A diminutive French prayerbook for personal Catholic devotions with an interesting English provenance, inscribed by one Mary Radclyffe. Given that this is a Catholic prayer book there is a strong possibility that it was bought, owned and inscribed by Lady Mary Radclyffe (1732–1798) of an English Catholic family with longstanding links to the exiled Stuarts. Mary’s father, Charles, a Jacobite and freemason, was an illegitimate grandson of Charless II (by Moll Davis) and spent most of his life in exile in Europe. He took part in the Jacobite Riding of 1745 and was executed the following year. Mary Frances Guillelma Radclyffe was born at Rome in 1732 and married Francis Eyre of Warkworth Castle in February 1755. Their eldest daughter, Maria Eyre, was born later that year.
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