Title: A false Jew
Description: <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><b><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">Full title:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="marclinepart"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#212529;">A false Jew: or, A wonderfull
Discovery of a Scot</span></span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#212529;">, </span><span class="marclinepart"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">B<span style="color:#212529;">aptized at London for a
Christian, Circumcised at Rome to act a Jew, rebaptized at Hexham for a
Believer, but found out at Newcastle to be a Cheat. </span><span style="color:#212529;">Being a true Relation of the detecting of one Thomas
Ramsey, born of Scotch Parents at London, sent lately from Rome by a speciall
Unction and Benediction of the Pope; who landed at Newcastle, under the name of
Thomas Horsley, but immediately gave himselfe out for a Jew, by the name of
Rabbi Joseph ben Israel, Mant. Hebr. soon after baptized at Hexham, by Mr.
Tillam, and by a speciall providence of God, found out by the Magistrates &amp;
Ministers of Newcastle upon Tine, to be an Impostour and Emissary of Rome, and
since sent up to the General and Councell of state to be further enquired into.</span></span></span></p><p></p>

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">4to.
pp. [8], 14, [2], 12. Signatures: <span style="color:#212529;background:#FFFFFF;">A-D⁴
E². </span>Bound in later 19<sup>th</sup>-century calf with blind tooling and
guilt spine title. Circular stamps of the Selbourne [private] library on A1v
and E2r. Imprint from C4r and D. Wing (ed.), Short-title Catalogue of Books
Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of
English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641–1700. 4 vols. New York, 1982-98
(2<sup>nd</sup> ed.), W-1266.</span></p><p></p>

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">First
edition of an account of Thomas Ramsay, the London-born son of a Scottish
physician, who, after studies at Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bremen, Würzburg, and
Rome, became a convert to Roman Catholicism and entered the (secret) service of
the Papacy, undergoing circumcision so as the pass for a wandering Jew. Robert
Ware (Foxes and Firebrands, Part II (1682), Bib# 4656313/Fr# 394 in this
collection) discusses Ramsay as ‘a great Scholar, well vers’d in Physick, and
an Excellent Linguist, yet a rank Papist’, posing not only as a learned
instructor of Hebrew at Newcastle, but in London as a poor Bohemian priest who
had been enslaved in Turkey, in which disguise he had gulled William Prynne.
Imprisoned in the late 1650s for suspected Catholic activism, he later migrated
(Ware relates) to Ireland, turning willing informer; he married twice and died
at Derry in 1679 or 1680, possibly poisoned by Jesuits. Ware’s extended account
was unknown to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), which dates
a ‘last glimpse’ of Ramsay to March 1660 – relying only on the present
pamphlet, whose author Thomas Weld is best known as a former emigré to
Massachusetts in 1632-34, and cotranslator of the versified text of the ‘Bay
Psalm Book’ (1640).</span></p><p></p>

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<span style="font-size:11.5pt;line-height:107%;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/catalog/bib_9140438" rel="ugc nofollow"><span style="color:#4B64FF;background:#FFFFFF;">Click here to view the Johns Hopkins
University catalog record.</span></a></span>