St John's College T.6 (James 475)
Records of the Huguenots. French, bef. 1700
No title page. Spine title: 'Memoires & Actes touchant ceux de la Religion Pret. Ref. Vol. 6'. The first 100 fos or so continue the chronological sequence in T.5, drawn from a volume of 'Memoires touchant ceux de la Religion Pretendue reformée', containing copies of 'Edicts, Acts, Memoires et traictez touchant ceux de la Religion pretendue reformée depuis L'an mil six cents vingt-un iusques en l'année 1630'. The copies date from 1628-30. The rest of the vol. contains additions to the first and second volumes of these 'Memoires', that is, to the volumes copied in T.2-4, including copies of documents dated between 1533 and 1620.
435x300 mm. Unfoliated (c. 300 fos). College bookplate (1937) inside front cover. There is no earlier internal evidence of provenance. T.1-18 were presented to the College by William Grove, a former Fellow, in 1762.
Single secretary hand, the same as in T.1-5, a clean copy. Paper, badly damaged by damp. Binding 17th cent.: leather on boards, with gold decoration and lettering: at centre on both front and rear the arms of Bénigne le Ragois de Bretonvilliers (d. 1700), President of the Chambre des Comptes at Paris, 1657: a shield, in chief two sickles, in base an eagle with olive branch, surmounted by a helmet. Bretonvilliers formed a library at his hotel on the Ile St Louis. At his death the Bibliothèque du Roi bought 35 MSS. 'Most of his books were stamped with his arms' (see Joannis Guigard, Armorial du Bibliophile, Paris, 1870-3, ii, 175).