first edition

An extremely scarce collection of works on the Inquisition in Spain, Portugal and Italy compiled anonymously from several tracts popular at the time, including Isaac Martin's Trial and Sufferings (first published in 1723), the Prosecution of the famous Molinos (a narrative account of the Spanish quietist's trial in 1687), and William Lithgow's Travels and Sufferings (relaying the author's seizure and imprisonment in Malaga in 1620).

The work can be placed in the tradition of Protestant martyrologies dating back to Foxe's Actes and Monuments, which sought to discredit the prosecution of heresy by the Catholic Church: 'Since Persecution, and the very Methods now in Use among some Christians, for propagating and defending their Religion, were in these first Ages, so destructive of, and apparently opposite to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we may justly wonder how they have been introduced into any Church, calling her self by his Name' (p.vii).

The work is illustrated with five engraved plates, two of which are signed 'Hulett' — probably the James Hulett (d.1671) known for his later portraits of Essex and Lord Fairfax in Francis Peck's Memoirs of the Life and Actions of Oliver Cromwell (1740).

ESTC records just four copies of An Impartial Account, three in the British Isles (London Library, National Library of Scotland, and Lincoln College, Oxford) and one in North America (Pennsylvania State University).

First edition, 8vo (17.5 x 11 cm); five engraved full-page plates including frontispiece, woodcut headpieces, tailpieces and initials, ownership inscription in pen to front free endpaper, leaves slightly toned, hinges cracked but holding, occasional minor tears, lacking final few ff.; vellum-backed marbled boards, MS spine, corners slightly rubbed; x, 11-416 pp.

ESTC N16844.