LAMBARDE, William.

A good copy, with the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy map in fine period hand-colouring, of the first edition of this famous early account of the antiquities and topography of Kent – the first English county history. William Lambarde (1536-1601) was an antiquarian and justice of the peace, with a great interest in the Anglo-Saxon origins of English culture and common law. The scholar Laurence Nowell encouraged him to publish ‘Archaionomia’ (1568), a collection of Anglo-Saxon laws; Nowell bequeathed all his books to Lambarde, which may have included the famous ‘Beowulf’ ms. Dedicated to the gentlemen of the County of Kent, ‘Perambulation’ examines the history and topography of its various cities and towns, including Leeds, Rochester, the Cinque Ports, Dover, and Bylsington. For each, Lambarde connects local landscape features and important local events, as were as folklore (e.g., the wooden idol of the God of Boxley, a sort of Kentish Priapus and a fraud perpetrated by monks) from late antiquity and the medieval period, often providing Anglo-Saxon and Latin sources and etymologies (e.g., Tenham from Tynham or a hamlet of ten houses). He relies on famous authorities such as Higden, William of Newburgh, Matthew Paris, and Matthew of Westminster. Based on Lyne’s map of the Heptarchy in ‘Archaionomia’ (1568), the engraved map, here in fine period hand-colouring, shows the subdivision of England into seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and is followed by an ‘exposition’ or textual explanation. Appended is the very famous section, in Norman French and English, on the typically Kentish custom of ‘gavelkind’, a Celtic system of land tenure, also present in Wales and Ireland, by which an estate was divided equally among the heirs (male or female). This custom probably inspired Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’. An entertaining, learned, and exquisitely printed work.

Two issues were published in 1576, differing slightly in the colophon – no priority established.