MARTYN, Benjamin (1698-1763).
Reasons for establishing the colony of Georgia, with regard to the trade of Great Britain, the increase of our people, and the employment and support it will afford to great numbers of our own poor, as well as foreign persecuted Protestants .
London: W. Meadows, 1733. Second edition, enlarged.

Quarto: (9 7/8” x 7 7/8”, 253mm x 202mm). Engraved frontispiece and tail-piece on page 41 by John Pine, and engraved map of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida at the end.

Bound in blue drab boards, backed in vellum. Author and title ink manuscript to the spine.

A little scuffed and bowed. Near fine internally, with excellent margins at the fore. Armorial bookplate of the Earls of Macclesfield (South Library, pressmark 161.D.19), dated 1860, to the front paste-down. Small blind-stamp of the library to the first free end-paper and the initial three leaves. Early vellum backed boards, uncut (lightly dust-soiled).

Benjamin Martyn (1698-1763) was the secretary to the Society for Establishing the Colony of Georgia, and this is his second work promoting the colony: “it is incumbent on us, at this Time more particularly, to promote and enlarge our Settlements abroad with unusual Industry, when the Attention of almost all the Powers in Europe is turn’d towards the Improvement of theirs. The French are continually undermining us both in the East and West-Indies” (p. 5)

The present item is the second edition, enlarged with letters of General Oglethorpe with “resolutions of the Assembly relative to his arrival” (Sabin) not present in the first edition of the same year. Sabin calls this a “well-written tract; plausible in its arguments, glowing in its descriptions, valuable for its information, and pertinent in its appeals to the philanthropic and benevolent.”

From the celebrated library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle, Oxfordshire, England, accumulated from the early XVIIIc by generations of the Parker family, and sold (over successive sales) by Sotheby’s. The first Earl of Macclesfield was Thomas Parker, 1st Baron Parker, made Viscount Parker, of Ewelm in the County of Oxford, and Earl of Macclesfield, in the County Palatine of Chester in 1716. He was Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench from 1710 to 1718 and Lord High Chancellor from 1718 to 1725. The present item was probably acquired by Thomas Augustus Wolstenholme Parker, 6th Earl of Macclesfield (17 March 1811 - 24 July 1896), MP for Oxfordshire from 1837 until 1841.

Howes M 356; Goldsmiths 7074; Sabin 45002.