Di Michele Riccio Napolitano De Re di Francia Librii. De Re d'Ispagnia. Libri III. De Re di Gierusalem Lib I. De Re di Napoli, & di Sicilia. Lib IIII. De Re di Vngaria. Libri II. Dal Latino, tradotti in questa nostra lingare da M. Giovanni Tatti Florentino. Con Priuilegio dell'Illustrissimo Veneto, per anni dieci.

In Vinegia. Appresso Vincenzo Vaugris al segno d'Erasmo 1543. FIRST EDITION of this translation. 8vo, 156 x 102 mms., foliated, 90, [6], with contemporary name on title-page , printer's ornament on title-page and repeated on verso of last leaf but two, contemporary or slightly later calf, with panels in blind on each cover, with initials "W S" within panels, green morocco label with spine and label neatly restored and laid down; no front paste-down end-paper,some slight soiling of title-page and next leaf, but a very good to fine copy. Michele Riccio (1445 - 1515) was a historian, jurist, and an ambassador, a disciple of Pietro Pietro Summonte. The text of his lives of various European kings and rulers is preceded by a preface written by the translator, Marco Antonio Giustiniano. It is possible that the volume belonged to William Seymour (1588 - 1660). The same initial appear on a copy of Musica Transalpina (1588) at the Folger Shakespeare Library, but on a more elaborate binding. In his book-length study Patrons and Musicians of the English Renaissance (1981), the scholar David C. Price [no relation] suggests that "the initials 'W. S.' stamped on the Folger copy of Musica transalpina [might imply] that it belonged to the William Seymour who married Lady Arabella Stuart, a ward of the Talbots, in 1610." The William Seymour to whom David Price refers was the son of Lord Beauchamp, and was later the 2nd Duke of Somerset. The Wikipedia entry on Seymour asserts that he was a scholar. If in fact Seymour owned this volume, he appears here to have been reading up on the lives of kings; and he was suspected, at one point, especially by his own king, of coveting just that job. He was in fact imprisoned in the Tower of London on the basis of, or partly on the basis of, the king's suspicion along these lines. Both Seymour and his first wife, Lady Arabella Stuart secretly married, were potential heirs to the throne, being "respectively fourth and sixth in line." Copies located in BL; NYPL, UC Berkeley, Newberry, Kansas, Cleveland; Biblioteca Casantense, Biblioteca Centerale di Roma.