Quarto. [14], 366, 84pp. With an engraved frontispiece. With an additional title-page, dated 1652, bound-in. Late nineteenth-century half-calf, marbled boards, ruled and lettered in gilt. Extremities rubbed. Armorial bookplate of 'Richard Harington' to FEP, ink ownership inscription and annotations to FFEP, very small holes to title-page - just clipping text, slight marginal loss to Oo, paper flaws to text of p.300-301 - without loss of sense, some spotting.

A reprinting of, and reply to, Catholic controversialist Thomas Bayly's (d. c.1657) Certamen Religiosum (1649) by Church of England clergyman Christopher Cartwright (bap. 1602, d. 1658). Bayly had related the proceedings of a meeting between Charles I and Henry Somerset, earl of Worcester in 1646, at which the latter attempt to convert the former to the Roman Catholicism - the monarch remained true to his protestant faith. Though Bayly's intent had been to provide propaganda disproving notions that Charles harboured papist sympathies, the account was widely disputed with many claiming it to be falsified. Cartwright here accuses Bayly of providing the Catholic Church with a spurious report that may be used in its favour, an issue he attempts to rectify through enforcing the role of the king as a defender of the Protestant cause.