In 1679, three years after the first recorded book auction was held in England, an Anglican preacher Edward Stillingfleet was embroiled in a series of printed refutations and counter-refutations with a Catholic priest Thomas Godden. The debate concerned Stillingfleet’s ‘charges against the Church of Rome’ and the year saw him respond with a volume entitled Several Conferences Between a Romish Priest, A Fanatick Chaplain, and a Divine of the Church of England. This series of four imagined conversations is set within an early book auction, a newly available social arena that encapsulated intrigue and uncertainty for its early attendees. The characters’ discussion begins when the Priest addresses the Chaplain: Rom. P: You are well met at this Auction of Books. I have been present at many of them beyond Sea: but I never was at one in England before. How go the prices of Books here.Fan. Ch: Very dear methinks, by the Books I have bought [...].R.P: May I know what they are Sir?F.C: Only some few choice pieces which I have picked out of this great Catalogue.R.P: Whereabouts are they now in the Catalogue?F.C: Among the Fathers; But I observe the Church of England men buy them up at any rate [...] yonder sits a Divine of the Church of England, who I suppose, is the person, who bought so many Fathers at the last Auction, as though he had a mind to write against the Papists.