Featured in one of last week’s reports, a copy of Sir Charles Doyly’s Views of Calcutta and its Environs that sold for £14,000 at Chiswick Auctions (22% buyer’s premium) on March 22 was one of many lots – both printed and manuscript – that came with a Harrington family provenance.
Several of those lots produced bids well in excess of estimate, almost from the very start of proceedings, when The Censure of the ROTA upon Mr Miltons Book, entituled the Ready and Easy way to establish a Free Commonwealth, a 16pp pamphlet of 1660 estimated at £50-80, sold for £610.
This was one of many publications that were prompted by the appearance in 1656 of James Harrington’s Commonwealth of Oceana, a work of political philosophy that had initially been banned by Cromwell.