Just a few weeks later London dealer Pickering & Chatto sold it on to Lord Cottesloe for £110, adding a five guinea charge for repairs and its enclosure in a folding box.
One hundred years on, Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) was looking for around £20,000-30,000 when it offered Principles… as part of the military library formed by Thomas Fremantle, 3rd Lord Cottesloe, but instead recorded a bid of £85,000.
The work’s many engraved illustrations are all fully coloured and one of them, giving instructions in the use of the musket, featured in a preview in ATG No 2417.
Shown here is the work’s exceptional binding of contemporary black morocco gilt. It bears the arms of the Prince of Wales, for this was the copy that Hexham inscribed and presented to the future King Charles II.
