Justin Croft : Rare & Fine Antiquarian Books - Specialist in antiquarian books, especially in the field of literature, history, social sciences, religion, art and architecture, science and medicine

First edition in Greek. Though some earlier portions of the prayer-book had appeared in the Greek/Latin diglot editions (first 1569) it was Elias Petley who brought the complete book into translation. It was done ostensibly for schoolboys although Griffiths suggests "A secondary purpose was perhaps the prospect of some kind of union between the Church of England and the Orthodox." This intriguing proposition is supported by the fact that the heresiologist Ephraim Pagitt, author of Christianographie (1635), commended Petley's Book of Common Prayer to the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and the Maronites in his mission to establish the Church of England as an international force against Catholicism (Oxford DNB, entry for Paget). The work was dedicated to Archbishop William Laud and Petley's manuscript is preserved in the British Library.ESTC suggests that the cancelled leaf [alpha] 1 may have been a sub-title, but all copies for which we have found collations are without this leaf. Griffiths's collation also gives "minus a [alpha] 1." The only copy sold auction in the past 30 years (ABPC, the Evelyn copy) was also without it.