Jean de LA COSTE (159.-1671) printer and bookseller. L.A.S., - Lot 100

Jean de LA COSTE (159.-1671) printer and bookseller. L.A.S., Lisbon May 8, 1654, to M. Marceau, conseiller du Roy en la Cour des Monnaies; 1page in-fol., address on back with 2 brown wax seals. He announces the death of Marceau's brother-in-law, R.P. Anseaume, in a shipping accident. Wishing to return to France, he had embarked on the Saint-Charles, "with a fairly favorable wind; being at the height of the Cap de Finis Terra, they encountered an Ostend fregatte of twenty-six cannon [...] when by an unforeseen and inevitable misfortune, the said fregatte lashed them with its broadside, a bullet gave into the powder which set fire to it and blew the ship into ten thousand pieces". Only eleven men from the bow were rescued by the Ostenders, and taken back to San Sebastian and then to Bayonne, where he heard the news. Père Anseaume was carrying "a good number of curious pieces which the Religious of icy had presented to him"...