An history Of the Memorable and Extraordinary Calamities of margaret of anjou, queen of england; Wherein may be seen the Inconstancy of Fortune, the Changes of Courts, and the Miseries of human Life, to which Crowns and Sceptres are subject...Translated out of the original Manuscript..

London: Printed by James Bettenham, For G. Strahan.., 1737. xii, 192pp. Later half-calf, marbled boards, tooled in gilt and blind, contrasting red morocco lettering-piece. Rubbed, joints split, chipping to foot of spine. Book-label of James Dolman to FEP, scattered spotting. The sole English edition of French royal historian Michel Baudier's (c1589-45) moral biography of Margaret of Anjou (1430-82), Queen (and sometime regent) of England 1445-61 and 1470/1. As daughter of the Duke of Anjou and niece to the French King Charles XII, Margaret's marriage to Henry VI was arranged as part of peace negotiations during the later years of the Hundred Years' War. During her husband's later period of incapacitation, Margaret was the de-facto ruler of England during a period of immense civil instability. The culmination of the Wars of the Roses saw Margaret's only son - Edward of Westminster - killed at Tewkesbury in 1471, and with him any chance of success for the Lancastrian cause. As the preface to this work (reputedly by Thomas Carte) notes, the French original was one of 'two Histories of our Author still preserved in Manuscript in the Library of the Abbey of St. Germain des Prez at Paris', and had languished unpublished owing to 'the French' being 'generally little curious of any thing that doth not concern their own Country'. The closing sentences of the work neatly set out the intention of the author in his survey of her tumultuous life: 'The Calamities of her Life gave Warning then to the Princesses of her Time, that Fortune takes a Pride in attacking Crowns, and that the Grandeurs of the World are not a sufficient Protection to any Body from the Strokes she gives in her Fury'. . First edition. 8vo.