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Since Archbishop's Abbot's death in 1633, Lambeth Palace Library has been home to most of his library, amounting to some 2,600 books and manuscripts. Several strays are recorded elsewhere, however, and this volume, in a contemporary binding with Abbot’s gilt-stamped arms, came to light in the dispersal of the rare book collection of Washington National Cathedral, Washington DC. The Library is especially pleased to acquire it because of the close relationship of the author to Abbot himself, because of the presence at Lambeth of the authorial manuscript of part of this text, and - not least - because of the interesting and complex textual and historical questions posed by the annotations in this particular copy.

Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier), is the prototype of the 'courtesy book 'and the classic picture of the ideal renaissance courtier, prince, and enlightened ruler. This copy of the third Aldine edition is from the library of Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton (1540-1614), with his calligraphic signature in lower and outer margins of title, accompanied by a variety of mottoes and quotations in Greek, Latin, and Italian, and with over two hundred marginal annotations throughout the text in his hand. It contains 195 leaves, 8vo, in 19th century vellum over boards, in a clamshell box by Sangorski & Sutcliffe. In his 1995 study The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano, pages 79-80, Peter Burke discusses this copy in detail as a prime example of the influence of the book on the aristocracy in Renaissance England, describing the marginalia as 'the fullest and most systematic annotations on Castiglione known to me.' Most of the notes are in Italian, but some are in Latin (quotations from Cicero, etc.).

This impressive volume was the subject of a temporary export ban by the Culture Minister in 2012. The restriction was enforced because of the rarity of the item and its unique value for local and national historians.

Autograph Letter, Autograph Postcard, eight Typed Letters and two Christmas cards, all signed, Hull and University of Hull, 21 April 1956 to 6 February 1985, various sizes, 13 pages (excluding the Christmas cards), some with envelopes, to Anthony Thwaite.  Some of these letters appear in Thwaite’

A bound volume containing three relatively rare printed pamphlets of the period (listed below) and a little gem – a contemporary manuscript plan apparently showing the proposed defences of the City.

Philip Miller’s Gardener's Dictionary was one of the most popular gardening books of the 18th century. Miller was an expert botanist and gardener, and the book was published in many different forms and editions: the first edition appeared in 1724, and the last edition in 1807.

This advice guide for female servants sets out rules of behaviour designed to promote their industriousness, preserve their characters and prevent any misbehaviour likely 'to result in their ending…their miserable days in an hospital or work-house…or [finding] their death-bed on a dunghill' and i

Hamish Scott Henderson was a published poet and member of the Scottish literary renaissance of the later twentieth century, a folksong collector and promoter of the folksong revival, a cultural historian, a Scottish nationalist, an international democratic socialist, a European intellectual and a

Robert, the son of Ralph de Alderstead of Merstham in Surrey, probably assumed the surname Pashley only on his marriage to Sarah, the heiress of an estate centred on Pashley in Ticehurst, in about 1265. His son Sir Edmund Pashley pursued a career in the common law.

This is an exceptionally rare early 11th-century charter.  The Godwine Charter is a single-sheet Anglo-Saxon charter written in Old English, on parchment, in the form of a chirograph.