(Vol. 1 only) Stratford"s Authentic Edition of the Investigation of the Charges Brought Against His Royal Highness the Duke of York by Gwyllym Lloyd Wardle, Esq., Member for Oakhampton, Containing the Whole of the Evidence

London: J. Stratford, 1809. Stratford"s Authentic Edition. Binding very good+, text-fair. Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, KG, GCB, GCH (1763 -1827) was the second son of George III. A soldier by profession, from 1764 to 1803 he was Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück in the Holy Roman Empire. From the death of his father in 1820 until his own death in 1827, he was the heir presumptive to his elder brother, George IV, in both the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Kingdom of Hanover. He was thrust into the British Army at a very early age and was appointed to high command at the age of thirty, when he was given command of a notoriously ineffectual campaign during the War of the First Coalition, a continental war following the French Revolution. Later, as Commander-in-Chief during the Napoleonic Wars, he oversaw the reorganization of the British Army, establishing vital structural, administrative and recruiting reforms for which he is credited with having done "more for the army than any one man has done for it in the whole of its history".
Frederick resigned as Commander-in-Chief in 1809, as the result of a scandal caused by the activities of his latest mistress, Mary Anne Clarke. Clarke was accused of illicitly selling army commissions under Frederick's aegis. A select committee of the House of Commons enquired into the matter. Parliament eventually acquitted Frederick of receiving bribes by 278 votes to 196. He nevertheless resigned because of the high tally against him. Two years later, it was revealed that Clarke had received payment for furniture from Frederick's disgraced chief accuser, Gwyllym Wardle, and the Prince Regent reappointed the exonerated Frederick as Commander-in-Chief in May 1811. The Duke's relationship with Mary Anne Clarke is used by Mary Anne's descendant, Daphne du Maurier, in her historical novel Mary Anne.
This copy of Volume 1 only has been nicely rebound in ½ leather on marbled boards, with the title on a red Morocco patch on the spine and black ruling and design. The text however, shows more of its age. The frontis portrait has been clipped from the original frontispiece and is pasted to the endpaper facing the title page. The portrait, the title page and the first two subsequent pages show moderate foxing and some ink scribbling. The ink name of a previous owner is at the top of the title page. Another ink name is at the top of page 561, and the last two pages of the index are missing. The rest of the text is comparatively good condition, with just scattered foxing and age darkening.