Elkanah Settle (1648–1724)
Fears and dangers, fairly display’d’: being a new memorial of the Church of England
London, 1706
7000.c.321

Settle spent his early career as a successful playwright in Restoration London but by 1700 found himself in need of new ways of making money. To this end he began to write poems to mark significant events in the lives of the nobility, sending them finely bound copies decorated with their coats of arms in the hope of receiving money in return. The success of this venture was mixed, and some people returned the unsolicited gifts leaving him out of pocket. Settle sent this prose work to Thomas Fane, 6th Earl of Westmorland (whose arms appear on the cover); he evidently kept it, as it was still in his family in the 1850s.