An Impartial Account of many Barbarous Cruelties exercised in the Inquisition in Spain, Portugal, and Italy.
Particularly, I. The trial and sufferings of Mr. Isaac Martin, who was put into the inquisition in Spain, with an account of his deliverance. II. A description of the inquisition of Granada. III. the prosecution of the famous Molinos; his condemnation, imprisonment and death. IV. An abstract of the travels and sufferings of Mr. William Lithgow, a Scotsman, and accounts of other cruelties used in the inquisition.
London, Printed, and Sold by the Booksellers in Town and Country, 1738
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.
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