Anonymous.

THE ARRAIGNMENT AND CONVICTION OF MERVIN LORD AUDLEY, EARLE OF CASTLEHAVEN (WHO WAS BY 26 PEERS OF THE REALM FOUND GUILTY FOR COMMITTING RAPINE AND SODOMY) AT WESTMINSTER, ON MONDAY, APRIL 25, 1631.AS ALSO THE BEHEADING OF THE SAID EARLE SHORTLY AFTER ON TOWER HILL.

      London: Printed for Tho. Thomas, 1642. Small 4to, disbound and intact, with the original sewing still in place; frontispiece (a portrait of Castlehaven, captioned with a list of the 26 peers who tried and convicted him), title page, pp. [1]-12, complete. First and only edition of the earliest book devoted to the celebrated 1631 trial, "the first reported trial for homosexual offenses in England" (H. Montgomery Hyde, THE OTHER LOVE, London, 1970, p. 44). In her recent monograph (A HOUSE IN GROSS DISORDER: SEX, LAW, AND THE 2ND EARL OF CASTLEHAVEN, New York, 1999), Cynthia B. Herrup claims that the London imprint is fictitious and that this anonymous pamphlet was most likely printed in Bristol for Thomas Thomas, a Bristol bookseller. The word "The" shaved at the top of title page, still a lovely copy of an exceedingly rare and important book. **** Sodomy first became a civil offense in England in 1533, and became a criminal offense in 1562, though it had long been a capital crime under ecclesiastical law. It continued to be punishable by death in England until 1861, when the maximum penalty was reduced to life imprisonment. The law was not repealed until 1967. B.R. Burg refers to several cases previous to Castlehaven's of men being brought to trial in England for sodomy, but these are cases without any historical record of verdict (see his article in JOURNAL OF HOMOSEXUALITY, VI:1-2 [1980-81]). In A HOUSE IN GROSS DISORDER, Herrup discusses "the two best- documented charges of sodomy before 1631": one case did not lead to prosecution for sodomy; in the other, "[Walter, Lord] Hungerford did not die because he was a sodomite or because he mistreated his wife, but the allegations in her petition helped to make his other behavior and his link to [Thomas] Cromwell seem more obvious." Herrup goes on to point out that "because the [Castlehaven] scandal was the earliest secular English prosecution for sodomy for which we have extensive documentation, authors (particularly popular authors) interested in male homosexuality have used it to anchor their histories, seeing it as an important moment in the tortuous relationship between private individuals and the state." Moreover, "the trial of Lord Castlehaven was to remain the leading case on the law of buggery for almost two centuries" (Montgomery Hyde, op. cit., p. 57). **** The Castlehaven trial was important for other reasons as well. For instance, according to Herrup, "the trial was 'epoch-making' and immediately recognized as such, in its insistence that a wife could testify against her husband." According to Ian McCormick, "this case had made legal history because the Lord Chief Justice concluded that a criminal participant could be a legal witness until he himself was convicted" (SECRET SEXUALITIES: A SOURCEBOOK OF 17TH AND 18TH CENTURY WRITING, London, 1997). Finally, some literary scholars have argued that the story of the trial influenced the plot of Milton's COMUS. (Incidentally, the Lord Chief Justice's ruling in the Castlehaven trial that emission without penetration was sufficient for a conviction of buggery did NOT withstand the test of time and never served as a determining precedent.) **** The revised edition of Wing lists only eight copies of this pamphlet, about evenly distributed between institutions in the U.S. and the U.K., and a search of OCLC, RLIN, and the British Library Integrated Catalogue locates no others. It is of the utmost rarity in commerce. For example, neither I nor any other specialist dealer I have been able to consult has ever seen or heard of a copy being offered for sale in our lifetimes.