The English Usurer; Or Usury Condemned, By The Most Learned And Famous Divines Of The Church Of England, And Dedicated To All His Majesties Subiects, For The Stay Of Further Increase Of The Same. The Second Impression, Corrected By The Authour. Blaxton, John (Ed.).

Second edition, published the same year as the first, of this scarce anthology of contemporary English writing on usury. This copy includes a crisp example of the woodcut frontispiece, contrasting a gowned moneylender with pigs rooting in filth. During this period, the use of money as capital, investment, and interest increased substantially. John Blaxton assembles material by the leading divines of the day to reaffirm that these practices of usury are incompatible with religious doctrine. His collection invokes the Christian ideals of neighbourly compassion and charity, and the Christian sin of storing up treasure. Blaxton graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1614, and preached at Osmington, Dorset, from 1621 to 1662 - a period spanning the civil war, Commonwealth, and Restoration. Provenance: Howard & Linda Knohl, with the 20th-century bookplate of the Fox Pointe Manor library to the front pastedown. ESTC S104600; Goldsmiths' 660; Kress 494; Madan I, pp. 176. Small quarto (178 x 135 mm). Recent pastiche of mottled calf, spine ruled in gilt and with red morocco label, raised bands, covers panelled in blind, edges sprinkled red and brown. Woodcut frontispiece depicting a usurer counting his money and two pigs rooting. Title page (A3) bound before the leaf explaining the frontispiece (A2). With three repaired short closed tears in inner margin of frontispiece, slightly into image without loss, minor browning to contents, occasional faint damp staining to lower margins, trimmed slightly close at head, shaving a few headlines and outer margin of frontispiece: a good copy.