Discovered while packing for the move.

A rarity.

Your Tatler is moving from a condominium unit into a house nearby. There are several reasons for the move, but the overriding one is residents from a neighboring condo complaining about my sweet, gentle dog–unlike the President’s ill-bred Major (and his ill-bred progeny, too)–venturing on their hallowed ground without a leash. My reaction to the complaints? Move. Find a house with land around it for the dog to play on. When one doesn’t have children, he spends all his attention, and money, on the dog.

In any event, while boxing up a considerable number of books, I noticed the one seen above; one I had been aware of before, but never paid much mind. It’s rather remarkable. The author, Alexander Ross, was inter alia chaplain to Charles I and a prolific author, having published many histories and scientific works. The book in question is titled, “PANSEBAEIA or a View of all Religions in the WORLD,” which it is and includes an entertaining annex on “Notorious Hereticks,“ including Mohomet. Ross later translated a French translation of the Koran into English and published it, likely making it the first Koran in English.

Ross, with his Catholic leanings, as well his chaplaincy to Charles I, eventually found himself on the wrong side of the English Civil War and, not surprisingly, met a sad end.

The book would probably have some value were it in better condition, but as it is, the front board is dis-attached and the pages have been cropped. It is however, quite readable. Someone in our clan must have read the whole thing, as there are light pencil marks throughout. How it got into our possession is anyone’s guess. On the frontispiece someone has printed “1658,” which happens to be the year our bunch arrived in New Amsterdam, but it’s highly unlikely a Huguenot refugee from Catholic France would have carried across the Atlantic a book by Charle I’s chaplain, so it probably came to us generations later.