Fifteen Drawings by Charles de Chatillon (circ. 1800), Illustrating the Family History of the Talbots, Earls of Shrewsbury, 1071-1541

c. 1800. Hardcover. Very Good+. Half brown cloth and morocco, gilt-stamped lettering on spine; oblong Folio; with 15 signed pencil drawings on paper (about 315x485 mm each), mounted on heavy cardstock with caption handwritten in French, in ink, in lower margin of mount. Circa 1800, with hand-lettered title-page indicating that this collection was mounted and bound in 1930. Cloth blistered; drawing paper a bit toned, with some faint foxing here and there.

These extraordinary historical scenes by Chatillon trace the births, deaths, marriages and battles of the Earls of Shrewsbury, from the First Earl, John Talbot (1390-1453), an important English military commander during the Hundred Years War, to Francis Talbot (1623-1667), the 11th Earl, who met his more scandalous end in a duel with the Second Duke of Buckingham. John Talbot distinguished himself for his bravery in battle, and is believed to have fought alongside Henry IV in the famous Battle of Shrewsbury, 1403, in which King Henry IV defeated a rebel army led by Henry "Hotspur" Percy from Northumberland. The battle serves as the climax for William Shakespeare's "Henry IV, Part One," and John Talbot appears, with speaking lines, in "Henry VI, Part One." (The Countess of Auvergne remarks of him, "Is this the scourge of France? / Is this the Talbot, so much feared abroad / That with his name the mothers still their babes?" ) The Battle of Shrewsbury is also the first in which English archers fought each other on English soil, and archers are featured in the battle scenes illustrated here -- alongside armored horses, waving flags, the stern expressions of the valiant, and the agonized faces of the wounded. The scope and intricacy of these drawings is difficult to capture with language -- no detail is left unrecorded, from the coat of arms on a shield, to the embroidery on a wedding dress, the vaulted arches of a church, the sinews of dog, the teeth of horse gnashing its bit. A must-see, please inquire for images or a complete list of captions.