9 CYRIL DAVENPORT acorn spray here and there ; it has also a border of parallel lines marked by small stamps, and was probably made about 1640. There is a volume belonging to LordSalisbury in the library at Hatfield which agrees with the descriptionsof Prince James' ' Concordance' in all respects, and although the continuity of its record is not complete, there is little doubt that it is the actual book. The portrait of Charles I. appears more frequently on book- bindings than that of any other person except Martin Luther, but while the great Reformer only adorns leather, the beautiful face of our ' White King' is also found wrought in silver and delicately worked in em- broidery. Few other of our sovereigns have been figured on bindings. There is one finely painted miniature of Elizabeth on a large Bible that belonged to her which is now in the British Museum ; and a bust of Charles II. in royal robes is painted on the front edges of the leaves of each of the three volumes of a copy of Foxe's ' Acts and Monuments,' printed in London in 1641, which was Royal property. This curious painting, probably the first of its kind, is signed ' Fletcher,' and is only visible when held in a certain position. I hope to describe it more fully when I have to say something about the bindings made for Charles II. Besides these few, no portraits of English sovereigns exist on bookbindings, as far as I know. The bindings made for Charles I. are either in brown calf or morocco ; the colours used in the latter are dark blue, dark olive, which often is faded to a pale brown, and rarely red. The Eúcti v Baviñac$, which has been shown by Mr. Almack to be largely if not entirely the work of Charles himself, was first published in 1648, immediately after the King's death, and most of the original bindings bear stamps having reference to the peculiar circumstances of its issue. The most usual of these stamps are the initials C. R., a skull, a crown, roses, an hour-glass or a thistle, variously combined, and many of the volumes are in black leather, the edges of the leaves also being black. On some of the earliest copies is an oval stamp with a portrait of the King in Royal robes, with the Garter, and a skull, enclosed within a border of twisted thorn, surmounted with a martyr's crown, and on a calf-bound copy, now in the Royal Library at Windsor, the King's portrait is wrought in silver repoussé, while another has small profile portraits on its two silver clasps. The date of the printingof a book is always an uncertain evidence of the age of the binding, but usually it may be presumed that the binding is later than the date on the title-page. If the binding is of 7
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