Jesu Christi D. N. Novum Testamentum, Theodoro Beza interprete

Additæ sunt summæ breves doctrinæ in Evangelistas, & Acta Apostolorum, Item, Methodus Apostolicarum Epistolarum ab codem autore, cum brevi phraseon, & locorum difficiliorum expositione, ex ipsius autoris maioribus annotationibus desumpta, paucis etiam additis ex Joach. Camerarii notationibus in Evangelistas & Acta.

Woodcut device on the title.
First Edition. 8vo. [168 x 102 x 38 mm]. [16], 419, [1] ff. Bound c.1630 in vellum, the covers with yapp edges and tooled in gilt with a single fillet border and a panel with a small fleur-de-lis at the outer corners and a vase with flowers at the centre. Smooth spine divided into five panels by triple gilt fillets, with a rectangular "s" shaped ornament flanked by stars at the centre of each panel, gilt edges, remains of green silk ties. (Split at the head of the upper joint almost invisibly repaired). Stock no. ebc2495.
Londini: excudebat Thomas Vautrollerus, 1574.

STC 2802. Darlow & Moule 6162.
The first issue of the earliest separate edition of Theodore Beza's version of the New Testament, which had first appeared in a Latin Bible published in Geneva in 1557. GGg4r has the errata and colophon, while the errata was corrected in the second issue of 1574. The editor was Pierre Loyseleur de Villiers, a theological professor who had come to London from Geneva. The annotations are mainly Beza's, but some were taken from J. Camerarius. Laurene Tomson's revision of the Geneva New Testament, first published in 1576 claims to be a translation of this Latin edition. The printer, Thomas Vautrollier, was a Huguenot refugee who had set up a press at Blackfriars.

This is a fine and large copy in an English gilt tooled vellum binding which probably dates from soon after 1627. There is a slightly cropped ink signature of Thomas Seyliard, with this date, at the head of the title. The fly-leaf has a later seventeenth century signature of Marie Heath, and there are the bookplates of John Peyto Verney (1738-1816) and Robert John Verney (1809-1862), the 14th and 17th Lord Willoughby de Broke.