Spooky book for auction

A macabre 17th century book about the execution of Gunpowder Plot conspirator Father Henry Garnet believed to be bound in the priest's own skin will go under the hammer this Sunday.

Perhaps most spooky of all, some claim to see an image of the priest's tortured face peering out of the anthropodermic binding of 'A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings against the Late Most Barbarous Traitors, Garnet a Jesuit and his Confederats'.

A macabre 17th century book about the execution of Gunpowder Plot conspirator Father Henry Garnet believed to be bound in the priest's own skin will go under the hammer this Sunday.

Perhaps most spooky of all, some claim to see an image of the priest's tortured face peering out of the anthropodermic binding of 'A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings against the Late Most Barbarous Traitors, Garnet a Jesuit and his Confederats'.

It is anyone's guess how much the book, which was made in London in 1606 by Robert Barker, the king's printer, just months after Garnet's execution, will fetch when it goes under the hammer at Wilkinson's Auctioneers in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.

Sid Wilkinson, the auctioneer, said: "Because the subject matter is so strange, we thought putting an estimate on it might be a bit vulgar.

"It could make £1,000, it could make hundreds, we just don't know."

He said the book is so rare Wilkinson's had never auctioned one before, but added that making books out of convicts' skin was not an entirely unusual practice.

Garnet's involvement in the plot by Catholics to kill King James I and most of the Protestant aristocracy by blowing up the Houses of Parliament has long been debated.
The priest claimed that, although he was not involved in the plot, he heard details of the plot during confessions, which bound him to confidentiality.

Despite his admonitions, the plotters went ahead.