TAYLOR, John [the Water Poet.]

The whole life and progresse of Henry Walker the ironmonger. First, the manner of his conversation. Secondly, the severall offences, and scandalous pamphlets the said Walker hath writ, and for which he is now a prisoner in New-Gate. Thirdly, the forme of the inditement which is laid against him, by the Kings sergeants at law, and his learned counsell. Fourthly, his conviction by the jury. Fiftly, his recantation, and sorrow for the publicke wrong he hath done his Majesty and the whole kingdome. Here are also many remarkable passages concerning the offence, and apprehending the said Henry Walker, with a true relation of his severall escapes and rescues from the hands of justice ...

      London. . 1642 First and only edition. 4to (15 x 19cm) [8]pp., an excellent copy in modern full calf, sponge-patterned, with blind stamped decoration, spine titled in gilt, the Bradley Martin copy, with bookplate. A stinging biographical lampoon of Henry Walker (fl.1638-1660), the journalist and bookselling preacher, by John Taylor (1580-1653), the Water poet. Walker gained the epithet "ironmonger" from an early apprenticeship, however he was drawn into journalism and preaching and through both means he propagated his anti-episcopal message. He printed numerous "seditious and scandalous libells" and in 1644 became involved in the perodical press, being responsible for many short-lived but influential titles, including "Occurrences of Certain Speciall and Remarkable Passages" (1644) and subsequently "Perfect Occurrences". "During 1642 Walker engaged in a pamphlet exchange with John Taylor, who repeatedly stigmatized him as an ignoramus ironmonger and a scandalous preacher . Walker's contemporary notoriety was chiefly as a newsbook editor, perhaps second only to Marchamont Nedham in prominence" (ODNB). In relation to the printing of seditious literature, Taylor accuses Walker of being the "chiefe or main stickler in this cause", and goes on to descibe the setting-up of Walker's bookshop, in which "hee not having any word of God in his said shop above the bulke or size of a horne-booke". Taylor estimates that Walker's output must have been "4. or 500000. of such pamphlets . by which means or doings, some hundred of thread-bare scriblers fell to the trade of scandalous writing, and newes making . these scandalous fooleries (or knaveries) were of such attractive force and power, that they drew at least 500. vagrants and vagabonds from all the shires round about London, and they were all suddainely metamorphis'd and transform'd into wandring booke sellers". Taylor discusses Walker's network of pamphlet distributors and goes on to relate various brushes with the law, including one incident where Walker, before a sojourn in Newgate prison, hides out in an upholsterers shop, escaping from the authorities on a boat down the Thames. A rare and significant pamphlet relating this important early newspaper baron. This, the Bradley Martin copy, is the only copy to have appeared on the market in the last 20 years. Wing T530. [Attributes: Hard Cover]