New York 2022 Catalogue: Words & Things

words

things

1. NOBILITY MOBILITY [CORONATIONS] A bound collection of manuscript and printed works concerning coronations.

[England. Circa 1625-1790]. Quarto (296 mm x 220 mm x 23 mm). 21 manuscript and printed items.

¶ This unusual collection brings together rare printed and manuscript works from the 17 th and 18th centuries on the subject of coronations. We do not learn the identity of the compiler, but the endpapers have an 1820 watermark, so we assume they were collecting around that period. Their anonymous act of scrapbooking has done a service to posterity by preserving many rare, ephemeral pieces which might otherwise have been lost or destroyed.

The compiler has numbered each item in ink to the upper right corner. Items 3-8 are 18th-century manuscripts in the same hand and on the same paper, so could be usefully grouped as one item; and the overall sequence is not chronological.

However, in our listing we follow the compiler’s numbering as there is presumably some subtlety we have missed.

The greater proportion of the manuscripts set out aspects of protocol and proper procedure, either in coronations in general or in the case of a particular monarch. Topics include the roles of certain ceremonial items (“a glove with the Arms of Verdon” here; “Super Tunica”, “Buskins” and “Sandalls” there; “A Circle or Coronett of gold adorned with precious Stones” elsewhere), and the finer points of admissions policies (“The White Staff Officers to keep their posts and not to suffer any person to pass that has not an Earl Marshall’s Ticket”).

Also included [item 16] is a handwritten, after-the-event account of the coronation of Charles I in 1625, relating that he came “privately by watr. from his Pal. of Whitehall to his Ould Palace in Westminr. about ye. hour of 9 in ye. morning”, and afterwards, “in fresh Robes, he returned to his Palace in West.”, and later “took his Barge to Whitehall”.

CONTENTS: 1. The True Form and description of the Procession to the Coronation of Her Majesties Queen Anne, to be perform'd the 23rd. of this Instant April, 1702. London, Printed for E. Jones, in Holbourn, 1702. Folio. Pagination 1p. Text printed in double column.

ESTC: Unrecorded. Broadside recording those who shall be attending the coronation of Queen Anne.

2. A Complete Account of the Ceremonies observed in the Coronations of the Kings and Queens of England. London: Printed for J. Roberts, at the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-Lane M.D.CC.XXVII. Quarto. Pagination [4], 76 p., [2] leaves of folded plates. Woodcut illustrations within text.

Notes: pp 58-59 misnumbered 66-67; pp 62-63 misnumbered 70-71; variant issue with p.76 numbered correctly; below imprint in square brackets: “Price 2s. 6d.”

ESTC T113300 (variant). 7 copies in the UK and 4 in the USA. 3. 18th-century manuscript notes headed: Ad Coronationem Hen. 5. [England. Circa 1760]. Quarto. 2 leaves. 3 text pages, 1 blank.

Watermark: Haewood 2764. Notes in English and Latin (“Ad Coronationem Hen. 5. John Talbot Ld Furnival. Manor of Farnham […] in right of he and his wife o to find for the kings right hand on his coronation day a glove with the Arms of Verdon […] Sr John Moy Moigne Kt. to be the kings Achetor Caterer and Lardener at the time of ye Coronation…”).

4. 18th-century manuscript notes headed: Coronation. Hen. 5. [England. Circa 1760]. Quarto. 4 leaves. 7 text pages, 1 blank.

Watermark: Haewood 2764. Notes in English and Latin (“Coronationem Hen. 5. Thomas Earl of Arundel. to be Chief Butler, as his ancestors has been. see – the Gilt Cap xx and Covers out of which fir drinks first at his Coronation and also all ye Vessels with ye wine in kings them remaining below the Bar”).

5. 18th-century manuscript notes. [England. Circa 1760]. Quarto. 1 leaf. 1 text page, 1 blank. Watermark: not sufficiently visible.

Notes in Latin (“Sui et Wilkes Do Domino regi et faciet servitorum dictæ serjantie”).

6. 18th-century manuscript notes headed: Lord Chamberlain of England. [England. Circa 1760]. Quarto. 1 leaf. 1 text page, 1 blank.

Watermark: Haewood 2764. Notes in English (notes on the “Lord Chamberlain of England”).

7. 18th-century manuscript notes headed: Great Chamberlain of England. [England. Circa 1760]. Quarto.

Single leaf. 1 text page. Watermark: Haewood 2764. Notes in English and Latin entitled “Lord Chamberlain of England”.

8. 18th-century manuscript notes. [England. Circa 1760]. Quarto. 1 leaf. ½ text page, 1 blank. Notes in English and Latin entitled “Great Chamberlain of England”.

9. 18th-century manuscript notes headed: Lord Treasurers appointed. [England. Circa 1760]. Octavo. 1 leaf. 1 text page, 1 blank.

Watermark: no watermark. List of names in English whom the “Lord Treasurer appointed”.

10. 18th-century manuscript letter. Quarto. [England. Circa 1750]. 1 leaf. 1 text page. Folded and addressed. Watermark: Pro Patria.

Notes in English (“Our Right Trusty and Right Entirely beloved Cosin and Councillor James Duke of Hamilton and Brandon”; “Councillor Henry Duke of Beaufort, Captain of Our Band of Pensioners”, etc). Address panel reads “To The Comptroller of the Army Accots. / Lansdown”.

11. 17th-century manuscript notes entitled ‘Observations of severall Things prepared for ye Coronation of their Majesties K James ye 2d. and Queen Mary’. [England. Circa 1685]. Folio. Bifolium. 4 text pages. Watermark: Horn.

Details of the objects and materials to be used in the procession including “Canopies”, “Super Tunica”, “Buskins”, “Sandalls”, “The Cover of Edwards Chaire”. The document appears to be contemporary with their 1685 coronation. Descriptions are often detailed, e.g. “Coate with plaine sleeves the Length behind is a yard and a quarter an halfe, and before a yard and a quarter – It opens with a slitt behind …”. Docketed “Observations on things for ye Coronation”.

12. 17th-century manuscript notes entitled ‘Provisions for the Coronation of the Majies King James the Second and Queen Mary at Westminster 23o Aprilis 1685. [England. Circa 1685]. Folio. 1 leaf. 2 text pages. Watermark: Not visible; Countermark: PB (it is not very distinctive but is similar to the countermark on Haewood 430 and 1787, both late 17th century).

Details of the jewels used in the coronation: “The Mar. of the Jewell House is to provide. For the King. Two Imperiall Crownes sett with precious Stones […] A Long Scepter or Staff of gold with a Cross upon the top and a - 1 Pike at the foot of steek called St Edwards Staff. A Ring with a Ruby …”

13. The Duke of Norfolk’s Order about the Habit the Ladies are to be in that attend the Queen at her Coronation. [London]: Printed by Nat. Thompson at the entrance into Old-Spring-Garden near Charing-Cross, 1685.] Folio. Single sheet. Signed at end: Norfolk and Marshall. Trimmed at base with loss of imprint.

Wing, N1232. ESTC locates 2 copies in the UK and 3 in the USA. 14. 17th-century manuscript note. [England. Circa 1690]. Octavo. 1 leaf. 2 text pages. Watermark: part of a coat of arms watermark with the words Dieu et Mon Droit at the base.

Lists of persons “At my Ld. Irwyn’s Lodgings in York buildings”; “barons of Scotland”; “A List of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office of the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber that walked at the Coronation.”

£3,750 Ref: 8027

15. 17th-century manuscript note. [England. Circa March 1688/9]. Folio. Single leaf. 1 text page. Watermark: Not visible; Countermark: MC. This appears to be a letter template. It begins “blanque blanque Right Trusty and Right welbeloved 8/9 Cousin […] the Queens Coronation, […] March 168 in the first year of Our Reign” A note near the end reads “for Earls & Countesses leave blanque where blanque is writt and let the rest scored wth. --- be left quite out & write 20…”

16. Early 17th-century manuscript note. [England. Circa 1626?]. Cut sheet (220 mm x 145 mm). Single leaf. 1½ text pages. Folded.

Description of the ceremony on 2 February 1625 when Charles was crowned in Westminster Abbey. It begins “upn. Thur. ye.

2d. of Feb 1625 being Candlemas day the most illustrious K. C. coming privately by watr.”.

17. Early 18th-century manuscript notes. [England. Circa 1702]. Slim folio (355 mm x 143 mm). 6½ text pages. Watermark: Arms of London. Entitled: “A List of the Nobility for the Coronation of her most Excellt. Matie Queen Anne. 23o. Aprill. 1702”.

18. Early 18th-century manuscript note. [England. Circa 1702]. Cut sheet (163 mm x 143 mm). Text to both sides.

This piece has been cut from a larger sheet and appears to belong with the preceding manuscript notes [17]. Docketed: “A List of the Peerages and Peers ac(cut out) to their Precedencies.”

19. Mid 18th-century manuscript note. [England. Circa 1760]. Folio ½ text page.

Watermark: Crown and letters GR within a circle. Not in Haewood.

Policy notes for a royal procession (probably King George III and Queen Charlotte, see item 20). Text begins “The White Staff Offiers to keep their posts and not to suffer any person to pass that has not an Earl Marshall’s Ticket”.

20. The Earl Marshal’s order concerning the robes, coronets, &c. which are to be worn by the peeresses at the coronation of Their Most Sacred Majesties King George III. and Queen Charlotte. London: printed by William Bowyer. And sold by G. Woodfall, at Charing Cross, MDCCLXI. [Price Two Pence]. Folio. 4p (with inset engraved illustration of crowns). Signed at end: Effingham, M[arshal].

ESTC Citation No. N6961. Maslen and Lancaster. Bowyer ledgers, 4325.

ESTC locates only one copy at Harvard University, Houghton Library. ESTC records a further two copies of what is presumably another issue or impression, omitting Woodfall from imprint.

21. An account of the ceremonies observed at the coronation of our most gracious sovereign George III. and his royal consort Queen Charlotte, on Tuesday the 22d of September 1761. London: printed for G. Kearsley, at the Golden Lion, in Ludgate-Street. M.DCC.LXI. [Price 2 s.]. Quarto. 48p (with inset engraved illustrations), folded plate, and three further plates which do not appear in the copy on ECCO. Note on ESTC: “Based upon ‘An account of the ceremonies observed in the coronations of the Kings and queens of England’, published by George Kearsly in 1760.”

ESTC locates five copies in the UK and five copies in the USA.

The appeal of this miscellany of documents is twofold: it collects examples of what we would now call ‘event management’ from across two centuries of coronations; and it preserves rare and unrecorded pieces that, but for this volume, could easily have been lost, discarded or otherwise consigned to oblivion.

$4,900 / £3,750 Ref: 8027

2. GRESLEY TREATMENT [GRESLEY, Elizabeth, Lady (1735-1793)] Manuscript book of culinary recipes and remedies.

[Circa 1740-1790]. Folio (paper: 320 mm x 210). The volume has been rebound in the 20th century. Unfortunately, they have muddled the pages into the following order: 3-8, 27-105, (106-337 are blank), 338-362 (360-1 are blank), 9-10, 13-14, 1-2, 1-2 (repeated), 15-26, 367-8, 363-4, 371-374. The first leaf is numbered 23 on the recto, but 4 on the verso so we assume it should be 3 (the error has been continued into the index). If bound correctly, this would give us the following pagination: tabulated index, pp 1-2 (duplicated), 3-10, 13-364, 367-8, 371-4. i.e. lacking: 11-12, 365-6, 369-372. With blank pages: 106-337, 360-1. The index has been fashioned by cutting a quire lengthways and the letters of the alphabet tabulated along the fore-edge in descending recesses. A recipe (“Red Lip Salve”) is included on the recto of the first leaf. Six loose-leaf recipes in different hands. Please note: all references below to ordering of the contents refer to the original order rather than as it is rebound. Watermark: Coat of Arms. Countermark IV. This combination is found in Haewood (420, which he dates circa 1724-26), but the Coat of Arms design is very slightly different.

¶ The act of rebinding this volume has done violence to its provenance and presentation; but, by tracing the notes and acknowledgements, we can confidently attribute the manuscript to Lady Elizabeth Gresley. Moreover, by following the original order of the pagination and cross-referencing the index, we gain a fuller understanding of its contents, which extend across Lady Gresley’s entire adult life and reveal her world to be rich in social and physical sustenance – including membership of a circle in Lichfield that included Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward.

The lives of ‘notable’ men in history are often delineated by their army careers, business dealings, ownership of estates, and so on; those of women, for example these same men’s wives, are much less clearly defined in posterity. But one way in which we can trace signs of their lives and activities is through the social circles they moved in and the correspondences they formed. Lady Elizabeth Gresley is a fine example, and her collection of recipes a perfect illustration.

ESTABLISHING ELIZABETH A key piece of evidence of the compiler’s identity is the inclusion of a loose-leaf note which reads “Mrs: Jane Shawe, presents her compliments to Lady Greasley, & hope this will find Sr: Nigal & her Ladyship very well”. Reinforcing Lady Gresley as the book’s compiler are a host of recipes attributed to members of her family, such as “Cos: Bowyer” and “Lady Bowyer” (Sir Nigel Gresley’s mother was Dorothy Bowyer (d. 1736)); “Cos: Oakley” (Sir William Gresley (1661-1710) married Barbara (Oakley née Walcot) (1661/2-1724)); and “Neice Wynn” (Elizabeth’s birth name).

Elizabeth Wynne, the third daughter of the Reverend Ellis Wynne and his wife Elizabeth (nee Oldfield) of Congleton in Cheshire, married her cousin Sir Nigel Gresley (1726-1787) in 1752. Sir Nigel’s life and career are well documented: born to Sir Thomas Gresley, 4th Baronet, of Drakelow Hall in Derbyshire, and his first wife Dorothy Bowyer; he had a short naval career, probably curtailed by ill health; became 6th Baronet after his elder brother’s death, inheriting Drakelow Hall and (from his mother’s family) Knypersley Hall in Staffordshire; after business failures, sold Knypersley to alleviate his debts; died in 1787 in Bath.

We know a good deal less about Lady Elizabeth Gresley. After Sir Nigel’s death, she moved to Lichfield, the home of her cousin Lady Gertrude Gresley (to distinguish the two, Elizabeth was familiarly known as ‘Lady Whitewig’, and Gertrude as ‘Lady Blackwig’). What details exist of her life and pursuits are largely drawn from accounts of the social circles she moved in, particularly in Lichfield – and this collection provides several bearings that confirm her place in these circles, as well as charting her journey from one home to the next.

PIGEON RAGU AND A DYING JESUIT There are some 260 culinary recipes and 55 remedies plus seven loose-leaf recipes (a complete list can be supplied on request).

Apart from the conventional formula of culinary recipes at one end and remedies at the opposite end, there is no clear organisation to the contents, but order is imposed by a tabulated index inserted at the beginning of the volume. The earliest date within the text appears on p.22 in the recipe: “Raison Wine. Mrs Gresley of Ashbourne / 1741”, and straight away the web of connections begins (a branch of the Gresleys lived in Ashbourne, Derbyshire). As we move into the later decades of the 18th century, Lady Gresley is joined by other contributors. These are presumably members of her household; either staff or any of her seven surviving children, two of whom – Elizabeth (1756-1839) and Frances (1757-1836) – remained unmarried and lived with their mother until she died in 1793. Several culinary recipes refer to “Lady Gresley” (i.e. her cousin Gertrude) who died in 1790, and the volume does not appear to have been continued after Elizabeth’s death.

Recipes range from short entries of three or four to a page, to longer entries sometimes extending to a second page. Most could easily be followed by any reader who was comfortable with instructions such as “Bake in an Oven much hotter than for an Apple Pye” (p. 51), or “a proper quantity of new milk”; but some helpfully give quantities in pounds and quarts and include precise instructions like “3 Qrs of an Hour bakes it” and, for preserving, “lett itt stand safe from frost 6 or 8 weeks then Bottle it”, or “it must be made about the middle of Marc[h]”. Some recipes reflect personal preferences, for example stipulating that “the Rhinds yt you putt into ye wine must be verry thin no thicker than for Lemmon cream they being apt as I think to give the wine a Bitter taste.”

Many recipes appear to have been written by Lady Gresley, but were presumably prepared by others. Several include instructions for finishing or garnishing dishes immediately before serving: for example, on p.7 “To make Snow Creeme” (in a different hand to Gresley’s) instructs the reader to “put it in ye Creem dish as heifull as you can make it: Let this be done but a Littell Be fore you sand it to the tabell”. Similarly, “To Ragou Pigeons” (p. 10), after detailed instructions (“Take pigeons Cut off ye Legs & the pineons & slit em down ye back & beat em fflat with a roling pin season em with peper & salt yn: slice baken”), concludes “one spoonfull of varjuse & a Lump of butter fflowered to be [f]laked in just before ye. are sent up.”

The Gresley family preferences tended towards the lavish, no doubt worsening their pecuniary distress. The recipes often include a wide range of ingredients, implying that if they felt the need to live frugally, they did not yield to it. They ate a variety of fruit and vegetables, and had plenty of meat, fish, and dairy. Sugar is sprinkled throughout in cakes and puddings, including how “To make Sugar ornaments for Cakes” (p.88) which may well have impressed their guests. There are some 33 varieties of wine from native ingredients like “Elder”, “Couslip”, “Burch”, and the relatively unusual “carrat wine”, along with wines from imported fruits like “Lemmon” and “oringe”. The cosmopolitan-sounding “Saragosa Wine by Mr Bogritt” actually contains locally sourced ingredients like “sprigg of Rue”, “ffennell Rootts” and honey. But of all the recipes, it is “Apricock Wine by Mrs Eliz. Oakley approved” that Elizabeth loves, for it “was the ffinest made Wine I ever drank & was very Like Frontineack”.

Health matters are dealt with in the conventional way, by writing them at the end of the volume. The family suffer from a variety of minor ailments, but fortunately, “Lady Margt: Stanley” has a “A Cure for the Itch” (p. 366), and a “Mrs Yates” knows not only how to make “The Soveraign Plaister”, but also its “Vertues”. But the family’s main complaint seems to have been coughs and asthma, for which there are 12 remedies including an endorsement from an unexpected source: “A Dying Jesuit declared that his riches which were very considerable were made by the following Recipe, being an infallible Cure for an Asthma, or shortness of Breath”.

RECIPES, RELATIONSHIPS, AND RESIDENCES The manuscript bristles with connections that allow us to trace Lady Gresley’s social and family circles, as well as her changes of address. On p.87, “To stew Peas Brown – Wooley Drakelow” namechecks the location of the Gresley family seat; on p.93, we are given “Mr. Gill of Bath’s receipt to make Mock Turtle” (the Gresleys moved to Bath for Sir Nigel’s health). Shortly after being widowed and moving to Lichfield, her notable connections – as charted in this manuscript – proliferate. She was only in her early fifties and was said to have “had a feeble and delicate frame,” but she was nevertheless “of an active and intellectual disposition.”1 It was here that she renewed her friendship with the poet, Anna Seward, “the Swan of Lichfield” (1742-1809) after a separation of nearly twenty years, and perhaps toasted their friendship with “Cowslip Wine – Miss Seward” (p.79).

THE DARWN CONNECTION The Gresleys were well acquainted with the physician and poet Dr Erasmus Darwin (1731- 1802): Lady Gertrude Gresley was the young Darwin’s patron in Lichfield, easing his entry into the upper ranks of local society, and the Darwin family were guests at Drakelow. Furthermore, Anna Seward was also a close friend of Erasmus Darwin, and went on to write the first account of his life.

Sure enough, among the remedies from Lady Elizabeth’s Lichfield period are several attributed to “Dr. Darwin”. “For Chill blains – Dr. Darwin” (p.340) is copied verbatim from his A plan for the conduct of female education, in boarding schools; and although the other remedies attributed to him (“For a Headache”; “Lotion for the Teeth”; “To make Ink to draw with”; “For Hysterick or Paraletic fits”) are all untraced, it seems highly likely that either Gertrude or Elizabeth also obtained these from him.

The latter-day interference with this volume’s integrity during its rebinding requires a kind of imaginative reconstruction to restore its proper sequence; fortunately, the internal connections make this possible, and we can uncover part of Lady Gresley’s life by tracing the network of family, friends and acquaintances visible in these recipes and remedies.

$3,900 £3,000 Ref: 8012 References: The Gresleys of Drakelow. Falconer Madan. (1897).

1. ‘The case of Anne Gresley’. W. A. Littler. QJM: An International Journal of Medicine. (2021).

3. PIETY, POLITICS, AND POX DALIELL, Mary and later SPENCER (c. 1709-1779). Manuscript ciphering book and diary.

[Yarmouth. Circa 1730-90. Dated in text]. Manuscript on paper. Quarto (203 mm x 63 mm x 18 mm). 77 leaves, a few excised with stubs remaining. 34 text pages (8 pp ciphering, 22 pp diary, 4pp religious notes). Contemporary vellum, stationery book.

Provenance: inscription to paste-down “Mary Daliell 1730”.

¶ 18th-century stationer’s books often served as ciphering and commonplace books of one sort or another. This volume combines several these functions, plus diary-keeping, each quite briefly and laconically.

The earliest entries appear to be “Notes colctd out of books”, which include excerpts from the recently published Travels of Cyrus (first published 1727) and Plain Reasons for being a Christian by Samuel Chandler (1730), together with passages from Tillotson, Norris and other religious authors. She then flips the book to begin her ciphering lessons, but after only eight pages of exercises (“Dry Measure”, “Subtraction”, “Multiplication”), she leaves her studies in favour of a diary.

The diary, spanning 1730 to 1790, provides a chronicle of an extended family in Great Yarmouth that takes in the Jacobite Rebellion, the often fatal consequences of making a living on the sea, a curious encounter with an 18th-century conman, and the new phenomenon of smallpox inoculation.

The first entry, headed “Yarmouth August ye 14 1730”, reads: “I was taking on to this Church by the Reverd Mr goodwin […] & the 31 of Augst that Reverd passtor Left this please.” (Retrospectively entered, clearly: starting the diary seems to mark a new beginning of sorts.) The next entry, dated “June ye 4 1731”, records the arrival of “ye Reverd Mr Millner” who “on ye 6 of June preach’d his 1st Sermon in this plase”.

Mingled with these reports of clergy are family events: a “cosen” gives birth to a daughter; the family’s maid is “married to Philip Smith”; and three days later “Died My Uncle Clifton”, followed a few weeks afterwards by “My grandmother Daliell in the 89th year of her age”. There are also snippets of local information (a cousin opening a shop; a storm etc.) and family news (parents moving from Yarmouth to Ormsby).

The outside world also intrudes: (31 March 1744) “War with France was proclaimed”; (16 April 1744) the ship the John & Thomas left Yarmouth (only to sink at 5 o'clock on 23 October 1744); 10 December 1745 has a lengthy entry beginning, “Tusday Joseph Cotman Mayor & ye gentlemen Met to Consult Wether they should fortify ye Town or Sirander upon as good Terms as they could to ye Rebels.” Having considered moving guns from fort to town, they hear that the Rebels have retreated back into Derbyshire.

She also records a curious encounter on 21 April 1732 with a fraudster: “I being then at Thos Coopers eqs Esqr. in Northwalsham : ye Most Noble george Thomasson prince of Asiria [smudged] Brackfast with us”, and is “Trying to raise up ye Sum of 9000 pound for to redeem his father (who was king of Jerusalem) & brother who was taken into Captivity by the grand Turk.”

Among the frequent reports of illness and death (including much child mortality), there are deaths at sea, Yarmouth being a port: “Mr Simon Fish was taken up at Robinhoods=Bay: ye Ship and every body on board perrish’d at Sea”; the preceding entry records that this tragedy occurred the day after his wife died.

There are two mentions of smallpox and the early form of inoculation known as variolation (a risky method by which powdered smallpox scabs or fluid from pustules were rubbed into scratches in the skin, in the hope the patient would contract only a mild infection). The first, opposite an entry for 16 Feb. 1731 and upside down: “Mary Spencer born on Tusday June ye 13th 1749 [...] 1757 November ye 9 she was Inoculated ye 15th she was taken ill ye 18th ye small pox appeard and provd a fine sort”. (This account makes a second appearance, with the additional information: “My Daughter Mary Spencer”.) On 30 March 1742 she records: “Billy Haw & Betty Fish had then the Small-pox, & the begining of Aprill paggy & Joseph & Sarah How : had the Small-pox; ye 20 of Aprill died Dolly Milner of ye Small-pox.”

For all its brevity, the manuscript appears to have been kept by two Mary Spencers and possibly another contributor. The younger Mary exits first (“in ye year 1770 died Mary Spencer who wrot ye above”), and then in 1776 “here end my Dear Mothers account”. However, although her diary-keeping days have ended, she lives a few years beyond this: a third (unidentified) contributor notes within the final few entries that in “1779 july 2 My Dear Mother departed this Life in the 67 year of her Age.” $1,200 / £900 Ref: 8046

4. WRITTEN ON THE STARS HEYDON, Christopher, Sir, (1561-1623). A defence of iudiciall astrologie, in answer to a treatise lately published

by M. Iohn Chamber. Wherein all those places of Scripture, councells, fathers, schoolemen, later divines, philosophers, histories, lawes, constitutions, and reasons drawne out of Sixtus Empiricus Picus, Pererius, Sixtus ab Heminga, and others, ...

[London]: Printed by Iohn Legat, printer to the Vniversitie of Cambridge. 1603. First edition. Quarto. Pagination [16], 24, p., 25-32 leaves, 33-34, 37-432, 443-551, [51]. Signatures: [par.]-2[par.]⁴ A-D⁴ 2D⁴ E⁴(-E4) F-4E⁴. Complete. Leaves C2 and C3 transposed (presumably at time of rebinding). L4 with closed tear to fore-margin running into text, but without loss. [STC 13266].

19th century half calf, rubbed and worn, upper cover detached. Text block trimmed with slight loss to edges of some annotations.

Provenance: armorial bookplate of James Hovell to paste-down. Barely perceptible inscription to the lower margin of final page. It looks like someone has tried to erase the name, but it appears to read “W. Bedford” followed by two obscured words, the first beginning with B.

¶ Our enthusiastic contemporary annotator seems to be entirely in sympathy with the author of A defence of iudiciall astrologie, which the ODNB considers “the most substantial English defence of astrology in its time”. The book is a rebuttal of John Chamber’s A Treatise Against Judiciall Astrologie (1601). It was the principal published work of Sir Christopher Heydon, who enlisted the help of his domestic chaplain, William Bredon (also a noted astrologer), in its composition.

Chamber pressed for astrology to be outlawed; Heydon, drawing on the work of contemporary authorities such as Tycho Brahe and the mathematician (and his friend) Edward Wright, presented the most consequential argument of its era in England for astrology’s validity as a science. The counter-arguments – including one by Chamber himself that was never published – were very few, adding to the reputation of Heydon’s defence.

The annotator has clearly read the book in its entirety, underlining (on over 420 pages) and making notes (on almost 200 pages) as they went. The annotations range from short, sometimes single-word glosses and memoranda (on around 90 pages) through to pages crammed with copious notes (60 pages), often with astrological symbols and manicules. The main text is annotated in black, but the index, which receives similar attention in the form of glosses, symbols, and underlining, has been annotated mostly in red ink. It appears that the annotator has returned to the main text afterwards and emphasised a few passages in this same red ink.

Following Heydon’s line of argument, the annotator seeks justification for a belief in astrology in the Bible, marking those passages of Heydon’s that cite especially persuasive Biblical examples (“Deut. 4:”; “Astrologie was reuealed first to Adam”; “Astrologers ye first fruits and first fou[n]de out & discouered ye tru[e] mesiah & his bir[th] by his starre”); and he does the same for the works of ancient thinkers that Heydon invokes (Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates).

Our annotator, while impressively attentive throughout, neither challenges nor develops Heydon’s arguments, but marks and summarises them. The effect resembles an early-modern version of the college textbook bristling with tab markers; for example, the side-note “pease sowne in ye increase of ye will neuer leaue a blooming & sowne in ye wane of ye ” simply echoes the printed text, and “of ministring phisicke” acts as a reminder that this page contains a passage on the wisdom of administering medical treatment “when the sunne commeth to the equinoctiall”.

The notes and glosses usually signal approval of a passage, and occasionally the wording commends it still further: in a section regarding the behaviour of livestock, inspired by “the auncient obseruations of husbandmen”, against the statement that “if the horse be put to the mare three daies before the full, shee will conceiue a male; but so many daies after, a female”, our annotator precedes their summary with “A notable good observatio[n]”. (Further down the same page he underlines another of Heydon’s pronouncements that brook no opposition and annotates: “Elephants wash them selves att euery New ”).

As the annotator gets further into the volume – contrary to what one often finds in such cases – their notes become more extensive, as their agreement and enthusiasm seem to increase. But they still barely venture into their own speculations, apparently content to feel increasingly sure that they have found a kindred spirit in Heydon and dutifully copying out incontrovertible truths such as “Sharpe deseases have theirs fitte upon odd dayes & long deseases upon even dayes”.

The volume’s annotations offer a corollary to the unchallenged status of Heydon’s book for some time after its publication. Our reader clearly embraces this scholarly support for their world view, and diligently plucks out the passages most useful to them, echoing the scholarly author like an acolyte, as if to imprint these erudite arguments firmly in their own mind. $3,900 /£3,000 Ref: 8024

5. IS THERE A DOCTOR ABROAD? [SOUTHWELL, Sir Robert (1635-1702)] Manuscript journal of travel and medical notes.

[Genoa, Livorno, Padua and Bologna. Circa 1660. Dated in text]. Manuscript on paper. Measurements: 188 mm x 95 mm x 12 mm. Approximately 130 text pages on 70 leaves. Bound in an earlier vellum document. Watermark: Upside-down bell above the word Galhairdo and beneath is an upsidedown crown. An unusual watermark not in Haewood or Briquet.

¶ This hugely appealing artefact began life as a vellum deed. But, with its original purpose fulfilled it was fashioned into a walletstyle binding (tied with a piece of vellum presumably also cut from the same sheet) that unfolds to reveal the remarkable 17thcentury notebook of a young man whose intense intellectual curiosity is recorded with an unvarnished immediacy of thought.

The notebook’s construction and unusual vertical oblong format indicate that this was a home-made book. Its owner and compiler, Sir Robert Southwell, was an affluent man, so its humble beginnings suggest that it was created for its convenient format rather than any concerns for parsimony: its simple, slim shape slips neatly into the pocket, perfect for our peripatetic record-keeper as he travels to Italy to absorb its history and customs, and learn about the medical and scientific advances taking place there, all of which are recorded in an urgent, eager, and consequently rather untidy hand.

Sir Robert Southwell was born in Ireland. He received some schooling in the city of Cork before moving to England in 1650. In 1653 he matriculated at Queen’s College in Oxford, where he graduated BA in 1655, having been entered at Lincoln’s Inn in 1654. He completed this ‘gentleman’s education’ by taking an early form of ‘grand tour’. But we learn from his journal that he was not merely adding polish to a fashionable education; he is genuinely curious to learn all he can about the workings of societies, the human body, and the natural world. His fascination for science, which is apparent throughout the journal, was confirmed in 1662, when his friend, Robert Boyle, sponsored him to become a fellow of the Royal Society (of which he was elected president in 1690).

The notebook has little in the way of a narrative shape; it serves as a handy receptacle for Southwell’s ‘memos’, many of which he apparently records ‘on the hoof’, as scenes unfold before him. At times the precise meaning of his notes can be a little obscure, but this contributes to the overall impression of a highly intelligent and engaged young man intently squirrelling away thoughts for later use or reflection.

PEOPLE: PAST AND PRESENT Southwell’s apparent sociability and facility for learning languages allowed him to move through social situations with ease (qualities which would serve him well later in his career as an ambassador). On the first page of his journal, he records his arrival at Genoa, where “ye Governour sent for us, received courteously with some state, discoursed of ye marriage of France & our Voyage to Rome” – and after Southwell’s company return to their lodgings, “he sent us .2. bottles of Wine”. Later he attends a grand marriage in Parma, which he records in detail (f.40r - f.42v.): “The Duchess was mett by 40 coaches wth. 6 horses [...] as her Coaches passed by, all ye Ladyes came out of theirs on ye way making obeyances [...] At ye townes end ye Bsp. red. her at a chappel there erected to give her benediction”. He records the seating arrangements at their lavish “publick dinner”. As befits a future ambassador, he is rarely judgmental, only occasionally allowing himself to lapse into gossip (“he is now poore, gained all away and is a most contemptible sottish fellow”).

Southwell is equally alert to figures and artefacts from the past, and assiduously records inscriptions wherever he goes (“the story is yt. 500 women went to ye holy war of wch. returned but 36 whose Armour is there hanging [...] ye breast plates swelling out. one is for a great (1) great bellyed woman and ye head piece of their Captaine is guilt with gold. There are armes fixt for for 30 thousand men likes muskets, pistolls, Drums &c.”). One inscription in particular draws his attention: “Pillar of Infamy” records the traitorous acts of “Johannis Paulo Balbi” and elicits his observation that “the Inscription on marble in ye wall, & ye Pillars placed in ye wall yt. it might not be throwne downe for of his relations there are eminent persons in ye towne.”

Also, on the vexed topic of sympathies and loyalties, Southwell remarks on support on the Continent for English Recusants: “The Jesuit told us yt. in England ye Priest doe com[m]only lodg in ye Parsons house. At ye Execution of one of them there are still a great number about him to give him the last absolution where he gains y e signe, as holding up his hands or soe.”

THE DOCTORS Chief among the social interactions is his friendship with the illustrious scientific couple Sir John Finch and Sir Thomas Baines. The two men met as undergraduates at Christ's College, Cambridge and became lifelong companions. They were, in Finch’s words, a ‘beautiful and unbroken marriage of souls, a companionship undivided during 36 complete years.’ When Southwell visited them in 1660, they introduced him to Ferdinando II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, whose ‘cabinet of curiosities’ is described later in the manuscript.

A certain amount of speculation still surrounds the relationship of Finch and Baines, but whatever the case, the intensity of feeling between the two men was never in doubt: “Dr. F. & Dr. B. have beene sworn friends since Aprill .11. (45) & never assunder 20 daye. soe yt. ye great duke say’d yt if either of them were knaves they would never have been lov’d soe long.” (f.34r.) Their scientific knowledge was widely recognised, and Southwell diligently records their opinions, remedies, medical advice (although it is never certain that he heeds it), and scientific ideas.

His notes include some curious anecdotes from Finch and Baines, such as account of the Duke’s visit with “his brother in Law in germany ye Duke of Hensbrook”, who claimed to have “men invulnerable”; upon which, “ye Duke sed bring me .3. & I will give them towne & lands in Toscany”. Three men duly appear and strike various heroic attitudes, prompting the Duke to say: “though this be a foole I must not bee. soe made one shoote him, wch. went through ye buttockes. whereat he sed Princes has Priviledge, but in fire comes one black & blew yt. had

beene shott.” The Duke, however, “found they putt .1. part if .5. before ye bullet all ye rest of ye pouder after” (f.13r.) “& soe ye bullet will not peirce a paper wch. y D. shewed ye Drss.—”.

Southwell also records some experiments on animals, including one in which they appear to cauterise a wound: “The D[uke] had a poison yt. dipping ye thred therein draw it with a needle thorough ye legg of a hen or dogg it dyes im[m]ediatly”, only to be revived “by a hott Iron passing it thorough ye hole, it tumbled dead, - risse up fell & risse, at last ran away”. He concludes: “ye reason is ye blood is infected, & thence ye braine ye burning hinders yt. if infection be not fed, & Nature conquers wat is already sufered.” (f.13v). Other reports from the front lines of experimental science include a peculiar observation which yokes together the digestive systems of ostriches and chickens: “The Eastridge digersts not Iron, as Mr Dr Finch tried by making our fast 5 days wch. ye D. gave him to Anatomise.” But the bird eats stones, which “serve as teeth to grind other meat by ye assistance of ye Gizards wch. rubs one agree ye other”. Furthermore, “poultry kept from eating stones would render their meat whole cast their feathers and dye,” as Finch and Baines supposedly discover after “ye D. sent ye Drs. 12 hens to try.”

Among other procedures he recounts is a method for preserving medical specimens: Dr Finch, having made a “table of Veins nerves Arteryes of Man”, shows him “a pott of Veines being ye Cava”, preserved thus: “first lay them 3 dayes in vinerar to draw out ye blood and Corruption, then 25 dayes in Mamsy or Sack & for a world of care and changes must be to take only yt. corruption yt. would otherwise breed wormes then spread them on board of Cypresse”. Finch, we are told, “has a box of ye Vena Cava wch. he has kept this yeare and a halfe in ye pouder of Aloes virroe and / Frankensence”. (f.30v-f31r).

Besides these practical accounts, we also learn something of the physicians’ opinions; for example, Dr Baines is sceptical about astrology, citing moral and physical grounds: he “slights Astrology upon 2 reasons ye one that if good fortune be foretold, it makes men imprudently bold & presumtious (?) if naught men turne cowards and use not yt. tallent wch. Heaven has given them for a guide and gardian to witt humane reason”; and secondly, “if yt. Materiall objects wch. we tast and touch have soe much difficulty in ye discourse of their true Causes, what can we say of ye starrs soe farr off .” (f.32r).

Southwell also records an episode which, while its exact details are hard to parse, have to do with medical precedence, attribution and clarity of writing: having spoken to Dr Finch about “Pequetts Canal” (ie the reservoir of Pecquet a part of the lymphatic system better known as the receptaculum chyli), he is advised to “looke in Barthalomeus Eustachius de vena / he has there in 12 lines better described it then P. in his whole booke. although he believes yt. Pequett found him by chance and not by yt. direction.” Finch appears to suggest that Bartholinus copied these notes and passed the off as his own in the third edition of his “booke of Vasis lymphatisis [...] wch. was a lye.” (f.20v.)

SCIENCE, MEDICINE, AND DISSECTION The good doctors supply Southwell with numerous remedies and advice on general health. Dr Baines bids him “dry up my Moisteres to see what least quantity of liquor I quencht thirst” and “drink that water, light, cleare & rising from ye east was beast & yt. in ye fountains head”. Indeed, the advice comes thick and fast: “boile my water with a crust of bread in it”; “Observe yt. I pisse in proportion what I drink if not abate yr. dyett”; “After a great meale never eat the till ye / appetite comes”; “After supper drink not and seldm betweene meales”; “Mellons are good for me being refreshing”; “Eat .2. meales a day and fast not too much. Moderate exercise”; “If my breast run not freely and any feaver happens, eat little, as alsoe when the weather is foggy, & ye body swells & nature is opprest”; “After travelling or exercise eat nor drink not till nature has reposd ye spirits, or otherwise exercise after it”; and perhaps the wisest of all: “Dr. Banes sed that ye greatest epicurisme in ye world was sobriety.” (f.14v-f.15r.)

Southwell sets down specific recipes and remedies as well, including: “Rx Contra un Hydropsie.”, “to ye head kills lice”, “Rx Coralli albi marmoris”, “Rx Isopæ, Origanæ, Saturiæ” and an unusual method to make “Ice in summer” for which you “Boile water and putt it into an earthen pott luted, and fling it into a well, 3 oures after take it up breake yr. pott & you have Ice. salt or salt Peter hastens ye thing Suett & Potters clay make.” In giving directions to make “a plaister”, he includes a reference to his friend Robert Boyle: “I suppose Mr. Boyles wax & brick better” before continuing: “if you boyle ye water in ye same pott lute ye mouth with 4 zl. of Argill-clay sifted Ana dry cow dung beat together in a morter with water. and ana of ye nap of cloth all into a confieture, daub ye mouth after you have Corkt it lett it dry in ye sun .3. houres, & then daub over ye cleftes agen.” (f.16v).

Southwell’s extensive excursions into medicine continue with an account “On a dissection of an Anatomy by Molenet at Padua” (presumably Antonio Molinetto) in Latin (f.36r). Shortly before this, he devotes nine pages to his visit to ‘Orto botanico di Pisa’, and Ferdinando II’s cabinet of curiosities, making note of features such as a porch “Hung with a number of Whales bones and farther in pictures on ye walls with verses . as an Hercules holding an herb in his hand”. In the “Cabinet of Curiosisites” he finds “a beautiful glasse to serve yr. face wch. on a suddaing fell downe like a percullis, and you start at a horrid face, yt. Cryes Inck and wants a piece of Nose”, and “Many Large elephant teeth Petrified”, as well as “A fish call’d Umbra like a sole petrifyed sticking to ye side of a flat stone ye bones in all their proportions jutting out like a Comb.” Some of the

curiosities return to the medical theme – for example, “The Anatomicall figure of a Man pictured wherein ye distribution of ye Inner veines appeare conspicuously”, along with the more fanciful “bone of a Gyants arme of ye thy wch. is .5. spans long”. (f.26v-f.30v) Southwell’s travels take him to “Bolonia”, where his attention is again drawn to medical matters: “Gasper Tagliaburcozius an Anatomist whose Image is up holding a nose in his hand, for yt. he made a nose grow or peec’d one.

1570.” (f.54v). He doesn’t say whether this is a painting or sculpture, but it presumably shows the Italian surgeon, pioneer of plastic and reconstructive surgery Gaspare Tagliacozzi (1545-1599). Other medical observations include “The Motion of ye Diaphragme is double, in breathing it rises behind and sucks before (or tis econtra) because ye lungs being full fill ye capacity, and ye Aire wch. was in before being compress makes ye aforsd. motion.” (f.55r).

MONEY Various other of Southwell’s observations anatomise finance and economics. For example, while at Genoa, his interest is piqued by the local operations of investment: “The Justice of St. George wch. is ye treasure and receipt and great magazine of ye towne is a justice separate from ye senate. it being a place where ye Customes of such Com[m] odityes are receved for ye paymt. of such debts as particulars have lent to ye publick. The payment is certaine they who putt in money may leave it there and if they would retire the principall their Interest is little or naught. but if one putt money therein he shall for ever draw 2. and a halfe .3. per Cent. and though he become traytour yt. but cannot faile . but soe never drawes ye principall.” (f4r-v).

BOOKS The notebook provides plenty of evidence for Southwell’s love of reading, and his keenness to learn from those he meets: “An Italian Fryer Com[m]ended to me Johannes Jovianus Pontanus libri 3 de Amori conpeyali 4o. as an exellent Poet though not much knowne Isabel Curtesa an Italian booke of Secrets.” We learn what books he reads (or intends to read): “Bookes to buy / Regualliæ del Peruasso / La dona del Cavallier marina / Il decamerone de Johanne Bocatchio / Gallileo. / Historia del Interdetto / L’Appologia contra Car Bet. per il Gersona / La differeza delle Venetian contra l’interdetto / Lipar Eri / Li pareri delli septi / Tehologi Alenterro interdetto / Historia del Inquisition.” (f.22v). He seems intrigued by an edition of Pythagoras that features woodcuts: “A little booke called Rithmachia or Ludus Pithagoricus […] in ye booke are all ye figures us’d in ye play and in a case they have there made in shapes on bitts of Wood. one learnes by ye game to be a perfect Arithmetitian.” (f.60r).

Other literary curios include “A packe of cards with for am anchient game call’d Lady Passionu[m] and an other a pay of ye four sorts of Poetts, Lurick Comick Amatorian and Heroick. Cards to teach ye K of france Geography History &c.” (f.60v), a “Chamber wch. held 4 shelves of large Mss. 200 at least dictated by Aldro: and many large Cubbords of ye figures of his workes very well done in wood, wch. having beeing imprest on Bookes, they are after Curiously Painted, there being of Beast Birds Plants & c and of y e Plants Dr Mt. Albano is presenting & setting out his undigested Notes”, (f.61v) and “The Chesse board of ye old Italian Poetts Dantes Aligerius” (f.61r). Elsewhere, as if applying to books the prescriptive attitude he has learned from Finch and Baines, he includes a little recipe for preserving one’s volumes: “To keepe bookes from brakeing Rx Oile of Aspick ziiij ana of pouder of Amber warme them together [Vertical note:] to warme yr books a bit of paper therein and shut them. and daub ye book with this they varnish the violins.” (f.17v).

Southwell’s career as a diplomat is well chronicled, and his political even-handedness and “courtliness” (ODNB), as well as his eclectic interests and his love of Continental Europe, all find early expression in this notebook. What perhaps comes as a surprise is the extent to which he immersed himself, especially via his friendship with Dr Finch and Dr Baines, in the evolving field of anatomy. Though some of the experiments and theories he describes are somewhat eyebrow- and hair-raising now, his hastily jotted notes on all topics show him to have been a man of uncommon reason and unquenchable curiosity.

$19,500 / £15,000 Ref: 7991

6. ONE GOOD TURNOR ...

TURNOR, Sir Edmund (1619-1707) Three manuscript commonplace books [Stoke Rochford, Lincolnshire. Circa 1671-1698]. Three volumes in contemporary bindings.

Written in the same neat italic hand throughout.

¶ If commonplace books can be considered as a way of clarifying one’s thoughts by filtering them through the minds (and eloquence) of others and then reading those thoughts reflexively, then these volumes offer us not only a masterclass in mental organisation but a vivid illustration of how religious belief and reflection consciously informed moral action in its author.

PROVENANCE AND FAMILY STRIFE The volumes were previously in the collection of Stoke Rochford Hall, once the home of the Turnor family. A tipped-in letter in the hand of Sir Edmund Turnor (1619-1707) has a note to the verso by Edmund Turnor, FRS, FSA (17541801) in which he claims “This book of Psalms containing 23 Penitental & 23 Eucharistical apparently transcribed by Mr. Baxter for Sir Edm. Turnor.” Unfortunately, he does not say why he has attributed the transcriptions to Mr Baxter. The fact that they are in an italic hand and a tipped-in letter by Sir Edmund is in a mixed hand does not in itself seem sufficient evidence that the volumes were not transcribed by Turnor himself, but it seems likely he had knowledge of his ancestor’s household.

One of the few sources for biographical information about Sir Edmund Turnor (1619-1707) is Burke’s Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland (1826), from which we glean that “This gentleman, a staunch and devoted royalist, remained ever most faithfully attached to the cause he had espoused. When Bristol fell into the hands of Prince Rupert, he was constituted treasurer and paymaster to the garrison there, but was

made prisoner in 1641, at the fatal battle of Worcester. In recompence [...] he received the honor of knighthood in 1663: at which time he was a commissioner of the alienation office, surveyor-general of the Outports, and one of the chief farmers of the Customs.”

The recto of the tipped-in leaf has a note written in a clear mixed hand by Sir Edmund Turnor himself which reads: “6 die Decembr 1671 / Mortals prize good things more by the priuation, then the fruition of them. I should be glad when I am deade gone, that yor Neighbors & Tenants should look upon you, not as John the son of Sr ET but as Sr ET remembered like a phasing out of his own ashes” This note is presumably an address to Edmund’s son John Turnor (1661-1719), who would then have been 10 years old. Another note, this time to the paste-down and of uncertain vintage but presumably written some time later, strikes a dramatically different tone: “I am so unhappy as to haue a S[on]. to consume mine eyes & to greiue my heart. 1. Sam 2.33. how for I haue contributed to it, by Elies indulgence, by a careless Education or by an impious Example [.] when I am penitent for my own fau[l]t, I may hope god will reform him. I look on my affliction in him as gods dis---(?) on me, & gather this comfort from it, yt my heauenly Father had more care of me then I had of him & does not Leaue me uncorrected.”

We do not learn from this manuscript what John has done to evoke this cri de coeur from his father, nor at what stage of his life, but the untidy hand renders it as a kind of frantic internal monologue compared to the more stately and considered address to his 10-year-old son. Whether he considered John’s “careless Education” to include his studies at Caius College, Cambridge and subsequently at the Middle Temple is impossible to know (John was also elected to the Royal Society in 1682 and married Diana Cecil, daughter of Hon. Algernon Cecil and Dorothy Nevile, circa 1685 – hardly grounds for paternal disappointment), but whatever the reason for Sir Edmund’s decision to commit his feelings to paper, this is a remarkable indictment of their relationship, and one hopes that these volumes had their clasps firmly fastened and their thoughts were kept private.

The intersection between Sir Edmund’s personal commonplace books and his public face is illuminating.

From his manuscripts we discover that, whatever his thoughts about his son, he held himself to a high moral standard which he enacted in the public realm, according to Burke: “Sir Edmund Turner’s benevolence and public spirit were exemplary, and several acts of munificence remain lasting monuments of his character.”

CONTENTS OF THE VOLUMES

The philosophical underpinnings of his public beneficence may be found in the contents of these three volumes, which give depth and substance to the sparse details we have of his character. What is probably the earliest volume (which includes the abovementioned notes) comprises excerpts from the Psalms. This is complemented by a volume of Bible extracts. If physical space is an expression

of spiritual importance, then these two volumes appear to reflect a belief that the Bible is the ultimate moral arbiter.

The third and final volume contains philosophical and theological extracts, which bring a finer grain to our understanding of Sir Edmund’s thoughts, and most obviously reflect his outward-facing persona. While he was certainly an avid reader, he did not seem to read for its own sake; he insists, quoting a passage from a work by Sir Thomas Pope Blount (1649-97), that “By ouer much Reading we Clogg & oppress our minds, & so digest nothing”. Reading, rather, seems to be a way of explicating his own thoughts (“Reading may very well be compared to eating & Meditating to digesting”, a phrase that also suggests the taking in of nutrients essential for human life) and using these as a spur to action in the world.

Taking the volumes in turn, we have: [1]. Manuscript Commonplace Book containing transcriptions of the Psalms. [Circa 1671]. Duodecimo (118 mm x 64 mm x 36 mm). 138 ff. Text to both sides, and to paste-downs.

Plus, one inserted folding leaf. Bound in full calf, brass clasps (lacking one clasp).

The manuscript is written in a neat italic hand. The transcriptions are extremely close to published versions of the Psalms, but they are not always verbatim copies. In some, Turnor (via “Mr Baxter”, if Turnor’s descendant is correct) provides a digested or more parsimonious rendering of the published versions. Whether he is trying to absorb the meanings through the act of rendition or simply felt they fitted more comfortably onto the page is not a settled question, but the arrangements certainly have a pared-back elegance and a very satisfying mise-enpage. Having said that, the final psalm extends onto the rear paste-down, so not only was the book bound before the transcriptions were written, but he was not prepared to sacrifice meaning at the altar of aesthetics where the two collided.

[2]. Manuscript Commonplace Book of Extracts from the Bible.

[Circa 1671]. There is no indication of the date and no visible watermark, but given its textual relation to the preceding volume, it seems reasonable to ascribe a similar date of composition. Octavo (139 mm x 90 mm x 14 mm).

101 ff. Text to both sides, 27 blanks. Pen trials to final leaf.

Bound in full sheep, rubbed, brass clasps intact.

This volume contains the extracts from the “Book of Chronicles”; “Book of Chronicles”; “Book of : Nehemiah”; “Book of the KINGS”; “Second Book of the KINGS”; “ESTHER”; “Job”; “Proverbs”; “ECCLESIASTES”; “The Song of SOLOMON”; “ISAIAH”.

The extracts are numbered by chapter but without their verse references. In similar fashion to his book of psalms above, some transcriptions are edited or abridged versions.

For example, “First Book of Chronicles. 4” reads “And Jabes was more honourable then his Brethren who called on the God of Israel saying : Oh thou wouldest blesse my coast and that thy hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from euill that it may not grieve me. And that God granted him that which he requested.” But in the King James Bible this section (extracts from 4:9-4:10) is rendered: “9. And Jabez was more honourable then his brethren : and his mother called his name Jabez saying, Because I bare him with sorrow. 10 And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, oh that thou wouldest blesse me indeed, and enlarge my coast and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me. And God granted him that which he requested.” Turnor’s excision of references to the importance of the mother in this passage is in keeping with the paternalism and misogyny he shows more clearly in his later commonplace book.

It is not immediately obvious what his intention was in selecting certain sections. For example, the above “And Jabes was more honourable” extract is followed by “9 And these are the singers cheif of the Fathers os the Leuites, who remayning in the Chambers were free : for they were employed in that work day and night” which is succeeded by a verbatim copy of 4:12 “And the Children of Issachar”, then “14 Of Zebulon 50000 : they were not of double heart” (Which is rendered more fully in the KJV as: “33 Of Zebulun, such as went forth to battel expert in warre, with all instruments of warre fifty thouſand, which could keep rank : they were not of double heart.”) Quite how or even whether these quotes are linked remains a mystery to us, but Turnor’s selection and inclusion of these extracts into three discrete volumes seems to be a very deliberate and carefully considered act, and a deeper exegetical reading would hopefully reveal an underlying logic, or at least Turnor’s preferences.

[3]. Manuscript Commonplace Book of Philosophical Thoughts. [Circa 1698 (dated on first leaf)]. Octavo (160 mm x 106 mm x 24 mm). 92 ff. Text to both sides, final leaf blank verso. Front endpaper with later notes, lacking rear endpaper.

Bound in full sheep, rubbed, brass clasps intact. Dated “4 July 98” at head of first page.

It is perhaps unsurprising that an octogenarian might ponder his mortal existence; and so it is that the volume begins “When I read of Socrates dyeing with a generous Charity and serene hopes” (extracted from Richard Lucas’s (1648-1715) An enquiry after happiness. 1685). But he consoles himself with the thought that “Euery age of life has its passion & its pleasure”, and perhaps hints at where he found gratification: “The Romans has 2 Rules of Drinking. 1. To drink down the Evening Starr, and, 2 To drink up the Morning Starr. The other was drinking so many healths as there were Letters in their Mistresses name according to that of Martiall.” This rare, uncritical allusion to worldly pleasures enriches our sense of his character beyond that of single-minded, pious philanthropist.

Thoughts of mortality are found scattered throughout the volume (“Funeral Sermon of the Countes of Pembroke”, which features extracts from Edward Rainbowe (1608-1684) A sermon preached at the funeral of the Right Honorable Anne, Countess of Pembroke. (1677). Wing, R142), and it is to his credit that he seems conscious both of his material advantages and of the fragility of earthly existence (“The prosperous and ambitious think of nothing but enjoyment, not of ye. sudden alterations and changes this world subject to”). But these are not morbid reflections, rather they give urgency to the need to act in the world while he still has time: “We should sit down a while & consider how short our life is at the best, and what little time in comparison, we haue to do in the world and how suddenly we may drop into the Graue before they haue done any at all” because “God will Judge us not only according to what we do, but also according to what wee would do.” Intention is crucial – and not the half-hearted kind, but one framed in plans and designs, even if we’re prevented by “the Graue” from bringing them all to fruition.

MAGNANIMITY AND MISOGYNY Turnor’s survival into his late eighties allowed him more time than most to realise the ambitions inspired by his spiritual beliefs (“It is the most excellent act of the greatest & most perfect of all graces & Uertues, I mean Charity”). Among his philanthropic work, he rebuilt and endowed the vicarage house and offices of Milton Erneys (the place of his birth). He erected and endowed a hospital for poor persons, enlarged the revenues of four hospitals, and built the alms house at Stoke Rochford.

Turnor’s beneficent thoughts and acts, while pleasant to contemplate, do not make him immune to certain prevailing attitudes, for example concerning marriage: “Being once his wife you are no more your own nor mine, but must resolve to suffer his comands & not dispute them”. Further on, he manages to combine a sense of social superiority with misogyny in one pithy sentence: “Is my high birth a blemish, or my wealth which all the vain expence of women cannot wast.” This arguably gives his charitable urges a paternalistic gloss, which, like his scriptural inspirations, may also have informed his real-world choices.

Also evident in Turnor’s selections and ruminations is a constant tension between thought and action, and perhaps a distrust of books themselves: having asserted (by again quoting Sir Thomas Pope Blount) that “It is not a mans Cloystering up himself in his Study nor his continuall Poreing upon Books that makes him a wise man”, he then remarks (in Blount’s words once more) “Did men but know how much the pleasure of thinking transcends all other pleasures, they would certainly put a greater ualue upon it”. The tensions here are obviously present in Blount’s work, but Turnor’s selection of these extracts suggests that he is also caught up in them, whether consciously or otherwise.

He ends his commonplace book with a passage from William Temple’s Essay Upon the Ancient and Modern Learning published in his Miscellanea. Part II. (1690), which appears to take Cervantes to task for pouring scorn on the ancient tradition of chivalry: “An ingenious Spaniard would needs haue it that the History of Don quixot had ruined the Spanish Monarchy for before that time Loue and Ualour were all Romance among them [...] Don Quixot appeared with that inimitable witt and humour turned all ye Romantick honour an loue into ridicule, the Spaniards he said began to be ashamed of both and to laugh at fighting and louing, or at least otherwise than to pursue their fortune or to satisfie their Lust”.

The Royalist Turnor may have been struck by this passage’s object lesson for the monarchy, but it also chimes neatly with his concern that excessive reading can “Clogg & oppress our minds”, since Quixote’s madness is ascribed to an imbalance of humours brought on by reading too many books.

Turnor clearly delivered on his pledge to avoid becoming a muddled knight errant; nothing if not clear-eyed, he has compiled this three-part manual as much to avoid falling into error as to inspire himself to good works. In this sense, the cry of anguish over his son that he has added to the paste-down – not tucked away in an appendix, but right at the front – might almost be a mea culpa, alluding to the transgressions of Eli’s sons and their father’s failure to restrain them. “I haue contributed to it, by Elies indulgence” – and by not, for once, putting this lesson into practice. $8,500 / £6,500 Ref: 7999

7. PREDICTIVE TEXT TITI, Placido (1603-1668) Supplement to Placidus de Titus; containing the nativity of that wonderful phænomenon, Oliver Cromwell. Calculated methodically, according to the Placidian Canons, by the Ingenious Mr. John Partridge, M.D. To which is prefixed, Primum mobile, or a complete set of astronomical tables, for the Exact Calculation and Direction of Nativities.

London: Printed by W. Justins, Blackfriars; and sold by Mr. Bew, Pater-Noster Row; Mr. Richardson, under the Royal Exchange; Mr. Mathews, in the Strand; Mr. Debrett, Piccadilly; Messrs. M. and J. Sibly, Goswell-Street; and Mr. Edmund Sibly, Brick-Lane, Spitalfields, M.DCC.XC. [1790]. ONLY EDITION. Contemporary calf, rubbed, title label “SIBLY’S WORKS’. Octavo. Pagination 179, [3] p. frontispiece and 6 engraved plates. [ESTC: T111569]. Annotations to text, manuscript notes to six pages of endleaves, 10 of interleaves, and over 100 manuscript notes at end.

The book was published as a supplement to A collection of thirty remarkable nativities, .. Translated from the Latin of Placidus de Titus’ London, 1789.

[ESTC: T111568]. But a leaf at the end of our copy The Order of placing the Plates of Placidus de Titus (which is not mentioned in ESTC) calls this the third volume. ESTC locates 3 copies in the UK (BL, Cambridge, Rylands), one 1 in Germany (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin), and 6 copies in the USA (Folger, 2 copies at Harvard, Library of Congress, Illinois, Minnesota, Yale).

¶ This volume offers an extensive manuscript supplement to the work of the Italian astrologer, mathematician, and Roman Catholic monk Placidus de Titus (1603-1668), who is best known for popularizing the system of astrological houses now known as the “Placidian system”. Astrology was still considered a serious science by some scholars in the 17 th century, but this attitude was waning. It received a brief boost in England with the publication of Sibley’s translation of Placidus’s work.

Our annotator, who appears to be writing in the late 18th century, certainly takes astrology extremely seriously; and, perhaps hoping for a revival of the practice, they add over 100 pages of scholarly notes. In doing so, they demonstrate an in-depth understanding of astrological methods. Two of their interleaves have been pasted directly onto the printed text, as have several manuscript leaves (presumably each time correcting or improving the obliterated text). Their work explains, and expands, Placidus’s text (the interleaves include headings such as “The Use of the following Tables” and “Sexagenary Tables explained”) and they have continued the page numbering in manuscript through to p. 276. Many of the notes are workings-out from the printed text (“Placidus De Titus’s Method [...] With this No. look in tables of R.A and it points to 29.3 69”) and comparisons of the merits of these with other methods (“Morinus’s was of finding ye planets Lat. at the aspects”; “Of semidiurnal & seminocturnal arks from Leadbetter’s Atronomy”; “This method is John Overton’s”), along with remarks that contribute their own methods (“N.B. I should have added to rule 4th that as 4 is there brot. to ye paral of 5”). They are clearly deeply engrossed in their subject and make numerous cross-references to the printed text as well as their own workings-out. For example, on p.219: “Suppose two planets on side as L wh equal or unequal arks they are brot. to a parallel by ye aforesaid proportion of their aks [manicule and side-note:] see Ex (14) on pa.225”, indicating that they have returned to their own text to further elucidate the methods.

It seems our scribe’s efforts to revive astrology were in vain – at least for the book’s next annotator. According to a manuscript note to the front paste-down, the book was “bought from Evans & Co Liverpool”.

Judging from the hand, they probably did so in the early 19th century.

They do not appear to pay any attention to the scholarly astrologer’s work, but instead add several unrelated recipes and remedies (“Good For Colds and Coughs”, “To make Pills” (they do not say what for), “For a Sprain”, “Receipt for the Asthama”; “To make Wite Wine”) to the available blank leaves near the end of the volume.

$1,950 / £1,500 Ref: 8036

8. SOCIAL PACKS [ENGLISH GAMES] A collection of four Georgian parlour games.

[England. Circa 1820-30]. In very good condition, with their original silk ties. Undated, but probably span the Georgian and Regency periods. Presented in a modern clamshell box.

¶ This highly engaging group, created by one family and complete as far as we can tell, is a striking example of the fashion for parlour games in 19th-century England. Its survival in excellent condition speaks to the great care with which the cards were handled, and thus how valued they were.

The family in question was clearly very sociable and keen to entertain both themselves and their guests. Of the four games, two are riddle-based and by far the most competitively conceived; the other two seem designed more to oil the wheels of sociability, and certainly require more than two players. All of them appear to be sui generis, with no published versions traceable (besides one or two riddles in circulation at the time).

THE DREAM OR, A GAME OF PRECIOUS STONES This set of 16 numbered gilt-edged cards, each approximately 90 mm x 62 mm, with three further cards (“Rule of the Game”, “To be read first”, and “To be read last”), seems intended for a young audience.

“Rule of the Game” lays out a simple dealing of the cards; the person holding the card for the “RUBY”, which is named on the “To be read first” card, “must immediately read it or pay a fine”.

“To be read first” sets the Carrollesque scene: “Stretch’d on the Grass [...] Young Alice wept”, is struggling to “learn her book”, and laments that “A Mineralogist I shall never be” Alice falls asleep, and has “wondrous dreams” in which “the rarest stones around her lay”. She asks them “From whence ye came and what ye be?”. In the last line “The RUBY” pipes up first.

On each of the main 16 cards, all numbered in sequence, a poem of up to 14 lines is narrated by its stone. The Ruby boasts of being “Most valuable and rare”, and of enticing “the lapidary to pursue / His Journey, to Siriam, and Peru”.

It then observes “the Diamond’s envious Glare”, signalling that the “Diamond” card is to be read next. This next card begins “Hardest of Bodies, & transparent clear, / Your fiery Red I’ve little cause to fear”, and after some brief pointers to its likely provenance (“Deep in the Mines of Prealconda & Caulour? / Or buried in the Sand of Semnelpour”), points – rather superciliously – to the next card: “To me the Jargoon, some resemblance bears / I hate its dusty, brown, presumptuous Airs”… and so on, as mineralogy combines with snobbery.

As the rules dictate, “Upon the mention of any precious Stone, which has previously been played, the Lady or Gentleman who held it half rises from their seat, or pays a fine. When the word Jeweller is mentioned, all the Jewels rise. Whoever omits, pays a fine.” The idea, it seems, is to remain attentive enough to rise at the correct moment.

The game cycles through its 16 precious stones – “The Chrysoberyl .4.”, “The Sapphire .5.”, “The Topaz .6.”, and on to “The Tourmaline .9.”, “The Pearl .10.”, and finally “Bloodstone, or Heliotrope .16.”, at which point, as told on the “To be read last” card, Alice awakes and vows “To Study Mineralogy!” – a field, like botany, becoming increasingly formalised and professionalised at the time but also considered an appropriate leisure pursuit for young ladies or gentlemen. The game’s purpose is apparently to engage the attention sufficiently for them to learn about precious stones and minerals (somewhat superficially, and at times inaccurately: rubies, for example, are not generally found in Peru).

RIDDLE CARDS A set of 28 double-sided cards, each approximately 107 mm x 70 mm, manuscript in ink on thick card stock, all edges gilt, with their original pink tie. The riddles are mostly written in verse form – for example: “My first receives the Miser’s treasure / My next affords him not much pleasure / Strange for my whole he’ll part with gold / And values it as much I’m told.” Although most appear to be original compositions (or at least, not discoverable in collections of the period), at least one was in circulation at the time: “Form’d long ago, yet made to day / I’m most employed when others sleep – / What few would wish to give away, / And fewer still, would wish to keep.” (a close variant was collected in The Nursery Rhymes of England by J.O. Halliwell, published in 1844).

Some sides have two riddles: for example, one side of a card the brief riddle “In contact my first is oft found with a hook –; / For my next in two parts of this verse you may look; / My whole is the best part of many a book. – ” is followed by the even briefer “What is that which is often felt but never seen?”

QUESTIONS WITH ANSWERS FOR LADIES AND GENTLEMEN A set of nine double-sided, gilt-edged cards, each approximately 57 mm x 85 mm. On one side a question is posed, either for a “Lady”, or a “Gentleman”, or for both. The other side of each card has 12 numbered answers, from which, one presumes, the player must choose (or perhaps call out a number to have an answer assigned them). This game was evidently the most played of the group, as the cards bear finger marks and other light evidence of handling.

The cards are unnumbered, but a likely sequence moves from the immediate (“Gentleman / What do you like best?”; “Lady! / What do you most frequently think of?”) to the intermediate (“Lady or Gentleman / Where will you see your intended the first time?”) to the relatively distant (“Lady, or Gentleman / “Where will you live when married?”, with

answers mostly related to the East of England: “Norwich”, “Yarmouth”, “Eye”, “Bury St. Edmunds”, etc). The game seems intended solely for gatherings of the young unmarried and unbetrothed; even for the most general question “Gentleman / What do you most frequently think of?”, two of the possible answers are “If you may marry” and “The dread of being an old Bachelor”. Some questions (“How long will it be before you make a Conquest?”) – and indeed some answers (“You never go into company but you do”) – take the players somewhat beyond the bounds of ‘polite’ conversation, creating a space for spontaneity and candour.

“WHICH POET?” RIDDLE GAME This little booklet, approx. 112 mm x 90 mm and still sewn with its original ribbon, bears a crown embossed stamp to the front blank wrap. There are 29 numbered verses written in ink, each giving clues to the identity of a poet. Verse 1 reads: “The Bard sublime first please to tell / Who wrote of Heaven, of Earth & Hell / Whose lofty strains & noble verse / Do many wondrous things rehearse”. A later hand has helpfully written the answer to this (“DANTE ALIGHIERI”) and several other riddles in pencil.

Other poets alluded to include Thomas Gray (1716-1771), William Cowper, (1731-1800) and Robert Bloomfield (17661823), the latter credited in the verse with writing “On subjects like the Fak’nham Ghost” – lending further weight to this collection’s East Anglian provenance.

Among the many captivating things about these four games is the degree to which, unlike the traditional set of 52 ‘French-suited’ playing cards, they are designed largely to ‘break the ice’ by stimulating discussion, interaction, even flirtation. These well-preserved games also give us a vivid picture of the cultural hinterland of a fairly well-to-do East Anglian household.

$3,900 / £3,000 Ref: 8034

9. HALL MARKS HALL, Elizabeth et al A small collection of manuscript commonplace and recipe books.

[Alton Grange Farm. Coalville, Leicestershire. Circa 1785-1818]. Three manuscript books together with loose leaf manuscript notes and a manuscript survey.

Provenance: from the private collection of Lady and Lord Parmoor.

¶ The manuscripts in this group are all from the Hall family, about whom we know very little; in some cases we have no indication of the likely writers. The loose collection includes a survey of Alton Grange Farm (near the village of Ravenstone, Leicestershire), which appears to be the Hall family home: there are mentions in the other manuscripts to fields noted in the survey, as well as numerous mentions of nearby villages.

Arranging the collection chronologically, we have:

[1]. [ANONYMOUS], Manuscript book of recipes and remedies.

[Circa 1785-6]. Small quarto (210 mm x 170 mm x 4 mm).

12 stitched leaves, 16 pp text to both sides in brown and red ink.(some leaves excised. Original stitching intact, folded, tears. Watermark: Britannia. Countermark: GR. At one end of this book are recipes, mostly for for ink and wax. These include “Doctr. Lewis’s Receipt for Black Ink”, “A Receipt for Sympathetic Ink [i.e. invisible ink] from Macquare’s Dictionary” (presumably Pierre Joseph Macquer’s (1718-1784) Dictionary of Chemistry (1771, 2nd ed.

1777); “A Receipt for Black Ink from the Handmaid to the Arts” and several for “Red Ink”, from the likes of “Mr. Hatton” and “Dr Skuteliffe”, the latter’s written “with some of his making”, though the colour is now rather faded (a note below it, in much stronger ink, reads “Red Ink Manufactured by Thomas Johnson Apr. 21 1765”). There are further recipes for “Green Ink”, “Yellow Ink” and “Indian Ink, from Do.”, as well as “A Receipt for Gilding Ribbons in common Letter Press”. For the making of wax, there are “Sundry Receipts for Sealing Wax of Various Colours”, and for “a courser hard red sealing wax”, “the best hard black sealing wax”, “hard Yellow wax”, and “Scented sealing Wax”. Also to be found are a “Receipt to make a liquid Blacking for Shoes” and, somewhat incongruously, “Paregoric Elixir”, a popular household remedy which, the scribe assures us, “is an agreeable and safe way of administering opium. It eases pain allays tickling cough relieves difficult breathing and is useful in many disorders of children, particularly the hooping cough.”

At the opposite end of this book are two pages of trials of various inks. These trials repeat certain sentences such as “Liverpool Mar. 17. 1785”, which are annotated with brief experimental notes (“first made”, “Second made”, “made with Double Distilled Vinegar”, “made with common Vinegar”).

[2]. HALL, Elizabeth, Commonplace book. [Circa 1787].

Small octavo (135 mm x 89 mm x 12 mm). 60 leaves, text to both sides (some leaves excised). 59 pp text and drawings at one end, and 13 at the opposite end. Green quarter calf, decorative pasteboards.

The majority of the text is written vertically; the drawings are mostly horizontal.

Elizabeth Hall has inscribed her name to the paste-down and the first text page, the latter in a decorative border beneath the copied-out first verse of a poem by James Merrick (1720-1769): How short is Lifes uncertain space.

Alas how quickly done.

How swift the wild precarious chase.

And yet how difficult the race.

How very hard to run.

This melancholy choice signals an existential angst that is soon complemented by a lament over the travails of her gender, as she pens a five-verse, sceptical glance at the lot of married women. We have been unable to locate this poem in any printed works, but that may be a result of her errant spelling. It begins: When man enraptured with the fair ones charms Employs each art to court her to his arms how very assiduous dose he prove

However, after “the prest […] Coples them in Wedlocks sacred Bonds”, a familiar decline begins, as the wife sits at home, “Wating the time it pleases him to come”. For her melancholia, she is considered “sullen”, and “her sadness

now is censured as a foult”, as she is consigned to “years of greef and pain. Had the woman but known, she never would quit the happy single state to be incumbered with a careless Mate But would injoy uriveald your own will Whitch is the Chill(?) of every woman Still”.

After this deeply felt cry from the Leicestershire wilderness, Elizabeth settles down to more compliant, religious writings, largely of a Methodist bent. These include “On the death of the Rev. Chars Wesly”, consisting of four lines beginning “Be stil ye winds; ye zaphyrs ceas to blow”, which appears to have been a song circulating in manuscript before its publication in Memoirs and Select Letters of Mrs. Anne Warren (1827).

Other Wesleyan references include a report that “Mr Costerdine preached at our house wone thursdy Night from these words in the 6th of heabruse and vers 1.— Leaving thearforethe first prinsepls of the Doctrin of Crist Let us go on to perfection” (probably referring to the itinerant Methodist preacher, Robert Costerdine (1726-1812)). She also notes that “Mr Sikes Preached at Breedon”, and mentions “Mr Tealor” and “Mr Sando”. She copies in extracts from the Bible and poems from various sources, including “On the death of Lady Littleton”, “Adieu to the village delights” and “From Mr. Prior of pleasure”, together with many of what appear to be her own devotional compositions and an aborted poetical “Invititation to a Robin”.

[3]. [HALLAM, John], Manuscript religious notes. [Circa 1790]. Bifolium (350 mm x 209 mm), text to both sides. 4 text pages.

Stained and torn along folds with loss. Watermark: Britannia (obscured by text and staining).

Fair copy of a sermon which begins “O Gracious Saviour! make thine own Worlds Spirit & Life to the Souls of my dear Parents who are form’d by the Breath & redeem’d by thy Blood”.

[4]. [DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL], Manuscript dairy. [Alton Grange Farm? Leicestershire. Circa 1818]. Tall folio (330 mm x 140 mm x 3 mm). 12 stitched leaves, text to both sides (two blank). 20 text pages. Original stitching intact, folded. Watermark: W. Holyoake.

Although this volume is in original condition with its stitching intact, the diary begins on page 60, so was clearly once part of a longer sequence. The text starts on “S[aturday] 20” and the first entry helps us locate it: “My father been to Ashby & I to Tonge” (the town of Ashby de la Zouch and the hamlet of Tonge are close to the Alton Grange Farm, Leicestershire).

Another entry mentions one of the fields in the Alton Grange Farm survey map (“the men have been mowing middleclose meadow” – see item [5]). Other entries return to the religious themes of items [2] and [3]: for example, “My father has been to Linton in the Burton Circuit & preached at noon but came here and preached here at Night”. And alongside a report of childhood illness (“I was very poorly this morning after swelling under my ears and pain in my jaws ^bones with fever [...] Mr. Child has been here he calls my complaint the mumps”), we find snapshots of everyday life through the young diarist’s eyes: “I have been drawing this afternoon Roulson & Mr Heap been at plow in the prierfields”; “I have been to school and have been drawing this afternoon with Mr. Newton it has until four oclock”.

[5]. [LANGWYTH, L. (Surveyor)], Manuscript survey of Alton Grange Farm. [Circa 1812 (dated in image)]. Single sheet (312 mm x 233 mm) dissected into four sections and mounted on linen.

This neatly drawn survey locates the farm on the road between Ashby de la Zouch and Leicester. It includes 11 fields, a small orchard, and a plantation. Beneath the survey is a watercolour illustration of the farm building which is annotated “Alton Grange Farm / L. Langwyth, Surveyor. Decr. 1812”.

To paraphrase another line of James Merrick’s poem, the “guardian powers that rule the fate” of such manuscript survivals have left this collection deracinated from their larger, fuller context. But despite the gaps between these poignant remnants of “life’s uncertain space” and the fairly standard devotional material that predominates, some gems shine through: in particular, evidence of a lively interest in making inks and wax, and flashes of female dissent, dotted around the tidily rendered Alton Grange Farm like the fields themselves.

$2,950 / £2,250 Ref: 8008

10. TAKING WING WING, John (c. 1662-1728) and the WING FAMILY DYNASTY An archive of annotated books and autograph manuscripts.

[Pickworth, Lincolnshire. Circa 1656-1693]. Two annotated books and two autograph manuscripts in contemporary bindings.

This archive is being sold jointly with Voewood Rare Books.

¶ This exceptionally rich and mutually informing archive contains two books by Vincent Wing, both annotated by John Wing, together with two closely linked autograph manuscripts. Together these offer a unique opportunity to study John Wing’s development as an astronomer and writer, and how his work relates to the wider context of 17 th-century almanacs, astronomy, mathematics, surveying, and publishing.

INTERLOCKING ORBITS The “Wing Dynasty”, in the words of the ODNB, was “a remarkable family of astronomers, astrologers, instrument makers and land surveyors spanning some 6 generations”. Its prime mover was Vincent Wing, who, from his origins as a farmer, propelled himself into the scientific firmament to become an influential proponent of Copernicanism who, “in both scholarly and popular writings, played a significant part in its triumph over Tycho Brahe's system in the mid-century.”

This multi-faceted archive demonstrates how closely locked the Wings were into one another’s orbits, as succeeding generations comment on, expand, and extrapolate from the foundational work of their forebear. Foremost among these is Vincent’s nephew John Wing, who continued his uncle’s advocacy of Copernicanism and “wrote brief essays on tides, gravity, the periodicity of comets, and the possibility of other solar systems and inhabited planets within the universe” (ODNB). He was also a surveyor, and taught mathematics, about which he wrote in his 1693 textbook Heptarchia mathematica.

John followed Vincent’s example of using his almanacs to promote the new astronomy, and his annotations of the latter’s printed books demonstrate a deep level of engagement with the topic. He was a highly successful (and best-selling) compiler of almanacs and ephemerides, which led him into disputes over astronomical tables (more of which below).

The constellation of characters in this archive includes:

Vincent Wing (1619-1668), astronomer and mathematician: author of items [1] and [2] (below).

John Wing (c. 1662-1726), astronomer and mathematician: annotator of items [1] and [2]; author of [3] and [4].

Elizabeth Wing (possibly John Wing’s daughter born in 1664): her inscription is in item [2].

“John Lord 1680”: this inscription, and possibly his annotations, appear in [1].

“James Lord His Booke 1685”: this inscription, and possibly his annotations, appear in [1].

Tycho Wing (probably the astrologer and instrument maker (1726-1776), or the astronomer and mathematician (1696-1750)): annotations in [1], [2], and [4].

Tycho Wing (1794-1851): bookplates in [1] and [2].

Before examining the interplay of these texts, we offer a brief overview of the archive’s constituent parts:

[1]. WING, Vincent (1619-1668); annotated by WING, John (c. 1662-1726).

Astronomia instaurata: or, A new compendious restauration of astronomie. In four parts. Wherein is contained, 1. Logistica astronomica: ... 2.

Doctrina sphærica: ... 3. Doctrina theorica: ... 4. Tabulæ astronomicæ: ... Whereunto is added, a short catalogue of all the most accurate and remarkable coelestiall observations, that have been made by Tycho, Longomontanus, Gassendus, the landgrave of Hassia, and others.

London: printed by R. and W. Leybourn, for the Company of Stationers, MDCLVI. [1656]. First edition.

Pagination [20], 105, 104-132, 104 p. [Tomash & Williams W90; Houzeau & Lancaster 9228; Wing W2987].

Contemporary calf, rubbed and worn, joints splitting, some leaves loosening.

Provenance: several inscriptions to front free endpaper “John Lord 1680”; “James Lord His Booke 1685”; “E libris Johannis Wing”; to front flyleaf: “Jo: Wing—pret” and John Wing’s inscription to lower margin of title page and to D1. 18th-century inscription to divisional title (Iii1) “Tycho Wing”; 19th-century bookplate of Tycho Wing.

[2]. WING Vincent (1619-1668); Annotated by WING, John (c. 1662-1726). Astronomia Britannica: in qua per novam, concinnioremq[ue] methodum, hi quinq[ue] tractatus traduntur. I. Logistica astronomica, quæ continet doctrinam fractionum astronomicarum integram, tùm in numeris naturalibus, tùm artificialibus. II. Trigonometria, seu doctrina triangulorum, (analytica & practica) ... III. Doctrina sphærica, quæ exhibet longitudines ... IV. Theoria planetarum ... V. Tabulæ novæ astronomicæ ... Congruentes cum observationibus accuratissimis nobilis Tychonis Brahæi. Cui accessit observationum astronomicarum synopsis compendiaria, ex quâ astronomiæ Britannicæ certitudo affatim elucescit. Opus exoptatum, non modò astronomis, astrologis, sed & theologis, historiographis, nautis, medicis & poetis, perutile & jucundum. Cui additur postscriptum de refractione. Authore Vincentio Wing, mathem.

Londini: typis Johannis Macock, impensis Georgii Sawbridge, prostantq[ue] venales apud locum vulgò Clerkenwel-Green dictum, 1669.

Pagination [20], 244, [2], 192, [2], 193-369, [1] p. Lacks the portrait frontispiece, 2Z4, and 3A1-2 (i.e. pp 359-60, and 367-69).

[Hozeau & Lancaster 9232; Wing W2986].

Contemporary panelled calf, heavily worn, front board detached, loss to spine, some leaves loose, tears.

Provenance: 17th-century inscription: “S for John Wing”; 19th-century bookplate of Tycho Wing to inner front board; 17thcentury trimmed inscription to lower margin of leaf 2E4 (of tables): “Elizabeth Wing” (possibly John Wing’s daughter born in 1664); 18th-century inscription to front endpaper of “Tycho Wing” (probably Astrologer and Instrument maker (1726-1776)).

[3]. WING, John (c. 1662-1726). Autograph manuscript entitled ‘Astronomia Nova Britannica or The New Brittish Astronomy Containing an Exact THEORIE of the Cœlestial Motions according to the Genuine and most Rational Systems of the World, wherein the Sun is Center of the Planetary-Orbs. With New Accurate and most Easie Tables to calculate the places of the Fixed Stars, the true Motions of the Planets and the Eclipses of the Luminaries for any time, Past Present or to come, performed with more ease and expedition than any yet Extant in English.

Deduced from Astronomica Britannica Published in Latine by Mr V. Wing, Mathemat. To which is added severall Observations and Calculations compared therewith, never before extant, and now set forth in the English tounge. By John Wing Mathemat.’

[Pickworth? Circa 1689. Dated in text]. Pagination [2 (title page)], 1-59 [2], 60-73, [2], 74-101, [2], 102-160. The first 35 pages contain text, mathematical calculations, astronomical observations and seven diagrams. The remaining comprise tables. The three breaks in pagination (recorded as [2]) each contain incorrect tables which have been crossed out and the pages stuck together (over time the glue has mostly come unstuck). Corrective slips pasted over sections of text on p. 102 and p. 146.

Contemporary panelled calf, heavily rubbed and worn, spine in panels, with lower panel missing, some browning to text and some leaves loose and frayed at the edges but no loss of text.

Watermark: Fleur-de-lis. Similar to Haewood 1656 (but without the countermark) and 1660 Dating: the latest date in the manuscript occurs on p. 35: “A conjunction of [ ] and the [Moon] at Pickworth the 11 Day of May 1689”. A note rear pastedown reads “14 Jan 1691 at 5.30 PM g [Capricorn] into Holland”, but this is in a looser hand and probably added after the main text was written.

[4]. WING, John (c. 1662-1726). Autograph manuscript draft in English of ‘Scientia Stellarum’, with astronomical tables.

[Pickworth? Circa 1693. Dated in text]. Pagination [4], 74; [2], 184, [4]. Two divisional title pages.

The original title page has been excised and a title page has been added at the end. “Scientia Stellarum” has been written in the same neat hand throughout. There are additional notes and calculations to endpapers and interleaves, some by John Wing, and others (including a loose-leaf note) appear to be by Tycho Wing (1726-1776).

Contemporary panelled calf, rubbed and worn, some leaves loose, tears.

Provenance: pen inscription to rear endpaper: “Jo: Wing pret 3d” pencil inscription to front endpaper of “Jno Wing” and pen inscription of “Thoms Waring” and “Eliseba”.

Watermark: Foolscap. The countermark is partly obscured in the gutter, but appears to be a D. Dating: several times dated within the text (e.g. “the Sun enters ^ [Aries] this present year 1693”).

Some early 18th-century notes in a different hand.

WING’S EXPANDING UNIVERSE ¶ Each text in this archive connects to all the others; an exhaustive tracing of their orbital paths would certainly yield many fresh insights, but we offer a few initial observations here.

The earliest text in this archive [1] is an annotated copy of Vincent Wing’s Astronomia instaurata: or, A new and compendious Restauration of Astronomie (1656) which brought the work of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler to the English-speaking world; it was notably used by Zechariah Brigden for his 1659 New England Almanac. It supplemented Wing’s pioneering Harmonicon coeleste (1651), which was the “first significant English treatise on planetary astronomy since the Copernican revolution”, and added “new tables and an appendix giving further planetary observations.” (ODNB).

John Wing has used his uncle’s book as a launchpad for his own development as an astronomer and almanac maker. He, too, adds new tables or extends those printed, and he makes calculations in the margins and his own remarks and observations (“This prob ffinde ye [moon]s place at in Mr Mertens Letter” (I2v); “The Semidiameter of ye penumbra is ye same with the Sun of Semidiameters of ye [sun] & [moon]”; “The Ascendant being always 90 degress from ye N [...]”). He frequently extrapolates from the printed text, perhaps with a view to his own publications (“In this case ye Ascend. must be ye same with ye deg. & min: of ye [sun]’s place because it is at ye time of ye rising [sun]”; “In this case ye Ascend. must [...] (Gg1)); ((Gg2v [vertically]) “In all cases ye Altitude of ye Nonagessima degree of any Point in ye Limb of the Disk, is ye Arch of the Disk intercepted betwixt that Point and ye Pole of ye Ecliptick”; [horizontally:] “The Ascendant of that Place where ye [sun] sets Eclipsed must be ye opposite degree and minute of ye [sun]’s Place hence in this Case ye ascend is 19o:16’”). He occasionally supplements the text (Cccc2v “Dr Wallis [John Wallis (1616-1703), mathematician and cryptographer] observed, this Eclipse at Oxford A.D. 1654 Begin. Aug: 2d 7h 45’ morn.

Middle 8 58½ Digits Eclipsed 10 fere(?) End 10 15 He also observ’d y e visib. Diam. [sun] equal to that of ye D contrary to what ye Astronomical Tables gave it.”); and there is a post-publication observation to the rear endpaper: “1680 On the 11 day of December there appeared a commet which Set about an hour Sooner then uenus but on the wednesday after it Set but a Little before uenus or near a quarter of an hour as I soposed and continued until the middle of January.” This note, which refers to The Great Comet, Kirsch’s Comet or Newton’s Comet, is in a looser hand than other notes, so may be by John Lord or by another member of the Wing family. In any case, like most of the annotations it shows the scientific method in action, as Vincent’s descendants advance his work through corroboration, extrapolation, and further observation.

Vincent Wing’s Astronomia Britannica (1669) [2] is his most important work. This huge treatise on the Copernican system was “the most significant English astronomical work of its time and made a considerable impact both in England and on the continent” (ODNB). It documented numerous observations by Tycho Brahe, Bullialdus, Gassendus, and other Continental and English astronomers, including those made by Wing himself. It was written in Latin, and John Wing has followed his uncle’s example by annotating this copy in Latin and in English.

The majority of the annotations are brief marginalia, glosses (T3v. “nota anomaliam annui orbis et anomalie commutationes efficiadem” (known annual geographic anomaly and anomaly changes)), and mathematical calculations, together with some pages of copious notes and working out of problems (T4v. “Notandum est pro inventu anomliae commutationis idem est si opposilum punctum Heliocentrici loci Planeta substrahelur ab Heliocentrico loco terrae ac si Heliocentricus [...]” (it is to be observed that to find the anomaly of the exchange it is the same as if the opposite point of the Heliocentric place is a planet to be foreshadowed from the Heliocentric position of the earth as if the Heliocentric location of the planet ...)). In keeping with the archive as a whole, he also cross-references other works by his illustrious uncle, for example on B3v. he refers to “Harmonicon pag. 234” (? first digit trimmed). This is probably Vincent Wing’s Harmonicon coeleste (1651) (see above). It was presumably this copy which John Wing used for his English language edition of Astronomia Britannica [2] (which appeared under the title Geodætes practicus redivivus. The art of surveying (1700) [Wing, W2985]), and it would also have formed the basis for manuscripts [3] and [4] in this archive.

He also adds occasional supplementary details, sometimes touching on more Earth-bound concerns: for example, Y1.

“Sethus Wardus” is underlined and in the margin is written: “nunc Anno. 1669.

Episcopus Sarisburiensis” (in 1669, Seth Ward had successfully petitioned for the return of the chancellorship of the Order of the Garter to the bishops of Salisbury).

WAR OF THE WORDS The manuscripts in this archive by John Wing (Astronomia Nova Britannica or The New Brittish Astronomy [3] and ‘Scientia Stellarum’ [4]) played a key role in the acrimonious disputes over late 17th-century almanac making. The large market for almanacs, although second onl to the Bible, was not infinitely expandable, and publishers fought each other for their share.

time of a lunar eclipse in Rome. He also incorporates observations from long after his uncle’s death (“Since the Publication of Astronomia Britannica I meet with few Cælestiall Observations, save what I have made myself” (p.

29). The latest date given is: “A conjunction of [Venus] and the [Moon] at Pickworth the 11 Day of May 1689” (p. 39).

According to the ODNB, a quarrel began “over their rival astronomical tables”. One of Wing’s many competitors, George Parker, alleged that Wing had “tried to rush into print a manuscript entitled Astronomia nova Britannica [i.e. item [3]], which he had been forced to abandon when Henry Coley exposed it as only half completed”. Wing defended the work on the grounds that it was an English version, in abbreviated form, of his uncle’s Astronomia Britannica [2] which had been widely praised.

There are several amendments and corrections to the text and tables (often in the form of pages stuck together, or sections pasted over with paper slips), but the manuscript presents itself as a complete and comprehensive work, so it is uncertain whether, in referring to it as “only half completed”, Coley was questioning the level of scholarship or simply denigrating his rival’s work to gain a business advantage.

Either way, the insult had its effect: Wing abandoned Astronomia Nova Britannica, and reworked its contents as Scientia stellarum. This text was published (with a separate title page dated 1699), as part of John’s edition of Vincent Wing’s Geodætes practicus redivivus. The art of surveying (1700) [Wing, W2985], but not before it, too, went through many changes.

John Wing certainly leant heavily on his uncle’s work and used it as a starting point for his own (as the annotated books in this archive strongly attest). Indeed, the first sentence of the manuscript, Astronomia Nova Britannica refers to “my vncle” and “his New Tables of the Cœlestiall motions”. But explains that he is expanding his calculations to enable readers to use his uncle’s astronomical tables in places beyond London—for example if one wanted to know the

Manuscript [4] has the running title “Scientia Stellarum”.

The title “Astronomia Practica”, has been struck through in the first part; if it was the original title of the book, that would explain the excised page noted above. In a note to the

end leaf, Wing writes himself a memo: “If I put in this Book to ye Art of Surveying, then take out problm. 1st being just 3 Leaves beginning page 272”.

The first chapter of the manuscript is: “The Explaination of the Terms of Art”, does not appear in the printed text. It is replaced with “Of the Equitation of Time for the Difference of Meridians”, which is “Chap. XII.” in the manuscript. Chapters II- XI are similar in substance to the published version, but they differ in phrasing. The manuscript also contains “Chap. XIII. How to find the Exact time of the Moon, Planets, and Fixed Stars, Rising, Southing, and Setting Several Ways.” This chapter, which was omitted from the printed version, includes the note “Ex. Anno 1693 [...] to find the time of Saturns coming to the South” which helps to date the volume. Wing’s proud assertion in the manuscript titles that “I Received them from the hands of that unparallel’d observator Mr John Flamsteed” was dropped from the published version, but references to Flamsteed in the text remained.

An additional layer of interest is the evidence of continued use after its publication. The first few pages contain numerous methodological notes and calculations, as do several pages at the divisional section. Some of these notes

are by John Wing, but others appear to be by the astrologer and teacher of mathematics, Tycho Wing (1696-1750).

There are some notes at the end of [4] in two different hands, but both scribes refer to calculations taken at Pickworth. The latest (“1732 dec. 11 I observ’d by an Astrolabe [...]”) is also likely to have been Tycho, who from 1727 taught the “arts and sciences mathematical” at Pickworth”. Tycho continued to use his ancestor’s expertise in the Wing almanacs until 1744, but this archive also shows that he drew upon John’s work for his own endeavors, as John had done done more extensively with the foundational writings of his uncle Vincent.

The remarkable survival of this group of intimately connected annotated books and manuscripts allows us to study this important dynasty of English astronomers and almanac makers and their ground-breaking work explaining and spreading Copernican astronomy in the Englishspeaking world. The contents of the archive, moreover, include a wealth of material of interest to historians of science and astronomy, mathematics, and almanacs, as well as to social historians. $60,000 / £45,000 Ref: 8042

11. RINGING THE CHANGES BELL, Thomas (1593-1610) The anatomie of popish tyrannie: wherein is conteyned a plaine declaration and Christian censure, of all the principall parts, of the libels, letters, edictes, pamphlets, and bookes, lately published by the secular-priests and English hispanized Iesuites, with their Iesuited archpriest; both pleasant and profitable to all well affected readers.

London: Printed by Iohn Harison, for Richard Bankworth, dwelling in Paules Churchyard at the signe of the Sunne, 1603. Quarto. Pagination: [24], 184, [8], p. Signatures: [par.]⁴ A-2C⁴. Complete. [STC 1814].

18th-century half sheep, recently re-cornered, marbled boards (somewhat rubbed and faded).

Provenance: armorial bookplate to paste-down of Thomas Bell. Blazon: Az. on a chev. 5 ermine spots between three bells. Crest arm embowed in armour holding a sword. 19th-century paper label to front board with Bell family armorial shield. Annotations and underlining throughout in an early 17 th-century hand.

¶ England’s tortured relationship with Roman Catholicism in the early-modern period gave rise to a succession of complicated conversion-andrecantation stories, none more dramatic than that of the Yorkshireborn clergyman Thomas Bell. This copy of one of Bell’s most notable anti-Catholic works, written with the zeal of the reconverted, has been annotated by a reader keen to endorse Bell’s arguments and to integrate key parts of the work into their wider reading on the subject.

Thomas Bell’s embrace of Rome led to his imprisonment in York in 1573, from which he escaped in 1576, fleeing to the Continent and studying first at the Catholic seminary in Douai in northern France and then at the English College at Rome.

After returning to England in 1582 (under the name Thomas Burton), he spent a controversial decade working as a missionary priest in Yorkshire and Lancashire, until the weight of opprobrium aroused by his years of antagonism appears to have contributed to his ‘handing himself in’ to the authorities. He recanted, turned informer on his ex-fellow-travellers, and became one of the most prolific and persuasive of the anti-Catholic writers, earning pensions from both Elizabeth I and James I. The Anatomie of Popish Tyrannie (1603) was one of several works by Bell following his recantation; it summarises a bitter dispute which had arisen between Jesuits and ‘appellants’ while he was studying in Rome. Although this copy bears an armorial bookplate and paper label suggesting that it belonged to a Thomas Bell, we can find no definitive proof that the book’s author (or a member of his family) was also its owner or annotator.

Whoever made the annotations is, nevertheless, well enough acquainted with Bell to have read some of his other works; see, for example, S3r. where, against the printed text reading “I have written at large, in my treatise intituled the hunting of the Romish foxe”, they have added “& his triall of the new Religion & his defence of it & his dialogue” (“his triall” presumably refers to The golden ballance of tryall (1603) and “his dialogue” is probably Bell’s 1609 publication, A Christian dialogue).

We can gather from the nature of the notes (in a hand which is at times tricky to decipher) that this reader is highly engaged with the topic at hand, and sympathetic to the book’s anti-Catholic stance. The title page, for instance, has two annotations: “Papa est pioru[m] popa”, a rather gnomic epigram that might translate along the lines of “The pope is the servant (or acolyte) of the godly”; and “Ignorance saith the papist is the mother of devotion, when truly it makes a murther of devotion”, a bit of wordplay that, presumably, accuses Catholics of peddling an elitist ‘ignorance is bliss’ approach to worship for the common people.

Some of the notes simply copy a phrase from the printed text (for example the dubious contention that “one that [is] not a christian may be bishop of rome”, which is repeated in a note elsewhere); others append a more personal observation, such as “the french preists have written as much against the Jesuits as the English have done”.

Among the annotations are indications of wider reading, particularly of a book entitled “The Jesuites Downfall […] with the life of father p[ar]sons an English Jesuite”, by “Tho James d d […] at Oxford 1612”. Since Thomas James became “d d” (Doctor of Divinity) in 1614, two years after the book’s publication, this helps us to date the annotations to sometime shortly after 1614. Robert Persons (1546–1610), often referred to as Parsons, was a senior Jesuit figure who played a leading role in the ‘English Mission’ which brought Bell back to England in 1582. The annotator refers to Parsons and to James’ book on several occasions, in one instance adding a cross-reference to their own “note booke for notes out of it”.

Though any ownership by the Bell family has thus far proven too tortuous to confirm a family connection, this annotated copy of one of Thomas Bell’s more prominent works shows its reader bringing a sound knowledge of the subject to bear on their engagement with it. $2,600 / £2,000 Ref: 8023

12. WRIGHT ON WRONGS WRIGHT, Thomas (c. 1654-d.?) Manuscript entitled ‘A Call to Repentance or a Warning before Judgment’.

[Circa. 1716. Dated on title page]. Octavo (155 mm x 95 mm x 17 mm). 30 leaves. Pagination [1, title], [1, blank], [3, introduction], [1, blank], 39, [15, blanks]. Title page within slightly decorated border, text in a neat upright hand. Several pen trials to later pages, title copied onto front paste-down in a less sophisticated hand. Ownership inscription to rear endpaper: “Wm Masham Book”. Watermark: Pro Patria. Contemporary sheep, heavily rubbed and worn, front board has been reattached using small pieces of material.

¶ The connection between physical disability or disfigurement and moral turpitude is embodied in Shakespeare’s Richard III. The association of appearance and morality was also made by the likes of Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), and Giambattista Della Porta (15351615) and other able-bodied writers.

But the author of this manuscript defines himself; he tells us what it is like to be a disabled person, and to suffer injustice, indifference, and scorn from society. He does this several decades before William Hay’s seminal work, Deformity: An Essay (1754), which is widely acknowledged as one of the earliest examples of a first-person account by a disabled author of his experience. Hay considers Richard III to have been “misrepresented by Historians, who thought they must draw a Devil in a bad shape”.

In this manuscript, Thomas Wright describes the horrific incident that led to his being disabled through the actions of, as he sees it, a morally corrupt man. He draws on biblical texts and the deep distress and anger he feels at his situation to issue a “Warning before Judgment” to those who have done injury to him, and to encourage “all wicked men to leave of their boasting and Glorying of their wicked and cruel actions and to call their sins to remembrance” (pp i-ii).

Towards the end of his narrative, he describes the appalling attitudes of society towards him as a disabled man.

THE ATTACK Wright recounts the unprovoked and seemingly mindless attack that he suffered at the age of fourteen and which left him disabled for the remainder of his life. He begins his description “In the year 1668 on the eleventh day of August about the middle of the day […] as I was riding about my lawfull occasion to water my Father’s oxen there chanced to come that way a company of Shearers amongst whome was a wicked man betwixt 25 and 30 years of age”.

Wright was “greatly afraid of him because of his stern and cruell countinance tho’ I saw no weapon” and tried to avoid crossing their path, but the man “run out of his company to me and struck a great Goss thistle which he had in his hands behind him under my mares tail which caused her to give me a great leap”. The gorse branch seems to have lodged behind the horse’s tail causing it to run “furiously away with me”.

The attacker’s companions had ample opportunity to save the boy, but they did nothing to help. His horse ran towards the man’s brother, “and I held out my halter, and cryed out to him in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ to take hold of it and save my life and limbs which he might easily have done but he willfully stept away and would not”. The horse continued “furiously down a steep hill till she tumbled over her head and broke my Thigh bone in three pieces and her own Leg which so lamed danted and amazed her that she could not rise but she lay upon me till a little Girl which was keeping sheep came from the far side of the Moor and raised her up.” Wright might have escaped with a broken thigh bone, but his horse, upon standing up, “trode upon my bare brest with her hinder foot which hath caused me a great deal of pain and misery.” The group apparently assumed he was “slain” and tried to absolve themselves of responsibility by claiming that the horse “went softly whilst she was in their sight; whereas all the company that were there with them saw and knew it to the contrary”.

So begins his existence with a physical disability and his lifelong struggle – both internally and externally – with injustice.

MORAL REASONING Wright seems tormented by the indifference shown by the group of shearers. If his attackers cannot comprehend the full effects of their actions, perhaps God will open their eyes to what they have done: “It is said of David that after he had committed Adultery, and murder that he slept securely in his sin for a season. But then the Lord sent his Prophet to awake him out of his security to put him in mind of what he had done”. Unfortunately, almost half a century has passed – he is around 62 at the time of his writing – and still “the Lord” doesn’t seem to have sent his “Prophet to awaken” Wright’s tormentors.

He wishes only for his attackers to show remorse, but “this man never repented or said he was sory for the wicked deed”; worse still, he adds insult to injury: “in my hearing amongest his Companion hath made it his bost and his Glory to tell of his Cruel Actions to pleasure his Hearers”.

Having recounted the incident, he turns to scripture and mines it obsessively. How could something so consequential to him be so inconsequential to his attackers? He wrestles with this question at length, as if hoping that a rational understanding might help settle his feelings of injustice. He wonders whether the answer lies in the way parents morally educate their children: “foolish wicked and ungodly parents as they live themselves so they train up their children like bruits even like the horse and the mule which have neither guide nor government”. It should be the parent’s “chiefest care to educate and bring up your children in the fear of the Lord while they are young that so when they are old they may never depart from it Prov: 22, 6. as good and Godly parents ever takes care to instruct their Children and families in those things”. Perhaps it is God’s will, he wonders, and Wright’s attacker merely God’s instrument? Pursuing this thought, he alights upon the Bible’s teaching that although “you may say of the persecutors and murtherers of Christ that they was but the instruments in the hand of God to bring his work to pass and do unto the son of God what he had foretold should be done and come to pass [...] God did revenge his blood upon them”. (pp. 8-9). But God has not intervened on Wright’s behalf, even half a century later, and his moral questions remain unsettled.

THE CONSEQUENCES Wright does not mention any legal action being taken against his attacker, who, it seems, is allowed to live his life unpunished either by God or society, while Thomas and his family are left to deal with the consequences. Now in his sixties, he recalls that he was once “healthfull and strong”, but “now I cannot help my self but am forced to go upon crutches all the time of my life to support my body”. He might have hoped to support his parents in old age, but “what I have suffered by him and not by my self only, but also my Father and Mother and all my Family for want of my help and succour which they cannot have, because he hath destroyed my Health and Limbs”.

Not only does he feel a burden upon his parents, but he is continually confronted with the prevailing attitudes towards disability: “I am become a scorn as I have passed by them have struck at me with their Cudgells others have struck me with their fists and made me to reel others out of scorn have waged their heads and put forth their tongues at me I am become now a prey unto the Children in the streets who have followed me by companies making their sport of me abuising and calling me wors then the worst of creatures”.

Using phrases from the Psalms (mostly nos 31 and 102), he continues: “I am made to hang down my head like a bullrush and to goe heavily I mourn as a dove and chatter as a crane of the Wilderness I am like an Owl of the desert and like a sparrow on the houstop which hath no mate.” (pp36-7). And again, “mine eyes are consumed with grief yea my soul is troubled my heart faileth for my life is spent with grief and my years with fighting my strength faileth and my bones are consumed, I was a reproach among my neighbours, and a fear to mine Acquaintance they that did see me without fled from me” (p37).

THE SELF AND SALVATION Wright includes very little biographical detail. In his initial account, he says that he is tending to his “Father’s oxen”, so we can safely assume he is the son of a farmer. However, it seems unlikely he was a yeoman of consequence, otherwise his attacker might have been held accountable for his actions. Although it would be wonderful to identify Thomas Wright, perhaps this is not the point of his story; Wright does not set out to tell us who he is; he wishes to tell us what it feels like to be him as a man disabled by another’s wrongdoing. He is clearly educated enough to achieve a good standard of writing; and in his determination to set down an account of his misfortunes and a thorough examination of the moral dimensions, he has created an object worthy of admiration: a book, conceived as such, and properly bound.

Wright nears the end of his melancholy story with further borrowings from the Psalms: “For I have heard the slander of many fears was on every side while they took counsell against me they divised to take away my life”; and, perhaps most poignantly, “I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind, I am like a broken vessell” (p. 37). Despite decades of silence on the matter from his fellow mortals, and apparently also from God, he concludes, much as his chosen Psalms do, following this lamentation with a reaffirmation of his faith and a plea for his final salvation: “My times are in thy Hands deliver me from the hands of mine enemies and from them that persecute me” (pp. 37-38).

This striking and carefully created book is a pioneering first-person account of disability in early modern England, and an articulate, affecting encapsulation of one man’s suffering. Wright’s “Call” is threefold: he wishes his tormentors – all tormentors, in fact – to repent; he wants God to answer his prayers; but his book is also addressed “To the Reader” – perhaps we might hear his plea. $12,500/ £9,500 Ref: 8014

13. A HARD SWALLOW TO PILL [SALMON, Mary Frances et al] English household manuscript of recipes and remedies.

[England. Circa 1680-1840]. Binding: 17th century full calf, gilt tooled spine, rubbed and worn, front board detached, contrasting red morocco label “CORDIAL[S] WATERS & SVRRVP[S]”. Pages edges frayed, some leaves loose.

Pagination (numbered in text). 2-56, [57-83 (blank)], 84-204 (including 5 blanks), thereafter blank to page 277, with several loosely inserted and pinned-in recipes, many addressed to “Mrs Salmon”.

Watermark: Fleur-de-lis; Countermark: HIS. Similar to Haewood 1785, which he dates to circa 1670.

Provenance: Ownership inscription to paste-down “Mary Frances Salmon 1813”. ¶ The very specific title to this volume’s spine label “CORDIAL[S] WATERS & SVRRVP[S]” tells us that it was probably one of several; another perhaps contained different kinds of remedies (e.g. creams and salves), and another culinary recipes. The earliest contributor dates from the 1680s, and the volume has been added to sporadically for over a century, until, in 1813, it came into the hands of Mary Frances Salmon, who has quadrupled the number of recipes.

Hand 1 [17th century]: 47 remedies.

Hand 2 [17-18th century]: 14 remedies.

Hand 3 [17-18th century]: 3 remedies. th Hand 4 [18 century]: 1 remedy.

Hand 5 (Mary Frances Salmon) and others from the 19th century: Approx 150 recipes and remedies.

There are also some 30 loose-leaf recipes in various 19th-century hands.

Although the earliest contributor is anonymous, they played an active part in the social culture of 17th-century manuscript exchange, a fact which can be traced through recipes found in similar handwritten collections of the period. For example, “The Lady Allen’s Water” (p3), can, as Elisa Tersigni observes, be found “in at least half a dozen of [the Folger’s] manuscript recipe books from the 17th century”; furthermore, as she remarks, this recipe is “commonly recognized in manuscript receipt books but not in print recipe books”.1 A search for variations on “Dr: Stephen his Water” (p8) (whose numerous “Vertues” are that “It Comforts the Sences, helpeth the conception of Women yt barren” and “It helpeth a sinking breath”) and “Lady Allen” finds overlaps in Jane Staveley’s receipt book (Folger, V.a.401). Like a game of Chinese whispers, each of these recipes differs to varying degrees from its counterparts – a not uncommon characteristic in manuscript exchange and in cultural transmission more generally.

Other participants in this cultural exchange (quite possibly unwittingly) include “The Lady Huets Water” (p22), which one can match against “The Lady Hewet's Water” in the Receipt book of Rebeckah Winche (Folger, V.b.366), and which may also be found in 18th-century printed sources (e.g. Smith’s The compleat housewife, and Hannah Glasse’s Complete Confectioner); and others such as “Doctr: Wright’s Water Good in any Violent Feavour or sickness in the Stomach” (p.18); “A Water for a Canker – The Lady Penelope Nicholas” (p. 26); “To Make Juniper Water – ye Lady ffowles” (p. 28).

Other sources, while less easily traceable, still leave an impression: a “Mrs Savill” provided the recipe for the irresistiblesounding “Horse Dung Water” whose instructions specify that you must “set your Pott over head all night in a horse Dunghill the next morning distill one half in a flatt Still the other half in a small Limbeck and Lett it drop upon Loaf Sugar”. We are assured that “The Vertues of the water are many and Admirable for all diseases the Water is to be taken warme you may take half a Gill or more as you please at a Time” (pp. 29-30). Similarly, a “Dr: Rudgeley” is credited with a prescription “for the Worms” (p. 26) for a “Young Lady” which was to be administered “three days before ye New and full Moone”.

DECIMATING CHICKS AND THE HUMOURS But while parasitic worms were to be removed, garden worms could be ingested: “Snail or Worme” (p. 9) are “very good Against A Hectick ffeavour Consumption the Jaundice or any Disease that proceeds from Obstructions of the Liver”, provided the worms are “gathered in ye latter end of Aprill or ye beginning of May”; and a “Peck of Snailes shells and all” are heated till they are “done making a Noise”. A remarkable and still more fauna-intensive “remedy” involved the decimation of local swallow chicks: “50 or 60 Swallows when they be ready to ffly out of the nests”; after which carnage, you “bruise [...] to Pap in a Mortar ffeathers and all”, add in “Two ounces of Caster in Powder” and some white wine vinegar and sugar. But the birds did not die in vain: this panacea was “Very good for ye Passion of ye heart for the Passion of the Mother, for ye ffalling Sicknesse for Sudden Swoonings for ye dead Palsey for the Apoplexy. for ye Lethargie for any other Impedimt proceeding from ye head. It comforted the braine so far forth as any thing whatsoever.” Moreover, “It is good for all yt are distracted, and in the greatest Extremity of sicknesse one of ye best things can be Administred”. Other, less bloodthirstily prepared treatments include “To Make the Great Palsey Water” (p. 16); “The Great Palsey Water alsoe for the Apoplexie” (p. 19) and for the “humours”: “To Make the Malencholy Water” (p. 17).

Preparation times are occasionally given (“steeped 4 dayes”, “Circulate them for 6 Weeks”), as well dosages (“give a Child Newborn like to dye a little poured into the Mouth will not hurt”; “you may take half a Gill or more as you please at a Time”). The frequent commendations (“Approued a Good Wine glasse”; “of an excellent Vertue”), some of which read more like encomia (“none can expresse sufficiently the Vertue of this incomparable water”), suggest the manuscript was actively used by the household.

Ingredients include: “Cittron rinde”, “clarett Wine”, “Saffron”, “Scabious”, “Sorrell”, “Egrimony”, “Angelicoe”, “Cinamon”, “Cloues”, “Nuttmegs”, “Corriander”, “Cardimum” – and sugar, of which there is frequent mention throughout the volume, in several forms including “Sugar candy”, “fine sugar”, “Muskified sugar”, and “Browne Sugar Candy”. The presence of sugar in the earlier section is a marker of status for its 17th-century consumers, beneath whose appearance of refinement and gentility lay the barbaric system of slave-labour production.

Although the volume changes hands several times as it moves into the 18 th century, the remedies continue in similar fashion; for example, p. 50: “To make the precious Water – This Water is Excellent for the Pain in the head & Stomach & good against the palsey the Wind & Colick in the Belly. It is also an Excellent Water for Women in Childbed because cleanseing & upon other the like occasions in Women; To give a Child Newborn like to dye a little poured into the Mouth will not hurt, but recover them although very weake”.

CULINARY ART AND VISUAL ART Mary Frances Salmon picks up the manuscript in 1813 and continues to add to it over the next three decades. She appears to be a very sociable woman; she pins in recipes sent to her (“with Mrs Dundas’s kind love to Mrs Salmon”) and ascribes numerous others. She is clearly a keen collector of culinary recipes (“New College Puddings” (p. 99); “Gooseberry Wine – Mrs Gleed”, “To make Champaign from Gooseberry’s / Mrs Rollin” (p. 100); “Custard Pudding” (p. 102); “Milk Punch” (p. 133); “To make Macaroons” (p. 134)), as well as techniques of making and mending (“Chinese Method of Mending China; To make hard Sealing Wax” (p. 113); “To make Black Sealing Wax; “To make Red Ink” (p. 114); “To make Mason’s Green” (p.116); “To remove spots of Grease from Printed Books” (p. 120), to which she adds “This receipt is much better as I found by experience.”

Mary Frances is also an amateur artist, judging by pp. 103-108: “Method of making a Composition for painting in imitation of the Ancient Grecian manner, or Encaustic painting, discovered by M rs Hooker, of Rottingdean Sussex – formerly Miss Greenland – The Society for the encouragement of arts, manufactories and Commerce”. A vertical side-note reads: “This receipt was given me by Mrs Anderson with whom I did a painting, with the Composition, Decbr. 30th. 1813”.

While we have been unable to identify the earlier contributors, it seems likely that the manuscript was passed from one generation of the Salmon family to the next. It offers a window into the social exchange of remedies and the kinds of illnesses that affected a late 17th-century household, before shifting its focus to food and a society more interested in sharing cuisine and art.

$6,850 / £5,250 Ref: 8020 1. Elisa Tersigni. ‘Code Makers: The Hidden Labour Behind the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Recipe Book Corpus’.

14. AGREE TO DISAGREE PASCAL, Blaise (1623-1662). Les provinciales: or, The mysterie of Jesuitisme, discover’d in certain letters, written upon occasion of the present differences at Sorbonne, between the Jansenists and the Molinists, from January 1656. to March 1657. S.N. Displaying the corrupt maximes and politicks of that society. Faithfully rendred into English.

London: printed by J.G. for R. Royston at the Angel in Ivie-lane, 1657. FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH. Pagination [22], 504, 405-409, [7] p. engraved additional title present, but lacking the folded plate found in some copies.

Bound in 20th-century grey boards, additional title slightly shaved along fore-margin, light toning throughout. [Wing P643; PMM 140]. Annotated in a 17th-century hand.

¶ According to Printing and the Mind of Man, Pascal’s “Lettres Provinciales, as they are called, are the first example of French prose as we know it today, perfectly finished in form, varied in style, and on a subject of universal importance”. This book shows Pascal in his element as a vocal advocate of Jansenism, a movement that sought reform within the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th century.

His ‘letters’ amount to a defence of Jansenism via an attack on the recent arguments of the Jesuits, who condemned the principles of Jansenism as skirting close to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. As PMM says, Pascal’s “weapon was irony, and the freshness with which the gravity of the subject contrasts with the lightness of the manner is an enduring triumph”.

Pascal’s salvos, issued clandestinely in 18 parts between January 1656 and January 1657, were swiftly translated into English and published in 1657.

Although the annotator of this first English edition does not date their notes, they appear to be contemporary. They seem have read the entire book, to judge by their addition of summaries of the chapters to the front endpaper (“the 3 poynts concerning grace videlect Next power, sufficient grace, Actuall grace, ar handled in the 1. 2. and 4 letters […] the 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. and 10. explicate the Motalitye of the Jesuits, by certayn discourses had betweene the Author and a Casuist of theirs […][...] the 18th. gives severall Popes eluded by the false information of religious sychophants.”). However, if their annotations are an indication of their interests, then it is Letters 1-7 and 9 that they find particularly engaging.

In keeping with the small format of the book, the marginal and interlinear annotations are written in a tiny hand; perhaps following Pascal’s style, they also combine a seriousness of purpose with a “lightness of the manner”. They display evidence of close, scholarly engagement, with approximately 50 pages of lightly annotated and underlined text, and around eight densely annotated pages. Notes range from laconic exclamations (“O horrid?”; “O damnable?” (B5r and v)) to amused remarks (“the Dominicans juggle about sufficient grace.” (B11v); “the Dominicans juggles described by a Parable.” (C2v.)) and delight in Pascal’s wit (“the Authors wittye abuse of the Jesuit” D7v.). They often summarise sections; for example, they bracket and

underline part of the printed text: “there’s onely the word next without any sense which runs all the hazard of it”, and annotate: “O the villanye and non-sense of the next power?”. Elsewhere, against Pascal’s description of his visit “to the Convent of the Dominicans” they give a précis: “The divers acception of the next power among the Molinists themselves” (B5v), and further on notes that “the Dominicans agree with the Jesuits in tearms and sounds of words but with the Jansenists in sense.” (C6v).

Points are raised, and sometimes answered, in which case this is noted. For example, after commenting on p. 60 that “5 perticulars must bee transacted in the soule to mak an action sinfull” (D6v), they follow this up on p. 65 with “this objection of the Epicurians answers fullye and confuts the Jesuits 5 perticulars that mak an action sinfull in page 60” (D9r). Several of the longer annotations recapitulate and reference the preceding chapter (“the Jesuit reconciles his doctrine with the contradictions of scripture, Pope and Councells by the interpretation of some tearme vide page 104. or by some favorable circumstance vide page 106. or by the most subtle and refined part of probablitie i.e. where the negative and affirmative have a certayne ^probabilitye in most opinions vide page 108” (G4v.)).

This early annotator of Pascal’s attack on the Jesuits is a fine example of engaged study of an early-modern text. Though the annotator’s identity is lost, their enthusiasm and hints of an inclination to emulate Pascal’s style in their own notes come through strongly. $1,950 / £1,500 Ref: 8025

15. TREADING HER WAY [TREADWAY, Ligonier (later owner and possibly partial compiler)] Manuscript journal of a young lady, and commonplace book of poems.

[Circa 1794]. Quarto (206 mm x 170 mm x 21 mm). Pagination 86; 35, [33, blanks], [12, pages containing pasted-in newspaper scraps, engravings]. Contemporary full calf, red morocco label to front board, rebacked.

Provenance: early 19th-century armorial bookplate of Ligonier Treadway. 20th-century pencilled inscription of “Mrs W Latham Hughes, Kyrewood – Grove Road, Sutton, Surrey”. Kerrison Preston Esq. and by descent.

¶ While the beginnings of Romanticism in England made their first salient appearance in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, this young lady’s journal, together with its poetic postscript reminds us of the era’s general milieu of gentility which provided the backdrop to the poets’ ecstasies and outrages.

THE YOUNG LADY’S JOURNAL Our diarist records her journey by coach from Norwich to Kirkbymoorside in North Yorkshire – via the likes of King’s Lynn, Spalding, Newark, Doncaster and York – and her eight-month stay in Kirkbymoorside.

This is perhaps her first long coach journey: every change of horses and stop for meals is recorded, along with the mixed social blessings of public transport. Of her co-passengers she relates that one “entertained us with his Travels thro Wales. the rest of the Company I did not like one old man had a Bottle of Geneva of which he was often taking a sip” (p6), and she grapples with the challenges of finding accommodation en route (in Spalding they are “all obliged to drink tea in a bed room the House was so full” (p4)).

It is with evident relief that she reaches “Kirby moorside” (p12), remarking that “every person seems happy, you do not see discontent painted on the face of any one” (p14). She then embarks upon a seemingly endless round of social visits, tea, walks, reading, card games, church services, polite conversations and occasionally feeling “indisposed”.

What can we surmise concerning our anonymous diarist? She is young and single, and has at least one sibling (a brother, who writes her a letter that leaves her “very much hurt”). She is fond of reading, and records just-published novels like “mysteries of Udolpho” (p39) and “Herman of unna” (p35), as well as “Mrs Macaulays History of England” (p24); she appreciates the picturesque, but rarely gets worked up over scenery.

From time to time, we glimpse little cracks in her well-bred demeanour: witnessing a church sermon by “Mr Dixon junr”, she finds him “so very much affected I did not know how to forbear laughing several times” (p15). She can be severe if someone fails to meet her standards, tutting that “Mrs Wm Harwood […] could not join in any conversation, do not think she spoke three times” (pp19-20); and a Mr Cleaver is “the stupidest young man at Cards I ever saw” (p24).

Our scribe is charmed by the “exoticism” of local customs: Nottinghamshire women milk cows “in the Fields – and it is carried home on their heads, the Poorer sort wear flat round hats” (p7); and, reports the Yorkshire fashion “to have two sorts of tea, and coffee, you are asked which sort you chuse the coffee is creamd and sugard ready” (p19). She is also intrigued by the post-Christmas ritual of “the fund plough”, in which the men, “dressed in Womans cloths […] go about the streets with music & colours flying – carrying the plough – they gather what money they can and make a feast”. (pp. 30-31).

After recording her “last day of my stay at Kirby”, she concludes with her own lyrical ballad, “The Adieu to Kirby moorside” – a poem that neatly illustrates the idiom that the generally well-off – especially women – were expected to inhabit: picturesque, respectable and restrained.

A CURIOUS MARRIAGE

An odd feature of this artefact is that the journal, once a single item, has been “married” dos-a-dos with a later commonplace book and a scrapbook. The journal retains its original marbled covers, so that one of these covers appears Tristram-Shandy-like midway through the volume. A continuous and close union between the two sections of the manuscript is suggested by the Britannia watermark, which is consistent throughout the volume. The commonplace book features a number of late-18th-century poems including “The Thief by G A Stevens” (The Lady’s Magazine 1796); “On a kiss” (i.e. Robert Burns’s 1788 poem, ‘The Parting Kiss’ or ‘Verses on a Parting Kiss’); “Poems by Christopher Smart”; and “Written at an Inn, by the late Dr Horne, Bishop of Norwich” (The Universalist’s Miscellany 1797).

A bookplate on the rear paste-down bears the armorial bookplate of “Ligonier Treadway”. The Reverend Ligonier Treadway (1797-1831) was vicar of Gayton and rector of Westwick, both in Norfolk.

Whether he was the commonplace compiler, and whether this helps with establishing the identity of the journal-writer – the Reverend’s mother, perhaps? – is a matter requiring further research.

But the Norfolk connection is compelling.

$1,950 / £1,500 Ref: 8026

16. COATS OF PAINT [CLEMENTS, Joseph and GOLDING, J.] Manuscript heraldry book.

[England. Kent? Circa 1795]. Quarto (270 mm x 214 mm x 43 mm). 184 leaves (including 12-page index on 6 leaves at end). Leaves numbered to rectos (104 omitted, but no reference to that page in the index). Bordered in red throughout, hand-coloured shields annotated below with family names. Several loose-leaf notes in later hands.

Bound in contemporary reverse calf, rubbed, front hinge cracked, marbled endpapers.

Watermark: Fleur-de-lis. Countermark: J W Whatman.

Similar to Haewood 1849, without “& Co”, which he dates circa 1768.

¶ This beautifully produced, highly finished manuscript appears to have been created for the love of the subject and the sheer delight in the aesthetics of its imagery.

The manuscript begins with a decorative title page (where one might expect the frontispiece). It contains a central motif of heraldic shields topped with a griffin, with the initials JC and JG to the upper corners and the corresponding shields of Clements and Golding to the lower corners. A pencilled note to facing blank (where one might normally expect a title page) reads “Joseph Clements and J. Golding 1795”. These are both Kentish families, which hints at a possible location.

This is followed by heraldic ordinary on three pages (on two leaves) to help the reader interpret the subsequent family shields. Each page of the main body of the manuscript is divided into a grid six-by-six, with hand-coloured and annotated illustrations. There follow 174 pages of painted shields with crests arranged in a grid formation of six shields to a page, which gives a total of 1044 shields. These are finely hand-painted with close attention to detail, and most are presented on a plain background. Some of the later pages are arranged like a heraldic ordinary, but no sooner do we detect a pattern than it is replaced by another or by none at all.

Among the more intriguing pages is p. 22 which features the shields of three authors (“Cowley”, “Shakespear”, “Pope”) and three actors (“Lewis”, “Garrick”, “Henderson”). Perplexingly, the Shakespear allusion is dissolved by the use of a different branch of the family to the bard’s. There are three pages which have coloured or decorated backgrounds, and these arrest one’s attention simply by their enormous visual appeal. The first of these singles out six families (“Arblaster”, “Bowes”, “Beddingfield”, “Briston”, “Nugent”, and “Bagot”) who share the characteristic of having a ground of ermines. The second decorated page illustrates the shields of six families (“Blackstone”, “Retowre”, “Theme”, “Arnest”, “Jorney”, and “Chorley”) who all incorporate organic trinities (e.g. three stumps, three woodbine leaves, three gillyflowers), which is reflected in the decorated panels. The third panel extends this aesthetic even further by arranging the shields and crests (which are represented in roundels) upon a highly decorated field of repeated geometric patterns reminiscent of gothic revival tiles – a style which reached its height in the 19th century, notably in the work of Augustus Pugin. There are various other nods toward the arrangement, but an overall pattern eludes us – it seems to show two enthusiasts indulging their love of the art of heraldry.

$2,250 / £1,750 Ref: 8018

17. WATTS UNLOCKES BUTLER WATTS, Isaac (annotator) (1674–1748); BUTLER, Joseph The Analogy of Religion Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. To which are added Two brief Dissertations: I. Of Personal Identity. II. Of the Nature of Virtue. By Joseph Butler, L. L. D. Rector of Stanhope, in the Bishoprick of Durham.

London: Printed for James, John and Paul Knapton, at the Crown in Ludgate Street. MDCCXXXVI. [1736]. First edition. Pagination [12], x, 11-320, complete with the half-title. [ESTC, T67971]. Contemporary full calf, marbled endpapers, early reback, rubbed, corners worn, occasional scattered spotting to text. Annotations by Isaac Watts to over 100 pages. These range from simple notes like “Objn: Ans:” to longer, the more sustained and detailed notes discussed below.

¶ The question of whether reason and faith can co-exist was one of the intellectual conundrums of the Enlightenment period, and one that still torments some modern minds.

This copy of the first edition of Joseph Butler’s major work, annotated by Isaac Watts, illustrates some of the confluences and cross-currents that characterised these deliberations.

Watts’ handwritten comments demonstrate the level of rigour he applies to his critique of Butler’s ideas, especially as they relate to John Locke and the problems of materialism; for, as he notes, “Others have Drawn Mr Lockes opinion to unhappy lengths” (2R1r).

WATTS AND BUTLER (AND LOCKE) Isaac Watts was a significant figure in the 18th century. Although often referred to as the “Godfather of English Hymnody”, his books on logic, theology and astronomy were among the most influential works of the period. According to Benyon (2016), Watts’s edition of the Psalms of David “was the most frequently published work in eighteenth century America, followed by his Hymns and Spiritual Songs”. His Logick (1724) became the standard text on logic at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale.

Joseph Butler (1692-1752) is already recognised as a major influence on Watts’ thinking. In his most famous book, The Analogy of Religion, first published in 1736, Butler drew analogies between nature and scripture in an attempt to show that God was the author of the “book of scripture” as well as the “book of nature”. Against the deists who strove to prove the existence of God through reason, he attempted to demonstrate that a reading of scripture and of nature in all their complexity shows that God was not, as the rationalists would have it, a provable certainty – leaving no role for faith – but rather a probability.

REASON AND FAITH, MEN AND BRUTES Watts was deeply influenced by the empiricist philosophy of Locke and Isaac Newton, which he combined with ideas from his own nonconformist upbringing to form a complex mix of reason and faith. The empiricist theory that our ideas and knowledge of the world are derived through reasoning from physical experience was considered too materialist by many, who were uncomfortable with the possibility that, as Locke says, what “we call Thoughts ... are only the Operations of Matter.”

But if everything is a mechanism in this new world of empirical explanation, what differentiates humans from other animals? There is evidence in this volume of Watts grappling with this and other related questions; he seems to be seeking arguments robust enough to counter the materialist side of Lockean philosophy, while preserving its empirical core.

As its title indicates, the book’s argument is built on analogies, so Watts expends much of his energy checking these for robustness and reporting on his conclusions. For example, in one passage, he concedes that “This Argt: drawn from our Intellectuall Ideas & Reflecting Powers not being injur’d by Severall Diseases, has much more weight in it than the former” (D4r), but while he considers it stronger than its predecessor, it is still too weak: “Yet since some ^other Diseases & even Sleep do hinder ^ weaken or stupefy our reflecting Powers, ye Materialist will say, the Analogy of Nature here is as Strong Agt:: ye immortality of ye Soul as it is for it.” Similarly, in a slightly later passage, he is again sympathetic to Butler’s ideas, but thinks they lack rigor: “This Chap. has severall good thoughts in it but upon the whole a Mortalist woud feel but small power of Conviction. The common generall Proof of a future state from ye want of due Recompenses to Vice & Wertue in this World carrys with it stronger Evidences than those supposed or Slight Analogies, many of wch: are found among Brutes as well as Men.” (K3r).

As Watts evaluates the arguments in The Analogy of Religion, he often finds Butler unequal to the task at hand: “I am so far from thinking ye Authors reasoning strong here yt, as far as I can see, the Analogy of Nature in ye Death of Brutes wd: lead us to conclude we have no living Powers abiding after Death; ffor all yt Sense & Experience can discover to us make no difference between ye Death of Brutes & men.” (C4r). Just a few pages on, he again refutes Butler’s argument, this time explicitly from the point of view of “A Materialist” who, he says “wd answer to all this, yt our Living powers are not in the Limbs – but in ye

Brain or Heart, & these being destroyed, ye Living Powers are destroyed too.” (D2r). Watts often plays devil’s advocate in this way, intent on anticipating future objections to his own arguments.

As Watts is acutely aware, if humans and animals are subject to the same physical laws, any differentiation must be a genuine one, otherwise “Q. Will not this sort of reasoning prove ye Souls of Brutes immortall too? See p. 22.” (D2v). This remark occurs on p.20, and if the reader follows to p.22 as instructed, against Butler’s assertion that “Brutes” are governed by the same order and “by consequence capable of everlasting Happiness. Now this Manner of Expression is both invidious and weak”, Watts has underlined “invidious” and “weak” and justifiably protests that “This Objection is reproached rather than refuted”. Ever the logician, Watts clearly requires a stronger argument than mere distaste.

PERSONAL IDENTITY Butler famously critiques Locke’s theory of personal identity. Locke’s definition of a person as an entity that can think reflexively and recognise itself as persisting over time was dangerously materialist, as it requires only self-awareness and makes no mention of a soul. Butler was among those of Locke’s contemporaries who took him to task; in the appendices to The Analogy of Religion, he accuses Locke of circularity, arguing that it is “self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity”. Watts summarises Butler’s argument (“Personall Identity to be determind as personal Similitude” (2Q3r)) and seems, in part at least, content with the thrust of this argument “Agt Mr Locke.” (2Q3r). He marks the passage on self-awareness through time on p. 306 “Lockes opinion answd”, and puts numerous dashes along the margin of the text. But he raises some objections to Butler’s arguments along the way – for example, against the idea that a person is aware of who they are from one moment to the next, he retorts “Qu: May not Madness make Nero think himself Hercules?”, suggesting that a person reporting upon themselves does not always make for a reliable witness.

PROVENANCE The importance of Watts’ annotated copy seems to have been recognised even at the time: a note to the rear endpaper reads: “I bought this book from Paterson Auctioneer London at the sale of the Library of Nathanael Neal Esq […] C.S. London March 1766”. Samuel Paterson (1728-1802) was a noted bookseller and auctioneer whose series of catalogues established him as a pioneer in the book auction trade. The ODNB says that he was “remembered by his contemporaries, such as Joseph Nollekens, as a great cataloguer and auctioneer […] [Samuel] Johnson wrote of him as ‘a man for whom I have long had a kindness’.” It therefore appears that, after Watts’ death in 1748, this book fairly quickly found its way into Neal’s ownership, and became part of an auction entitled The Genuine Library of Nathaniel Neal Esq., Solicitor in Chantry and Secretary to the Million Bank, Lately Deceased. Including Many Valuable Books, Chiefly English, held on 13-14 February 1766, where it was bought by “C.S.”, who, appreciating its significance, contextualises it in terms of Watts’ other work.

The endpaper note also records that the book “belonged originally to Dr. Isaac Watts whose name ^is in his own handwriting & also Notes in the Margin, exemplifying his directions in his book on the Improvement of the Mind”. Watts’ inscription (“I Watts. 1736 / Pret 8r:-”) has been grafted to the front free endpaper – whether taken from another book or retained from the original endpapers is not clear, but the latter seems more likely, as the inscription and publication date are both 1736 (and, indeed, the purchaser clearly thought so). Either way, the marginal marks and annotations are in Watts’ distinctive hand throughout, exemplified by his eccentrically curlicued “ye”.

MORE QUESTIONS The relationship between reason and faith is, of course, far from resolved: in the final pages, Butler offers his “Conclusion”, but for Watts the questions keep coming. He even appears to query the role of Christ (at least in terms of the general argument), when he asks: “Why by a Mediator?” (2P3v) and “Again, why by a Mediator.”

On the same page, he skirts the realms of scepticism: “Why Christty: not universally reveald? Why not stronger Evidence?” (2P4r). It is not clear from these remarks whether he is actually questioning the necessity of there being a mediator – Christ – between God and man or whether they are part of his overall strategy to anticipate opposing arguments.

Such questioning typifies Watts’ relentless logical engagement with Butler’s analogies and arguments in this book. The annotations deepen our understanding of the development of the ideas of one of the key figures of the 18th century and help to trace some of the nuances in a complex and long-running debate that endures to the present day.

Benyon, Isaac Watts: Reason Passion and the Revival of Religion . T&T Clark. (2016).

Rivers, Isobel. Isaac Watts. (2004). ODNB. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . (2022). <https://plato.stanford.edu/>

$12,500 / £9,500 Ref: 8049

18. BLAND SHEEP OF THE FAMILY WILLIAMS Charles (1734-?1806) Manuscript entitled ‘Memoirs of the Family of Williams of Newcastle upon Tyne.’

[Newcastle upon Tyne. Circa 1805]. Contemporary reverse calf, boards detached, lacking spine, text block broken, leaves loose and some frayed at edges. [4, half-title and title], 517 numbered pages (final page blank), hand-coloured manuscript map on two pages at end entitled “Rout of a Tour into North Wales”. Half-title: “Memoirs wrote by Charles Williams in the year 1775.” But, the manuscript was completed (and probably written out) in the early 19th century rather than the “1775” claimed on the half-title. Armorial bookplate to paste-down of Charles Williams.

¶ This memoir of 18th-century life contains enough emotional subtexts and barely suppressed resentments to populate a novel from the period. Charles Williams, son of John and Margery Williams, narrates in a neat hand the genealogy, lives and travels of his affluent family, while getting a few things off his chest, chiefly about his siblings.

The Williams’ wealth appears to derive from the iron and coal trade: one of Charles’ brothers runs “the Iron Founderys in this Town and Gateshead, and those with the Collierys at Clifton in Cumberland” (p. 42). The memoir features notable commentary on its era: the notion that “the Arts and Sciences have come to a degree of perfection unknown in any former period” (p. 3) seemingly reflects High Enlightenment philosophy, while the “amazing Wealth acquired in the East Indies lately” (p. 6) alludes to the burgeoning activities of the East India Company throughout the 18th century.

This exploration for riches provides the main backdrop of sibling rivalry: Charles congratulates himself on his own common sense (“Prudence has been my companion, if not my constant guide” (p63)) and claims to have “the Wisdom of being content with mediocrity” (p. 6) (though the memoir’s picture of affluence is a far cry from the mediocrity of the time).

Nevertheless, the globetrotting exploits of his brothers clearly rankle: “there never was [a family] so dispersed about the Globe”, but “I, who had always the strongest propensity to travelling, have hitherto been less out of this Island than any of my Brothers” (p. 73).

Charles paints vivid, sometimes unsparing family portraits. He relates how his father “not truly estimating human happiness, nursed the Viper of anxious business in his breast” (p. 60); how his brother Edward, prone to excessive drinking, “has been struggling through life” (p. 61); and how his brother John, whose death in India was “occasioned by the falling of the Gallery of a house upon him” (p. 55), left a will in which he declared his intention of marrying his housekeeper. This last unhappy occurrence sparks some misogynistic invective concerning “a set of worthless Females” who are “scarcely to be paralleled in any part of the Island” (p. 67), after which Charles demands rhetorically: “was ever Man more jilted than myself was by one Will Newton’s daughter” who “at length abandoned me for a Wild Irishman, an Ensign in a Marching Regiment” (p. 68).

Charles clearly considers the lure of India to have ruined the prospects of his generation of the Williams family, whether by poor judgement, failure of character, sheer bad luck, or all three combined. He is much given to speculating on what might have been, had wiser counsel (his, naturally) prevailed. His highly personal insights into lives of affluence in 18th-century Britain, with nods to a wider sociohistorical context, give this manuscript a rich and entertaining perspective on one family’s experiences of the British Empire – and of each other. $1,250 / £950 Ref: 7834

19. MITCHELL’S MELANCHOLIA MITCHELL, John (1783-1835) Manuscript journal with notes on death, depression, and vaccination.

[Royd House, Wadsworth, Calderdale, West Yorkshire. Circa 1818-34]. Quarto (205 mm x 165 x 15 mm). Approximately 48 text pages, followed by numerous blanks. Contemporary half calf, marbled boards, rubbed and worn, joints splitting, minor spotting to text.

¶ This intimate journal records the fluctuations in the mental and physical health of John Mitchell, and his search for solace in Christianity. Mitchell, writing between 1818 and 1834, outlines a life framed by privilege but marked by deep unhappiness. The book begins, as its title page announces, with “Answers to Barrow’s Questions on the New Testament” – that is, a set of exercises testing a student’s biblical knowledge. But this is abandoned after two pages, and the journal begins: “I have been much depressed with the fear of Death all my life” – setting the tone for what follows.

Mitchell recounts the deaths of close family members, and makes frequent reference to a general debility, the details of which remain obscure. Throughout the journal he chronicles his inner struggles and wavering convictions, particularly concerning his commitment to his faith and the worth of his fellow humans. He declares his intention to be baptised, since “Religion is the most important Concern in this world” (f4r) – but he soon despairs that he “shall lose all Patience [...] and give up my Religion”. Recording his first experience of a Baptist meeting, he says of the other attendees: “I did not like well, perhaps because they were most of them poor people”, and remarks on “their lowliness of mind”, but acknowledges that “God is the author of them as well as me” and their souls “are as precious in his light as mine” (f6v).

His narrative alternates between lucid self-awareness and obsessive despair: he notes that he has had “so few trials compared with some men” (f21r), but regularly complains of being “weak in the body and depressed” (f6r) and laments after attending a wedding party: “It is painful to a person of such acute feelings as I to have been placed in such Company” (f9r). There are moments of light, however: of his baptism, he writes: “I felt as if I had been electrified. Oh how my Spirits were revived […] I walked into the water quite undaunted, & felt a kind of sacred pleasure”; and “I felt revived in my Body during the Remainder of the day” (f12r). But such epiphanies are short-lived: a few days later, he reports that “I have been discontent murmering, pettish and impatient, for which I feel grieved at heart” (f13v), and confesses that “I have not that Love to God & Man which I and every Christian ought to have” (f13r).

Writing about the death of his infant son, Mitchell hints at a mistrust of vaccinations, relating how the boy “had been inoculated for the Cow Pocks […] he was never perfectly well after this, and it is supposed the Inoculation operated, but too powerfully on his Constitution” (f25r). Vaccination had become widespread following the 1798 publication of Edward Jenner’s work, but while it led to a dramatic decline in smallpox, Jenner faced criticism from the clergy for the “ungodliness” of inoculating oneself with diseased animal material. Did Mitchell’s religious devotion contribute to a mistrust of vaccinations?

This is now impossible to determine, although the tenor of his writing suggests he would not have been reluctant to express such a view, had he held it.

This journal is an affecting account of its writer’s emotional instability that still strikes a chord today. While suggesting a certain affluence, it yields insights into how religious devotion both helped and hindered him in his struggles with physical frailty and depression.

$1,550 / £1,200 Ref: 7899

20. WYNNE SOME, LOSE SOME WYNNE, William (bap. 1692, d. 1765) A small archive of manuscript notes and letters.

[City of Westminster. Circa 1719-27]. 28 manuscripts (circa 69 pages in autograph and circa 14 pages in other hands). Folio and quarto.

Some items slightly browned, folded.

¶ These 28 manuscript notes, drafts and letters, mostly loose-leaf, illuminate the professional world of their principal author, William Wynne, lawyer, author and Serjeant at Law. The material includes an original autograph draft of a rare published text, but the centrepiece of the collection is a set of documents – foremost among them a draft letter to a highly placed relative – relating to Wynne’s attempt to secure a coveted post at Westminster Abbey. Several other manuscripts, whose purposes are often unclear, circle back to names, topics, even repeated phrases, expressed in the draft letter and intensive notes that evidence this attempt at preferment. What emerges is a portrait of a man devoted to the law and rigorous in his pursuit and citation of precedent.

Wynne was the youngest of five children born to Owen Wynne (1651-1700), warden of the Royal Mint during the reign of James II and under-secretary of state to Charles II and James II; and his wife, Dorothy (1659-1724), daughter of Francis Luttrell. William graduated BA from Jesus College, Oxford in 1712, and in the same year was admitted to the Middle Temple.

He was called to the bar in 1718 (shortly before the first of these documents was written); and a mere five years later he was senior enough to play a key role (assisting Sir Constantine Phipps) in the defence of Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester, who was tried for high treason. That same year – 1723 – Wynne returned to his old college to earn an MA. In 1728 he married Grace Bridges (1700-1779), whose father, William Bridges, was a Serjeant at Law, and they had six sons and two daughters. Bridges was close to successive bishops of Hereford, and Wynne became an adviser to some Church leaders including Edmund Gibson, bishop of London. He was created Serjeant at Law in 1736. In 1746 he contributed to the defence in the trial for high treason of Francis Towneley, who had commanded the Manchester regiment in the Jacobite rising of 1745. He died in 1765 and was buried in the north cloister of Westminster Abbey.

ESTC records two works by Wynne: The Life of Sir Leoline Jenkins (1724), a biography of the Welsh lawyer and diplomat with whom he had a friendship; and Observations Touching the Dignity and Antiquity of the Degree of Serjeant at Law (1765), written to justify the privileges of this rank at a time when they were under threat. ESTC locates only three copies of the latter in the UK (Advocates Library, British Library, and All Souls Oxford), one in Ireland (Dublin Honourable Society) and two in the USA (both at Harvard Law Library). We now add a third work which is anonymous in ESTC (see [1] below).

This archive, mostly written between his advent to the bar and his marriage, shows a young lawyer throwing himself into his work. The miscellaneous nature of these papers leaves any attempt at a through-line prone to supposition, but they are geographically anchored in the district of Westminster. Wynne wrestles with his circumstances (seeking promotion, administrating local law and order, drafting letters to the press) and looks to history as he researches the legal foundations of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey.

THE ARCHIVE MAY BE USEFULLY SEPARATED INTO THREE SECTIONS

SECTION 1: AUTOGRAPH DRAFT OF A RARE PAMPHLET [1]. William Wynne. Manuscript draft entitled ‘Letter to the Honble memb of the City of Westmr in answer to a ^certain Letter to a Memb of Parlimt concerning the Bill for regulating the Nightly Watch in the City of Westmr.

[St. Anne, Westminster. Circa 1720]. Watermark: Arms of London. 8¼ text pages (the ¼ page of text is written on the inner wrapper). Paper wrappers, original stitching intact.

This is the autograph draft of an extremely rare, printed pamphlet, “An answer to a printed libel, intitled, A letter to a member of Parliament concerning the bill for regulating the nightly-watch in the city of Westminster and liberties thereof.” (London: printed for J. Roberts, and A. Dodd, 1720. Pagination 17, [1]p. Octavo.

ESTC locates two copies in the UK (Roderic Bowen Library and Archives, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and Senate House Library, University of London) and one copy in the USA (UCLA, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library).

Citation No: N31036.) The pamphlet was published anonymously, so this draft provides proof of Wynne’s authorship.

Wynne’s principal purpose in this letter is to defend Joseph Cotton, Deputy Steward of Westminster and Clerk at Cutlers Hall, against an accusation of incompetence. This was around the time that the Night Watch Bill of 1720 was being debated as a measure “for the better regulating the Night Watch and Beadles in the […] Counties of Middlesex and Surrey”. The Bill proposed creating a local rate to fund the night watch, and although it was defeated, it proved an important moment in the history of London policing, stimulating further discussion and protest by writers such as Daniel Defoe

The original “printed libel”, authored by “N.M.” (possibly Nathaniel Mead, MP for Aylesbury 1715-1722), argues that the position of Deputy Steward “ought to be, and ever has been till now, in the Hands of Men of the greatest Figure and Repute in the Law”; instead, sniffs “N.M.”, it is currently “fill’d by the Clerk to the Company of Cutlers”, and he asks whether it is not “contrary to all the Rules of Reason and Law, that a Man by Law uncapable to plead a Cause, shall sit to judge one, and that a Domestick Servant to the meanest Company of the City of London, should govern the City of Westminster”.

Wynne’s reply takes “N.M.” to task for this ad hominem attack, arguing that it is “writ wh too much malice & gall to convince, & is rather an invective agt one single p-s then matter of argumt or r-.” He goes on to chide the author (somewhat hypocritically given his own anonymity) for being “pleased only to m- kn to us 2 Letters of his Name”, before hazarding a guess that he is “some Candidate for award offrd of ye Liberty of Westmr. & yt he has met some disapointmt therein”.

Wynne’s remarks become ironic in light of his own failed candidacy for such a position two years later, as indicated by the next manuscripts in the collection; but his objection to character-based attacks matches his own professional approach: time and again, Wynne argues from precedent, and much of the material here records his strenuous efforts to establish those precedents.

SECTION 2. APPLICATION FOR THE OFFICE OF STEWARD. [2]. William Wynne. Material relating to Wynne’s attempt to gain the office of Steward of the Courts of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey.

Wynne made this unsuccessful bid after the death of the incumbent, Charles Battely, in 1722 (the office went to Battely’s nephew, John Battely, a lawyer, in 1723). (a) Autograph draft of a letter initialled “WW” to John Wynne (1665/6-1743), Bishop of Bath and Wells. [21st August 1722].

Watermark: Arms of London. Folio. Single sheet. Text to 1½ pages.

In this draft letter, Wynne asks his relative John Wynne (here referred to as “ye Rt Revd Ld Bp of St. Asaph”) to use his influence as a Prebend of Westminster to help secure him the “Stew[ar]dship of ye C[our]ts Belonging to ye D[ean] & Ch [apter]... the steward being a sort of Check or Control... upon the Receiver [General]” and citing “ye late Mr Battely”, i.e.

Charles Batteley. John Wynne was principal of Jesus College, Oxford from 1712 to 1720, so perhaps William hoped the old college connection would help his application. Ever the lawyer, Wynne couches his request in the form of an argument. He begins: “I think myself bound ^fairly to lay before your Ldp what I humbly apprehend to be the true state of the Case.”

He acknowledges the consensus of “Yr Ldps Revd Brethren” that “the office of Stewd was an incidl to that of the Recr or at least yt one had been usually held & enjoyd with the others” – before begging leave “to affirm the direct Contrary”. Drawing on his own research (evidence of which we find elsewhere among these papers), he asserts that he has not found any instance in the history of the Church, and raises Juvenal’s classic question “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (“Who will guard the guards themselves?”), “where the Recr was acted as stewd at the same time, besides Mr Battely. & the reason I take to be plainly this, that they have been lookd upon in some degree as incompatible, or yt it has not been thot altogr so prudent, to trust the receipt of fines &c as well as the recording of them, to one & the same ps; the steward being a Sort of Check or controul in that respect upon the receiver.”

The combination of roles in one appointee, he argues, is not only unprecedented (until Battely) but unwise. For good measure, he observes in an aside that “most, if not all the Stewards ^of ye Cts have been Barristers at lae, & yt some acts of plimtr ^made for ye regulation of Interior Cts plainly suppose they ought to be so. & I remember this has been an objeć agt the prent Dep: Stewd of Westmr ^” (i.e. the late Batteley).

Wynne relates having had occasion to see the “Charters of ye Church in the hands of ^ye late Mr Battely, ^of some pts of them depending partly for informa- & partly for antiquity sake”, and recalls reading there “that it was made a Collegiate Body by Q Eliz: to be governed by such stats & orders as She should thereafter appoint for ym.” But in a recent dispute, “it did appear (& was not denied by on either side) that she never did (nor any of her Succ) send any such body of Stats, & that ye Stats then produced, were only a draught or project without any royal Sanction, but in some cases had been followd, & in many others utterly neglected & contradicted.”

Some of the turns in Wynne’s argument are a little obscure, but his claim in the letter to have had “some ^little opportunities to inform myself” about the background to the Steward’s role is borne out by some of the other material in this collection. (b) Notes from researching the Chapter books of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey. Manuscripts mostly in English. [circa 1722]. Watermark: Coat of Arms. Countermark: GR. Haewood 442.

Folio. Approximately 7 text pages on 3 bifolium sheets, with two small sheets of notes loosely inserted.

These three documents, dating from roughly the period when Wynne was preparing his application for Steward of the Courts of Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey, show him undertaking a forensic archival examination of the precedents and procedures surrounding the appointment of Stewards of the Courts and Receivers. [i]. “Extracts from Register & Chapr books Relating to the office of Steward of the Courts.”

In this, as elsewhere, Wynne seems to be checking not just for precedent but for consistency and transparency. He reports that certain records do not tally, for example: “Memord: the Treasurers Books ano 1640 . 1641. are wanting. But by the Treasurers books of 1642. the said Stipend appears to be paid to one Mr Wyne Steward. but there is no entry of that year in the Leiger book so no patent appears to Mr Wyne.”

Wynne’s chronology extends to the case of the lately deceased Mr Batteley, of whom he notes in the final column: “Mar. 7.

1703. a patent is ordered to be sealed to Charles Batteley Esqr […] But Mr Batteleys patent does not appear to have been enterd in the Leiger books.” In what he clearly views as a clincher, he reports that, of previous appointees, “Not one of them Steward & Recr […] except Mr Batteley.” And informing his little aside in the letter to the Bishop, we also find the note: “Most of the Stewards Barristers at Law, if not all.” [ii] “Extracts from the Chapter-books &c in Relation to the Receivers office.”

Wynne structures this along the same lines as [i], for example: “Dec 2. 32 Eliz 1590. George Burden & George Bellot’s patent for receiver & Sollr L.G So. 103.

“NB. The act for this patent Dec 2. 1590. is not Enterd in the Chapr book, but there is a reference to it, as having been before sealed & then lyeing in the Treasury. Dec 4. 1592. the s d parties G: Burden & G Bellot being not yet agreed.”

Again, the chronology ends with a reference to Batteley: “Mr Batteley has received the sd stipend (having been let into Mr Needhams patent”, then: “NB: Mr Needham & Batteley’s patent is in the year 1693.” [iii] “General orders of Chapr &c a Memoranda” This third set of notes includes references to the suspension of “D[ean] Williams” (John Williams (1582-1650), also Archbishop of York) and the delegation of his authority as a result; and a general investigation into how the authority of the Dean has been used in practice: “During D: Williams’s Suspens (3 years) there were many offices gted by patent as well as leases & presentations. When he came out of the tower those very patents were all regranted & sealed in the first Chap r he met them.”

Again, Batteley’s name appears in the latter entries: “7 No: 1712 yt Mr Batteley have a discretionary power left wh him, to recover any rents belonging to ye Church.” (c) Three manuscripts, between three and four pages each, setting out the legislative origins of the Church at Westminster, in which Wynne seems to reach beyond the issue of individual precedent for his case and burrow into the foundations of the idea of precedent as it applies to the Church. [i] 3 pages. Notes and copies of texts in Latin and English.

Text begins: “K: H 8th: by Lrs patents dated 17th. Dec: in the 32d year of his Reign founded a Cathedral Church at Westmr. consisting of a Bp Dean & 12 prebendaries”.

Wynne then asks “Whether the present Church of Westmr be any ways affected by an Act made in the 6th year of Q Anne, Intituled, An Act for avoiding doubts touching the Statutes of diverse Cathedral & Collegiate Churches.” In answer, he attributes the following (via a note below the text) to “Ja Mountague Att Gen”, dated “Mar. 18. 1708”: “I look upon the late act 6: Anne to have established no other Statutes but such as have been usually received & practiced since the Restora of K Charles ye 2d in the governmt of Cathedral & Collegiate Churches founded by King Hen 8th. And the Church of Westmr does appear to have been founded a Collegiate Church by Q. Eliz & not by Hen. 8 th who was the founder only of the Cathedral wch was absolutely dissolved & annihilated, when Q Eliz erected & endowed the p[res]ent Church.

Therefore I dont think ye sd Stat 6 An: can any ways affect ye Collegiate Church of Westmr”. [ii] 3 ¼ pages. Notes and copies of texts in Latin and English.

Text begins: “Queen Eliz: by her Letters Patents founded & erected the Collegiate Church of St. Peter West mr. & Constituted therein a Dean & twelve Prebends”.

“In pursuance of the said Queens intentions,” he continues, “there have been several draughts or projects of statutes framed by the then Dean & prebends, or some of their successors, in order to receive the Royal Sanction as above directed […] But […] neither of the said draughts ever was confirmed by the said Queen, or any of her successors.

“But yet those statutes have been sometimes & in some Cases admitted & received as the rule & standard of their proceedings, at other times & in many other Cases utterly neglected & contradicted”. This is a phrase that Wynne also uses in his letter to Bishop Wynne, as is another used here: “Some persons have been so unexceptionable, that the Dean & Chapter have at once consented to a patent for life.”

The document concludes with five questions concerning procedure and points of order. [iii] 4 pages. Notes and copies of texts in Latin and English.

Text begins: “Q: Eliz by her Lrs. Patents founded & erected the Collegiate Church of St. Peter Westmr. & Constituted ^ therein a Dean & Prebends, who were to behave order & govern themselves” Wynne appears to have returned to this text and annotated the notes in a looser hand. This may be an early draft of [ii] above: there are also five questions after the main body of the text, and the final page is a roughly drafted chronology, mostly of patents awarded, between 1580 and 1662.

SECTION 3. MISCELLANEOUS MATERIAL [3]. William Wynne and others. Miscellaneous materials concerned with the Dean and Chapter, or the district, of Westminster. Some appear to have a bearing on Wynne’s stewardship bid; some notably repeat information or names already encountered in the manuscripts above. Also included are what appear to be notes from criminal cases on which Wynne was working. (a) Autograph notes on the history of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey, manuscripts in English and Latin. [circa 1722]. Watermark: Horn with LVG. and IV (Jean Villedary). Quarto. 12 text pages on 5 bifolium sheets.

These manuscripts, largely written in Latin, appear to have been transcribed from archival documents, and may therefore be the source material for some of Wynne’s other notes and pronouncements relating to his bid for the stewardship (one heading, for example, reads “De Senescalli Cunar & Receptoris Officiis”). They may be usefully broken down into two sections: [i] 8 pages. Text in Latin with a few notes in English.

Heading reads: “Proportio, S, distribution Collegii bti Petri Westmr: ab illustrissima Regina Eliz fundati” [ii] 4 pages. Text in Latin. Subheadings include: De possessionibus Collegii perlustrandis & visitatione Ecclesiatum. Ca: De Bonis & possessionibus Coll: non alienandis & Cocationibus earundem./ Ca: De Senescalli Cunar & Receptoris Officiis. De Amiguis interpretandis & regulis generalibus. (b) Autograph draft of a letter regarding an article in the St. James’s Journal. [Undated. Circa 1722/3] Watermark: Arms of London. Countermark: H. Folio. 3 text pages, 1 blank.

In his response to “ye story of ye Abbot of Westmr” in the St James Journal (a periodical published in 56 numbers between May

1722 and May 1723), Wynne conveys an account of the life of John Williams (1582-1650), Archbishop of York, which he describes as “faithfully transcribed from an author of credit (Bishop Hacket,) without any alteration.” This presumably refers to Hacket’s Scrinia reserata: a memorial offer’d to the great deservings of John Williams (first published 1693; abridged editions in 1700 and 1715). Wynne gives the page references for his transcriptions in the left margin throughout the letter.

Wynne explains that he is prompted to relay this account because Bishop Williams is a figure “[w]hose case & circumstances some people think more analogous to that now under considerã”.

The remainder of the letter is a reproduction of key passages from Hacket’s account of the life of Bishop Williams. Wynne’s choosing to write a public letter concerning a former Dean of Westminster (from 1620 to 1644) fits in with the concerns he pursues elsewhere in this collection. Indeed, Williams’ name crops up in notes by Wynne in [2](b) in relation to William’s suspension as Dean and imprisonment in the Tower of London. (c) Autograph notes commencing: “Precinct or Close of St. Peter”. Watermark: I Villedary. (Jean Villedary dynasty of papermakers was active in Angoumois (Vraichamp, Beauvais, and La Couronne) 1668–1758, and Gelderland (Hattem) 1758– 1812). Quarto (two sheets stitched together). 3½ pages.

The manuscript begins: “Precinct or Close of St. Peter Constantly distingd from ye ph most of multitude of such places Extrapar: in Lond- -- Christchurch Bridewell St Catherine – Inns of Ct. all De Chapr & Cathedrals in Kdom not described as wn any ph in yr Charters”. Matters discussed include appointing “scavengers for cleaning ye streets in ye p[aris]hes of Lond Midx & Westmr” and the statutes concerning cleaning, repair and maintenance of local streets and “Highways”. (d) Autograph notes commencing, “For Paving & Cleansing streets in Citys of Lond- & Westmr & Suburbs & Liberties thereof &c”. Countermark (only): I H. Octavo (single sheet, folded). 4 pages.

This manuscript, which seems related thematically to 3(b), recounts some of the byelaws for the area (e.g. “No ps shal hoop wash or cleanse any Barrells in any […] Lanes or open passages […] or mend or rough timber on pena[lty] of 20s for every offence). There then follow what appear to be rough drafts of warrants for the prosecution of negligent ‘scavengers’. A note at the end reads: “Mr. Joums in Dirty Lane adm- hs to be Raker & had Covents to save ye Scavenger harness.” (e). Miscellaneous documents, two of which are annotated by Wynne.

[Circa 1752] Various sizes and papers. [i] Copy document. Quarto. 2 pages, with ½ a page of annotations in Wynne’s hand. Text commences, “25 Geo: 2. ca 23. fo. 507. Be it enacted by the Kings most Excellent Majesty by & with the Advice & Consent of the Lords spiritual & temporal & Commonly the present Parliamt. assembled & by the Authority of the same That from & after the 25th Day of March 1752 the Churchwardens Overseers of the Poor & Vestrymen of the P-ishes of St. Margaret & St. John the evangelist in the City of Westminster”. Wynne’s annotations include marking a section as relating to “Poor. Highways.

Cleaning Streets.” [ii] Copy document. Folio. 3 pages with occasional annotations by Wynne. Text commences, “Supposing that the a Quo Warranto be to shew by what Authority the Deane and Chapter Clayme the Libertyes and ffranchises of returne of Writte Goods and Chattells of ffellons Waifes Strayes”. [iii]. Various sizes of paper from octavo to folio, some in other hands. Mostly in English; occasional Latin. 11 pieces. A total of 21 pages.

Miscellaneous notes, some apparently from court cases Wynne was involved in. (e.g. “So is as represented by Smith he is only Complied of & convicted of an Assault & thou- Comd, wht bail not only Ct Leet – but addit powers by act p-lient”).

In this small archive we witness William Wynne marshalling arguments in support of his application for the office of Steward of the Courts of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey. What emerges is a picture of a man rigorous in his pursuit of legal precedent, who fully understood the importance of antiquarian studies in doing so. These notes are complemented by his autograph draft of a rare published pamphlet which demonstrates his compositional methods, while helpfully providing us with his name as the author of a previously unattributed work in ESTC. The additional notes, although at times diffuse, are often illuminating, as they frequently reference his application and help inform our understanding of his working practices and historical interests. In the course of his diligent studies, Wynne assembled some highly valuable historical material touching upon the foundation of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, and thus opens a window into the world of an early modern legal mind.

$11,150 /£8,500 Ref: 7954

21. CUTTING CALAMY CALAMY, Edmund (1671-1732) Manuscript entitled ‘An Historical Account of my own Life, with Some Reflections on the Times I have liv’d in’.

[Circa 1731]. Contemporary half calf, plain boards. Rubbed, front board to volume one detached.

Three folio volumes, each measuring approximately 330 mm x 220 mm x 30 mm.

Text numbered to both sides. Vol. I: 348, (18 pages marked up for omissions); Vol. II: 349 -517, [3, blanks], 1-183, [1, blank], [1 p index to endpaper], (12 pages marked up for omissions); Vol. III: 1-274 (18 pages marked up for omissions).

The manuscript is written in two distinct hands, and annotated in a third.

Hand I is written in a very neat flowing copperplate hand.

Vol. I: 348; Vol. II: 349-517, 1-124.

Hand II is written in a neat italic hand.

Vol. II: 125-183; Vol. III: 1-274.

Additional marginal notes in ink: Hand I. Hand III. Probably Michael Calamy (d. 1870).

Additional marginal notes marking suggested omissions in pencil throughout all three volumes.

¶ Edmund Calamy’s prodigious writings on ejected dissenting ministers remain central to a modern understanding of the history of nonconformity. As the ODNB remarks: “modern historians continue to see early dissent very largely in terms of the sufferings of the ejected clergy. As a biographer he was responsible for rescuing many details and even the names of ejected ministers which would otherwise have been lost.”

Calamy’s autobiographical work, An Historical Account of my own Life, with Some Reflections on the Times I have liv’d in, survived only in manuscript until John Towill Rutt published an edition in two volumes in 1829 (2nd edition, 1830). According to the 1886 D.N.B., “there was only one, unimportant omission from Rutt’s edition”. But an examination of this manuscript quickly reveals that many omissions were made in the published version, and many historical details that would “otherwise have been lost” are now recovered by the rediscovery of this manuscript. Furthermore, in examining the variations between the manuscript and published version some intriguing questions arise.

EDMUND CALAMY AND HIS WORK Edmund Calamy (1671-1732) was born in London, into a family already steeped in dissent: his father and grandfather, both also named Edmund Calamy, had been ejected ministers. After studying at dissenting schools and academies and at Utrecht, he moved to Oxford in 1691, where a warm reception at the university assisted his attempts to examine the arguments for and against conformity so that he could arrive at his own position. He then preached and worked in assistant roles in various London congregations, and was one of the first publicly ordained dissenting ministers since the Act of Uniformity. In 1695, he married Mary Watts, daughter of a cloth merchant and haberdasher; and in 1703, he became minister at Tothill Street, Westminster.

Calamy’s published works began with his Abridgment of Mr Baxter's Narrative in 1702, a new edition of the autobiography of the moderate nonconformist Richard Baxter (1615-1691) that followed Matthew Sylvester’s poorly edited attempt, the unwieldy Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696). He undertook a major reorganisation of the material, but his signal achievement was to add a large chapter detailing the silenced and “ejected” nonconforming ministers. Calamy’s Abridgment was “published at a critical juncture in the history of dissent. The whole work was intended as a popular statement and defence of nonconformity against the highchurch attack on dissent and toleration” (ODNB). He later revised and extended the chapter listing the ejected ministers, which was issued as a separate volume; another two volumes, entitled Continuation of the Account, appeared in 1727.

Calamy followed Baxter’s doctrine of moderation, in matters both theological and political. After the huge impact of his Abridgement, he employed his diplomatic skills and his extensive network of acquaintances to advocate for nonconformity, for example representing the case of the dissenters during parliamentary debates and in discussions with the Church of Scotland after the 1707 Act of Union. As the leading Presbyterian minister after Daniel Williams’s death in 1716, he frequently led the delegation of ministers in their addresses to the throne. His first wife died in 1713; three years later he married Mary Jones.

Calamy’s manuscripts passed by descent to his great-grandson Michael Calamy, who “lived a very secluded life at Exeter, in a house filled with the family books and papers”. Michael died in 1870 and the papers were inherited by his more distant relatives, the Pope family. The last recorded owner was Michael A. Pope, who lived in Sussex (the same county as this set was acquired). The Popes do not seem to have held the collection in such high esteem as their ancestors and scarcely any of Calamy’s papers and manuscripts survive. The ODNB states: “Of his original manuscripts, only a copy of his autobiography and his commonplace book appear to have survived. The loss of his archive is incalculable.

The autobiography, An historical account of my own life, with some reflections on the times I have lived in, [...] provides the main details about Calamy's life and contemporaries, but is itself a valuable source.”

WHICH MANUSCRIPT IS THIS? Rutt says in his preface to his edition of An historical account of my own life that he used two manuscript copies for his publication: one was “taken from a copy of his autograph which had remained in the family of Sir Walter Stirling, Bart. for more than half a century”. The other was “in the possession of the Author’s immediate family, I was informed, several years since, by the late Edmund Calamy, Esq. whose son, the Rev. Michael Calamy, at my request, has favoured me with the use of it”. Our manuscript appears to be this second item.

In his essay ‘Lapsus Calamy’, Roger Thomas identifies five manuscript copies of Calamy’s autobiography: “three successive autograph revisions which we may call A 1, A 2, and A 3; secondly a copy in three folio volumes (collated by Edmund Calamy IV) – let us call it B; and finally a copy owned by the family of Sir Walter Stirling in Rutt's life time, from which the editions of 1829 and 1830 were chiefly printed – let us call it C.” There is also a copy at the British Library [Add MS 50958-50959] which “corresponds to vol. i, p. 1-vol. ii, p. 141 of the printed work, and 50959 to vol. ii, pp. 141-503. Apparently imperfect, by the loss of a third volume corresponding to vol. ii, pp. 503-34, of the work as printed.”

Quoting from the 1886 D.N.B. entry, Thomas says that Rutt edited the work “from two transcripts of Calamy's autograph, one of which in three folio volumes, had been collated with the original by his son Edmund”. This latter is Manuscript B. All the copies identified by Thomas have since been lost, apart from ours, which appears to be the same Manuscript B: “a copy in three folio volumes” which was “collated with the original by his son Edmund”.

Although Rutt claimed to have made no significant omissions, Thomas says that “the variations and omissions are numerous” between the printed edition and the manuscripts, but he identifies one in particular which helps secure the identity of ours as Manuscript B: “In Rutt’s edition (vol. ii, p.265) we read that in Cornwall Calamy had the opportunity of observing a cock fight and the printed account ends “I stayed there a little while, to make observations, though I could see nothing entertaining”. But the manuscript (vol. iii, f.85) continues: “and I could not help taking notice of one thing, which I confess greatly affected me; which was, that, there were some scores of clergymen present upon that occasion, there were scarce any that bawl’d or shouted so loud, or betted so high, or swore so bloodily as they.””

This exactly correlates with our manuscript. Moreover, this section has been bracketed and crossed though in pencil, with the annotation “omit” to the margin. A second omission Thomas refers to is an “account of the difficulties which Calamy’s congregation encountered in finding a new site for the chapel they built in 1721”. This too, is present in our manuscript (vol. iii, ff.195-200), where it is annotated in pencil “Some of these particulars might be omitted, as uninteresting to the general reader.” The reason for the first omission, although not explicitly given, can be surmised: Calamy’s dismay at clergy behaving in a somewhat worldly manner strays into a more personal area that diverges from the general tone of the printed book – and this is far from being an isolated example. Thomas questions “why Gordon went so far astray” in his D.N.B. article as to assert that “there was only one, unimportant omission from Rutt’s edition of it.” Indeed, the variations are, as Thomas observes, numerous – and this manuscript holds vital clues as to why those omissions were made.

WHICH MANUSCRIPTS DID RUTT USE? Having explained that he used the Stirling family’s autograph copy and another copy which remained in the Calamy family, Rutt remarks that both “were, no doubt, correct and early copies of the Author's autograph. Mr. Calamy's MS. (which is in complete preservation,) was collated with the original by the Author's son, the Rev. Edmund Calamy, who died in 1755. Sir Walter Stirling's MS. has every appearance of having been as early a copy.” Rutt goes on to claim that, after comparing these manuscripts closely, “I have found a very exact verbal agreement. Yet I am greatly indebted to the liberal courtesy of Mr. Calamy, whose copy has enabled me to supply several deficiencies; and thus to complete the Historical Account, as left, in 1731, by his pious and learned ancestor.”

Rutt’s account elides the numerous variations between the manuscript and printed versions – but the rediscovery of Manuscript B allows us to identify these many variations. Furthermore, the pencil annotations in our copy may help explain why some of the omissions went unacknowledged.

WHAT KIND OF OMISSIONS DID RUTT MAKE, AND WHY? The omissions frequently concern impecunity and other personal matters. For example, in vol. I, f.49; Rutt p. 63, a section has been bracketed in pencil, with the side note “to be omitted”. Indeed, some has been omitted, but not all. The following is not included in the printed text: “Tho’ he had good Preferments, a considerable Income, & no Child, yet he died Poor, and was indebted to Several Relations, who forgave his debts, yt his Widow might not be quite destitute. His Library (as I was afterwards inform’d by Ned: Millington the famous Auctioneer)”. (The next few lines are bracketed in the manuscript, but they were included in the printed text.). Further on, three consecutive pages with sections crossed out and in brackets (vol. i, ff.50-52) include passages concerning relatives, and feature marked omissions like the bitter aside: “without taking the least notice either of me or mine by the smallest legacy; notwithstanding that I & my Sons were the only persons left to bear up the Name of the Family”. We also find details omitted of a relative who was “for some time at Cambridge” but having “no great allowance from the Father, nor any great Inclination to Learning, he [...] became a Silkman in ye City”. Soon after this deleted sally into the material world, we find (f.52) a clause bracketed with a line through it that refers to Calamy’s father being “disappointed in several matches” before his marriage. Again, this is missing from the printed version.

When money, family and iniquity intersect, they become particular targets of the editor’s eye: of a deceased husband, we read the disapproving coda, excised from the printed version: “leaving what was pretty considerable to his 2nd Wife, yt she might be ^ye more capable of living creditably in her State of Widowhood. But then it was expected, (and I have been told also promis’d) yt She at her death would make no difference between his Children by his first & Second Wife; Which promise came afterwards (I know not how) to be forgot.” These pages are annotated in the upper margin of f.51 “Perhaps this account of the family might be omitted altogether, at any rate, those passages within brackets”.

An extended passage, which has been omitted from Rutt’s edition, discusses the character and work of the man-midwife and physician Sir David Hamilton (1663-1721). In a section concerning Hamilton’s 1697 publication, The private Christian’s witness for Christianity, Calamy is unflattering about Hamilton, and includes a strong suggestion that his opinion is tainted by its effect on Calamy’s wife (presumably his first): “The reading of this unhappy Book of Dr: Hamilton’s (for so I can’t help accounting it) was one occasion ye deep Melancholy of my poor Wife, wch. was ye thing yt made me the more warm & open in opposing it, than my inclination would have led me otherwise to have been, She finding one in so great Repute for Piety as D r. Hamilton [...] how frequently he experience’d such peculiar divine Influences in his Prayers, & had such sort of Spiritual Sensations afforded him as she was a stranger to, was induc’d to call it in question whether she had any Sincerity in her; or any Experimental Acquaintance with Real Christianity”. But we learn that Hamilton, though provoking her grief, was likely not the original cause: “I must indeed own yt my Wife was under ill habit of Body before yt Book fell into her Hands”. Calamy is candid about his wife’s melancholy, but not so his annotator, who marks the whole passage for omission. This account is preceded by a passage on Hamilton which has not been marked up, but was nonetheless omitted from the printed edition.

The reason is perhaps twofold: the first is simply that it would have interrupted the narrative flow, but the second is intriguing, because he seems to be questioning Hamilton’s trustworthiness, suggesting that his position as man-midwife “might be likely eno’ to recommend him to a number of the Other Sex”. Calamy then casts doubt on his sincerity, because “such a notion as this, might be some Temptation to him, to pretend to more than ever he really did experience”. Again, the personal and the critical combine to qualify the passage for removal.

There are approximately 50 pages that have been marked up in pencil for omission (often annotated “omit” or with remarks like “These details are not only improper to publish. They would be uninteresting to the public” vol. ii, f.354), as well as further sections, such as the above, that are not marked up but were also omitted by Rutt.

We suggest that the pencil annotations were most likely by Michael Calamy (d. 1870), who lent this manuscript to Rutt and marked up sections he would have preferred did not make it into the public arena. This would account for the fact that many of the marked-up passages are of a personal or financial nature. How do we account for the additional, unmarked omissions? If, as we suggest, Rutt acquiesced to Michael Calamy’s requests, he would himself have had to make omissions and minor changes, as any editor would feel obliged to do, to retain the narrative flow.

Calamy’s body of work forms a cornerstone of our ideas about the history of 17th- and 18th-century nonconformity. The rediscovery of this manuscript provides insights into how a major part of his legacy was edited, and thus shaped by later generations. The editing notes have been made in pencil, preserving all the original text, and allowing us to reach back beyond these changes. As a result, we can see how some of Calamy’s candour and personality were “smoothed out” for publication, making this an important source for the study of religious dissent that also restores many private details about Calamy and his family. The manuscript’s amendments and omissions raise compelling questions about how, and by whom history is curated, and offers a suggestive account of its own afterlife. $12,500 /£9,500 Ref: 8022 References Gordon, Alexander. Calamy, Edmund (1671-1732) D.N.B. (1886).

Thomas, Roger. ‘Lapsus Calamy’ Transaction of the Unitarian Historical Society. (1966).

David Wykes. Calamy, Edmund (1671-1732). ODNB. (2004) Calamy, Edmund; edited by John Towill Rutt. An historical account of my own life. (1830, 2nd ed.)

22. REVOLUTIONARY PROFILES [SHIPPEN, Peggy (1760-1804) et al] Collection of seven silhouette portraits including those of prominent Philadelphians.

[Philadelphia. Circa 1779]. One sheet (that of Shippen) retains its edges. It measures: 385 mm x 255 mm. The others appear to have been cut from sheets of a similar size.

Provenance: from the collection of the late James Stevens Cox F.S.A. (1910-1997), a Bristol-born bookseller, publisher, writer, archaeologist and local historian.

Watermarks: The portraits of Shippen, Chew, and the two of Redman are watermarked Fleurs-de-lis with J Whatman mark. Haewood 1846a for this combination which he dates circa 1778-81; the portrait of Rosetta Cary is not watermarked; the portraits of Kitty and Lucius Cary are watermarked with Coat of Arms with GR countermark. No exact match found in Haewood, but similar to 441-450 which he dates to the mid-18th century.

Each of the portraits has been annotated in pencil. These are: [1]. “Miss Peggy Shipping (i.e. Shippen) / Mrs Genl. Arnold” [2]. “Peggy Tew (i.e. Chew) Philadelphia” [3]. “Becky Redman Philadelphia” [4]. “Becky Redmond (sic) Philadelphia” [4]. “Rosetta Cary” [4]. “Kitty Carey” [4]. “Lucius Cary”

¶ This collection is just as compelling for what isn’t shown as for what is. Not only do four of the seven portraits point beyond their “frames” to the infamous Revolutionary War figures of Major John André and General Benedict Arnold, but one – that of Arnold’s second wife, Margaret “Peggy” Shippen – beautifully evokes her public image as a spy by “reversing out” her silhouette and showing her as an absence.

Silhouettes became the first form of affordable portraiture available to the general public. Named after Étienne de Silhouette (1709-1767), Controller-General of Finances under Louis XV, who was ridiculed for his parsimonious outlook, silhouette portraits – known as “profiles” or “shades” until the 19th century – were a cheap alternative to miniatures and could easily be created several copies at a time. They reached their peak of popularity in the late 18th century, after which the introduction of machine cutting, and the lower-quality results, prompted something of a decline.

Profile portraits gave rise to a culture of exchange: silhouettes were often made for presentation to friends, admirers, inamoratas, etc. This collection contains items that were surely used in this way, but the social standing of their subjects, and

therefore of their circle, was markedly higher than many intended customers. Although it’s unclear exactly when or by whom they were created, three of the six “sitters” (Peggy Shippen, Peggy Chew and Becky Redman) are related by place (“Philadelphia”, as most of their portraits are labelled), by mutual acquaintance, and by a famous event, the Meschianza, which took place in 1778, and which, along with the watermarks, may give us a rough estimate of when the portraits were made. The silhouettes in this sub-group are also distinguished by an impressive degree of finesse.

The three remaining portraits all feature members of a family named “Cary” or “Carey” which we are unable to locate. These profiles are slightly larger, include pencil guidelines, and the definition of features is not as accomplished. However, although they appear to have been created by a different artist, they have been annotated in the same hand, so are clearly related. And all of the items are of a piece in a material sense: they have been cut from white paper, not the more common, silhouetteappropriate black.

THE MESCHIANZA British forces, under General Sir William Howe, occupied Philadelphia from autumn 1777 to summer 1778. Howe resigned his command in spring 1778 and, before his return to England, was fêted by Philadelphian Loyalists and neutrals at a festival, called the Meschianza, or Mischianza (a made-up Italianate name signifying ‘medley’ or ‘miscellany’). This gala event, inspired by various lavish spectacles in Georgian England, was co-organised by his aide, the artistically inclined Major John André. A centrepiece of the proceedings was a ritual jousting tournament, in which 14 “knights” (including André) contested for the honour of their respective “fair damsels”, most of whom were recruited from Philadelphian high society. Among them were Peggy Chew, Becky Redman and – according to some accounts – Peggy Shippen.

The young, charismatic André seems to have taken an interest in all three young women (whom the annotator identifies using their unmarried names – or in Peggy Shippen’s case, both her unmarried and married names). He was also a maker of silhouette portraits; however, there is no suggestion that he was the creator of any of the pieces in this collection.

OUTLINING THE “DAMSELS” “Miss Peggy Shipping / Mrs Genl. Arnold” Margaret “Peggy” Shippen (1760-1804) was born in Philadelphia to Edward Shippen IV, later Chief Justice of Philadelphia, and Margaret Francis, and raised in a family that was predominantly Loyalist. In 1779, she married Benedict Arnold, whom George Washington had appointed military commander of Philadelphia. She later played a key role in the foiled conspiracy between her husband and Major John André to hand the Continental Army base at West Point to the British, having authored the ostensibly innocuous letters to André that bore Arnold’s coded messages.

Some accounts place Shippen among the “damsels”, along with her two sisters; others allege that their somewhat conservative father objected at the last moment. This ambiguity seems particularly apt considering her famous role in espionage, and complements the “absence” represented by her silhouette – the only one of this group to be defined by its surrounding paper (the missing cut-out perhaps having been presented to another acquaintance). The annotation “Miss Peggy Shipping [sic] / Mrs Genl. Arnold” suggests that it dates from a “transitional” period not long after her marriage, which took place the year after the Meschianza. It also, arguably, adds to her air of elusiveness.

“Peggy Tew”

Margaret “Peggy” Oswald Chew (1760-1824) was born in Germantown, Philadelphia to Benjamin Chew, Pennsylvania Attorney General and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, and his wife Elizabeth (née Oswald). After being raised in a social circle that included the likes of George Washington, in 1787 she married John Eager Howard, who became the fifth Governor of Maryland.

Peggy, besides being a friend of Shippen’s, was invited to the Meschianza by John André himself, who was an early suitor and asked her to attend as his escort – and, indeed, she is recorded as his “damsel” for the joust.

“Becky Redman” / “Becky Redmond” Despite accounting for two of these silhouettes, Rebecca “Becky” Redman (c.1750-1832) is less well documented. She was born in Philadelphia to Joseph Redman, formerly sheriff of the city (mother unknown) and married Colonel Elisha Lawrence in 1779 (so the annotator’s use of her unmarried name may indicate that her portrait was made before that date).

Becky was another friend of Shippen’s and another “damsel” recruited for the Meschianza; André was an admirer, and not only wrote her a poem around the time of the Meschianza but also made a silhouette portrait of himself in the same year and presented it to her (this is now held by the Library Company of Philadelphia).

SPIRITS AND SPIES The dating of the “Philadelphia” portraits at around 1779, while not conclusive, is indicated by at least two factors: the watermarks that place them around this date and the use of unmarried names for the subjects, two of whom were married—and consequently changed their names—in 1779.

That these fashionable Philadelphians were part of an exalted (and youthful) circle of acquaintance, members of whom were involved both in high society, and shortly thereafter, in Loyalist espionage, give this collection a historical significance; and the beguiling mixture of presence and absence in their ghostly portraits invites the viewer to engage with their past lives, and gives the collection an elusive quality and a poignant edge.

$6,500 / £5,000 Ref: 7984

23. UNPOETIC JUSTICE BLACKSTONE, Sir William (1723-1780); annotated by the editor, Sir John Taylor COLERIDGE (1790-1876) Commentaries on the Laws of England. In four books. The Sixteenth edition, with the last corrections of the author; and with notes by John Taylor Coleridge. This copy with Coleridge’s additional manuscript annotations.

London: printed by A Strathan, for T. Cadell and J. Butterworth and Son. 1825.

Four octavo volumes. Pagination Vol. I. xxiv, 485 [i.e. 529], [1], plus 2pp manuscript pages, portrait frontispiece; Vol. II. vii, [1], 519 [i.e. 582], [1], xix, plus 3pp manuscript pages two folded plates (Table of Consanguinity and Table of Descents); Vol III. vii, [1], 455 [i.e. 511], [1], xxxi, [1], 4 manuscript pages; Vol. IV. vii, [1], 443 (i.e. 504), viii, [43], [1]. (Follows Blackstone’s paging in the margins.) Bound in half calf, gilt-tooled spines, contrasting labels, marbled boards, page edges untrimmed, some spotting to text.

Provenance: The front endpaper of each volume is inscribed “Mary Coleridge / Torrington Square / Febry 3rd 1827 / From her affectionate husband” and a further inscription (presumably in Mary’s hand) to volume one reads “To her dear son Lord Coleridge from his loving father. Octr. 6. 1875.” There is an additional inscription to the title page of the third volume, which reads “Mary Coleridge Torrington Square Feby. 3. .1827 – From her husband.” Two letters from Robert Gifford, 1st Baron Gifford, PC (1779-1826) (to whom the edition was dedicated) bound in at the front of the first volume.

¶ This is a remarkable association copy of Sir John Taylor Coleridge’s edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries with his annotations throughout, and a dedication to his wife Mary, who has subsequently written a dedication to their son Lord Coleridge.

Sir John Taylor Coleridge (1790-1876) was a judge, and a nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. According to the ODNB, he “was educated from 1796 until 1803 under his uncle, George Coleridge, at the King's School, Ottery St Mary, and then at Eton (1803-9) and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was elected a scholar in 1809. At Corpus he was a friend of [John] Keble and [Thomas] Arnold. His university career was one unbroken triumph. He won the chancellor's prize for Latin verse, the prizes for English and Latin essays, and the Vinerian scholarship. He was placed alone in the first class in classics in 1812 and was elected to a fellowship at Exeter College.” He was called to the bar by the Middle Temple in 1819.

His early years in the law were financially difficult, and he supplemented his income by taking pupils, writing articles for the Quarterly Review (which initially earned him more than his work at the bar), and producing an edition of Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries (1825).

Blackstone’s magnum opus, the Commentaries on the Laws of England was published between 1765 and 1769. It became “the most celebrated, widely circulated, and influential law book ever published in the English language” and “long dominated legal education in North America, where nearly 100 editions and abridgements had been produced by 1900.” (ODNB). Coleridge’s 1825 edition was aimed at a wide variety of readers (students, lawyers, and “country gentlemen”) and included copious scholarly and general notes.

In his preface, Coleridge says that “it will be thought by many that my notes are too numerous; and I confess that when I began the edition, superfluous annotation was one of the faults of former editors, which I most confidently hoped to be able to avoid.” His editorial excess is compounded in this copy by a host of manuscript annotations that Coleridge has made to over 170 pages (just over 50 pages in each of volumes I-III and about 20 in volume IV). He has also added blank leaves to the end of each volume, of which approximately six pages have manuscript notes.

The handwritten notes express queries, quibbles and ruminations on the finer points of the text in question. The following may give a taste of the kind of legal casserole that Coleridge cooks up in response to some already fairly abstruse passages: “x. In any pleading founded on the custom of merchants it was usual to state what the custom was, & bring the specific case within it; & while that was so, it was proper to class the mercantile law with particular customs; now that that usage has ceased, it would seem to fall more properly under the first head of the general custom of the realm, i.e. the commn law as applicable to its own subject matter.” (Vol. I. F6v);

“x. It seems incorrect to say that the Lords sit together with the King in one house. He comes into the Lords’ House, when he meets his parliament, but so do the Commons; he sits in the Court of the King in Parliament, but this is not a legislative meeting. In his legislative capacity he either does not sit at all, or sits together with both branches.” (Vol. I. L8v).

“x. Hallam denies this, on the ground that by statute H VIII was empowered to dispose of the succession by will – that he did duly dispose of it, & preferred the line of his younger sister Mary, to that of Margaret - & that May’s descendants being as James’s accession. See. Const Histy. 1. 311” (Vol. I. P6v).

The extensive manuscript additions suggests that Coleridge had not finished his deliberations on Blackstone’s Commentaries, and raise the possibility that he was contemplating a second edition.

$5,200 / £4,000 Ref: 8044

LAST WORDS & THINGS 24. [ASTLEY, Sir Jacob (1579-1652)] Manuscrupt entitled ‘A muster booke, of the Kyngs Majesty's army’.

[England, Ripon. Circa 1641. Dated in text]. Contemporary limp vellum, some staining, insect damage to section of covers. Manuscript title to front cover “Muster Book of the Kings Army / 1641”. Folio (298 mm x 203 mm x 10 mm). Title, 83 text pages, some blank interleaves.

Provenance: From the library of Lord Cottesloe. Loosely inserted invoice to Cottesloe from Davis & Orioli, dated 1961.

¶ This remarkable document, written on the brink of the First Civil War, arranges soldiers shoulder to shoulder who would soon be mortal enemies. The folio volume, bound in limp vellum, is written in neat secretary hand and provides protocols and a full muster of the troops laid out in a rubricated grid system. The effect is of information clearly delivered, which despite its immense importance is accomplished without ostentation.

It is inscribed to the front endpaper, “To the Right worll Sr Jacob Asteley knight sargiant Maior genrall of the kyngs Mats: army.” Sir Jacob Astley (1579–1652) was a distinguished Royalist military commander who played an important part in the English Civil War. Interestingly, this muster was “taken the 25th of March. 1641”, the month of the first “army plot”, an alleged conspiracy by Royalist officers to coerce Parliament in which Charles I lost his closest ally, the Earl of Strafford. And this presents something of a conundrum: the nine pages of introductory material begin with protocols issued to Astley by this same Earl of Strafford who, at the time this manuscript was written, had already become one of the first victims of the nascent Civil War. These are enumerated in ten sections over four pages, subscribed “Geuen under my hand, and seale at Armes, the fift daie of Nouember. 1641. Strafforde”. Why were they included? The answer may be a prosaic one (a scribal error) or perhaps indicates that while the man himself was expendable, the rules must still be adhered to.

Following Strafford’s posthumous instructions, we come to copies of two documents by Astley written at a pivotal moment in the events leading the Civil War. These are subscribed “Rippon, 12th: January. 1640” and “Rippon. 23rd : Nouembris. 1640.”

The Treaty of Ripon was agreed on 26 October 1640 after Charles I had been defeated by the Scots in the Second Bishops’ War and forced to agree to humiliating terms by which the Scottish army remained in Northumberland and Durham and exacted payment from the English to reimburse the costs of their occupying army. This, together with the need to maintain his own army, left the King in desperate need of money and with no alternative but to call another Parliament.

The muster itself includes details of 16 infantry regiments and five cavalry regiments, including the names of officers and the number of men, in addition to the officers and specialists in the artillery train (from one tent-keeper to 11 bridge-makers).

The armed forces of “the Kyngs Majesty's army” - Royalists such as Jacob Astley and George Goring alongside prominent Parliamentarians like the 10th Earl of Northumberland (“Earle of Northum: Cap:”) - were gathered and apparently unified on the pages of this “muster booke”. Yet within just a few months, they would be riven by the forces of history.

This manuscript, with its mixture of clarity, disparity, and internal conundrums, neatly holds in suspended animation the crosscurrents running through the country that would soon disintegrate into conflict and chaos. $10,500 / £8,000 Ref: 7838

25. BAILEY, Mrs Guide to preferment, or the complete art of cookery, made plain and easy... ornamented with engravings shewing the art of trussing and carving.

London: Printed by S. Bailey, No. 50, Bishopsgate within. [Circa 1804]. Octavo. Pagination 90, [2, advert and blank], complete with the frontispiece. Contemporary sheep-backed plain boards, rubbed and worn, but sound and probably the original binding. Frontispiece frayed in the fore-margin with some loss.

ESTC locates three copies (Cambridge, Leeds, US National Library of Medicine) with the imprint: London: Thomas Bailey, printer, [1785?].

OCLC identifies three issues of this book: One copy at University of Iowa Libraries with the imprint: London: Printed and sold by Dean and Munday..., [179-?]; Two copies (University of Cambridge, Library of Congress) of with the imprint, London: Dean and Munday, [18--], has different pagination. And one copy of this edition by S. Bailey, at the National Library of Wales.

According to Potter, in his Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797-1830. (2021). S. Bailey is probably the printer and publisher, Susan Bailey. On 22 September 1767, she married the printer William Bailey whose family had been in the printing and bookselling business since 1702. Bailey is said to have been the originator of a cheap method of printing, by which he at first hopelessly cut out rivals. He made up a large forme of type containing a number of small advertising bills for different clients and printed them all off at one time. Before this each job had been separately printed. William and Susan had four children. In 1790 William and Susan moved the firm to 50 Bishopsgate Within, where William died in November 1794, leaving the firm to his wife, who operated as bookseller and printer under her own imprint, ‘S. Bailey, No. 50 Bishopsgate within.’ She relocated to 35 Threadneedle Street in 1806.” This would date the Guide to Preferment’ anywhere between 1794 and 1806. However, we are able to date this book a little more precisely because has at the end, A List of Books Printed and Sold at No 50 Bishopsgate within, London which includes The Valentine Writer for 1804 priced at 0s 6d. Of the 20 books she lists as being for sale at her shop, we have located only two in library collections: The oddest of all oddities, which she published in 1797 and Barrington’s Voyage to Botany Bay which she published 1791. Given that our book appears to have been published circa 1804, she seems to have held unsold stock for at least a decade. $2,600 / £2,000 Ref: 8048

26. [BEGGARS; WILLIAM AND MARY (1689-1694)] A proclamation, anent the beggers.

Edinburgh: printed by the heir of Andrew Anderson, printer to Their most excellent Majesties, anno Dom, 1692.

Broadside. Folio. 1 sheet ([1] p). At end of text: Given under our signet at Edinburgh, the eleventh day of August. And of our reign the fourth year, 1692. [Wing, S1656]. Folded, frayed slightly affecting the woodcut of the coat of arms at head and small hole in text with loss of one letter. Docketed “Proclamation Anent Beggars 1692 11 August 92”, and annotated on the reverse “P-nss(?) 4 Januarij 1693 yeires The wich proclamatn was dewly proclaimed at ye martal Cross in lyme of oppen maeral be me John Barnet Officer”.

ESTC gives three locations in the UK (Edinburgh, 4 copies at the NLS, Signet), and three in the USA (Harvard, Huntington, Indiana).

$800 / £600 Ref: 8050

27. BRADLEY, Richard (1688-1732) The country housewife and lady’s director, in the management of a house..

London: Printed for Woodman and Lyon in Russel-street, Covent-Garden, M.DCC.XXVIII. [1728]. Third edition.

Octavo. Pagination pp. xi, [1], 187, [1], collated and complete with the engraved frontispiece. [ESTC T184839; Bitting pp.55-56; Maclean pp.11-13; Oxford pp.58-59]. Modern sprinkled calf, holes from where the text was originally stab stitched, occasional spotting and staining throughout. Ownership inscription to title page of “Miss Stain” and loosely inserted leaf of recipes in the same hand, browned and frayed.

¶ As its title states, Bradley’s book is aimed at the rural reader. Its diverse recipes are arranged according to the months of the year, and its Arcadian frontispiece is teeming with country folk working in the fields and farms or relaxing with a pipe.

However, this copy’s owner, a Miss Stain, appears to have resided in London. She mentions “[a] Lady at Wandsworth” and although she also mentions a “Mr Taylor of Norfolk”, she has added the word “Thames” in superscript to another recipe “Twenty Gallons of Cold ^Thames Water” as if indicating that water must be obtained from that river.

Miss Stain has inscribed the title page and included a loose leaf of six manuscript recipes for wines (including “A receipt to make Elder Wine” and “To make a Small Wine”). Her notes are conversational, including with the book itself: “Our White Wine we made according to the Receipt of Bradley, only wee gently bruis[ed] the Raisins with the stalks, and then pour’d the Hot Water on them – we used Velvedore Raisins”. $1,300 / £1,000 Ref: 7941 28. CULPEPER, Nicholas (1616-1654) The English physitian: or An astrologo-physical discourse of the vulgar herbs of this nation. Being a compleat method of physick, whereby a man may preserve his body in health; or cure himself, being sick, for three pence charge, with such things only as grow in England, they being most fit for English bodies.

London: printed by Peter Cole. 1652. FIRST EDITION. Folio (275 mm x 187 mm x 16 mm). Pagination pp. [14], 92, 189-255, [5], text complete, but lacks the portrait frontispiece. Bound in 19th century half calf with endpapers renewed, rubbed and worn, loss to spine, front board detached, title laid down, loss to upper right corner touching printed border, text lightly browned throughout.

Provenance: ownership inscription to head of title page: “Winifred Warham”. Note to centre and righthand margin “Requiem to the Ma—(? trimmed) Sun”, and a few pen trials (one dated 1755). 19th century armorial bookplate to front paste-down of Sir William Grace, Bart.

ESTC locates 5 copies in the UK, and 9 in the USA. Wing C7501; Henrey 53; Norman 541.

¶ The first edition of Culpeper's famous herbal—the most frequently printed English herbal ever published. It was deliberately priced cheaply and used only English plants which could be collected from the hedgerows or obtained at low cost to allow the widest possible dissemination of medical knowledge. His English translation of the Pharmacopeia under the title A Physical Directory, broke the College of Physicians’ monopoly on knowledge making the remedies accessible to the common people.

“Culpeper's magnum opus was The English physitian (1652). Costing 3d., it provided a comprehensive list of native medicinal herbs, indexed to a list of typical illnesses, using an astrological, rather than Galenic, approach (of the kind still flourishing in popular British culture), and set out in a straightforward and frank style. It sold widely at the time, and there have been over one hundred subsequent editions, including fifteen before 1700. (One edition of 1708 was printed in Boston, Massachusetts; it and the translated Pharmacopoeia, printed in 1720, were the first medical books published in North America.)” (ODNB). $1,300 / £1,000 Ref: 7929

29. EDWARD III, Law reports for 40-50 (Hilary, Easter, Trinity, and Michaelmas terms). Regis pie memorie Edwardi tertii a quadragesimo ad quinquagesimum, anni omnes a mendis quibus miserrime scatebant repurgati et suo nitori restituti. Anno domini. 1565.

Londini: In ædibus Richardi Tottelli, [1565 (15 Aug.)]. Colophon reads: Imprinted at London in fletestrete within Temple Barre at the signe of the hande and starre by Rycharde Tottel, the xv. daye of August. An. 1565. Folio. ff. xlix, ii-xxxi, xxvi, xxxvi, ii-xlvi, ii-xxviii, ii-xxxiiii, iixxvi, xxxiiii, xxvii, xxvii, [1] leaves. [STC 9583. Beale R44]. Modern half morocco, gilt title to spine, a few marginal tears (affecting blanks margins only), some light staining and occasional spotting.

¶ “Edward III (1312-1377) reigned from 1327 until his death and is “widely regarded as a gifted administrator, military leader, and legislator. His best-known legislative acts include the Statute of Laborers (1351) and the Treason Act (1351). He is also credited with the establishment of effective local law enforcement by increasing the powers of the Justices of the Peace after 1350. Year Books were a series of notes on debates and points of pleading in Norman England. As such, they are crucial primary sources for medieval common law.” (Tarlton Law Library).

This is the second edition of the year books from the 40th to the 50th, and last year of the reign of Edward III (1367-77). The year books are the first English law reports and are not just one of the foundations of English law but of every legal system in the world which has taken the common law as its model. “Tottell’s greatest claim to distinction was that he was the printer of Year Books par excellence.” (Bolland. A Manual of Year Book Studies. 2013).

$1,950 / £1,500 Ref: 8039

30. EDGCUMBE, George, 1st Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, PC (1720-1795) Three autograph letters on the subject of gardening.

[Bath, Paris. Circa 1783-85]. Three letters signed “Mt: Edg:”, two with address panels. A total of six pages.

¶ Mount Edgcumbe House is a Grade II listed stately home in Cornwall, originally constructed in the mid-16th century; its gardens and parkland are Grade I listed in the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. The formal gardens were developed from 1750 to 1820. Highlights include Milton's Temple (c. 1755) – an Ionian temple with a plaque bearing lines from Paradise Lost – and an Orangery (c.1760).

These three letters, written by the British peer, naval officer and politician George Edgcumbe to a Mr Birt – presumably his steward – relate to the management of his house and garden during his extended absence.

[1] Quarto, bifolium. Sealed and stamped, folded for posting. Two pages. Letter addressed to: Mr: Birt / Mount Edgcombe / Plymouth Saturday 18th: Decr: 1783.

My Lady has written by this Post to your Wife, asking her many questions as to her ability of discharging the duty of Housekeeper, and desiring to know if she is willing [...] consider it well, and assist Jenny in giving clear & distinct answers […] both together I am sure you would keep every thing in good order both within doors & without [...]

[2] Quarto, bifolium. Sealed and stamped, folded for posting. Three pages. Letter addressed to: Mr: Robt: Birt / Mount Edgcombe / Plymouth – via London Paris July 23d: Decr: 1784. [...] the next great work to be taken in hand must be the new Green House [...] perhaps it may not be amiss to employ some people to clean the Bricks and pull down some of the walls of the old Garden, if they can be of use in the new Green House [...] I hope before this letter gets to you, Jenny will have brought you a Fine boy […] if it is a boy, you may call it George if you will [...]

[3] Quarto, single sheet. Folded for posting. Single page. No address panel.

Bath Jany. 4th: 1785.

I am glad to hear your wife is so well […] but I wish it had been a Boy, and you might have call’d him George [...] I hope you’l fill the Ice house of which Tomlinson & you may ^be very proud […] the first attempt of the kind, lett me know where you have collectd all the Ice [...] $785 / £600 Ref: 7897

31. [FULLARTON, William (1754-1808)] Manuscript report on the French expedition to Egypt.

[Roehampton. Circa 1798]. Folio (385 mm x 245 mm). 17 ½ text pages on 9 loose leaves (plus 2 blanks). Edges chipped, browned and stained, some splitting along folds. Written in a neat scribal hand.

¶ This unpublished report sheds light on British strategic thinking in the face of the existential threat to the empire posed by Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 1798. A retained scribal copy with copied inscription at end: “(Signed) W. Fullarton. -”

William Fullarton was a Scottish soldier, politician, and colonial governor. Attended Edinburgh University in 1768, elected a fellow of the royal societies of Edinburgh and London. Served with distinction in the Second Anglo-Mysore War (1783-4).

In this report, he assesses the perceived threat to the British empire “in consequence of the intelligence, that Buonaparte landed a large force at Alexandria”. He appraises Napoleon's chances of success and his likely course of action: a march to Suez, an uncontested passage to India, and the formation of a deadly alliance with Mysore or the Marathas. He describes the vulnerabilities of British defences in India, and proposes a grand alliance with the Ottoman empire, and predicting compliance owing to “the belief already prevalent in Turkey, that Buonaparte having outraged the head of the Catholick Church at Rome, intends a similar insult, to the Mahommetan faith at Mecca”. Fullarton expresses great confidence in British naval commanders including Nelson (“that distinguished officer”), St Vincent, and Rainier. He reckons that the “Establishment in Egypt is essential to the preservation of the English Empire in the East” and considers it crucial “to obtain from the Turkish government, such an establishment in the Levant”. He concludes that if the French “are opposed by old and ordinary routine, as they have been by the Continental Powers, the Result must be such, as has already disgraced every Nation in Europe, except Great Britain.” $1,600 / £1,250 Ref: 7960

32. GILMOUR, Sir Alexander, 3rd Bt. (c.1737-92), of Craigmillar, Edinburgh. A Collection of 37 Autograph Letters to Thomas Adams of Alnwick, 1780-83.

[Warkworth, London]. A total of 43 letters (37 written by Gilmour; 5 by his friend John White, and 1 draft letter by Thomas Adams.) A complete transcript of all the letters (barring a few tricky words) will be included with this collection.

¶ These letters trace a downward trajectory, as their writer tries to evade his creditors, battles gout and arranges for the existence of his lovechild to be kept secret (successfully, it seems, until these letters surfaced).

Sir Alexander Gilmour was the only son of Sir Charles, Second Baronet of Craigmillar in Midlothian, Scotland. He succeeded to the baronetcy in 1750 and went up to St John’s College, Cambridge in 1753. He moved in James Boswell’s circle during the 1760s and was appointed Clerk of the Board of Green Cloth in 1765, while pursuing a brief political career as MP for the County of Edinburgh (1761-1774). The Cambridge Alumni website cites a statement in The Gentleman’s Magazine (1792) that he ‘married at a very early age and has left at least one son’, adding that this ‘appears to be incorrect’. While his marital status remains moot, this correspondence is the ‘smoking gun’ concerning the latter.

Gilmour moved in James Boswell’s circle during the 1760s, becoming a rival to Boswell for the hand of one Miss Catherine Blair, though she – an heiress who perhaps had a nose for rakish spongers – evidently rejected them both.

Gilmour’s pecuniary embarrassments are well known; the same cannot be said of another imbroglio that was brewing. In a letter dated 28 October 1780, he extends an invitation to Adams (a solicitor acting on his behalf), adding “I am authoris’d by a Lady now sitting by me to assure you, that you shall have a warm dry Bed”. This “Lady”, one assumes, is the lover he later refers to as “Queen Mab”, probably an allusion to the ‘fairies’ midwife’ referred to in Romeo and Juliet. The second half of the letters is largely taken up with the consequences of this liaison, as Gilmour strives to keep his lovechild secret.

On 7 August [year?] he informs Adams that “Queen Mab […] is gone upon a visit [to] young hopeful”, i.e. their baby, Charles.

“She insists upon his being rechristned, and has made a point with me that I shou’d beg the favour of you, to assist at that Ceremony in the Capacity of God-father”. But by September 1783, matters have taken a turn. Gilmour writes of “the indispensible necessity of parting with Queen Mab”, and a little later he confirms his plans for an “Allowance of £50 per ann.” to persuade her to make a discreet disappearance. A dispute ensues, but in the final letter, in late October, he pronounces himself “glad that Queen Mab has agreed to set out for Edinburgh”.

After his imprisonment in London in 1784 and a drawn-out decline in France hiding from his creditors, Gilmour died from gout in 1792. This collection of correspondence brings back to life a scandal that hitherto only existed as a rumour, and conveys the strenuous efforts that Gilmour took to keep it that way. $4,600 / £3,500 Ref: 7983

33. [JAMES II] Manuscript entitled ‘An Establishment of His Majesty's Guards, Garrisons, & Land Forces [...] with their full Pay and Entertainement to commence the First day of January in the First year of our Raigne. 1685’.

[England. Circa 1685. Dated in text]. Contemporary black morocco with gilt border and panel, floral cornerpieces, attractive triangular indents created from semi-circles, rebacked with new spine and endpapers, remains of original clasps to rear board only. Quarto (200 mm x 150 mm x 10 mm). Title page, 66 text pages (including 1 blank used as a separator to final section).

¶ Just as his older brother Charles II had done, James II and VII marked the beginning of his reign by mustering his military authority. But as befits a simple updating of his brother’s establishment in 1660 of the nation’s first-ever unified army, this manuscript is a humbler example of the art of calligraphy in the service of authority.

The manuscript is arranged into 22 sections including: “Seven Regimts more Consisting of 240 Soldiers besides Officers un each, In all 1680.”; “His Majts First Regiment of Foot Guards consisting of 208 Soldrs in 26 Companies of 80 men in each besides Officers.”; “His Majts Royll. Regimt of Foot Guards consisting of 1050 Soldiers in 21 Companies of 50 in each besides Officers”; and “The Regulation of ye Weekly Subsistence of ye Forces.” There are also summaries of costs in the final pages together with details of allowances..

As is frequently the case with early modern documents, entries range from the general (“One Kettle Drummer”; “Two Trumpeters each 2s. 7d”; “ffifty Soldiers. each 2s. 6d”), to the specific (“Chirurgeon 6s. & One Horse to carry his Chest 2s C Diem”), to the singular (“To 5 Sisters that quitted their Lodgeings in ye Savoy, to make Room for his Majts Foot Guards. 5s C Annum each”). $2,600 / £2,000 Ref: 7840

34. NISBET, Alexander (1657-1725); annotated by Ralph SPEARMAN (1749-1823) An essay on the ancient and modern use of armories; shewing their origin, definition, and division of them into their several species.

Edinburgh: printed by William Adams Junior, for Mr. James Mackeuen, and sold at his Shop opposite to the Cross-Well, Anno Dom, M.DCCXVIII. [1718]. First edition. Quarto (229 m x 171 mm x 24 mm). Pagination pp. vii, [7], 224, [16], collated and complete with the 7 engraved plates. [Moule, CCCCXXXVI]. Contemporary calf, pitted and worn but sound, title page laid down and with sliver neatly grafted to lower margin, worming (Q4-T1 and 1 plate), short marginal tear (2B3), remnants of a modern bookplate to rear pastedown, clipped armorial to pastedown and two clipped coats of arms pasted to verso of two plates.

¶ This copy of Nesbit’s heraldic classic is heavily annotated by the antiquarian Ralph Spearman, who, it is claimed, served as the model for one of Sir Walter Scott's finest characters, ‘Jonathan Oldbuck’ (or ‘Monkbarns’), in his 1816 novel The Antiquary.

Whether true or not, Spearman apparently played the part of the great antiquary – if anything, perhaps a little too fancifully.

Cadwallader Bates, in Archaeologia aeliana, or, Miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquity (1886), describes the fictional persona that Spearman constructed for himself: “vanity led him to endeavour to trace his descent and name from the ‘lords of Aspramont, a castle and county on the confines of Lorraine and Bar.’ His new hall at Eachwick was built entirely for show: being three stories high, with gingerbread battlements, and of great length, though only one room thick […] Seen from a distance, it quite deceives a stranger by its palatial appearance.”

For all Spearman’s desire to claim a long bloodline, he died without children and left his property to his steward, a Mr Hunter, and his elder son, on condition they took his surname: so much for heraldry being a science! Perhaps not coincidentally, we find him exploring the legality of passing on arms to an adopted child in the following section of page 114. The printed text reads “When a Noble Person adopts an Ignoble one, the Question is, whether the Ignoble by Adoption become Noble … generally all the Lawyers are for the negative … the Ignoble cannot succeed more to the Honours of their adoptive Fathers, than Bastards to their Fathers, and regrets that such a Succession in England, where many, of a base and ungentle State, as adopted Sones, do inherit the Names, Possessions, and Arms of their adoptive Fathers” but Spearman manages to pluck what he needs from the text, stating in the margin “Adopted sons in England inherit the Arms as well as estates of the Family they are adopted into.”

Despite Cadwallader Bates’s disdain, Spearman is often mentioned favourably. For example, the Historical, Topographical, and Descriptive View of the County of Northumberland (1825), calls him “a celebrated local antiquary”, and say that “Mr. Surtees observes, ‘almost the sole depository of a vast mass of oral and popular tradition.’ […] his correspondence with other antiquaries would, if collected, be extremely curious.”

Spearman’s numerous interactions with the text range from single-word annotations, underlining, and manicules (on approximately 50 pages) to more detailed annotations to approximately 20 pages as well as all 7 plates of shields. The presence of two inscriptions (“Ra. Spearman Preston 1807” to the pastedown and “Ra: Spearman 1809” to the title page) suggests repeated readings, an impression reinforced by the presence of a brief review to the front pastedown written by Spearman after he had read the book: “This is the best Book of Hedaldry, I have met with and As a sistem that throws some Appearance of Science on it, superior to the larger and later Editios […] far superior to All the Quaintness and pious Jargon of Guillim and Morgan &c –” and at the end of a few of his annotations, he adds “R. S. 1810.”

He makes notes relating to his own family (“thus Clarenceaux adds 3 Bells to Spearmans Chevron), and, on page 138, to his aspirational connection to the “lords of Aspramont”: “+ The Family of Counts Asperemont Princes of Roman Empire Seated on the sixteenth Seat of the Bench of Westphalia in the Imperial Dicts gave the same Arms Gules A Cross Argent”. Here we also learn of his sources as he states “see Battle Abbey Roll Rymers Fœdera, Bodin of A Commonwealth, Thuano Historia, Pitsius, de Temptoribus Anglicus, Moreris Dictionary, History of England, and the War 1742. Travels thru Germany, French Army list 1788 &c. State of Europe, Life of Dukes of Loraine Maps &&c” as well as inscriptions from Westminster Abbey (e.g. “+ there is an elegant Monument of this Lady Sophia Fairholm Marchioness of Annandale in Westminster Abbey also of Lord William Johnstone her younger Son”), although these may have been copied from printed sources.

While adding genealogical notes on the family of Weilycleugh on page 42, he makes the following incidental observation: “they had his Oval Watch which shut up like a Hunting Watch, decorated with scripture History on the lid &, it was silver, the Rim & Spring brass, in the inside of the lid his Achievement, motto, and Title: the Miss Hudsons Milliners are Daughters of said Hudson last named. R.S. 1810.

The Celebrated Dr Ramsay of Newcastle, MD. has this watch AD. 1812. given him by a Person who saved it from a Silver Smiths melting it.”

Such anecdotes remind us that random occurrences might befall any object – including this volume – on its journey through time and how tiny matters of chance can seal its fate. $3,600 / £2,750 Ref: 7947

35. [WILLIAM OF ORANGE] Manuscript entitled, ‘The Life and Glorious Actions of William the Third, King of England &c..

[Circa 1726]. Contemporary calf, recently rebacked. Spotting and marks to text, title page with section of upper margin clipped (apparently to remove a previous owner’s inscription) and strengthened with fragment on an old list of expenses.

66 pages (title, dedication to Carteret, pp.1-107). Engraved portrait of William III William to front paste-down, annotated “The portraits illustrating this work are not only scarce but valuable”, implying that at least one other portrait is now missing.

¶ Were it not for its intriguing denouement, which notably alters the account of King William’s death, this manuscript might be taken for a verbatim copy of The Life and glorious actions of William III. King of England, &c, a rare publication printed at Dublin in 1726 and known by only one surviving copy held at the National Library of Ireland (ESTC Citation No. T219072).

This manuscript follows the printed text until the closing pages (i.e. pp 217-231 of the printed text, and 100-107 of our manuscript), at which point the two accounts diverge. This is also marked by a change in paper and a subtle change in the hand; we are confident that this is the same scribe, but they perhaps added this altered section at a slightly later time.

The source of this alternative reading of the death of William III is unclear. The most plausible explanation is that it was copied from another printed text, but a thorough search of ECCO reveals no likely candidates. A note on ESTC to the 1726 Dublin edition suggests it is “Possibly related to one of the works with a similar title published in 1702.” However, the 1702 work is significantly shorter (just 16 pages in 8vo compared to the 1726’s 231, albeit in 24mo) and bears little textual resemblance beyond its subject and title.

Our manuscript diverges from the 1726 edition on page (217) line 12 of the printed text, which relates economically the king’s final crisis: “ … On Sunday Morning He supp’d some Broth, and found Himself somewhat easier, tho’ excessive Weak. Thus He continued all the Forenoon, but in the Evening he was very Faint, and in the night had Three violent Fits. Thus he continued ‘till Sunday following, when early in the morning his Majesty finding his Spirits begin to forsake him, with all the signs of approaching Dissolution, He Received the Holy Sacrament.” pp (217-8).

Our manuscript agrees that “On Sunday morning he supped some broath” but this seems to have revived him – sufficiently so to send a “Message to parliament recommending the Union of the two Kingdoms in the strongest terms”. And it was only after “the Royal Assent was given by commission to several bills amongst which one for attainting the Pretended Prince of Wales” that “King’s case became dangerous.” Our scribe was apparently keen to emphasise the importance of the Union to the dying king, who, we are assured, “preserved his / senses to the last moment” (102/3).

In the printed text, the king imparted no final words of wisdom, but our manuscript has him uttering the widely reported: “Je tire vers ma fin”. The king’s “struggle between life and death” lasted until the morning, when a “Prayer was offered up and as it terminated he drew his last breath in the arms of one of his pages March 8. 1702”. Then a grace note: “On his left arm was found a ribbon with a lock of the Queens hair”.

Where the printed text presents a lengthy encomium, the manuscript is more alert to the preservation of the Union and the continuation of the monarchy, and concludes with the (presumably satisfying) note that “Princes Anne of Dunmark … the same day was proclaimed Queen of England Scotland France and Ireland.” £1,000 Ref: 7990

I specialise in interesting and unusual manuscripts and antiquarian books that record their histories as material forms, through the shaping of objects and the traces left on the surface, by the conscious and unconscious acts of their creators and users.

Dean Cooke Rare Books Ltd 125 York Road, Montpelier, Bristol, BS6 5QG, UK +44 7747 188 125 www.deancooke.org dean@deancooke.org @invisibl_inks invisibl_inks

Dean Cooke

Rare Books Ltd