Francisco de Vargas Mejia

Francisco de Vargas Mejia (1484–1560). Lettres et memoires de François de Vargas, de Pierre de Malvenda, et de quelques evêques d'Espagne touchant le concile de Trente.Translated and edited by Michel Le Vassor. Amsterdam: Chez Pierre Brunel, 1699. PML 195033. Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2008.

Le Vassor dedicated his translation of Vargas's Lettres et mémoires to the English statesman William Trumbull, who had allowed him to consult manuscripts about the Council of Trent in the Trumbull family library. This is the dedication copy in an elegant gold-tooled red morocco presentation binding by the Double Drawer Handle Bindery, thought to have been the "most important Amsterdam workshop of the eighteenth century." Since Le Vassor would have sent Trumbull this copy as soon as the book was published, he must have commissioned the binding in or soon after 1699, just a year or two after this workshop had been established.