HALLEY’S COMET PROPHETICAL PAMPHLET The Mystery of Ambras Merlins, Standardbearer Wolf and last Boar of Cornwal

Rare prophetical pamphlet published after the appearance of Halley’s Comet a year before.

4 page folio text with caption title and imprint from colophon. Small woodcut on last page depicting a ‘Flagg figured with a White Wolf’. 4 pages. Toning to paper edges and a couple of brown spots, otherwise a very good copy bound in modern quarter calf over marbled boards with additional blanks to bulk out the volume. This is the dated version of the pamphlet - ESTC R10135 - (11 locations); the undated version found in 2 further locations. Provenance: this copy sold at Bonhams in 2019; previously not seen at auction since 1986.

The Mystery is a prophetical pamphlet, published in the wake of the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1682, and promising ‘sundry other Misterious Prophecys, both Ancient and Modern’ which relate to ‘the danger of an invation [sic] in England by the Turks’. The writer describes himself only as ‘a Lover of his Country’s Peace’. He touches briefly on his observation of ‘The Situation, Dimention, Complexion and natural Comixture of the said Comet’ before moving on to the complex implications of its appearance, drawing on Lilly’s 1681 almanac and foreseeing a Turkish landing in the West country which will be met by the ‘Boar of Cornwal’ which shall ‘fight, defeat and sink him [the Turk's Standardbearer Wolf] in the deep of the Severn sea.’