Rare 17th Century Gaol Records Sold for £11,000

A handwritten set of 17th century records of prisoners at Stafford Gaol has sold for £11,000 in Tennants Auctioneers’ Books, Maps & Manuscripts Sale.

Early UK manuscript calendars of prisoners are exceedingly rare, and the lot comprised 42 lists dated between March 1661 and August 1688. They listed the details of prisoners and their charges, examples of which included: "Elizabeth Woolley alias Bell of Elford in ye County of Stafford upon suspicion of having two husbands", and "Ann Daybanck charged with murdering her daughter Dorothey Daybanck" as well as four men accused of being Popish Priests, and charges of burglary, highway robbery, stealing livestock, counterfeiting coins and more. 

Selling for £8,000 was a manuscript journal/commonplace book by Sir John Ross (1777-1856), a Scottish naval officer and Arctic explorer. The book is composed of ink sketches of ships at sea, copied verse, and vignette sketches of figures and places, and had been passed by descent through the Ross family. 

Sir John Ross was born in West Galloway, and joined the Royal Navy aged just nine years old before a long career serving in the Navy, the merchant navy and the Swedish Navy. In 1818, he embarked on the first of three expeditions to the Arctic, on one of a number of attempts by the British Admiralty to find the North West Passage. Having sailed around Baffin Bay and made their way into the Lancaster Sound, a rare mirage known as an iceblink led him to believe there was a range of mountains blocking passage, and so they returned home. Once this mistake was realised, his reputation was tarnished until a second perilous expedition which saw them trapped in ice for months on end. Forced to explore the area, they gathered important geographic, ethnographic and scientific information and established a rapport with the Innuit people. 

Other highlights included:

• a three-volume set of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (George Allen, 1955), sold for £4,400
• a bound collection of 10 chapbooks dating from the late 18th and early 19th century including rare works published by Ann Lemoine, one of the first independent female publishers in England (£2,500)
• an 1858 first edition of Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (£1,100)
• a late 18th century volume of Thomas Bankes' A Modern, Authentic and Complete System of Universal Geography…The Whole Forming a Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels (£1,300)