An Order of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, assembled at Westminster, in the House of Lords, December 22. 1688. London, Awnsham and William Churchill, 1688.
Large folio broadside (452 x 345mm, with a section of 30 x 154 cut from the lower left corner of the margin: no text missing). Single block of text beneath drop-head title, with list of names before and after text, large tear through the text to the central fold, with no loss, three folds.
An important anti-Catholic proclamation issued just a few weeks after the landing of William of Orange at Brixham in Devon and the day before James II fled England. The order requires that all Catholics, with a few exceptions, leave London within five days. The family of Alexander Pope was one of those affected but Pope himself was only a baby at the time.
‘The Lords Spiritual and Temporal... considering the great Mischiefs that have happened unto, and do still threaten this Kingdom, by the evil Designs and Practices of the Papists, in great numbers resorting unto, and abiding in the City of London, and places adjacent to the said City; For the better preservation of the Peace and common Safety, have thought fit, and do Order and Require, That all Papists, and Reputed Papists do, and shall, within Five Days after the Date hereof, depart from the said City, unto their respective Habitations; from which they are not to remove above Five Miles distance’.
ESTC r213737, well held in the UK and Ireland (6 copies in London, 3 in Scotland, 4 in Oxford, 1 in Dublin) but only Harvard, Huntington, Newberry and Indiana in North America.
Wing 2836A; Steele I, 3933.