DON TOMAZO, OR THE JUVENILE RAMBLES OF THOMAS DANGERFIELD
London: printed for William Rumbald in the Old Change, 1680. First Edition. Octavo, [16], 224 pages; VG; bound in 3/4 polished calf, marbled boards and endpapers; paneled spine with gilt rules on ridges, blind-stamping to panels, on black morocco label with gilt titling; text block red; scuffing to front board; mild wear and rubbing to extremities; small bookplate to front pastedown; note on page 224 stating 'Read [?] 1742'; Signatures: A-P⁸.; rare; shelved case 3.
1329459
Shelved Dupont Bookstore
Price: $6,000
NOTES
ESTC: R12136; "A fictitious narrative with some scraps of truth"; attributed to Dangerfield. cf. DNB.;
Thomas Dangerfield (1650-1685) was an English conspirator who became one of the principal informers in the Popish Plot. The Popish Plot, an invented conspiracy by the English priest Titus Oates, alleged that there was a Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II. The anti-Catholic panic occurred between 1678 and 1681 and led to the executions of at least 22 men.;
"In March 1679 a young man of infamous character who went by the name sometimes of Willoughby sometimes of Dangerfield, lay in the debtor's side of Newgate...he was employed to go the round of coffeehouses frequented by old Presbyterians and new Whigs, to pick up what scraps of information against them he could."
[Kenyon, J. P. The Popish Plot, 1903, pages 204/206];
"Tomazo's rambles are told in a genial mock-heroic manner by a witty and inventive narrator. Frustrated by his father's severity, the boy robs him and heads off to Scotland with Jemmy, hoping for riches. The reality turns out to be rather different...Not to be defeated, Tomazo proceeds to out-rogue the English rogue in a career which - mingling Dangerfield's pedestrian crimes with fantastic exploits - takes in forgery, theft, coining, soldiering, whoring, spying, and piracy...Tomazo's luck never deserts him: when captured as a spy in Antwerp he is saved by the intervention of a Catholic priest and when he is arrested in England for coining it is Mrs Cellier who procures his release. Notably, the narrative ends without describing the events of the Popish Plot." [McElligott, Jason. Fear, Exclusion and Revolution, 2006, page 116-117];