Reliquiæ Sacræ Carolinæ

The oldest book of my father's collection was a tatty  book with no cover. It was printed in 1649, which I thought was amazing. I didn't particularly like history at school and didn't feel any great connection to the past, but holding this old book did seem to do that. Even better was the inscription on page 2:

"Mary her booke 1682"

Now that's history.

Inside, the title page announced "The Pourtaicture of His Sacred Majesty", although this page did seem out of place, a more modern typeface compared with the rest of the book, and an altogether newer feel.

I searched the internet for the title and found it to be related to Charles I. Also known as the "Eikon Basilike" (often written in Greek capitals ΕΙΚΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΗ), it was supposedly written by Charles while he was imprisoned just before his execution. Was this book therefore a copy of this "Eikon Basilike"? What was strange was that the book contained a number of embedded title pages, as if it was a collection of separate parts, and one of these appeared to be the "Eikon Basilike" itself:

Confusing.

On the fly leaf, now the front of the book because of the missing cover, was a hand-written note that was rather difficult to read and took me some time to decipher.

Eventually I worked out that it said this:

"(?) This copy has a recently included printed title page which however is incorrect! The book is a copy of the Reliquiæ Sacræ Carolinæ printed by Samuel Browne at The Hague in 1650".

This was a definite step forward. I now had a good idea (if the note was to be believed) what the book was, but without the cover or correct title page I couldn't be at all certain. What I needed was to find a another copy of the book to compare it with. From searching the internet I discovered that the National Trust had a copy of the Reliquiæ, so I sent them an enquiry, and received a very helpful reply from their Libraries Curator. She explained:

The Reliquiae or 'works' of Charles I usually included the 'Pourtraicture ... (usually known as the Eikon Basilike) which purported to be written by Charles I, although is now thought to be by John Gauden.  The bibliography of the Eikon Basilike is extremely complicated, as there were lots of different editions produced around the same time, many with false imprints (including the edition which may be yours, which was actually published in London).

The bibliography of the Eikon Basilike and related Reliquiæ have, the curator explained, been the subject of at least two studies. She said:

There are published bibliographies of the work and its variants, including E. Almack's Bibliography of the King’s book and F.F. Madan's New bibliography of the Eikon basilike.

I found an online copy of Almack's Bibliography of the King’s Book, and was able to discover that his edition number 31 matched my copy precisely - the page numbering, font style, the textual description and page contents, and the image of the Eikon title page itself were all identical. The description of the title page ends with "HAGUE, printed by Samuel Browne. 1650". All this seemed to confirm that the note written on the fly leaf of my copy was correct.

There was one detail (two transposed pages) for which I wanted to check with the newer Madan work, but I could find no copy of this on the internet. Again the helpful NT lady suggested I contact Cambridge University Library, as they were considered the authority on the subject and held Madan's own collection of the books. This time I really hit the jackpot, as the person who replied to my email took a particular interest in the Eikon, and was able to answer my outstanding question and confirm that my book was definitely the Almack 31/Madan 61 edition of the Reliquiæ. He was also able to advise me what the missing title page and illustration page would have looked like if I wanted to add them to the book when rebound.

I eventually obtained proper images from the British Library who had a matching copy of the book and also a copying service that could provide images. The images that I received needed a great deal of cleaning up using an image editor, as I didn't want personal scribblings from someone else's book in mine - it didn't seem right to include something that definitely didn't belong, even though the whole idea of tidying up books and inserting missing pages is a real no-no for book conservationists.

Bibliography

The Eikon Basilike, or Pourtaicture, known as the King's Book, is a sort of spiritual diary written by Charles I in the period leading up to his execution, or at least was originally believed to be so. This was disputed by John Gauden, the Bishop of Exeter, who after the Restoration claimed that he had written it. Evidence from witnesses one way or the other was influenced by where their allegiances lay. Current thinking is that it was probably authored by Gauden using at least some of the king's writings, but the truth will never be known. It was first published just after the Charles's execution in 1649 as a pro-royalist publication and to elicit sympathy for the (now ex-) king.

The Reliquiæ Sacræ Carolinæ, sometimes called the King's Works, is a collective work of, as the title page announces, the civil and sacred writings of the king, that was first published in 1650. It incorporates the Eikon (the "sacred") as well as speeches and letters by the king (the "civil") during the rise of Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentarians.

The Eikon (and by extension, the Reliquiae), was very popular and ran to many editions over the succeeding years. Its publication was banned by the Protestant Parliament, and to avoid punishment, the publishers claimed it to be printed in the Hague when in reality it was printed in London.

References

Samuel Browne - Wikisource

Reliquiae Sacrae Carolinae  - Wikipedia

The Idler - a full leather rebinding

My second leather rebinding was a book called "The Idler" by Samuel Johnson, published in 1799. It was in poor condition and of little value to me. The main reason for choosing this book for a first stab at full leather was its similarity in size to the "Reliquiae Sacrae Carolinae" (the 1649 book I briefly alluded to in the blog intro) and I used it as a practice run for repairing the Reliquiae itself.

The boards of the book were already loose or detached, but I deliberately split the text block so that the starting condition of the book was very similar to the Reliquiae, so I would get to practice all the elements that the latter would need during repair.

The book was sewn on sawn-in (recessed) cords so there are no characteristic raised bands on the spine. This was fine for what I wanted; the Reliquiae also had a flat spine, quite typical for a 17th century book, and I wanted this to be the same. I chose to use tapes for attaching the boards to keep the back flat. These I sewed on while stitching along the back of some of the sections and cross-stitched across the split to hold the two parts together.

It looks a bit untidy (and is) but this was the first time I'd done this sort of stitching. In fact, as a newbie it was the first time of doing nearly everything here. In hindsight and with a bit more experience, I'm not sure how much strength this stitching really gives to the tapes and to joining the split in the spine. Perhaps Japanese tissue glued across the split and adhesive for the tapes is as good if not better, but that's for the future.

Anyhow, once adhesive has been applied to the back then it's all a bit stronger and tidier. Below shows the boards attached with the tapes recessed.

On the first book I sewed "proper" headbands but I found it really fiddly. For this one I tried something different - and quicker. Various alternatives are possible, one type is simply material - I used a thin scrap of leather - folded over a thin core - in my case, a thin strip of leather.

It's OK but I'd think twice about doing it again. One of the purposes of a headband is to give extra strength to the head of the book where fingers are used to hook the book off the shelf, and this headband is floppy and doesn't do that. Another downside I found was that it makes quite a bit of bulk at the head and tail of the spine, which then needs to be evened out when it is back-lined. You can see in the image below that I had to fill in between the headbands to make it flat before gluing a paper back-lining.

The leather used for the covering is calf, appropriate for an old book. I wanted the leather darker than the natural colour, so I dyed it with multiple treatments of a water-based dye. Below shows the leather after paring and dying. The colour is slightly uneven, but I was happy with that as I wanted a more "rustic" look rather than being completely clean and uniform.
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It didn't quite turn out like that. After the leather had been pasted, the surface turned dark, and unevenly so. For (new) leather to darken when it's wet is normal, returning to its original colour as it dries out, so I wasn't concerned. Unexpectedly, however, when the leather dried out it stayed the same dark colour, and having a strange mottled appearance. This actually looked OK to me as an aged piece of leather, but definitely not what it was supposed to look like.

No-one I've asked has been able to explain why this happened. The general feeling is that there must have been something odd in the leather tanning process. My theory is that during the process of dyeing the leather (and perhaps because I used multiple coats and it was water-based) the dye soaked into the leather, and wetting the leather from underneath (with the paste) brought the dye to the surface The cover for the Reliquiae (coming later) was from the same skin, and did the same thing. I've pasted dyed leather from different skins since then and not had the same issue.

After tooling, here is the finished book: