Fourth words & things

words

things

words & things

[BIGENIO] The Surprising Adventures of Bigenio, An Hermaphrodite, or Human Being, endowed with the propensities of both sexes; containing a true account of its Birth, Education and subsequent Seduction by its Tutor; Eloping from home; turning Thief; Intrigues in Bath and on the road to London; arrival at the Metropolis; entrapped by M S , the old Bawd of Drury Lane description of her house and inmates; hires himself as lady’s maid to Mrs. D.; found out by husband gets horsewhipped and escapes; takes lodgings at the west end of the town, where he entraps the son of a Banker, who marries him is found out and again escapes with upwards of £500, the marriage present; flies to York, where the rich old mai Miss Dornton falls in love with him at an assembly, whom he marries, and in a short period absconds with £2,000 and upwards, eluding all trace, although he has been lately seen passing in Oxford Street, and thence sown BOND STREET.

London: Printed by J. Bailey, 116, Chancery Lane. Price 6d. 1824.

Duodecimo. Signatures: A-B6, C2. Pagination 28 p., hand-coloured frontispiece (lower left margin of frontispiece torn with loss to several letters of the publisher’s details).

Red morocco backed boards, circular armorial gilt book label of Edward Hailstone (1818-1890), British book collector and antiquary, fifth son of the botanist Samuel Hailstone (1767-1851).

¶ The intersex protagonist of this tale is depicted as both monster and beguiling object of desire. The first thing the reader –or, perhaps more importantly for the chapman hawking it, the buyer – sees on opening the book is an image of a handsome, moustachioed individual whose skimpy dress reveals enough to convey a sexually indeterminate, but also alluring persona.

According to Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus, the beautiful child of Hermes and Aphrodite, merged the male and female sexes into one. Hermaphrodites have long been recognised by the medical profession, but attitudes have ranged from serious scientific investigation to outright denial of their existence. For example, James Parsons, writing in the 18th century, was sceptical of the classification, preferring instead to reduce all possible cases of intersex people to women with genital deformations 1 .

More widely, interest in liminal characters appealed as much to those who wished to explore the transgressive side of the human psyche as to those who feared it and preferred to banish them to the margins of society or the safety of cheap literature.

THE PRINTER

The book was printed by John Bailey, son of Susan and William Bailey, both of whom were publishers and printers. William died in 1794, and Susan ran the company under her own imprint. In her will she left the business solely to her two daughters. Of her two sons, John established himself as a printer at several London locations over the next two decades before settling at 116 Chancery Lane, where this book was printed in 1824.

PRECEDENCE

John Bailey was a prolific publisher of books but specialised in neatly packaged stories in 24 or 28 pages sold as chapbooks. Among his publications is a reprinting of Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband 1746. Bailey produced it as a chapbook in 1813, complete with a hand-coloured frontispiece showing its bare breasted heroine being publicly flogged. The story was based on the life of Mary Hamilton who took the identity of a man, assumed the name Charles, and married several unsuspecting women. Perhaps success with this publication served as a spur to publish another story with a liminal protagonist and a titillating frontispiece. Although we can find no trace of an individual whose story follows the trajectory of ‘Bigenio’, Bailey suggests that we “need look no farther than into the Philosophical Transactions” (p.3) of the Royal Society for evidence of their existence. It is true that a search of articles in the Philosophical Transactions published before the book’s 1824 printing yields 41 concerning hermaphrodism. However, only about half a dozen are solely concerned with the subject of intersex humans, and none seem to match Bigenio’s adventures, so it seems his claim is a general appeal to scientific authority rather than a retelling of a documented life

ONE OR TWO BIGENIOS?

This is an unrecorded edition, having likely fallen victim to a kind of inverse law of publication in which the greater the circulation at the time of production, the scarcer it is now. There is only one other known copy of a title resembling this one, located at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Douce FF 73 (8)). It too was printed by John Bailey, but the signatures and typesetting are different. The Bodleian copy collates A2, B12, and does not have a frontispiece, whereas ours is A-B6, C2, with a hand-coloured frontispiece.

Comparison of the two texts raises interesting questions, especially in the different uses of pronouns. The title page of the Bodleian copy begins The life and adventures of Bigenio, an hermaphrodite and goes on to promise descriptions of “nightly scenes” and the “nuptial night!”, which are not in the title page of ours, but these promises are unfulfilled: both texts opt for the coy narrative that “What happened that night decency forbids me to declare” (p.21 in our copy, but p.22 in the Bodleian copy). In our copy, the narrative is supposedly “taken from a well authenticated fact” which was reported by “persons who were acquainted with the monster” (p.3), but this justification does not occur in the Bodleian copy.

The two publications diverge in their uses of pronouns. The Bodleian copy uses “he” consistently in their title page, which reads:

The life and adventures of Bigenio, an hermaphrodite : containing an account of his seduction by his tutor, for which he absc protector's house, and his singular adventures in London and Bath: he is induced to enter into a brothel by the noted Mother description of its nightly scenes! He enters into the service of a certain Lady, as her maid, from which an unlucky discovery abscond. He dances a new hornpipe to a new tune; attended with unpleasant accompaniments. Commences business on his own accou Captivates a young Gentleman, who marries him. Description of the nuptial night! More unpleasant discoveries. Is obliged to l and arrives at York, where he marries a Lady with £2000 a year; and again absconds. The whole interspersed with many amusing

whereas our title page (see above) begins by using “its” (e.g. “containing a true account of its Birth, Education and subsequent Seduction by its Tutor”) before switching to “he/his/himself” (“hires himself as lady’s maid to Mrs. […] he has been lately seen passing in Oxford Street”). On the first page of the text in both versions, the matter of pronouns is supposedly settled: “In order to avoid a want of perspicuity, I shall designate the subject of this History by the masculine gender, and call it he, although it had equally pretensions to the feminine gender, and might with as much propriety have been designated by the monosyllable she.” Nonetheless, only a few pages later they drop the convention in a sentence where the character “Young Fallow” places “her” (i.e. Bigenio) “behind him on horseback”.

The Bodleian copy is undated, so we are unable to ascertain whether the pronouns and enticements of bedroom scenes to the title page were added in the earlier or later edition. But a more in-depth comparison of both texts may uncover further variances and yield answers to these and other questions.

REPULSION AND ATTRACTION

Bigenio is frequently referred to as a monster (“so great a monstrosity” p.17), or repellent (“what was the astonishment, horror, and confusion of the young ‘squire when he found he had to deal with an Hermaphrodite!” p.11). But they are more usually depicted as beautiful (“Bigenio had just turned his sixteenth year, was remarkably beautiful in the face [...] his elegance of shape and carriage” p.4) and sexually attractive (“Perhaps it may be thought he found nothing very luscious there, but Bigenio had two breasts that swelled out like blushing peaches, and were as soft as the finest down enclosed in a velvet case” p.6). Although many characters they encounter are repulsed when they discover that Bigenio is intersex, the book also explores what happens when prejudice meets reality and the latter triumphs: “a certain Lady of fortune” is repulsed by the very idea and “started back at the thoughts of an Hermaphrodite, and vowed she’d never have any commerce with it”, but is enamoured of the reality when she meets them “dressed in a most elegant attire”. We are told that “the lady [was], struck with his beauty and air, suffered her aversion to vanish and give place to lust” (p.21). But implicit in the story’s presentation – and its evident – is not so much the triumph of desire over disgust as their co-existence and interplay in people’s reactions to Bigenio’s dual nature.

Intersex people are seldom touched upon in literature, yet this book was clearly designed to appeal to a popular audience and appears to have sold well enough to warrant another, altered edition, creating an interesting conundrum over precedence. The volume offers a unique window onto a previous era’s attitudes to sex and gender – and the variations around the use of pronouns have an intriguingly modern resonance

SOLD Ref: 8104

James, A mechanical and critical enquiry into the nature of hermaphrodites. (1741).

2. <https://royalsocietypublishing.org/action/doSearch?

AllField=hermaphrodite&SeriesKey=rstl&AfterYear=1668&BeforeYear=1824&queryID=13/292241067>

2. SYNONYMOUS RELATIONSHIP

ROGET, Catherine (née ROMILLY) (1755-1835). Two manuscript books of poetry and botany.

[London. Circa 1778-91]. Two notebooks in their original paper wrappers with engraved illustrations.

Catherine Roget [née Romilly], sister of the lawyer and politician Sir Samuel Romilly (1757-1818), was the mother of Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869), compiler of the famous Thesaurus. This pair of manuscript books reflect her interests -educated 18th-century woman – in literature and botany.

More than a decade appears to separate these notebooks, but they share the same watermark, and their engraved covers are extremely similar, raising the distinct possibility that they were bought at the same time. Such notebooks were probably fairly popular in the 18th century, but relatively few have survived; the engraved paper covers gracing this pair have mitigated against their deterioration.

Notebook I. Manuscript commonplace book of literary extracts.

[London. Circa 1775]. Small quarto (195 x 160). 40 pages of text on 20 leaves. Written in a clear, legible hand throughout. Covers dust-soiled and torn at the edges. Watermark: Britannia. Stationer’s notebook, original stitched paper wrappers with engraving to front cover of “A Chart Shewing ye Sea Coast of England & Wales with ye Fortifications Royal Docks Harbours Sands &c. Sold by C. Dicey & Co.” Ownership inscription to upper margin of front cover reads “Catherine Romilly”. The manuscript is undated but presumably precedes Catherine’s marriage in 1778.

Extracts (mostly in French but a few in English) include “En Parlant des Passions” from “Pensées de Ciceron”; passages from “Essais de Montaigne”; “L’homme aprés la Creation” and “Principes de l’homme”, both from “De Mon. De Buffon”; “Menope Tragedie de Voltaire” and “Extracts from the Translation of Chevalies Mehegan’s View of Universal Modern History” “Narblas”. The notebook ends with “Sonnet to the Evening”, which first appeared in print in 1789 as “Sonnet VI” of William Lisle Bowles’s Fourteen Sonnets, which, alongside the work of Charlotte Smith, did much to revive the sonnet form. The date suggests either that Catherine copied the poem into her book leaving her birthname on the cover unchanged or that the poem was circulating in manuscript.

Notebook II. Manuscript entitled ‘Linnaeus’ System’. [London. Circa 1788]. Small quarto (195 x 160). 54 pages of text and illustrations on 30 leaves. Covers dust-soiled and torn at the edges. Watermark: Britannia. Stationer’s notebook, original stitched paper wrappers with engraving to front cover from Francis Barlow’s (1622-1704) edition of Æsop’s Fables. The engraving is the same as those in Barlow’s edition, with text of poem by Aphra Behn, but title “The Sow and Pigs” is within the plate mark which does not seem to be in the early editions, so is presumably a reworking of the original. Ownership inscription to inner front cover reads “Catherine Roget. 1791”. Titles to margins of front cover read “Botany -1787-” and “Linnaeus’ System”.

Catherine’s second manuscript begins with basic “outlines of Linnaeus’s System of Vegetables” (from “I. Monandria. – one Stamen” and “II. Diandria. – two Stamens” through to “XVIII. Polyadelphia. – Filaments in 3 or more parcels” and “XXIV. Cryptogamia. Flowers very small, invisible or not yet discovered”) and then branches out into a more detailed treatment. The next section, “Sketch & Explanation of the Orders of the System of Linnaeus”, elaborates by listing the sub-groups for each (“Monandria” has “1. Monogynia. – one Stamen” and “2. Digynia. – Two Pistils” and so on).. In her next, untitled section, Catherine goes into greater detail and provides examples of plants (e.g “Scabiosa columbraria – Small Scabious”, “Nicotiana Tabacum – Common Tobacco”) which she illustrates with small diagrammatic drawings. Her artwork then blossoms somewhat in three pages of drawings of indigenous plants (“Wild Speedwell”, “Blue Monk’s hood” etc), which she has sketched in pencil and then drawn over in ink and heightened in watercolour.

Following this brief interlude of individuation, she returns to classification, with details of “Leaves as to figure” in 62 leaf forms from “Orbiculatum” to “Teres”. Under the heading “Stalks of Flowers” she includes examples and brief details (“without an odd feuillet or having the secondary pinnated again & these last not terminated”, “Spatulated or roundish above with a long linear base”), and similarly, of Fructification” are accompanied by sm in pen, some with watercolour washes.

Notebooks of this kind and vintage offer many attractions – the glimpses into a young 18th-century woman’s intellectual life, the uses and adaptations of published material by their contemporary readers – and each also has its own particular appeal. In this case, Catherine Roget has, in her Linnaeus notebook, created a personal reference work which, though by no means unusual in itself, has resonances with the renowned reference work that her son was soon to create.

SOLD Ref: 8122

3. THERE WAS A GOOD COOK FROM ...

[UNDERWOOD, MAUNSELL, & CASWELL FAMILIES] Two Irish manuscript recipe books, together with over 70 looseleaf recipes and a scrapbook.

[Ireland, Limerick and Portarlington. Circa 1732-1860]. Two quarto volumes, together with looseleaf recipes and a small octavo notebook.

¶ This multifarious group of household remedies and recipes is the product of several generations of the Maunsell and Caswell families, who were related by marriage. The earliest manuscript was compiled for Mary Underwood, who does not appear to have been a family member, but who certainly lived in the same geographical area, so was perhaps a servant to the Maunsells.

[1]. [UNDERWOOD, Mary] Early 18th-century manuscript of culinary and medicinal recipes entitled ‘A book of Receipts’.

[Ireland. Limerick. Circa 1723-3]. Title page and 27 text pages (mostly to rectos) in three hands on 24 leaves, 37 blank leaves, some pages excised and missing. Contemporary vellum, worn and soiled, missing lower section of spine, text block loose.

¶ Three hands are evident in this manuscript, the majority of which presents remedies, along with a few recipes for wines and cakes. The first page appears to introduce these three scribes, but also introduces a note of confusion since these are all rendered in the same hand: “A book of Receipts belonging to Mrs Mary Underwood Limerick June the Seventeenth 1732 / Written by James

Fitzgerald In the year of our Lord 1733 / Mary Underwood her book 1733”.

Conditions needing alleviation include “The Gravel”, “for Cough of Cold”, “Erisipelus” (a form of skin infection), and “Apostemes in the Ear or Ulcer” (with a further remedy for “Noise in the Ears” – perhaps tinnitus – “of which a Gentleman who was hysterical was Cured”

Depending on their ailment, the sufferer may be subjected to a treatment involving “horse Dung”, “Motton Dripping or hogs Laurd”, “one Gallon of white Snails” or “Eartworms cleansed”; or they may get off lightly with a

remedy containing “Nutmeg”, “Canary Wine”, “Myrh, Alloes, and Saffron”, “Rosemary flowers”, “feneegreek”, or “Lisbon wine” If requiring “A Receipt for the Dropsy”, they could expect something containing “2 handfulls of Ground Ivy, a quarter of a pound of the fielings of Steell, half a pound of Rusty Iron, The Peilings of 12 Civell Oranges”; or, in the case of “the “Mithridrate 20 grains and Virginian Snake weed in fine powder 13 Grains”.

Instructions and doses tend toward the specific: the somewhat ferrous remedy above for “the Dropsy” directs that one should drink “a pint of it in the morning & a pint at noon – a pint at Night milk warm”, while the “Receipt for the Scurvy or Itch” reassures us that “The Ointment may be used on the belly and Stomack and every where for it is Safe”, but adds that “it is troublesom for you to make, the Apothecary hath it ready made”

Such remarks give clear evidence that the manuscript was both created and used with a degree of first-hand experience: a recipe for “Marmalade” advises that “it is better to boyle [the oranges and rinds] up often Then to add, so much Sugar at a time”. There are endorsements, too, such as “These three last rects are aproved of & given for choice” and “It’s an infallible receipt for Consumptions, it is very good for ye Cholick in Stomack it cures the Jaundice and Dropsies” – as well as the familiar note of approval, “Probatum est”.

[2]. [MAUNSELL, Richard] Late 18th- to early 19th-century manuscript book of recipes and remedies. [Ireland. Portalington. Circa 1790-1810.] Pagination [6 (4, index; 2 blanks)], 98, 105-119, 5 blank leaves; 13 at opposite end. Contemporary calf backed marbled boards, very worn, lacking spine, text block loose. An inscription to front free endpaper: “Rich. Maunsell Portalington March 3d 1807”, written in a different hand to that of the earlier sections of the manuscript.

¶ This second volume was probably commenced later in the 18th century. It is written in a further two different hands, the second of which belongs to “Rich. Maunsell Portalington March 3d 1807”. The character of the manuscript is very different, in several ways: recipes vastly outnumber remedies, attributions are much more in evidence – indeed, some entries are grouped by attribution, suggesting that they have been copied en masse from collections of friends and acquaintances – and a few recipes have an international flavour, demonstrating how well connected many families were in Ireland.

The manuscript begins with an index of recipes, before an initial batch headed “Mrs Massy’s Recits” (“To make an EggCheese”, “To make Rice Pancakes”, “Dr Smyth For a Cough”, etc); and she makes further appearances later, with the likes of “Sago Pudding” (p.62) and “Rice Jelly” (p.82). Elsewhere, another group, numbering over 15 recipes, is headed “Mrs Verckert’s receits”, and includes “Naples Biskets”, “The Right Indian Pickles”, “To Collar Cow Heals”, and “Excellent Saffron Cakes”. Later on, “Mrs Leslie’s Receits” showcase that lady’s strengths in preserving fruit (“Raspberries”, “Golden Pippins”, “Oranges Whole”, “Apricots – N:B: The skins make a pretty little Tort”).

The network of recipe exchange broadens with every page, as we encounter “To Pickle lemons – by Mrs Moore”; “Pickled Salmon + by Mrs Mict Stretch”; “Wallnut Catchup – Mrs Purdon – very fine”; “Queen Cakes – Mrs Widenham”; “Petty Pattyes – Lady Rothes”; and so on. The recipe: “Mrs Monsell – Brandy Peaches” presumably refers to Mrs Maunsell, suggesting that the unattributed hand is that of a servant. Remedies, too, are endorsed through attribution, often to medical sources: “Doctor Frends receit for a sore Throat”; “Doctor Meads Elixir of Rhubarb for the Gout”; “Dr Ormonds receit for Plaister to Ripen & draw a Sore”; or to redoubtable-sounding authorities such as “Mrs Clampett for the Evil”.

Alongside the kind of dishes expected of any recipe collection (“To make Sausages”, “Catchup”) and local specialities (“To Bake Salmon – Limerick”, “To make Irish Plums”), there are a few pleasingly named confections: “A Hedge Hog” turns out to be an almond cake with “2 Currants for eyes”; and “A What Madam” involves the combination of “Curd of a Gallon of milk, ¾ of a pd of butter, 2 grated Biskets”. The geographical reach extends a little with “Olio, a French Dish” (“Cut 5 or 6 chickens in quarters, 3 pints of Green peas, 2 large lettuces, 6 Artichoak bottoms, & a little spearmint shred small”), “Naples Biskets”, “Dutch Wafers”, “Prussian Puddings”, and “German Puffs – Mrs Gough”, and journeys still further to include “The Famous American Receipt for the Rheumatism” and “Picklelilloes – Indian”. Another section presents dishes from “Mrs Charles Smyth”, including the far-flung “Antigua Pudding”. Outlandish in another sense is the disturbingly named “The Leg of a Negro”, which actually features “a leg of tender Pork, cut like ham [...] seasoned with Claret or Port” – but which betrays all too clearly the cultural norms of some members of society, even at a time when the abolitionist movement might have given them pause for thought about such terminology.

Like the first, this volume bears signs of having been well used. Notes have often been added, either as simple encomia (“Best Boiled Almond Pudding” is pronounced “Extream good”; “An herb Soop” has been “marked, much liked”) or as qualifying remarks (“Orange Tarts […] This is for lids for them or any other fine thing, but it is too rich for side Crust”) or to suggest adjustments (“Potted Woodcocks […] If you have no oven, put them into a tin pan with fire under & over them, that the birds may do gently”; “Live for Ever […] N:B: This is very hot, & perhaps less Ginger would answer better on account of its great heat, cut the Lozinges small”). A recipe for the popular “New College Pudding”, which appears to be a manuscript circulated version, is so brief as to suggest familiarity, and includes a couple of amendments that indicate active use and experimentation.

[3]. [VARIOUS SCRIBES]

[Circa 1780-1860.] This manuscript contains upwards of 70 loose recipes and remedies from various correspondents in many different hands, a few addressed to members of the Maunsell family.

¶ Contents include “Dr Quirk’s recipe for Flux”, “To make a mackerony Dish” (addressed to “Miss Boswell”), “To make Daffy’s Elixir”, “A Cure for the Hydrophobia. Decr 13th 1807”; and “Spanish Flummer” (for which you should “always use silver spoons”). These copious loose-leaf recipes and remedies demonstrate the fluid nature of manuscript culture. Crucially, they provide evidence that this collection was, in no small part formed through a lively social interaction whose alliances were bonded through manuscript recipe exchange.

[4]. [CASWELL, Samuel] Scrapbook of newspaper notices and handwritten letters. [Ireland, Limerick. Circa 1840-90]. Octavo. Card covers. Armorial bookplate of “Samuel Caswell / Blackwater”.

¶ The chief value of this scrapbook – which contains clippings from Irish and English newspapers (Limerick Chronicle, Bassett’s Daily Chronicle, The Times), a school certificate (“Latin Verse Composition”) and a few handwritten letters – is the confirmation it provides of the provenance of its companion volumes.

The recipes and remedies in this multigenerational collection were tried, tested, judged, adjusted and recommended by the Underwood, Maunsell and Caswell families over more than a century, giving us a valuable series of insights into the tastes, preoccupations and practices of these Irish households, and the wider social circles in which they moved.

SOLD Ref: 8097

4. DRUG DISPENCER

[SPENCER, Jonathan (1785-?)] Early 19th-century manuscript pharmacopoeia by a practicing medic.

[Salford? c.1810]. Quarto (202 x 165 x 3 mm), Approximately 30 text pages on 18 leaves, with two loose leaf remedies (one pinned). Stitched without covers. Numerous leaves excised at the end with only stubs remaining, first few leaves detaching, spotting and some staining. Four metal pins through first leaf attaching printed receipt for W. Bowman, chemist and druggist of Bury, and another copy of this receipt loosely inserted, both with manuscript recipe to verso. Watermark: P Tregent 1810.

¶ This heavily used pharmacopoeia was, according to the family from whom it originated, compiled by one Jonathan Spencer (b. 1785), of Salford, Manchester, where he practiced as a dentist, pharmacist and physician.

The text comprises 130 brief recipes for poultices (“Cataplasma Dauci Salive”, “Cataplas Sinapleas”), elixirs (“Elix Salutis Vulgo Daffys Elix”, “Tinct Benzoes Comp”), tinctures (“Tinct Aloes”, “Tinct Nicotianæ”), syrups (“Syrup of the Juce of Maberries”, “Syrup Zingiberis”) and other concoctions made and sold by apothecaries including “Cerat Saponis”, “Drops for Gravel of Stone”, and a few for treating

“Give one Twice a week untill the horse stales freeley”). Ingredients are mostly in Latin, with a few in English. Where instructions are included, these are usually provided in English (for “Elixir Asthmaticum”, the reader is advised that the “dose is from 20 to 100 drops to adults and 5 to 20 for children … in Hysop water or Canary”), as are many of the preparations (“Digest the Guaiacum & Balsam in the Spirit for six days & shake it after and strain it”). This is especially true of the section containing syrups, most of which feature details for preparation: for example, when making “Syrup Altea”, you should “Boil the root to one half and press out the Liquor and then add the sugar and Boil”, or for “Syrup , the advice is to “Macerate the root in the Vingar for Two Days now and then shaking the Vessel After strain it with a Gentle pressure To the strained Liquor add the sugar and . Many leaves appear to have been cut from the end, but it is uncertain whether these were blanks. What can be stated with some confidence, however, is that Spencer was actively using this manuscript in his everyday medical practice.

SOLD Ref: 8101

5. BEASTLY TREATMENTS

DOWNING, J. A treatise on the disorders incident to horned cattle, comprising a description of their symptoms, and the most rational methods of cure, founded on long experience. By J. Downing. To which are added, receipts for curing the gripes, staggers, and worms in horses; and an appendix, containing instructions for the extracting of calves.

[Stourbridge]: Printed and sold at Stourbridge. Sold also by T. Hurst, Messrs. Longman and Rees, Paternoster-Row; and Messrs. Rivington, St. Paul’s Church-Yard, London, 1797. Reissue of the first edition, published the same year. Octavo. Pagination xii, 131, [1], xiv (misnumbered ziv), [4] p. Lacking the half-title. Numerous blanks bound in at the end, with manuscript remedies to 14 pages. Modern half calf, marbled boards, endpapers renewed, some marks and browning to text.

¶ Downing’s treatise contains details of symptoms and treatments for diseases in cattle, together with a small number of remedies for maladies in horses. Of its over listed 250 subscribers, a many are local to Stourbridge or Worcestershire generally, from where the author hailed. Many were presumably landowners, yeomen or people otherwise directly concerned with farming, but the list also includes professions such as surgeon and druggist, and of course booksellers.

Whichever of these groups our scribe belongs to, they have augmented the work into the 19 adding some 31 recipes and remedies (variously from 1803 to 1840) including “For Black Water in Cattle”, To Prevent Calves Striking”, “For a Gargett in a Cows Elder”, “To take A kell of a Horses Eye”, “Diuretic for inflam’d Legs, on a Horse”, and “To prevent Sheep from striking”. Most simply list ingredients and quantities, but there are short notes (“the eye to be rub’d twice pr Day”), and some more detailed instructions like: “The Beast should be bled freely and milked quite clean. [...] If it should so happen to be milked more than once [...] it destroys the effect of the medicine [...] though the Udder appears full, yet it should gradually diminish without any injury to the beast.”

all the practical remedies for animals,

they’ve allowed themselves some indulgence, judging by a recipe “To make Punch Ice” (not for the livestock, one imagines) using oranges, lemons, brandy and rum. Some remedies are ascribed to the likes of “Casewell”, “Humphreys”, “R. A. Charleton”, “Geo: Hampton” and £750 Ref: 8098

6. MAKING ENGLISH SIMPLES

EGENOLFF, Christian Herbarum, arborum, fruticum, frumentorum ac leguminum, animalium præterea terrestrium, uolatiliu[m] & aquatilium, aliorumqq´[ue] quorum in medicinis usus est, simplicium, imagines

Apud Chr. Egenolphum, Franc, [M.D. LII]

Quarto. [4 (of 16, i.e. lacking title and most of index], 294 (of 312 of which 10 are lacking and 8 have been replaced in high quality facsimile, with competent hand-colouring). Woodcut illustrations with contemporary hand-colouring throughout. Copiously annotated throughout in a 17th-century hand. Bound in contemporary limp vellum, recent silk ties and manuscript title to front board (incorrectly dated in a modern hand). The book has clearly been heavily used and been the subject of modern restoration.

¶ “Renaissance herbalists composed their texts primarily by “gathering,” synthesizing, and commenting upon the materials of their predecessors and using this information as a scaffold upon which they could then record their own differing or dissenti experience.”1

This book’s annotator has largely followed the method that Sarah Neville describes above: having absorbed a range of sources – from classical authors to their own experience and contemporary practice – they have melded the material to create a kind of hybrid. The result is a personalised (and evidently well used) reference tool for a member of the 17th-century medical profession, most likely a ‘field guide’ as well as a medicinal resource.

The Herbarum, Arborum, Fructicum was first published in 1545 by the Frankfurt printer Christian Egenolff (1502-1555), considered the first important printer and publisher operating from Frankfurt-am-Main, and best known for his publications of herbals and re-issue of books by Adam Ries, Erasmus von Rotterdam and Ulrich von Hutten. However, he is also remembered for his protracted squabble with the botanist Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566) over violation of copyright and was sued by the Strasbourg printer Johannes Schott (1477-c.1550). Egenolff successfully defended himself by claiming that “images of the natural world such as plants could not be protected as works of art” because “the ultimate artist responsible for [their] image is God”2 .

ENGLISH DOCTOR OR APOTHECARY?

But who is our scribe? Clues to their identity are scarce, but the ease with which they move from English to Latin and occasionally Ancient Greek indicates that they were English and highly educated, and we can be reasonably confident that they were a practicing physician –either a doctor or an apothecary, judging by the fact that the annotations focus on the plants’ medicinal uses. The English herbalist William Turner (c.1509-1568) contends that there were few “surgianes and apothecaries […] in England, which can understande Plini in Latin or Galene and Dioscorides […] in Greke or translated into Latin”.3 Our scribe cites these authors and is evidently Greek and Latin literate; underscoring the blurred boundaries that still existed between these nascent professions.

It was, however, still clearly important to our medic to annotate almost every plant with its common English name. But, having checked many of the English 16th- and 17th-century herbals, we find that few of the names have a close match. There is no suggestion of an attempt to systematise along the lines of Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712) or John Ray (1627-1705), so a simpler, more practical explanation seems the most likely: this being a bespoke reference guide for practical use, the added names appear to be those used in common parlance and were probably recorded to aid communication with non-Latin speakers.

The choice of a German herbal as the groundwork for this project is an interesting one. Our 17th-century medic would have had a number of English herbals to choose from, including William Turner’s (d.1568) New Herbal (1551) John Gerard’s (15451612) Herball (1597 and the 1633, revised by Johnson), and Henry Lyte’s (1529?-1607) Herball. These were handsomely illustrated volumes with explanatory text, but of prodigious size, weighing several kilograms and needing a table in order to be read. What would have made this book so appealing to our medic, are its small size and the lifelike illustrations, making it the only medicinal plant identification handbook that could be carried in a pocket while walking in the countryside. There were

illustrated pocket editions of Leonard Fuchs’ Historia Stirpium (1551) with tiny woodcuts and full Latin text, but Egenolff’s little reference book was a clear winner for its usefulness and convenience. This ‘adapted’ copy is all the rarer in view of the low survival rate of such handbooks.

ROOTS AND BRANCHES

We can speculate about some of our scribe’s sources with more confidence: classical authors are namechecked many times, for example Dioscorides, whose method of abortion is cited in the notes on “Laurus” (“Diosc: asserit foetū necat in matrice”

which translates as “Dioscorides asserts, it kills the foetus in the womb” The work of Galen is strongly represented, usually in Latin ( Galen” p.70 and elsewhere) and occasionally in English ( Poore mans Treacle” p.81).

More specific book references seem to be rare (as far as we can determine), but a notable exception occurs with ‘Acer’ on p.37 where the scribe writes Maple tree”, and cites “Pliny 24 lib: cap. 8.” who conclusu et applicat dolorem hepatis egregie fugare” the maple tree and applies it to drive away the pain of the liver very well”). This reinforces the impression that, by the time of the manuscript’s composition, our medic has long since absorbed, internalised, and blended knowledge from printed sources and perhaps first general outlook and skillset. The virtually text-free nature of Egenolff’s printed book therefore enables them to fill the clear leaves with all that they know about the subject – and they clearly know a great deal commentaries of other authors.

HERBS AND HUMOURS

The volume abounds with handwritten instructions and memos concerning medicinal uses of the specimen concerned. The plantain, for example, is commended as a remedy for both dysentery and earache (“auriū dolores”), for the latter ailment prescribing drops in the ear (“auritus instillata”) and, in cases of emergency ( (“injecta syringae”). The scribe also observes (in English) the potentiating advantages of mixing: “Borage and buglosse may be reduc’d both to the same kind off herbes althoughe they have severall denominations in Eff: Phys: put the leaues floures and rootes in the same medimies because by connexinge off them togeather, and because they p[ro]duce the same effects, et vis unita forlior. Una potest esse alte rious succedaner” (“and a united force. One can be highly successful”) (p.9).

Some plants mentioned have retained their place of prominence in modern herbal medicine, although not always for the qualities we’ve become accustomed to: “Hypericum”, or St John’s wort, “cum flore et semine, coctum et potatum urinam deducit et in vesica lapidem diminuit” (“with flowers and seed, cooked and drunk, produces urine, and reduces the stone in the bladder”), and its leaves “macerata aqua ambustis, vulneribus et ulceribus saniosis prosunt” (“soaked in water are beneficial for burns, wounds and suppurating ulcers”).

It comes as no surprise in a work of this period that great emphasis is placed on the balancing of humours: beside “Buglossum” (p.9) is the note: “fuligimosos melancholiae hality reprimunt haec duo” (“these two repress the black melancholy”); and while comparing the digestive efficacy of varieties of “Nardum” (p.42), our medic comments: “Nardum Indicum, vel verus nardus, calefacientem et siccantem habet qualitatem, secundum Galen califaciens primum et siccans

humours circulating around the affected part”) – to say nothing of its benefits in aiding digestion and treating a headache.

The book has undergone more recent repair and preservation work, which complicates its material history by adding a layer of modification. But it nevertheless offers visually beguiling, first-hand evidence of the level of expertise of an English 17thcentury medic and a working demonstration of Neville’s assertion that “later herbals descended from earlier ones, and previously printed botanical books were a crucial location for herbalists’ “gathering” behaviours”5. We have concentrated on only a few pages of annotations; there is much more to digest here for the scholar of 17th-century medicine, and plenty to explore in detail.

1. Sarah Neville. Early Modern Herbals and the Book Trade, p.70

2. Ibid, p. 57

3. www.rcpe.ac.uk/heritage/william-turner-and-first-english-herbal

SOLD Ref: 8095

4. This and the following translations are approximate and sometimes reliant on unclear Latin. We are indebted to Christopher Whittick for his help in interpreting the text.

5. Sarah Neville. Early Modern Herbals and the Book Trade, p. 217.

7. LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

[GIBERNE] Manuscript book of recipes and remedies.

[Circa 1775-1830]. Quarto (210 x 168 x 19 mm). Pagination [13, index], [2, blanks], 157 numbered pages (pages 38/39 torn out). Contemporary vellum, torn at head of spine. Manuscript title to front board “Receipt Book of Medicines”, but also contains numerous culinary recipes. Pencil inscription to front paste-down reads “Giberne”

¶ This comprehensive collection of remedies, while apparently compiled for household use, perhaps served a wider reach; its many attributions and named endorsements certainly indicate a healthy social network. There are well over 350 remedies, compiled at different times, by at least two scribes, suggesting either that the household was unusually large and frequently unwell or that the Giberne family’s expertise was much drawn upon by the local community. The remedies are often quite brief and suggest a familiarity with the language of the apothecary.

Remedies are often clustered according to the ailment, and augmented over time, while others are simply inserted randomly into gaps. Time and again, the Gibernes demonstrate – or, at least, claim – their privileged knowledge by adding qualifications and recommendations to these remedies. Their presentation of the ever-popular Daffy’s Elixir, for example, carries the specific caveat: “The Right Daffy Elixir to be had only of Dr Peter Swinton No 46 at the large White House Salisbury Square Fleet Street – Mrs Allens(?) Direction”; and the ubiquitous cure for a run-in with a wandering mutt (“To Cure the Bite of a Mad Dog”), here copied from the “Hampshire Chronicle March 10th 1777”, is annotated “Dr Haygarth of Chester, suggests that to wash the Wound as soon as possible wh Water for an hour during wh time should be frequently squeezed”. Similarly, their cure for “Rheumatism” recommends “Husks of Mustard” which should “only be bought at the Mustard Manufactory City Road London”, but carries the encomium: “C. Berry our Servant always found beneficial”.

Most of the remedies are attributed: some acknowledge their printed sources (“See Mrs Glasse’s Book” (p.142)), others their manuscript sources (“Remedy against the Plague” on p.123, is copied from “Mrs Dryden’s Old Rect Book”). A great number suggest a more personal connection: for corns, “Mary our Cook from Wales” (p.155) recommends “Soft Soap, & brown sugar, made like a paste” and on p.15 “Mrs Giberne” has something for “Head Ach”, alongside two other remedies for the same condition; one from a “Mrs Freeman”, the other from “Wilkinson”. Another member of the family (“Mr Mark Giberne”) has a simple recipe “For the Hands” (p.120), and a “Mrs Crispen of Clifton Septr 1777” has “A Good Receipt for Cleaning the Teeth [...] NB: a fourth part of the above quantity may be sufficient to get made at a time. It may be used upon the Teeth either with a soft Brush, or soft Linnen” (p.149). Meanwhile, “Mr Powell / Hair Dresser at Worcester” (p.156) has something “To Thicken Hair”.

Names and measures typical of an apothecary are much in evidence: a remedy to alleviate “Shortness of Breath” comes with specific instructions: “Miss Benson 1803. She takes two pills at Night When her Breath is Affected most, Ann takes but one” (p.71); and “An Electuary made for me, by Mr: Crew 1769” (p.14) includes directions that it should be taken in “The quantity of a Large Nutmeg at Night or Early in the Morning”; while another is attributed to “A Prescription of Dr Fothergales for Miss Dewbery” (p.145). Among the entries are occasional memoranda that contribute to the sense that this manuscript served as a more general resource of services: for example, “Academy for the Deaf and Dumb. Mt Braidwood, Junr in Mare Street Hackney} cures Gentlemen. Mrs Braidwood cures and instructs Ladies”, which is updated in (aptly) darker ink “Mr B Since Dead” (p.104).

Some remedies feature instructions in varying degrees of detail that suggest an exacting approach to their use: “Great care must be taken to prepare the Aloes properly”, warns one, “with juice of Violets or a very strong tincture of Liquorice [...] One or two Pills is a Dose immediately before Dinner or Supper” (p.37); others suggest options for improvement: “Milk Punch” is annotated “When you put it in the Barel you may add 3 pints of warm milk from the Cow, or Omit it, just as you please” (p.136), and the efficacy of “A Good Gargle for a Sore Throat” (which includes “Honeysuckle, Bramble & Sage Leaves [and] port wine”) is not spoiled simply because it has festered, for “If it is Mouldy in the Bottle by keeping it is not the worse when skim’d off” (p.120).

These refinements confirm that the compilers are trying, testing, and either improving or completely rejecting some remedies. For example, among a group of 18th-century remedies for scurvy (one is dated 1779 and another 1780) is a cure for “Stone Gravel”, which, although added later (Bath Herald in 1813), seems less satisfactory than the earlier cures, since it carries the remark “I do not reccommd the tryal” (p.144). Another remedy, this time “For reducing corpulency”, (p.143) is curtly dismissed with “I would not reccomd this”, and “A certain and speedy Remedy for pimples that rise or settle in the face &c.” from the Gentleman’s Magazine (1752) is annotated “I do not reccommd the tryal” (p.144). No such qualms are expressed, however, over the directions “To Stop Bleeding at the Nose”, despite seeming more likely to terrify than to cure the sufferer: “Hold the Head over a Red Hot, Heater, or Iron”.

the cutting and preparing of the fish, which, following the addition of ingredients such as “strong Beer Allagar, half an ounce of Mace, the same of Cloves, [...] one ounce of long pepper, 2 ounces of white Ginger”, will “Keep a Year round” (p.138). “Beer drank at Sydney College in 1801” is provided by “Revd Geoe Butler – of Sydney College Cambridge 1801” (p.101).

This is a particularly noteworthy collection of remedies, thanks to the presence of so many attributions and named individuals. Whether or not the Gibernes had the reputation as apothecaries that some aspects of the manuscript might imply, the sheer profusion of contacts and sources mentioned here makes this an object that reaches out in many directions from its household origins.

8. LOCKED UP

CALLAGHAN, Robert (1708-1761). 18th-century lawyer’s manuscript legal and philosophical notebook.

Quarto (205 x 160 x 30 mm). Dos-a-dos: 145 pages of legal and philosophical notes at one end; 102 pages of notes contracting Locke at opposite end. 247 text pages on 128 leaves.

Bound in contemporary full vellum, probably a stationer’s binding, tear to spine and long slash across one board, manuscript note to opposite board reads “To be kept”

Watermark: Coat of Arms above initials “RD” (similar to Haewood 417, circa 1739, but he does not record any initials).

INTRODUCTION

¶ The process of abridging texts is central to the practice of law. In précising, the student absorbs and fixes ideas, making them more able to mobilise these when needed. As Francis Bacon observed “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” Here we see our newly qualified lawyer practising their art on classical and contemporary philosophical and legal texts. Chief among them is the philosophy of John Locke, whose ideas dismantled the “divine right of kings” and replaced it with the rational, self-determining individual freed from paternalist rule. The ruler derives authority not from God, but from the consent of the people whose interests they must serve, especially “life, liberty, and estate”. These ideas underpinned the United States Constitution.

WHO COMPILED THIS VOLUME?

The scribe identifies himself several times on the first text page and elsewhere as “Robt Callaghan”. This is probably Robert Callaghan (also O’Callaghan) (1708-1761), of Dublin. Support for this attribution comes from another inscription to the pastedown which reads “Thomas Callaghan ye youngest son of C C:” The initials “C C:” likely refer to Robert’s father, the eminent lawyer and member of parliament, Cornelius Callaghan (1682-1742); Thomas Callaghan (1713-1742), also a lawyer, was indeed Cornelius’ youngest son.

Robert attended Dr Thomas Sheridan’s preparatory school in Dublin and was an alumnus of Trinity College (BA 1729). He then studied at Middle Temple in London, before returning to Dublin where he entered King’s Inns in or about 1733, when this manuscript was written. As well as following his father into the law, he too became a member of parliament, representing Fethard, Tipperary in the Irish House of Commons between 1755 and 1760.

DEATH AND PROPERTY

In what appear to be the earliest entries in this manuscript (the date 1731 is written on the first leaf), Callaghan makes notes on “Rent Service as ye law now stands”. But on the following page he begins with summaries of the first three chapters of JeanBaptiste Du Hamel’s (1624-1706) Philosophia vetus et noua ad usum scholae accomodata (1682), which presents ideas from the experimental philosophy of the Academie Royale des Sciences (Du Hamel was its first secretary). He follows this with contractions of other works in Latin, apparently drawn from Democritus and Epicurus and also name-checking Plato and Aristotle. Callaghan devotes a total of 19 pages to these matters, before moving on to topics more directly related to his work as a lawyer.

The first grouping covers land law, possession, and eviction, and also takes in tenancy, chattels, “Fealty”, “Franckalmoigne”, “Homage auncestrell”, inheritance, and others in this vein. Other subjects included are the ever-useful “Court of the Powders” (the itinerant court for dealing with disputes on market days), the ubiquitous “Crimes & Misdemeanors”, and the more bluntly expressed “killing” and its prosecution.

Indeed, after property, death (whether at the hands of oneself or others) occupies much of his attention. He notes that “Capital offences are of three sorts, High Treason, Petit Treason, Felony”; that “Murder of one’s self may be comitted when one kills himself by hanging, Poysoning, Drowng, stabbing &c, with deliberation & a direct purpose. in this case one is termed felo de se”; and that “if an infant under 14 years old, or a Lunatick during his lunacy, or one distracted by force of a disease, or an Ideot, kills himself it is not felony”. (These and other passages probably come from Thomas Wood’s An Institute of the Laws of England (1720).) He then enlarges upon this theme, discussing “Manslaughter” (“ye killing of another w.out malice in a present

heat on a sudden quarrell, upon a just provocation, or in ye Comission of a voluntary & unlawfull act without any deliberate intention of doing mischief”) and “Chance medley”, then “excusable homicide” and “Justifiable homicide”.

As with the other sections in this volume, Callaghan does not copy out uncritically the thoughts of others. In the legal sections, as well as summarising laws and cases (“Ld Buckhursts Case” – short summary of the judgement; “Sr Willm Pelhams Case”; “Porters Case”; “Alton Woods Case” … “That wherever ye King is deceived in his grant it is void.”), he amends, corrects and adds to the texts. Appropriately for an Irish practitioner, he also makes occasional notes on laws in England compared to those in Ireland (“Arson (from ardeo to burn) is a felony att Com[m]on law, & is a malicious & voluntary burning ye house of anothr by night or by day & is a felony treason in Ireland”; “Murder in Ireld is treason, but not so in Engd”).

FILLED WITH IDEAS

At the opposite end of the volume, Callaghan sets down a précis of John Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding (1st ed. 1690) in just over 100 pages. Locke’s great philosophical work is arranged in four “books”: Book I (refutation of innate ideas) comprises four chapters; Book II (how we acquire knowledge) has 33 chapters; Book III (the importance of language in relation to knowledge) has 11 chapters; Book IV (what can and cannot be known) has 21 chapters.

Callaghan elides the first book –presumably because he takes the argument against innate ideas as given – and moves straight to how ideas are acquired. All chapters of Books II and III are summarised, together with chapters 1-10 of Book IV. It appears he had not finished the summaries because the title of chapter 11 has been entered but not précised. Each chapter is neatly summarised anywhere between half a page and two pages. He also includes marginalia to aid finding subjects at speed: for example, Chapter I of Book II begins “Of Ideas in general and their original. Whatever is ye object of ye understanding when a man thinks; or whatever ye mind is employ’d about in thinking”, and has the side note: “What is meant by ye term Idea”.

The summary that follows is interesting because, rather than summarising, as we might have expected, Locke’s second paragraph (positing that all ideas come from sensation or reflection), it recapitulates the argument against innate ideas (contained in Book I): “It is an establish’d opinion amongst some that these are certain innate ideas principles, as it were stamp’d upon the mind of man which ye soul brings into the world wth it.” Then in lighter (presumably later) ink, he adds “but this opinion is entirely refuted in the first book of this Essay”; and a side note reads “How do Ideas come into ye mind”.

Given the evenness of the text, Callaghan appears to have accomplished the task over a relatively short period of time. His summaries are clear and succinct and offer a fascinating insight into the reception and practical utility of Locke’s ideas. The book itself is clearly a practical aid, in more ways than one: a note on the cover commands that it is “To be kept”, declaring its lasting usefulness; meanwhile, a scattered handful of memos to the pastedowns include a reminder of on Fryday night” –philosophers, and human beings in general, must grapple with.

Callaghan’s volume offers a remarkably active witness to legal studies in England and Ireland and the discipline’s concern with the perennial subjects of property ownership and the taking of life; and it presents a fascinating dimension with its insight into the reception and application of Locke’s philosophy in the early 18th century.

SOLD Ref: 8055

References:

Elias. A. C. (Ed.) Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington. 1997. Alumni Dublinenses: a register of the students, graduates, professors and provosts of Trinity College in the University of Dublin (1593-1860).

<https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/works/70795b624>

<https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-1-252618751-2-788/cornelius-ocallaghan-in-myheritage-family-trees>

9. A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE

[HAYTER, Charles (1761-1835); HAYTER, Sir George (1792-1871)]. Original working manuscript on perspective.

[Circa 1804]. Quarto (195 x 165 x 10 mm). 35 text pages and a few pencil or crayon sketches on 24 leaves, with 15 pen and ink drawings and one engraved plate loosely inserted.

Contemporary vellum, soiled, text block loosening, some leaves excised. Manuscript calligraphic inscription to cover of “G” or “C” “Hayter. Vol. 5th 1804”. Inscription to pastedown reads “The Works of my dear Father Charles Hayter (John Hayter his son)” with several pen trials. An inscription to the pastedown at the opposite end reads “George Hayter”.

¶ This manuscript, which seems to have emerged out of the Hayter family’s home education, records its own evolution into Charles Hayter’s first published work: An Introduction to perspective (1813), a book which retained intact many of the personal notes found here.

The Hayters were a highly successful and mutually supportive artistic family. Charles Hayter (1761–1835), himself the son of an architect, studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London and developed a reputation as a fine miniature painter. In 1788, he married Martha Stevenson (1762-1805). They had two sons and a daughter, all practising artists: Sir George Hayter (17921871); John Hayter (1800-1895), a portrait and subject painter who exhibited between 1815 and 1879 at the Royal Academy and the British Institution; and Anne Hayter (fl. 1814-1830), who worked as a miniature painter.

Such an independent-minded family could not be entirely without conflict: Charles and his son George had an early falling out (the latter stormed off to become a midshipman), but they soon recovered their relationship and continued their work together. Indeed, according to the ODNB, Charles “came to rely” on his eldest son, “who remained at home without benefit of formal education [ ...] as a young lad he had a thirst for knowledge” and instead availing himself of “his father's skills as a teacher of geometry and perspective for artists [...] In copying his father's pencil portraits Hayter developed his skill as a draughtsman”.

Our assumption is that this manuscript was initially created as part of his children’s education, but that Charles soon saw its wider potential. Support for this theory comes from retention of certain personal references, together with changes which ‘translate’ certain details from the particular to the general.

The manuscript begins “My Dear George”, which reinforces the impression of having been originally written in “Dilogue” for personal use between Charles’s children. A note on the endpaper lists the characters as “George”, “Ann”, “Eliza” and “John”. These all refer to family members: Charles’ mother’s name was Elizabeth, and the others are his children. There are clear signs of adaptation from a familial to a general readership: for example, the instruction to “look steady up Edward Street” loses its local reference after the address is amended simply to “out”.

The text opens with a (heavily revised) question by Papa My Father tell you it would be that you Drawings would never be worth looking at impossible for you to paint original pictures if you did not make yourself thoro’ Master of Perspective, & pay the utmost attention to its rules” asks “will you tell me how to begin”. George replies you the meaning of the Word Per Perspective is the art of drawing on a surface, objects as they appear to us in nature” that Charles taught George, it seems probable not only that he also taught his other children, but that George, too, was (as this “Dilogue” implies) an active participant in their education; and Charles took this question-and-answer form, and even the names of his children, into his later published work.

Midway through, the volume has been flipped round to encompass a page and half of draft attempts at what became part of the Introduction to perspective. The text begins “The pleasure and improvement I shall derive in proving any rendering knowing that this most rational and delightful means of employing a spare hour”. This has been struck out with two vertical lines, and he begins again: “The pleasure to be derived from the practice of so fine an art, this most rational and delightful to

the refinement of ^that Taste” – and continues onto the next page. The text includes further crossings out, but what remains uncut closely resembles part of the final published text.

The illustrations are so similar to those in the published book that it seems highly likely they were directly copied from this manuscript. There are 15 loosely inserted drawings, ranging from quick sketches and diagrams to flawless vignettes which could pass for the finished article. Many are executed on little scraps of paper (some clipped from the backs of letters or other sketches) which are cut and pasted into combinations, annotated and their respective plate numbers changed, giving strong material evidence of a work in progress.

The artistic materiality is carried though into illustrations that occur within the text, one of which includes a perspective diagram with flap illustration overlaid. This detailed pen and wash is even more appealing for having been carefully rendered on a small fragment of paper cut from a letter, and complements the overall sense of transition between the personal and public contexts that this manuscript captures in striking

SOLD Ref: 8121

10. THE BUNS & THE BEES

[RECEIPT BOOK] manuscript book of culinary recipes.

[Circa 1843-1880]. Quarto (205 x 70 x 18 mm).

Approximately 75 text pages, 54 blank leaves. Calf-backed marbled boards with manuscript title to front board, spine damaged with large areas of loss. Some scuffing to front board, spotting and minor marks to text.

¶ This 129-page recipe book with six loose-leaf remedies is written in multiple hands. Culinary and household medical recipes are interspersed throughout. The culinary recipes include “M Soyer’s soup for the poor”, “American Cake”, “Buns for Breakfast”, “German Bread”, “French Pudding”, “Ginger Wine”, and “Calves feet jelly”. The volume also contains remedies for “a cold on the chest”, “for deafness”, and “hooping cough”, and recipes “to prevent milk from tasting of turnips” and “to prevent horses being teased by flies” Most of the recipes are attributed, many to “Mrs Sawle”, “Lady Rycroft” and “Mrs Tucker”. Some recipes are sourced from printed publications. For example, to “destroy scaly insects” is taken from Horticultural Cabinet;. “Directions for managing hive and bees”, on the other hand, have a more direct attribution: “Gale Glass hive maker, Alton”.

11. MOTHER’S APPROVAL

[CULINARY RECIPES] Early 19th-century manuscript book of culinary recipes.

[Circa 1810]. Quarto (204 x 70 x 17 mm). Approximately 97 text pages (of which 11 are pasted in recipes), 12 blank leaves. Vellum-backed marbled boards. Stitching broken, text block loose in biding. Boards heavily worn, some spotting to text.

¶ A note to the front paste-down reads “My Mother’s approved receipts”, but this notebook is written in multiple hands. Culinary recipes are at the front; remedies and calculations for managing a household are written from the back. The culinary recipes include “Shrewsbury Cakes”, “India Pickle”, “Fruit Acid” and “Diamond Cement”. The volume also contains calculations for budgeting and managing a household, such as a sum for “the value of 152/2 Gallons of Brandy”. Dispersed throughout the calculations are a few household recipes, such as one “For French Polish” The recipes have clearly been used, with those found unsatisfactory crossed through or labelled “Bad Bad.” Most of the recipes are unattributed, but a few are taken from printed publications, e.g. “Wine from immature grapes” is meticulously attributed to “Remarks on the Art of making Wine by Macculloch 2d Edition”, complete with the publisher’s details.

£400 Ref: 8138

£300 Ref: 8137

12. HOME PRIME

[ASTLE, Daniel] 18th-century manuscript Latin primer.

[Derby. Circa 1782]. Quarto (206 x 143 x 27 mm).

Approximately 277 text pages on 141 leaves (including paste -downs, but lacking front endpaper), which continues onto the paste-downs. Stationer’s vellum-bound notebook, spine damaged with loss to upper and lower section, ghost marks of old tape repairs to spine and boards. Inscription to front paste-down reads “2d: Danl: Astle Bought this Book at Derby Augst 21st 1782.”

¶ This exceptionally neat manuscript provides an insight into the levels of literacy that might be expected of young scholars in the early modern period. The text is written in a very clear hand in red and black ink throughout, with some of the neatest manicules we’ve ever seen. It begins with “A Caution in making Latin”, which commends books used “for Latin Exercises”, but advises that “young Scholars” must learn the “manner of Construction” in Latin, hence the need for this manuscript. Topics treated include “Of the Sign of the Genetive”, “Conjugation of Verbs”, examples of “A Verb Deponent”, “Clark’s Rules for Translating”, and “General Rules respecting the Declension of Nouns”.

Later in the manuscript we learn that the “young Scholars” are “my dear George and William”, so it seems highly probable that this is an artefact of home education.

13. A WOMAN’S PRIDE

[JOHNSON, Sarah] 17th-century manuscript account of a revelation presented to Queen Mary.

[Circa 1692]. Bifolium (sheet measures 345 x 230mm). Two text pages. Docketed: “A copy of Sarah Johnsons message to ye present queen 1692”.

Watermark: Royal Arms of England, within a shield and surmounted with a crown.

SOLD

Ref: 8107

¶ This account provides an intriguing insight into attitudes towards a woman’s voice when she is considered God’s messenger. “Sarah Johnson” apparently travelled from her “abode in Ireland” to present Queen Mary with her “revelation of his Spirit”, in which she witnessed a vision of “3 Lions furiously fighting”. Sarah interpreted this as “3 Kings wth their Armies vizt. ye K of France, K. James & K Wm” – and it is the latter, Mary’s Protestant husband, who triumphs. The text is accompanied by copies of an account (initialled “WT”) of her audience with the queen, which she was granted despite her apparent lack of social status. She forthrightly warns of impending “wrath of the almighty” and demands that the King and Queen “discourage the support of crying sins” and show “humility”; and if they doubt that her authority is divinely sent, she invokes the testimony of her “neighbours & acquaintances” Despite Johnson’s audacity, it seems she was treated in a “courteous and friendly” manner throughout.

SOLD Ref: 8140

GREY’S COLOURS

[GREY, John (d.1709)] Early manuscript inventory entitled “A true and perfect Inventorie of the goods and Chattells of John Grey Esqr: Late of Howick in the County of Northumberland deceased”.

[Howick, Northumberland. Circa 1709]. Single sheet of paper folded to make a strip 415 mm x 325 mm with conjugate blank. Text to one and a half sides.

This detailed tally of one man’s worldly goods provides a striking contrast with the minimal and mostly functional possessions usually recorded in such early modern inventories. John Grey was evidently well to do: the inventory, recorded after his death in June 1673, begins with his “apparell, purse, watch, Swords & pistols, and furniture for his pad”. Soon we encounter everal rooms defined by colour: “blew roome”, whose contents include “blew Curtins” and “blew hangings”, and a “gray Roome”, which contains at least three pairs of “Curtins”, but none of them grey; followed by a “stript Roome”, which features “printed Curtins” and “6 Turkey work

Further indications of relative prosperity occur throughout the inventory. “high granary” there are “two servants bedsteads”, and elsewhere we find a “silver Tankerd & 5 silver spoons”, a “damask table Cloth & 1 dozen damask napkins”, an abundance of bedding, and a kitchen stocked with the likes of “4 spits […] 3 dozen pewter plates […] 5 pair of tongs”, and “3 small guns”. Meanwhile, in the “Seller” are “Barrells great and small 30 and one Hogshead &20 dozen of bottels & one old press”, and “in the Milkhouse 31 milk tubs ^2 Cheese tubs 2 Churns 6 firkins”.

This plentiful evidence of a busy working household continues outside, with livestock including “51 milk Ewes”, “45 Lambs”, “12 swine”, “6 kine”, “6 Calves”, and much more besides. John Grey seems also to have attended to his inner life, to judge by the presence “in his own Closet” of “133 books price – 05.00.00”. His total wealth is initially estimated at “514.03.09”, then reduced on “15th May 1710” (almost a year later) to “the sum of 469.00.8” –for reasons not recorded.

SOLD Ref: 8139

FORGOTTEN THINGS

SMITH, John 17th-century manuscript entitled ‘A true and pfect Inventory of the goods and chattles of John Smith of the pishe of ffarmeborrow in the County of Sondsett yeoman deceased taken and prised by Richard Short Samuell Smart & John weekes the sixteenth day of June and in the yeare of our Lord God 1673.’

[Farmborough, Somerset. Circa 1673]. Single skin (410 x 195 mm), folded. Vellum.

¶ The worldly goods belonging to a 17th-century yeoman, indeed to anyone below the level of gentry, tended to cater only to the basic necessities of sitting, sleeping, and eating. Such is the case with “John Smith of the pishe of ffarmeborrow in the County of Sondsett”, whose inventory, recorded after his death in June 1673, is a reminder of the austere norms of ownership for a yeoman in the early modern period.

The appraisers, moving through Smith’s house and assigning a value to everything in pounds, shillings and pence, begin by noting “his weareing apparrell 05-00-00” (clothing being a fourth necessity), and “money in his purse and due uppon bond 48-10-00”. In the hall they record “one table board three chaires six joyne stooles one side board one cupboard 02 00”, and in the kitchen, items including “one furnace one brasse pann fower kittles […] one paire of andirons […] one dripping pann”.

Smith’s work on the land is well represented, from “corne in the Mowbarten in the howse and corne growing uppon the ground 15-00-00” and “one cart” and “plow harness” healthy smallholding’s worth of livestock that includes Kine and a Bull 25-00-00”, “twenty two sheepes and lambs 04 00-00”, “six stales of bees 01-10-00”, and the nonspecific “three young beasts 04-00-00”. The inventory is rounded off with the sum of “04-09-00” which is “due to the deceased” from a debtor, and with the mopping up of “things forgotten 00-03-04”, Smith’s total wealth is given as “153 01-04”.

SOLD Ref: 8031

JACOBITE

[JACOBITE MANUSCRIPT] Hybrid manuscript entitled “Ane Colection of Meditations & Prayers &c. Especialy such as are proper to be us’d before, at, and after receivig the Holy Sacracment of the Lords Supper for my own Privat Use”.

[Moray and London. 1686-1724]. Octavo (text block measures 56 x 96 x 26 mm). Pagination [2, title], 10, [2], 11-146, [5], [3, blanks], 147-260, 263-314, [7, “Table”], 315-321. Despite the absence of pp261/2, the text appears to be complete. Frontispiece, and 24 engravings (some full page, but most within text), one of which is hand coloured. 19th century calf, marbled endpapers, rebacked (probably 20th century), metal clasps, all edges gilt. Inscription to the fore edge reads “Morray 1724”.

¶ Collaging, copying, adaptation, and original composition all combine in this volume to chart a series of textual and physical journeys. Our scribe assembles a patchwork of illustrations and published text, together with their own thoughts, that resembles a collage, whether in terms of the object’s construction, the text’s fragmented narrative or its author’s geographical journey.

The disruption of chronology offers a series of trails that reflect the unsettled nature of the scribe’s own physical movement from the conception of the text to its conclusion in 1724. There is no clear, set order in which to read this manuscript: instead, the scribe gives us a range of interconnected textual routes through and around the manuscript. For example, near the end of p14 we are instructed to “(see) pag i8, 22”, and a few lines later to “(see) pag. 115”. The former direction takes us to “A Prayer”, which calls upon God to “assist me by thy H: Spirit yt my preparations […] be as exact as if I were to stand before ye Thron of my Eternal Judge” and “be admitted to the Marriage supper of the Lamb” before guiding us to “see page (38.) (39)” – and, beneath it, “A Caution as to our Preparation” enjoins us to “[see pag 40]”.

Page 38 takes us to page 254; page 39 returns us to page 18. But, before we breathe a sigh of relief at having closed one textual circle, we should remember we have only followed one of three paths set out on page 18: we have yet to visit pages 22 and 115 (the latter of which presents still further onward journeys). Meanwhile, if we’ve followed p38’s instruction, p254 presents the “Prayer to Holy Jesus” which cries “O Crusified Jes: my only hope & refuge! bath me in thy Blood beautifie me wth thy Merits” and then directs us to “see pag 37”, where the reader encounters a very similar cry “O My crucified Jesu!”, before directing us back to p254 – creating an endless loop of messianic suffering.

The majority of directions, however, offer the reader several different routes through the text: the prayer on page 22 refers the reader to no fewer than seven places (“pages. 18: 22: 38: 39: 25: 66: i48:”). This unusual combination of choice and direction disrupts normal sequential reading; because the options could always be combined differently, just one different page turn alters the sequence, resulting in a proliferation of possible routes and readings.

The manuscript’s title page can itself be interpreted as a map charting the book’s creation, apparently over 38 years: it was, a note reads, “begun in London 1686”. At this time, James (1633-1701) was King of England and Ireland as James II, and King

of Scotland as James VII, having succeeded his elder brother, Charles II, in 1685. James was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and fled to France in 1689; a further note on a later page suggests that this manuscript followed him and was “Used by me when in France 1690 & 1691”, then “ended 1724 Morray” – a trajectory (London-France-Scotland) that shadows the fate of the Jacobite cause and suggests that our scribe may well have been a Jacobite.

EDITING

Their identity remains elusive, but their sources suggest a complex mentality informed by Protestant, Catholic and occasionally secular texts. The scribe’s justification for compiling this text is provided in the preface: “If the deretions of Solomon […] may be look’d upon as safe & sufficient Guids” ~ “Any who has scruples […] lett them read Doctor Combers Preface to his Companion to the Temple, and if they do so (without prejudice) it will certainly convince them of their error.” Thomas Comber’s (1645-1699) Companion to the Temple (1st ed. 1672), was intended to reconcile Protestant dissenters to the church of England. A small pamphlet inserted between pages 146 and 147 entitled “For a right use of the H: S: by BP Ken”, is copied from the English non-juring bishop Thomas Ken’s (1637-1711) An exposition on the church-catechism, or The practice of divine love (1st ed.1685), and “Scots Christian Life” (p95) refers to the Anglican clergyman John Scott (1639-1695).

Various saints feature (“St. Mechtildis” on p40; “St. Austin” on p108; “St. August:[ine]” and “St. Bern:[ard]” on p290), and “Seneca tho a Heathen” (p291) is admitted as an honorary or proto-Christian, in order to offer some Stoic wisdom. Despite such displays of wide reading, the scribe, while discussing those “dubious in oppinion in matters of Religion”, implores that God “free me from all prejudice [especialy yt of Education]”, echoing a distrust of education expressed earlier, in a poem (p7) which reads: “By Education we are all misled, / Some believe, because we were so bred: /Mass John continues wt ye Nurse began, /And thus ye Child imposes on the Man”. This reconstructs lines from Dryden’s recently published poem The Hind and the Panther (1687), while other entries appear to be unpublished, or at least so recomposed as to elude easy identification.

Another bit of “editorialising” is particularly noteworthy: on p287 the scribe observes that “There are excellent, and Devot Prayers, to be had out of ye Auther of the whole Duty of Man, before & after examination.” But they appear to have thought better of this recommendation and have neatly pasted over it a slip of paper (since partly lifted) declaring “An Act of Contrition to be made before & after our Examination & solemne Confession of our sins to Almighty God in order to our Receiving ye Holy Eucharist.” It seems that our author, like the routes one follows in their book, is prepared to go back and change course later.

CUTTING AND PASTING

What sets this manuscript apart is its use of the conventions (and even clippings) of the printed book. The title page adopts several of these practices (centring and varying the size of the text, place and date[s] of “publication”), and there are red borders and running titles throughout. An engraved frontispiece is only the first of many engraved illustrations, including “Christ brought before Herod” (p172) by William Faithorne (www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1857-1212-244 –though the text differs from that recorded in the British Library Catalogue) and a full-page illustration titled in manuscript “Christs Resurrection” (p223) which retains the name of the artist (LaVergne). In this latter image, our inventive scribe has utilised an area depicting a blank stone tablet to insert – very neatly – apposite Biblical quotations and notes. This integration of the scribe’s own identity with the existing illustration makes for an alluring visual.

Their seeming adherence to the conventions of the printed book has some notable exceptions: on the page after the illustration mentioned above is another, hand-titled “Christ Ascendeth into Heaven” (p224), which is entirely bordered around with manuscript Biblical quotations (this practice begins with the first illustration after the frontispiece, on p8, which has also been hand-coloured). While the form of the printed book provided an initial guide for the scribe’s feelings, its boundaries were no match for their compulsion to break out into blizzards of text if they were so moved.

All of these elements – the selection and collaging of different sources and materials, the multiple textual paths on offer, the suggestions of a difficult journey undertaken by the book itself and its author – combine to produce a quite remarkable and hugely appealing hybrid artefact.

SOLD Ref: 8094

17. INTO THE WOODS

HOWELL, James (1594?-1666); Mary CHIVER. Dendrologia. Dodona’s grove, or, the vocall forrest. By I.H. Esqr

[London : Printed] By: T[homas]: B[adger]: for H: Mosley at the Princes Armes in St Paules Church-yard, 1640. First edition. Folio. [12], 32, 39-135, 166-219, [1] p., [2] leaves of plates. 18th-century full calf, recently rebacked and recornered. Damp stain to text throughout, plates torn with small areas of loss to, neatly laid down, closed tears to frontis and final text leaf, both repaired without loss.

Provenance: 17th-century ownership inscriptions of “Mary Chiuer” to front free endpaper and lower margin of final text leaf. Two inscriptions to title page: “Mary” and “Robert Chiuer”. A pencil-note to the paste-down claims, without any justification, that this is the author’s own copy.

¶ In Dodona’s Grove, an allegorical poem by the 17th-century Anglo-Welsh historian and political writer James Howell, prominent figures and groups are represented by trees and other plants in order to comment on events in Europe, particularly England, between 1603 and 1640. The political criticisms in Howell’s work may have been a causal factor in his incarceration in Fleet Prison from 1643 to 1651 (although financial insolvency was the given reason).

This copy of the first edition of Dodona’s Grove has annotations and manuscript notes, by one or both of the book’s early owners, Chiuer”, and “Robert Ciuer” who unpick Howell’s allegory, demonstrating in the process a high degree of erudition. The annotations to the front free endpaper make free use of phrases from the Book of Psalms and Genesis, and combine them with personal reflections:

Leading a Life without all strife in quiet rest and peace, from envy and from malice both or hearts and tongues to cease which if wee do then sch all we shew,

Feare not mary for thou hast found fāuar with god

Well may it bee saide

Mary bee not a fraide

And all his sonnes and all his daughters Rose up to comforte him : but hee refused to be comeforted; and hee saide I will goe doune to the graue.

Mary Chiuer is my name the lord be me with me

Immediately after this, two leaves of manuscript notes have been bound in. This paper is watermarked: Crozier (Haewood 1219, which he dates 1634/5) and the hand is commensurate with the time of publication – ie, the 1640s. The notes, written in a clear, confident hand, decode Howell’s allegory: A Parley held by Trees in the Vocall Forest. The reall Subject.

Under the shaddowe of Trees s couchd a mixt Methodologicall Discoure {Theologicall

Partly {Politicall {Historicall

Reflecting upon the greatest Actions of Christendome, since the yeare sixteene hundred and three (viz: from the beginning of his later maties raigne in England to the very Epoche, sixteene hundred, and fortie

The manuscript notes that follow give the actual names of the persons and places in the text: “The Oke reprsents the K. of England”; “the Mulbery Naples & Italy”; “the Elder Tree the D. of Bauaria”; “Homelia Bohemia Anagr.”; “Tutelia (Anagr of Lutetia) Paris”; “Mordogan a Giant spoken of in the Spanish Romances Anagr. of Gondomar” (Gondomar was a Spanish ambassador to England who was involved in negotiations over the failed ‘Spanish match’) … and so on.

Marginal annotations, made to 22 pages of the main text, continue the work of interpretation. The hand is very similar to that of Mary’s on the front endpaper, although it lacks the distinctive flourish she adds to the tops of the ascenders in the letter M in two of three inscriptions of her name; such a flourish could simply be a conceit she employs in rendering her own name, and is not found in her cry “Mary bee not a fraide” but it adds a touch of ambiguity as to the identity of the marginal exegete. The scattered marginalia are usually only a single word (“infamie”; “Henrie. 4.”) or a few words. For example, the word AMPELONA is underlined on p.7 and annotated in the righthand margin “France”, with the Ancient Greek transliterated as “the Vine”. Similarly, ELAIANA is underlined on p.13, annotated with a transliteration into Ancient Greek and rendered as “olive” for “Spain”. Further brief remarks on this same point include “like ye Welsh” and against the printed text “as much as a cloud would line a Monmoth Cappe” they write “a welch Expression”, – raising the possibility that Mary Chivers, like James Howell, may be of Welsh origin.

A later, probably 18th-century hand has continued the task of interpreting Howell’s allegory, adding names in pencil to about 20 pages but choosing to make no further comment. The last word, however, goes to Mary, who signs off the volume on the final text page: “Mary Chiuer / The lord be with her” (the second line has been slightly trimmed at the lower margin, presumably by the 18th-century binder, but is perfectly legible).

Taken as a whole, this annotated copy provides fascinating evidence of how a highly educated early modern reader interacted with a contemporary text, and is a wonderful example of a well-read annotator getting to grips with the allusiveness and layered meanings of Howell’s remarkable arboreal allegory.

SOLD Ref: 8117

[REMEDIES] 18th-century manuscript book of medical and veterinary remedies. [Wales? Circa 1760]. Octavo (184 x 110 x 20 mm). Approximately 144 text pages on 85 leaves. Written in a legible italic hand. Bound in modern full calf, and endpapers renewed. Watermark: Fleur-de-lis (but obscured in the gutter).

¶ Some remedy collections seem to reach beyond the confines of household use. This book is a case in point: many of its entries suggest a more than passing interest in the science behind the remedies, and the sources used – Cheyne, Boyle, Floyer and others – suggest a wide-ranging use of medical texts.

Our anonymous scribe appears to be based in Wales, and the family clearly owns livestock; not only is there a latter section devoted to remedies for horses and cattle, but one entry (with the Welsh title “Clyn ol neu Palfeis oi lleu-neu wed; llain” but the rest in English) notes: “The above was adviced by a stranger that was passing the road when our Cow could not stand on her legs” (f.57).

Human health is nevertheless the chief concern, accounting for over one hundred pages. Things begin modestly, with two remedies “for a Cough”, a recipe for “Balsamic” (which includes “2 Drams of Sperma Ceti”), and directions “To Stop Reachings or Vomiting”. But next, under the heading “Sleep”, we get a foretaste of the compiler’s predilection for charting the theoretical underpinnings of remedies: “Medicines that will force perspiration will procure Sleep as Opiates, Eastern Gums, […]Cordial, and Diaphoretics. And a Dose of the Pilul. Gumof. With an Alotic will give a good night as it drive out the perspirable matter every way.” (f.2).

This passage is drawn from George Cheyne’s The Natural Method Of Cureing the Diseases of the Body (1742), which marks the point at which page headings mostly switch from ailments to authors and the entries lengthen. Among others who get an extended treatment is Robert Boyle (1627-1691), whose work our scribe draws on for 14 continuous pages, taking in remedies “For the Consumtions” and “Tumors to discuss & ripen them if it cannot discuss them”, and two apiece for “Jaundice” (one recommending a mixture of steel filings and “Loaf Sugar”) and “Itch” (which features “Quick Silver”, an alarming ingredient that makes numerous appearances in this collection).

A three-page section on “Small Pox, by R. Mead” begins with a stab at epidemiology (“originally bred in Affrica – and more particularly in Ethiopia”) before recommending a regimen of “Oatmel or Barley gruel” and “Cool Air”. The tone then becomes more parochial with “A Receip for my own Disorder for Sharp Humor in my Body by I. Simon - Llangrallo” –offering the hope that our scribe may be “I. Simon” from the village of Llangrallo in South Wales. It begins: “Take a Tea Spoonful Morning and Night of the Bottle which I received”, and ends with the annotation: “This is an approved Remedy says a Man in Bristol that tried it” (Bristol is some 50 miles from Llangrallo).

Our scribe reproduces many passages that take humoral theory as a given. An extract from Boyle prescribes “A Drink to be frequently employed to correct Sharp Humors”; “Lemery on Food” specifies which fruits are suitable “for young People that are of a bilious and Sanguine Constitution” (they include “Strawberries & Goosberries ^& Plumb”, which, however, “are not good for Melancholy, especially when not ripe, for they increase acid Humors in them”).

There are around 26 entries in Welsh: seven or so appear early on, under the headings English but soon switches to Welsh for a remedy beginning including section devoted to consulted, on topics including

The sections addressing equine and bovine matters, besides their natural emphasis on treating maladies (e.g. Cure”), also indulge in more general techniques, such as “How to know the Age of a Horse” and Horse to follow you seek you out”

Our scribe has a clear interest in medicine that goes more than skin deep: the inclusion of the likes of Cheyne’s tables setting out proportions of nourishment” contained in a dozen “Foods” (mostly meat and poultry, but also “Carp” well as passages from other 18th

indicates that the owner of the manuscript, if not actually a doctor, shares with that profession a profound interest in medicine, health and human physiology. The bilingual nature of the entries and the presence of so many veterinary remedies greatly enrich the appeal of this intriguing book.

SOLD Ref: 8051

19. FOOTSTEPS IN THE HALL

HALL, John (1783-1847) Manuscript commonplace book and library catalogue.

[Yale, New Haven, Connecticut. Circa 1799-1804]. Folio (320 x 200 x 10 mm). 45 leaves. Pages numbered to p.78 (lacking pp.15-16), 77 text pages of text and some calculations. Original marbled wrappers, covers detached and worn.

¶ This manuscript, dating from its author’s college career, includes remedies, scientific and religious excerpts from printed and manuscript sources, and personal observations of phenomena such as sleepwalking and meteorology, along with an impressive library catalogue. An especially notable text concerns an African American man who became famous for having a skin condition that made him turn progressively white.

John Hall was born in Ellington, Connecticut and graduated from Yale College in 1802, then in the 1820s founded “the Ellington School”. His manuscript shows a keen scientific curiosity, a slightly dogmatic approach to religion, and occasionally an inclination to press the former into the service of the latter. He draws on a range of sources, from the Bible to periodicals (The Port Folio the Connecticut Courant) to Virgil, John Locke, and Lavoisier’s Elements.

In true early-modern fashion, science, theology and the remnants of folk medicine coexist in Hall’s manuscript. He begins with entries on scientific themes including “Mathematics”, and “Electricity” (“Cold water thrown on a person struck with lightning is recommended as having a salutary effect” apparently). A batch of “Anecdotes, Passages, &c” includes Locke’s assertion that “It is as certain that there is a God, as that the opposite angles, made by the intersection of two straight lines, are equal” – together with other rationalist theological thinking.

The remedies in “Physick” include a “Cure for a cancer” in which toads are applied to a sore to “extract the poisonous humours”. Hall charts the steps that this remedy has made in reaching him: “I was informed of this by a Mrs Abbe who knew a woman that was cured in this way

by the prescription of an Indian woman.” Fortunately, “Mrs Abbe is a woman of veracity”, but the toads must be “confined until they become

The veracious Mrs Abbe is one of a cast of acquaintances who furnish Hall with material or anecdotes. The most prominent is “Dr Dwight” (probably Timothy Dwight, Principal of Yale College during Hall’s time there), whose expertise centres on matters religious, with the odd sortie into science (“the Question, Whether Springs originate from vapor”). Other figures include “A Capt. Ells of Middletown” (p4), “Mr John Elsworth, afterwards (p13), and “Revd Mr Willard” (p48).

One particularly salient entry carries an unsettling echo elsewhere in his manuscript: the case of “Harry Moss” (i.e. Henry Moss), a freedman whose skin condition attracted curiosity and speculation. Hall’s account relates how “his skin began in spots to turn white, & has continued gradually to change” – a loss of pigmentation that would now be identified as vitiligo. Some members of the abolitionist movement, such Dr Benjamin Rush, used the case of Moss and others to build a specious argument that black skin was the condition that needed “curing” (Rush himself prescribed republican values, military service and farming), and that success in this would lead to “whiteness”.

Hall’s descriptions, which do not match any surviving texts that we can find, feature details possibly taken from a medical journal (for example, specifying affected patches “contiguous to [Moss’] finger nails”), and include the comment “I could not perceive that it was any where distempered” – leaving open the possibility that he is

recording his own observations (Moss is known to have toured a number of American cities making public appearances). In any case, Hall concludes: man sustains a good character, & served with reputation in the American war”. A curious passage in an earlier entry echoes Rush’s wrongheaded reasoning: under the heading “Is the work of regeneration progressive?” (p20), Hall again addresses a theological question (this time, whether becoming virtuous can be instant or progressive) by applying what then passed for scientific observation. He begins: “This is best illustrated by an example. There is a pond in which, if an [illegible] ^African wash himself, he will instantaneously, such is the virtue of the water, become perfectly white.”

As appalling as this strand of thinking is, one cannot fault Hall for the breadth of his reading. His library catalogue – which was clearly a work in progress – is extensive and eclectic. After an abandoned beginning on p71 (“List of Books”, including “Forsyth’s Agriculture” and “Darwin’s Phytologia”), 10 pages later he recommences his task more formally: “Catalogue of Book belonging to John Hall” is arranged in vertical columns across nearly five pages with book titles numbered up to 255. Hall still makes several corrections as he shifts titles to different positions in the list.

The titles reflect his interests in science, philosophy, and religion (“Henry’s Chemistry”, “Whiston’s Theory of the Earth”, “Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws”, “Cicero de Officiis”,

“Watts on Prayer”, “Butler’s Analogy of Religion”, “Essays to do good Cotton Mather”), but they also range more widely, to take in history (“Life of Washington by Dr Ramsay”), medicine (“Beddoes Hygeia”), literature “Pope’s Homer’s Iliad 2 Vols”, “Don Quixote 4 Vols”), and travel Voyage”, “Staunton’s Embassy to China”).

Hall’s manuscript presents a complex picture of a world in transition through the mental furniture of a young man in New England trying to integrate the new scientific ethos with the ancient pull of superstition and the imperatives of religion. The inclusion of his library catalogue adds a fascinating dimension, together with insights into beliefs about racial types which seem to slide all too easily into outlandish theories - then as now.

SOLD Ref: 8073

The New York Public Library holds the Hall Family Correspondence: https://archives.nypl.org/mss/1290

[INFIRMARY FOR POOR PEOPLE] Early 19th-century manuscript notes kept by a hospital doctor.

[Circa 1818-20]. Octavo (165 x 106 x 26 mm). 9, [1], 293, [1].

Contemporary half calf, marbled boards, rebacked with remains of original spine laid down.

¶ This doctor’s casebook amounts to a chronicle of medical treatment among the urban poor in the early 19th century, ranging in tone from the coolly clinical to the humanely melancholy.

In an “Introduction”, our anonymous scribe explains that he began recording cases “at the time Typhus Fever was so prevalent in this town and neighbourhood” – which town, we have insufficient clues to determine, but the occurrence of names such as “Baird”, “Stirling”, “McLachlan” and “McFadyen” leads us to suppose a Scottish location. He continues that his notes “were merely intended to be memoranda of any particular symptom, or any morbid appearance, which might occur in the course of my practice among the sick Poor in South East District of the city”. He subsequently encountered “so many very interesting cases of other descriptions, that I was induced, for my own after benefit, to include them also” an exercise that has brought

(p.7) (strictly speaking, an index) lists entries alphabetically under (from “Abscess” to “Vomica”), with columns for “Name” (of the patient often several per disease) and “Page”.

In the entries themselves, patients’ details usually include their name in the case of men, or their husband’s name in the case of women (unless they are widowed, in which case “Widow –”). Children are referred to by the parent’s name. Occupations are only occasionally recorded, but “Weaver” is several times mentioned; and “Mary McFadyen” (p.25), whose condition is “a very well marked case of Hysteria”, merits the observation that “She was a young unmarried woman, but I believe a prostitute” – though our scribe offers no basis for this belief.

Although poverty was a likely driver of many of the diseases recorded –

the word “scrophulous”, with its old connotations of moral and social inferiority, makes many appearances – the better off are not immune to calamity: an account of the case of “Elizth Taylor’s Son, Aged 7” who had “a small tumor in the groin” has a footnote: “A case in private practice very similar to this in a boy of the same age [...] proved fatal”.

Our scribe is sometimes given to dwelling on issues that still preoccupy doctors today, but from a perspective particular to his age: setting down his thoughts on “Widow Brock aged 60” (p.164), he begins: “Melancholy are the reflections which this case has often brought to my recollection”. In medicine particularly we scarcely ever meet with a case where we can say positively a priori, that this or that will have a beneficial effect, that this peculiar practice will to a certainty produce a cure; we practice very much in the dark indeed.” But there are exceptions, and this doctor’s lengthy lament centres on “the case of the poor woman Widow Brock”, who he believes would have survived her bout of “urine retention” but who delayed consulting a doctor, and so “lost her life entirely from her own false sense of delicacy”.

Other remarks are typical of the misguided beliefs of their era: discussing “Mr Lorrimers Wife”, whose affliction he considers is “decidedly a case of scrophulous diseased joints”, the doctor approvingly cites his patient’s “opinion that it would have gone the same way as her sons, had it not been for the repeated application of the leeches”; but in the case of “Peter Brodie’s wife aged 48” (p.224), he endorses the use of stronger (or, as we would consider it, foolhardier) stuff: “I consider the mercury alone to be entitled to the Credit of Curing this Case, the bleeding [...] may have done no harm, but I verily believe it did no good” (p.227).

At the end of his introduction, the anonymous physician looks forward to being able “to bring back to my remembrance many of the ideas which floated in my mind at the time they were written, recollections, which without this aid would in all probability have faded away” rather like some of the orthodoxies upon which he relies. But his clear dedication to medicine and his bursts of candour leave an indelible impression; and give a remarkable insight into the conditions and expectations for poorer people living and dying in Georgian Britain.

SOLD Ref: 8112

21. KITH IN HALKYN

[WILLIAMS, Anne] Welsh 17th-century manuscript book of culinary recipes and remedies.

[Halkyn, Wales. Circa 1690]. Quarto (text block measures 200 x 160 x 22 mm). Approximately 140 text pages on 113 leaves. Contemporary vellum, heavily rubbed and worn, lacking backstrip, paper softened and frayed at edges, some loose pages, preserved in modern marbled paper solander box. Watermark: foolscap, five-pointed collar, letter four above three roundels above.

Provenance: ink inscription to front endpaper reads “Anne Williams: 1690. my dear frend that is now and ever will be from this time for the and forever amen. In time.” Beneath this in pencil: “Anne Clough Spinster”. At the opposite end the are two inscriptions by “Hugh Roberts” and two by “Ann Williams” the latter of which adds “of Halkin” (i.e. Halkyn, a small village in Flintshire, Wales).

¶ Judging from the recipes and the names mentioned in this manuscript, Anne Williams was an affluent and well-connected woman who mixed with local gentry families. Indeed, many of her connections, from whatever rung of society, can be mapped to a small area around the village of Halkyn, Flintshire in Wales.

CONNECTIONS

The Williams family are connected by marriage to the Thelwalls, Wynns, Conways, Mostyns, and the Salusburys via the Mostyns, all of whom are mentioned in this manuscript. The closest connection is “to dry Cherrys my sister Thellwalls way” (f8v), but we do not know whether they were sisters or sisters in law. A reference occurs on f2r, “To make a Cake Lady Salusburys way”: the Salusburys’ family seat, Lleweni Hall, is approximately 11 miles from Halkyn. The connections go deeper elsewhere. For example, “Miss Conway of Stoughton’s” (f89r) and the eponymous “Stoughtons Bitters”(f54r), refer to Stoughton Hall, around five miles from Halkyn. The Conways owned this estate for several generations before they got into financial difficulties and were forced to sell Stoughton Hall in 1732.

Anne’s extended family also includes “Deare Cos Alice Winn”, who contributes a recipe for “spice cake” on “febryary ye 22nd 1701” (f33r), and “Cosen Mary Mostyn” (f52r), who offers one for “Cowslip Wine”. Later in the book, “Cosen Mary” contributes “To Pickle Cabbage called by some when pickled Labba de Loy – 1752 – Given by the Dutches of Roxborough to her Brother Sir Thomas Mostyn in Flintshire” (opp f83r); Sir Thomas Mostyn, 4th Baronet (1704-1758), lived at the family seat of Plas Mostyn, roughly nine miles from Halkyn. He had some 12 siblings, one of whom was Mary who provided the recipe. Another reference to Anne’s wider family is appended to a remedy “for the stone or Grauel” (f46r) which was “aproued by my nephew Madockes of bronyou” – probably Bryniau, a village situated 12 miles from Halkyn.

While all these references nestle our scribe into a family network that stays close to Halkyn, we have not identified exactly which Anne Williams it was who compiled this manuscript. There were several women in families whose first name was Anne, and the name Williams preceding or following marriage1. However, the name “Anne Clough” beneath Anne Williams’ inscription mentioned above is provides a useful line of inquiry; and indeed, the marriage of Anna Williams of Halkyn to Hugh Clough of Henllan (which was then also in the county of Flintshire) is recorded in 17032. Another record shows that Anna Williams was buried at Halkyn 28 June 17303. If these two records are one and the same person, they give us a best guess as to our scribe’s identity.

Among the attributions to friends and acquaintances, frequent mention is made to “Mary Bennit” who knows how to “Preserve Gooseberryes” (f14r), and “Whip Sillibubs” (f16v), as well as other goodies such as “very good Cakes”, several others refer to “M B” (probably Mary Bennett). Another friendship affirmed through food is with “my Deare friend Catherine Jones” who “was pleased to giue me these receates” (f16r). Among the remedies, a “Mr Perkins” has a “Plaster for legs that are swolne or sore” (f25r), “Sr Ed: lloyd” has a “good & safe purge for ye dropsey” which includes the commendation “Bettony taken Every way is mighty good & wholesome”. A brief history of a remedy is described in the lengthily titled “A Soueraigne watter of Doctor Chambers which he long used and therwith did many cures and keept it secret till a little before his Death, and then ye Bishop of Canterbury gott it in writing” (opp f103v)] and the ubiquitous “The Ladie Allens Water” (f24r), and “Lucatelas Balsam” (f111v) both make an appearance.

CONTRIBUTORS

There are some 190 culinary recipes and 65 remedies ranging from a few lines to full pages of detailed notes. The manuscript was commenced circa 1690. Anne Williams seems to have been the main contributor, with upwards of 130 culinary recipes, and about 10 remedies from the last decade of the 17th century through to the first decades of the 18th (a recipe on f31 is dated 1701, and the subsequent recipes appear to have been written around that time). Anne is joined by two early 18thcentury hands who add most of the remaining recipes and remedies, but a fourth, neat cursive hand has added a few in the 1750s. The latter references the same families, so we assume that all the scribes were from Anne Williams’ household or her descendants. The text is arranged in the conventional dos-a-dos format of recipes at one end and remedies at the other (with spill over from each).

INGREDIENTS

Ingredients cover a wide range of sources, from components gathered locally to those shipped in from overseas. They include herbs and spices (“Nutmeg”, “oringado”, “Liquorish”, “Take Balme Cowslips or what hearbes or what flowers you like”, “best ginger punn’d very small”), fruit (“Raisons”, “oring”, “lemon”, straberyes mullberies or Rasberries ye last is the best” (f7r), “Peach & Nectarine Fritters”), and meat and fish (“raw veale a pound & halfe of beife suett”, “a Red

Hearing if lent or else Backen does well”). But perhaps the most frequently used ingredient is something that, at the time of compilation was still a relatively expensive commodity: “Sugr”, “fine Loafe sugar”, “Shuger”, “suger”, and so on. How much did people know, or even care, about where sugar came from or the appalling conditions under which it was grown? It’s difficult to say with certainty, but it may well have been given the level of consideration many of us in the modern era devote to how our clothes are manufactured.

USEABILITY

One of the most striking features of the manuscript is its clarity and useability. Early modern recipe books are often written like a series of aide-memoires with the gaps in instructions easily filled by the experience and knowledge of the cook. But this volume contains unusually explanatory notes and descriptive prose, giving rise to some interesting analogies. Some are straightforward (“mingle all together and make it up in round balls of ye biggness of an apple or an Egg” (f3r), “cutt it in bitts Eyther licke dice or dyamond” (f4v)), while others, though still admirably clear, are more unexpected. In this example, she likens the mesh texture of pastry to a portcullis: “put it into a dish upon a sheete of puff past The fassion of a perculles & ye Materiall of ye pudding will rise up to ye past & fill up ye chinkes” (f4r).

casual-sounding suggestion that one heat “ouer the fire Leysurely” and when making “Court Cakes” the cook is instructed to all these with yr hands full to houres till it begin to eye and Look as white as snow”. but the temperate and timing are captured in the instruction to “bake ym in a pritty sharp ouen”, after which “box ym up for yr use sett ym indifferent neare ye fire and they will keep a whole yeare” (f35r). In other cases, timing more precisely (“two howers will back it this is aproued by Mrs Ester Jones” (f39r); and in others again, exactitude mixes with ambiguity, as in the instructions to “to euery pund of Damsons a pound of Suger [...] put a pritty deale of the suger in the pann” (f11r).

At times, the directions are so thorough that one wonders whether a method is being explained to someone else: for example, when they say “Take two pound of ye fattest backen cutt of all ye leane & rastiness whatsoeuer scrape it all wth. a knife till it come to ye substance of butter, as yu scrape itt put it into faire water” (f4r), or “To Coller Pigg Cut your Pigg downe the backe and belly and take out all the bones then take the head and Cutt off the nose and wash itt to or three times in faire water and Lay it in water two or three hours to take if blood [...] take sweet herbs some winter sauory a little sage sweet marjoram [...] nutmegg a few cloues […] strew it altogether all ouer yr Pigg and Roule up yr Collers as hard as possible [...]” (f25v).

Not only could these recipes be followed by most readers, but evidence abounds that they have been well used. For example, “To make Gingerbread” (f15v) has been crossed out entirely, and the method of “Preserving Goosbereys Green and whole” (f9r) turned out not to be “The best way” after all as it, too, has been struck through. crossed out and annotated “ys is not a good reseet”

has two lines crossed out (“& the rest of the suger you may put in when you mixe itt for Marmalet, if”) and replaced in the margin with the following instructions: “To Every pint of liquor yu must add half a pound of suger more yn at first this ^do when yu boile oven it”. The recipe ends with a note, both helpful and parsimonious, suggesting that “if you please you may keepe the seedes to boile in water for women that haue sore Niples” (f10r).

Like many of the best examples of early modern culinary collections, this heavily used and widely references manuscript looks as much outward to its owner’s network of acquaintances and family as it does inward to the practices and preferences of their household.

SOLD Ref: 8135

1. We are grateful to Dr Robert Colley for his invaluable assistance in researching this manuscript.

2. <https://www.findmypast.co.uk/transcript?id=GBPRS%2FM%2F884003293%2F2>

3. <https://www.ancestry.co.uk/discoveryui-content/view/179947:62104?

tid=&pid=&queryId=bde20d8fe9344a5b44e956cd4e198c89&_phsrc=glF33&_phstart=successSource>

22. HIS BERKELEY’S WORSE THAN HIS BITE

BERKELEY, George Charles Grantley FitzHardinge (1800-1881). A group of 20 illustrated letters.

[Circa 1833]. 20 handwritten letters, folded for posting.

¶ Among this humorous group of illustrated letters is a pen-and-ink self-portrait of Berkeley seated upon a display case. “Don’t you wish I get a place for the Case at Mdm . Tussaud’s?!” he asks, and immediately answers his own question: “Oh yes!!!”.

In this and other letters in the collection, we see the lighter side of George Berkeley, a man renowned as an aristocratic snob with an argumentative and violent disposition. Berkeley was tried and found guilty of assaulting a bookseller who would not reveal the name of a reviewer who had savaged , in Fraser's Magazine; two days later he duelled with its editor, but after three shots the latter was only slightly injured.

This collection of correspondence, which comprises 20 letters, shows our scribe wielding only a pen, and indulging in flights of fancy, fits of lyricism and bouts of gentle ribbing. , possibly Mary Catherine Berkeley (née 1824) known as Lady Catherine. The few that lack a salutation have a similar tone, so were probably to her. There is a palpable fondness, when for example he “ever depend on my wish to see you perfect in everything”. The tone verges on the paternal at times, telling Catherine to “remember this as one of my , but it can also be characterised by a friendly, playful banter.

Adding to this puckish wit are a number of small motifs embedded in the writing itself, and larger, more detailed illustrations which provide further glimpses of our scribe’s personality and his fondness for gentle teasing. He indulges in little jeux d’esprit such as a cartoon apparently showing Catherine attempting to scale a vertically written word, , with the exclamatory sidenote: “Mr Berkley says there is no such and the caption “Helping a tardy scholar over a tall (presumably a reference to Catherine’s use of the word in a recent letter). Other illustrations include a sketch of Catherine, (one assumes) at a writing

desk, and a rendering of two ladies being blown off a hilltop in a blustery wind. Berkeley reflects on his impressions of the contrast between city and countryside: he rhapsodises in one letter “the birds on shore, sing as if heralding approaching summer”, then disparages “the smoky city”. An affection for nature is evident in his description of “the fields and on the beautiful Hills and Woods” of Bath which he seems to find restorative, feeling able to “muse and think of how much is left to man”; but he again deploys his acerbic side when describing the “old chaps” of Bath with their “gay wigs and white washed faces”, and he skewers the “old Male Dusts” who “don’t do any harm, but on the contrary often lead to laughter at them an undesirable expense”.

Berkeley’s personality – or at least, the aspects of it that he chose to present to Catherine – come through strongly in these letters and their light-hearted illustrations and offer an unexpected counterpoint to his pugnacious public image.

£750 Ref: 8111

23. CHAOS OUT OF ORDER

[CAMPBELL?] 18th-century manuscript ciphering book and later notes.

[Circa 1790-1820]. Quarto (210 x 180 x 25 mm). Approximately 112 text pages, some inset diagrams. Bound in green vellum with the stubs of ties remaining. The sewing has disintegrated, and most of the pages are loose or loosely held. Soiling and staining, some pages with tears, crumpling and creasing of top corners along the inner margins with small loss in places, several strips of paper with notes loose.

¶ Contrast and complementarity, order and disorder, clarity and inscrutability, rest uneasily side by side in this volume. The book seems to have begun conventionally enough as a very carefully produced ciphering book with intricate and finely drawn illustrations. Our unidentified scribe (although the name Campbell appears apparently randomly on one page) has taken care in their transcriptions, using a flowing hand with bold section headings and very few crossings-out. Its methodical reproduction of the principles of an orderly universe, however, gets a twist in its final quarter in a series of bizarre and densely composed charts and tables whose meaning and purpose remain inscrutable. It is unclear whether these additions were made by the scholar in their later years or another scribe who has used the book as a convenient receptacle for their remarkable theories.

The unnamed scholar dutifully copies down a series of texts under carefully written headings: “Arithmetick” (14 pages, with subheadings including “Vulgar Fractions”, “Cross Multiplication”, and “Extraction of Roots”), “Principles of Geometry” (20 pages, subdivided into sections such as “Propertys of a Circle”, “Connic Sections”, “Propertys of the Parabola”, etc), and “Of Mechanicks” (42 pages, taking in the likes of “Of the Center of Gravity”, and “Of the Mechanical Powers or Six Simple Machines”

dimensional shading.

This recognisable form of scholarly endeavour has been supplemented with something far less susceptible to interpretation. A later hand has created over 30 pages of grids and filled them with text, both vertical and horizontal, that appears to map an array of correspondences. Rows and columns display word-sets, sometimes linguistic (“Drown / Drought / Drowsiness / Drudge / Drone”), sometimes moral (“Honesty / Generosity / Virtue / Piety / Vigilance”), sometimes on themes harder to determine. Often the grids seem calendrical, with months and dates marked (including at least one year – 1821), though the intention is unclear. Soon the writing becomes denser, and the perpendicular arrangements of text overwhelm the pages; coloured boxes appear on one grid, a row on another grid has a wash of blue save for a clear full-moon-like circle – and always the text continues underneath.

Perhaps the scribe is attempting some grand mystical theory underlying the universe, a bespoke form of Gnosticism or the Kabbalah; there may well be a kind of mania or mental illness involved. But the presence of these indecipherable “charts” in a manuscript ostensibly devoted to the agreed-upon mathematical principles that govern human existence makes for a curious, slightly unsettling volume.

SOLD Ref: 8058

24. ARMS MANUFACTURER

RADCLYFFE, William (1770-1828); RITTERSHAUSEN, Nicolaus. Genealogiæ imperatorum, regum, ducum, comitum, præcipuorumque aliorum procerum orbis Christiani : deductæ ab anno Christi MCCCC. continuatæ ad annum MDCLVIII. [with] extensive manuscript tabulated genealogies and biographical notes.

Tubingæ [i.e. Tübingen]: Impensis Johannis Georgii Cottæ, 1664. Third edition. [Manuscript notes circa 1800-25]. Pagination. Volume 1: [16], and [120] double leaves of genealogical tables; volume 2: [4], [92] double leaves of genealogical tables. Bound in early-19th-century russia, with marbled endpapers, upper cover detached and with worm trail, chipped and rubbed.

Manuscript biographical notes and tables to approximately 300 pages, plus 7 tipped-in notes and a three-page manuscript index at end.

Provenance:

[1]. William Radclyffe (1770-1828), Rouge Croix Pursuivant, College of Arms, his armorial bookplate to verso of ffep. and manuscript notes to over 300 pages.

[2]. William Noel-Hill, 3rd Baron Berwick of Attingham Park, Shropshire (1773-1842), with his bookplate (crest: On a chapeau gules, turned up ermine, an eagle, wings extended or, preying on a child proper, swaddled gules in a cradle, laced or with motto beneath: “Sans changer”) to pastedown.

The book was sold at the Sotheby’s sale of Lord Berwick’s library (1843) where it was described as “Lot 954 Genealogiæ Inperatorum (sic), Regum, Ducum, Comitum, a Ritterhusio, with copious additions in MS. by Radcliffe Rouge Croix Tubingæ, fol. 1664.”1 It was bought by

[3] Edward Smith-Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby (1775-1851), who has inscribed the ffep “Purchased by Boone May 1st. 1843 at Ld Berwick's Sale Lot 954 – 2l.2s - for me Derby Knowsley.” A second inscription records the book’s new location at “Knowlsey Private Library/West Division/East Bookcase/Shelf 1 No. 7.”

Boone mentioned in the first inscription is probably the bookseller, William Boone (fl. 1825-1848) of 480 Strand, London and later 29 New Bond Street, London2. He is known to have purchased at least two other lots: “Lot 137 Banks, Thomas Dormant and Extinct Baronage, 4 vols. bds. 4to 1807-37” (for 1l. 11s), and “Lot 2896 Yorkshire :- Pedigrees and Arms of Families of Yorkshire, with drawings in trick, bound in russia, Manuscript. fol. n.d.”3 .

Note: Radcliffe has numbered the pages inconsistently. To avoid any confusion, we have opted instead for referencing by continuous foliation.

¶ This artefact may well be considered an exhibit in an early-19th-century case centring on a forged pedigree by William Radclyffe, once Rouge Croix Pursuivant of the College of Arms. Radclyffe was the book’s first inscribed owner, and the uses to which he put its blank pages are striking in light of his later (or, rather, contemporaneous) transgression.

RISE AND DESCENT

Radclyffe began as a shopkeeper and confectioner in Oxford Street between 1790 and 1795, when his sister’s marriage to an elderly but wealthy man enabled him to retire from commerce and pursue an interest in genealogy and heraldry. Having gained access to the records of the College of Arms via an acquaintance, in 1801 he produced a pedigree deriving him from Anthony Radclyffe of Blanchard, Northumberland, and via this connection, establishing his descent from the Lords Derwentwater. In 1803 the Duke of Norfolk nominated him Rouge Croix Pursuivant, and he built a considerable reputation as a genealogist.

Over a decade later, beginning in 1816, Radclyffe’s pedigree, which had been registered at the College of Arms, was the subject first of doubts, then of an investigation. An entry in a parish register recording a marriage in 1640

involving one Rosamund Swyft, and upon which Radclyffe’s pedigree chiefly hung was found to be forged, and the culprit identified as Radclyffe himself. He was fined and imprisoned, and surrendered his patent as Rouge Croix, although the disgrace that followed could not completely eclipse his reputation as a genealogist: after his death, the College of Arms approached his widow to request his manuscript collections, but this volume, despite its importance, seems to have escaped notice.

Ritterhausen’s book comprises a series of tabulated genealogies of earlier kings, emperors, and rulers, but do not directly touch upon Radclyffe’s enquiries; his choice of Rittershausen’s volume appears to have been driven by the quantity of blank

pages that he can fill with his own work. His motivations for so doing are, at this distance, inscrutable, but given the strong suggestion (as we shall see) of a nefarious purpose to some of his writings here, it’s at least possible that he intended to evade detection by hiding his notes in an unprepossessing volume. If he did, it worked, because when the College of Arms sought his manuscripts, this vital piece of evidence – which may fill a blank space in the chronology of his pedigree-forging – apparently went undetected.

BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS

Radclyffe’s manuscript consists mostly of genealogical notes and tabulated descents of British families. They begin quite generally, with four pages of genealogical tables entitled “The Decent of the Ancient Kings of Brittain” (copied from Geoffrey of Monmouth), then become more specific as he tabulates the pedigrees of various noble British families assembled from other printed and manuscript sources. For example, there are seven pages of notes and tables including “Kings of Burgundy”, “Earls of Anjou”, “Kings of Scotland”, the Earls of Huntingdon, Chester, and Northampton, and the “Baloils” (i.e. Balliol) Kings of Scotland (the latter from “Dugdale’s Barone. 523”). He provides tables replete with armorial shields for the “Northern Barons &c”, which are “Ex Nicholson & Burn’s Hist. of Cumb. &c” (i.e. Joseph Nicholson and Richard Burn’s The History and Antiquities of the Counties of Westmorland and Cumberland. London, 1777), and he augments these with notes from “Dugdale Baronage & My Old Peerages”. Tables with armorial shields and roundels are also provided for “Clare’s Earls of Glocester, Clare, & Hetford” and “Barons Fitzwalter”. Within the roundels he occasionally cites sources, including “Dugdale”, “Vincent” and “Mills”, together with several page references to manuscript pedigrees he has completed on later pages. Other sources include copies of legal documents (wills, indentures), and epitaphs (one of which is illustrated with gravestones (f89r)), Glover is referenced (e.g. “Glo: Coll: B.30. P.22. 65”) and the Harleian Manuscripts are frequently mentioned.

THE MALEFACTOR’S ARMS

Notes such as these do lend weight to the notion that Radclyffe was a capable genealogist, but the volume’s most compelling aspects lie elsewhere: his

treatment of the Barons of Kendal is curiously elaborate and attentive. He begins with a full-page shield (divided into 20 panels) and two crests, and continues with genealogical tables that include roundels and shields, the latter hand-coloured.

Radclyffe’s motivation for such a luxurious presentation soon becomes clear: the second page of tables charting the Barons of Kendal, once they reach the 15th century, segue into the Radcliffe family and provide our scribe with the earliest piece of evidence for his own pedigree – and our first piece of evidence for his intentions in writing this manuscript.

Radclyffe seems to have executed much of the work in 1800, a not insignificant fact bearing in mind that he produced his dubious pedigree a year later: there are numerous references to people living in that year (“Thomas Biddulph Clerk nm. Bristol now living Sepr. 1800”; “Robert Forster [...] now living in the Army 2nd Novr. 1800” (f64v); “George Smith alias Marechale […] now living in London & attested this Pedigree be true 18 July 1800” (f52v)). But the full time span of his work on the manuscript extends over several decades. He was convicted in March 1820, but continued working at the house he was apparently given by the College of Arms until they finally ejected him in summer 1823. Despite this ignominy, we can see from his manuscript notes that he lost none of his assiduity and continued his antiquarian studies after this date (“William Perkin only son & heir born 9 Oct 1807 died unmarried17 January 1825” (f58v), “Hannah Milnes sole heir of her father married to Walker sometime of Round Green now of Upper Woodhall W. Barfield 1825” (f59r)).

This earnest pursuit of true lineage far outweighs Radclyffe’s more perfidious acts, but one’s attention is naturally drawn to evidence of the latter. Three pages (which are all referred to as p60 in the manuscript) are of particular interest: these contain the genealogy and biographical details of the Swyft family, which served as the raw material for his fraudulent pedigree. The tabulated genealogy extends to Mary (“living 1st Febr. 1644”), and Rosamund, whose brief details are: “born after 1612. Youngest Daughter. was” (f126v). This truncated entry, so expressive of the frequent sparseness of detail concerning the lives of early-modern women, also illustrates how this biographical vacuum allowed Radclyffe to “fill in the blanks” and continue Rosamund’s story in a way that suited his purposes. What gives this blank space added intrigue is that text has been carefully erased leaving a “ghost text” of what was probably Radclyffe’s original contrived connection.

Radclyffe’s creation of a fictitious line of descent for himself seems beyond question; what drove him to blot his escutcheon in such a manner is less clear. But the timing of the bulk of his manuscript notes and the areas of concentration and detail makes a compelling case for further study.

£2,750 Ref: 8129

References

1. Catalogue of the ... library, and ... collection of heraldic and historical manuscripts, the property of ... William lord Berwick, which will be sold by auction. By William Noel- Hill (3rd baron Berwick.) Sotheby’s. 1843.

2. NeC4667-8778 - Papers of Henry Pelham-Clinton, 4th Duke of Newcastle under Lyne (1785-1851), in the Newcastle (Clumber) C < https://mss-cat.nottingham.ac.uk/DServe/TreeBrowse.aspx?

src=CalmView.Catalog&field=RefNo&key=NeC4667-8778%2F6186>

We are extremely grateful to Dr Robert Colley for his invaluable contributions to our understanding of this volume..

[CARTWRIGHT, Charles; HILL, George] Manuscript sermons [bound with] The vvhole book of Psalmes: collected into English meeter, by Thomas Sternhold, Iohn Hopkins, and others, conferred with the Hebrew, with apt notes to sing them withall.

London: Printed by G. M[iller] for the Companie of Stationers. Cum priuilegio Regis Regali, 1633. [Manuscript Circa 1639-1651].

Octavo. Pagination [10], 91, [3] p. Collated and complete (but corner of A4 torn with loss to 14 lines of text). A fragment of 11 leaves from another contemporary edition of the Psalms is loosely inserted at the end. Approximately 113 manuscript pages (plus some blanks) bound before the printed text comprising four sermons. A few leaves appear to have been excised from the first sermon, thereafter complete.

¶ While violent upheavals and widespread destruction during the 1640s tore apart the social fabric of England, Charles Cartwright was intent on bringing together this volume of print and manuscript material, apparently to aid and record his preaching. Cartwright has taken a printed edition of the Book of Psalms and bound in over 100 pages of his own manuscript sermons, to create a portmanteau that probably accompanied him on his travels.

An in inscription to f.1 reads “soro mono at puisant but I am your Louing brother untill death Charles Cartwright 1649 anno Io. Charles Charles Finis Elizabeth” (presumably the sister referred to in the Latin inscription). Another inscription of similar vintage to the rear endpaper reads simply “George Hill” and has his pen trials, but given that Cartwright has inscribed to the volume to his sister Elizabeth, and he dates it within the period in which the sermons were written, we assume that the scribe was Cartwright. However, despite the fact that we know his name, together with the dates and places of the sermons, Cartwright’s identity has proved elusive. He does not appear in the CCED database, but they have a gap in their records at these dates, so the records may have fallen victim the chaos of the era.

Parts of the manuscript may contribute in a small way to filling in a few gaps in these records: Cartwright’s comments indicate that these sermons were used at several locations and at different times. He notes, for example, that the sermon on “Luke .2.10.11.” was delivered at “Willingham: 1639: Bonby: 46: Old Malton 1651”, and “Esay 25: 6.7” at “Willingham: 1640: Ashby: 1641: Thurston . 1642. Old Malton 1649. Narborough 1646. Bonby 1647”. There’s a notable shift in tone from the early part of Cartwright’s manuscript, which is suggestive of a preacher learning to moderate his public statements in the name of prudence. In the first sermon he shows his Royalist colours with a stout defence of the Divine Right of Kings that uses the Biblical metaphor of a vineyard: “god provides for the preservation of his vineyard as a Nation by building a tower in ye midst […] Such is a King, who […] by his sovereign power is also to quell all forraign enimies & domestick rebellions by his princely clemoncie” and, as the monarch is not accountable to parliament “by his impartiall & uncontrolled justice to regulate & correct offences”, he is within his right to dissolve it, or as Cartwright says “by his kingly proregain” (which we read as prorogue) “to protect countenance & justifie his ministers and ye dressers of the wise execution of his lawes”. Cartwright presses home the argument that “god himselfe is this tower and his vineyard, The king his vice regent his principall husbandman, and as he hath god’s power of his people delivered into him, as his delegate; so is he in gods steed the tower of defence, upon the earth in ye minds of ye nationall vineyard; whosoever therefore resisting this power this tower; resisteth God himself”. Before long,

Cartwright becomes specific: “such a tower was our Charles to us, till sedition, faction superstition, heresie, treason, rebellion, prophaneness irreligion, blasphemie and contempt of all holy things broke downe our headge, dismantled our fortresse, sed prestat motos componene fluctus”.

This Latin phrase, from Virgil’s Aeneid (roughly, “but let me still the raging waves”), and cited by Cicero as a rhetorical device, seems here to signal Cartwright’s ambivalence over being too outspoken about current events; and it foreshadows how, after this outburst, Cartwright effectively unpins his colours from the mast and in the following three sermons, sticks to safer scriptural ground (“I neede not trouble my selfe with unfoulding ye context, doing it is only an historicall relation of ye nativity of our saviour”), perhaps realising the need for greater discretion to avoid controversy during the Civil War years. This rare survivor from a tumultuous decade in English history, quietly reveals its author’s sympathies and hints at some of the tactics they used to survive the violence of the period.

SOLD Ref: 8091

26. REMEMBERING ALICE

[HEALEY, J. G.] 19th-century Scrap book, including a rare engraving of Alice of Dunk’s Ferry.

[Circa 1780-1850]. Quarto (200x 250 x 35 mm). 144 leaves of which, approximately 117 are manuscript pages, 73 are blank pages, and 98 pages contain scraps ranging from the late 18th century through to the mid-19th century. Early 19th-century half roan, heavily worn, spine broken. Paper watermarked 1820. Compiled by one “J. G. Healey” of “Willenhall”. A later hand had added brief biographical details of the initial compiler on f60v: “J.G. Healey born at Cotham in the Parish of Millwich. North Staffordshire.” The scrapbook was compiled circa 18201850 using engravings dating from circa 1780 to 1850 and poems copied out in manuscript in the first half of the 19th century.

¶ “Alice of Dunk’s Ferry” was one of America’s earliest oral historians, with a prodigious memory and a gift for storytelling. She worked on Dunk’s Ferry on the Delaware River where she was also known by the monikers “Black Alice” or “Old Alice”, and would regale her passengers with stories dating back to the 17th century while collecting tolls.

Alice was born enslaved in Philadelphia around 1686 where she lived until the age of 10, when she was taken to Dunk’s Ferry in Buck’s County. Her stories of the indigenous people of what became Pennsylvania (and its colonisers, including William Penn, Thomas Story and James Logan), as well as her in-depth knowledge of the Delaware River and its fish, led to her being celebrated as a local historian. She died in 1802, when she was said to have reached the age of 116.

A year after her death, a portrait of Alice was created in stipple engraving and printed in two variations: one was produced as a stand-alone print, and is the version we have in this scrapbook; the other was used to illustrate her short biography in the recently published Eccentric Biography; or. Memoirs of Remarkable Female Characters (Printed by J. Cundee, IvyLane, London, 1803, and at Worcester, Masschussetts, 1804). In the latter version, an inscription beneath her portrait states that it was “Engraved from an Original sent from America, by Mackenzie [...] by T. Hurst, Paternoster Row”. Thomas Hurst was a bookseller and printer who operated from 32 Paternoster Row between 1799 and 1805, before moving to 12 Printing House Lane in 1808 1. No details are given as to whether Mackenzie’s “Original sent from America” was a drawing or painting, and we have been unable to find even a passing reference to it since.

The central image of both versions is executed in stipple engraving technique, but the surroundings differ markedly between the two,

not least in their employment of line engraving. As noted above, the book illustration contains publishing details, but is otherwise blank, whereas, except for the name “Alice” the stand-alone print does not include text and is instead surrounded by vignettes illustrating her life – visually supplying context that the version illustrating her written biography does not. The sailcloth backdrop seems to allude to her ferry work, and her devout beliefs are represented with a crucifix and Bible. Beneath her image is a vignette depicting Alice seated at a table with a well-dressed man and woman whom she appears to be entertaining with her storytelling craft. But another element in the design offers an interesting extra layer to modern commentary concerning Alice’s reputation: it has been claimed that her entrepreneurial activities – such as setting up fisheries and supplying shad for sale in Philadelphia – have only been recognised in recent years 1. This contemporary print, however, appears to acknowledge her supposedly overlooked accomplishments by including several fishes and nets in the surrounding illustrations.

A comparison of the two variations presents an intriguing printing conundrum. The central image of Alice, as we have said, appears to be exactly the same stipple engraving in both prints, but the backgrounds differ. This suggests that both versions were printed simultaneously in the year 1803, using one of three possible methods. The first would involve the plate (either with lettering or biographical vignettes and mixing stipple and line engraving methods) being printed and the background burnished out and replaced with the new surrounding, then a second print run completed. The second possibility would be to print the central image from one plate and then transfer that image to a second plate by running a still-damp print through the press to transfer the image onto another piece of copper which would then be engraved with an almost-exact copy image. The third solution, and probably the most likely, would be to print an entire run of just the central oval and then divide it into two sets; both sets would then be returned to press, one with a new plate containing only the wording, the other set with a plate featuring only the vignettes, and both with the central oval left blank. This technique is commonly used for multi-colour intaglio prints and would account for a slight, but perceptible, difference between the blacks of the central oval and those of the vignettes.

While the illustration to Eccentric Biography probably survives in most copies, this stand-alone print with its arresting iconography is extremely rare with only one copy recorded in library collections at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. Although it is unclear why the Alice engraving appears in this collection of unrelated images, its inclusion prompts an intriguing question as to how and why it may have been of interest so far from its place of origin. It could be partly explained by the fact that abolitionism was at its height in Britain at the time, but apart from the occasional rarity like a small print of John Wesley “Published by J Hancock” there is little else to support an abolitionist reading of the artefact. Instead, it seems to be simply that Alice’s portrait made for a visually attractive centrepiece to one (f.39r) of the scrapbook’s many pages.

The survival of this standalone print – most loose copies of which would have been all too easily lost or irretrievably damaged – makes this otherwise unremarkable scrapbook stand out as a testament to Alice’s enduring influence. The unresolved question over exactly how the two variations were created provides a fascinating puzzle for historians of early-19th-century printing and the depiction of Alice is a remarkably clear example of early 19th century iconography devoid of the usual patronising or ‘othering’ tropes.

SOLD Ref. 8146

1. <http://bbti.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/details/?traderid=36380>

2. For example, Alice’s Wikipedia entry and ‘Marking Juneteenth with slave’s tale’ by Edward Colimore, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, 7 June 2015.

27. MAGICAL MISCELLANY

[DESPIAU, L.]. Select amusements in philosophy and mathematics : proper for agreeably exercising the minds of youth. / Translated from the French of M. L. Despiau, formerly professor of mathematics and philosophy, at Paris: with several corrections and additions, particularly a large table of the chances or odds at play. The whole recommended as an useful book for schools, by Hutton.

London: Printed for G. Kearsley, Fleet Street; Bell and Bradfute, Edinburgh; and Brash and Reid, Glasgow. By W. Glendinning, Hatton Garden. 1801. First English Edition (first published in French in 1799). Octavo. Pagination xix, [1], 397, [1], and 33 leaves added at end (of which 21 pages have manuscript additions). Contemporary calf backed marbled boards (with show-through from an earlier text), rubbed and worn, light spotting to text.

¶ Despiau’s Select amusements is a panoply of magic squares, magic lanterns, card tricks, artificial memory, palingenesy (the “means of which a plant or an animal, as some pretend, can be revived from its ashes”), illusions (phantoms, “Chinese shadows”, Silhouettes, “Magic Picture”, etc), household recipes, amaze multifarious format evidently appealed to our scribe, who has added 21 manuscript pages to the end of the volume. Although an inscription to the endpaper Grimes by around forty years. They have added in 33 blank leaves after the end of the printed book, and the expanded volume has been rebound cheaply using old text pages, the contents of which are faintly detectable on the covers.

The manuscript entries begin with several household hints and recipes (“To make good blacking”, “To make Gum water”), but the emphasis begins to shift towards the vein of Despiau’s “Amusing secrets”. An instruction on making “A Simpathetic Ink” (one of several such recipes) is followed soon afterwards by “A Secret for Travellors”, which recommends the sucking of a stone made of “Roach allum” to assuage one’s thirst on a hot journey.

The stone-sucking suggestion appears in texts as far back as John Bate’s The Mysteries of Nature and Art (1635), and other entries appear to have been sourced from a range of printed collections. The directions “To extract spots of grease from books, prints or writings” match closely with text from William Pybus’ A Manual of Useful Knowledge (1836) (although Pybus, like his anthologist peers, often raided earlier volumes for his content); and “An excellent powder to scour the teeth” appears in The Laboratory; Or, School of Arts by Godfrey Smith (several editions, 1770s to 1790s) – as do several recipes for treating metals (“To colour Gold”, “To make all metals malleable”).

Smith is also the apparent source for a recipe “To prevent getting Intoxicated”, two methods “to mend broken china or glasses”, and more involved procedures for making “A Camera Obscura” and “A water dial”. In both latter cases, our scribe also copies out Smith’s diagrams, but adapts the water dial image so that a human figure, pseudo-classical in Smith, becomes a contemporary hatted gent.

Another source becomes evident in the recipe to “Grind leaves of gold in a few drops of honey & add to it a little gum-water, & it will be excellent to write or paint with” – a method found in Dictionarium Polygraphicum by John Barrow (1735); another, detailing “How to take the impression of a Butterfly”, also appears in Barrow.

Later manuscript entries betray an interest in alchemy, or the appearance of it: in a handful of passages seemingly taken from Art of Distillation (1651) by John French, we find instructions “To make a plant grow in 2 or 3 hours” (you’ll need “common mould” and “the water that soaks from an ^old dunghill”), and two recipes “To make the Silver tree of the Philosopher” and “the steel tree of the Philosophers”. The first of these requires “aquafortis 4 oz. fine silver 1 oz which dissolve in it; then take aquafortis 2oz in which dissolve quick silver, mix these 2 liquors together in a clear glass with a pint of pure water […] after a day you will perceive a tree to grow by little & little”.

The recipes then address more practical matters: “To harden quills” from Mrs Rundell’s The New Family Receipt-Book (1810); “Instructions for Brewing and Managing Porter” and other recipes for alcoholic drinks such as “tart ale”, “Spruce Beer”, and “Milk punch”.

This volume embodies the magic of the miscellaneous text: it was originally compiled in French and translated into English with additions; the contents (printed and manuscript augmentation) follow various paper trails, some leading back to the 17th century, and even its marbled paper boards utilise sheets from an earlier printed text. These elements combine to create a continuous interchange between print and manuscript culture.

SOLD Ref: 8126

28. PENNED A PENY

[PENYSTON, Sir Thomas (1591-1644); PENYSTON, Sir Fairmeadow (1646-1705)]. Manuscript miscellany of early 17thcentury prose and poetry.

[Cornwell House, Circa 1634]. Octavo (text block measures 147 x 100 x 14 mm). 83 leaves (one endpaper torn out with only stub remaining). Approximately 72 text pages.

Contemporary limp vellum, slightly soiled, one corner nibbled, text clean. Watermark: Coat of Arms (lions, castle), above lamb, surmounted by a crown. Similar (but not exact match) to Haewood 608, which he dates circa 1619.

Provenance: ink stamp to front endpaper “Cornwell House”, and inscription: “F Penyston” to the opposite end. Cornwell House was the Penyston family seat from the early 17th century when it was acquired by Sir Thomas Penyston (1591-1644).

¶ Manuscript miscellanies are repositories of early modern prose and poems some of which found their way into print, while others remained solely in scribal culture. As well as their literary appeal, they offer tantalising remnants of cultures of exchange within coteries, networks, and families. This appealing artefact is a case in point: it contains works either copied out several years before appearing in print or known only to have circulated in manuscript form, together with subtle clues to the identities of its scribes and the circles in which they moved.

part of his gathering of material for exchange with friends and acquaintances, it was taken up and added to by a later hand, who doubtless had their own coteries and networks.

Hand I is a clear and legible fine cursive secretary hand. Given the provenance and date of the manuscript, we believe this to be Sir Thomas Penyston (1591-1644), one of the first baronets, who served both as sheriff of Oxfordshire and as a member of parliament for Westbury. The young Sir Thomas, having graduated from Queen’s College, Oxford in 1609, studied common law at the Inns of Court and figured in the retinue of Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset, described as “one of the seventeenth century’s most accomplished gamblers and wastrels” 1. His acquisition of “Cornwell House” in Oxfordshire provided the Penyston family seat until the late 19th century.

Hand II is a hasty, but legible, late 17th-century italic. An inscription in this hand at the rear of volume reads “F Penyston” –probably Sir Fairmeadow Penyston (1646-1705), Sir Thomas’ grandson, who succeeded to the baronetcy after the death of his brother and, like his grandfather, served as sheriff of Oxfordshire. On his death in 1705, the baronetcy became extinct.

We will therefore refer to Hand I as Sir Thomas Penyston and to Hand II as Sir Fairmeadow Penyston, although further archival research is needed to corroborate this.

THE CONTENTS

Sir Thomas has left the first few pages blank – perhaps having intended to create a list of contents, and into this space his grandson has entered snippets of Elizabethan poetry:

Hand II. One page of lines from Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene that apparently had special resonance for Sir Fairmeadow. The five extracts are mostly couplets such as “1. for unto knighte there is noe greater shame / then lightness and inconstancy in loue” and “14 some frounche their curled haire in courtly guise / some prancke their ruffes, and others trimly dight their gay attire.”

Hand I has written what is probably the earliest entry: “Of Robert Deuereux Earle of Essex and George Villiers Duke of Buckingham some observations by way of Paralell in the tyme of their estates of fauour; 1634.” This 52-page text is a manuscript version of Sir Henry Wotton’s (1568-1639) A parallell betweene Robert late Earle of Essex, and George late Duke of Buckingham, published posthumously in 1641; the date of 1634 does not appear in the 1641 published versions, and we suggest that ours is a version circulated in manuscript prior to publication.

Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639) was ambassador to Venice under James I, Provost of Eton, and an accomplished poet. He knew and served both Essex and Buckingham: the former has been described as “Wotton’s first patron” 2, and Wotton was counted among “the few who remembered George Villiers with gratitude, or who endeavoured to rescue his memory from opprobrium” 3 .

Other similar copies are recorded, for example Folger X.d.244 and British Library MS 22591, ff. 306r-311r, 4 both of which are undated but catalogued circa 1633. There are some occasional differences in page layout, and minor textual variances (e.g “quiet minde” (f.6) for “quiet mood” (p.1); “In the duke wee have noe such abrupt straines” (f11r) for “On the Dukes part, wee have no such abrupt straynes” (p.4)).

Essex: “howsoeuer thus two Peeres (“these two great Peeres” in the printed version) were disrobed of their glorie, the one by Judgment the other by viollence, wch was their finall distinction”. Why Sir Thomas copied down Wotton’s then-unpublished work is unclear, but one of the threads to be teased out is the one protruding from his membership of Sackville’s retinue, since Sackville’s wife, the noted diarist Anne Clifford, was related to Wotton via a cousin who married him 5 .

Hand I. “On this Great Frost 1634”, a poem by William Cartwright, (1611-1643), which appeared in his posthumously published Comedies, tragi-comedies, with other poems (London, 1651), making this another manuscript-circulated copy of a yet-to-beprinted work. There are several variances from the text of the published poem; for example: Line 4 “and doe yor metaphors” for “and may your metaphors”; Line 16 “were nowe discreete, to build upon the shore” for “Were wisdome now, To build upon the shaore”; Line 39 “wish” for “wise”; Line 55 “Scavola’s” is omitted in the manuscript.

Hand I. “On the Thawe 1634”, (First line: “What? must our eies mellt too? waters oppresse”. Last line: “The Barges nowe may Come the Carriers way”) is a copy of a poem by the diplomat and politician, Sir Dudley Digges (1583-1639), that circulated in manuscript only. The ‘Union First Line Index of English Verse’ notes seven iterations of the poem under such titles as “On the dissolution of the sanow” [1634] and “On the dissolution of the great frost by Dr. Digges”, recorded in other 17th-century manuscript miscellanies. Its immediate proximity to Cartwright’s poem on the “Great Frost” is clearly deliberate and the two poems appear to be similarly juxtaposed in several other miscellanies (Bodley, Malone 21; BL Add. 71164; Yale, Osborn S0489) 6 .

Hand II. An epigraph which begins “D.O.M. ossa Mariæ de bello monte Comitissæ Buckinghamiæ”. Maria, Countess Buckingham is perhaps best known as the mother of the royal favourite Sir George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. This is presumably included because it neatly links back to the earlier text by Wotton on “Robert Deuereux Earle of Essex and George Villiers Duke of Buckingham”.

However, of less obvious significance is the mocking “Epigramme. To D.W.” on the following page: “A man of scarlet lately was promoted / Unto a Curacy w Not Dogge nor Cat, nor Child, nor Hen they noted / he Could endure to heare, therefore his chamlet”

The book has been flipped to create a dos Penyston to continue the compilation. He devotes nine pages to Summary acct. of the Kings of England beginning with Egbert suppos’d to be the 1st King yt the eighth page by extracts from Virgil ( Ovid (begins “Phyllis. Lyciugi Thracum filia Demophoonta Thesei filiu[m], ex Troiano bello redeuntem hospitio excepit” Cretensis sagittarrius”, before completing the brief English history on the ninth page. We have not identified the original text for the history and presume it has been digested from a larger work or perhaps several sources.

This manuscript offers some compelling examples of scribal circulation among social and family groups in the 17th century, in the form of several pieces of prose and poetry that were yet to be printed. In the process, it weaves a diaphanous web of connections with enticing threads for researchers to pull on.

SOLD Ref: 8130

1. Cooper, Robert. The Literary Guide and Companion to Southern England (Ohio University Press, 1998).

2. Thomson, A. T. The Life and Times of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. (Hurst and Blackett, London, 1860) p307.

3. Ibid, p305.

4. <https://mpese.ac.uk/t/WottonParallelEssexBuckingham.html>

5. Malay, Jessica L. (ed.). The Autobiographical Writings of Anne Clifford 1590-1676. (Manchester, 2018). p.29 n.48.

6. Union First Line Index of English Verse.

29. BRIEF CASES

[ENGLISH LAW] 18th century manuscript legal notebook. [England. Circa 1774-1806]. Oblong octavo (170 x 100 x 28 mm). 206 text pages on 103 leaves, and 33 blanks at end. Bound in contemporary sheep, rubbed, joints cracked, original clasp intact. Price in manuscript to pastedown “15d” . Watermark: Pro Patria.

¶ This manuscript notebook contains brief case notes probably held at the Court of Common Pleas. Typical examples are: “In Com[m]on Pleas. Case for Saml. Cross of Dedham Innholder ã John Squirrel of Stratford St. Mary in Suffolk Innholder for Defamation ret in fifteen days of the holy Trinity. June 5th: 74” and “In Com[m]on Pleas Case for Mary Gooding Wid & John Key Extors of Robt. Gooding deced agst: John Legg of Tollesbury Marriner for 2£. 13s. 0d . the Balance due on a Promisory Note of hand ret on the morrow of All Souls. 10th: July 1775”.

The notebook is in good original condition and although details are a little sparing, concision appears to have been key for this 18th century legal scribe.

30. RAISE HIS SIGHTS

[MELBURN, Samuel] 18th-century manuscript ciphering book. [Circa 1784]. Quarto (200 x 60 x 35 mm). Approximately 248 pages, a couple of leaves excised at end. Full vellum stationer’s binding, some spotting and minor marks.

SOLD Ref: 8125

. Melburn

His Book 1784”. Almost all of the pages have been filled with text and calculations. The mathematical rules are elementary, ranging from “Subtraction” and “Multiplication”, to “Tare and Tret”, and “Double Rule of Three”. Methods for calculating measurements are included (“Dry Measure”, “Liquid Measure”, “Measures of Coin”), with problems worked out by the student. Several of the topics relate to specific trades – for example, “cloth measure”, “Apothecaries Weight” and “Land Measure” – and currency is also dealt with, especially borrowing and lending. The rudimentary mathematics with their limited practical applications seem intended to equip a student for a circumscribed future as a shopkeeper or tradesman (“A Brewers Clerk receives of several persons”, “There was a Lad bound and apprenticed for 8 years”), but the early inclusion of “Motion of the Heavenly Bodies” may have caused the pupil to raise his sights a little.

SOLD Ref: 8140

31. DIFFERENT AIMS

[POWELL, W.] Early 19th-century ciphering manuscript.

[Circa 1807]. Quarto (200 x 170 x 10mm). Approximately 76 text pages. Paper stationer’s binding stitched into pasteboard covers. Watermark: Britannia (Dated 1807).

¶ Adorning the front cover of this ciphering book is a print of “The Lovely Archer” published by “John Fairburn, Minories, London”.

According to the British Book Trade Index, Fairburn traded between 18021847 from 106110 Minories and 40 Fetter Lane. He was declared bankrupt in 1810, but presumably recovered. He may by the same John Fairburn I.

[See also HOLDEN02]. The cover is inscribed “W. Powell’s. Book”, but the following leaf comprises spelling practice which includes the name “Joseph Vines”. The book appears to have quickly changed hands, from Vines to Powell, and the latter has used it as a ciphering book. Majority of the rules pertain to matters of commerce such as “Of Barter”, “Of Simple Interest for Days” and “Of Rebate or Discount”. Some other elementary mathematics are also included such as “Of Geometrical progression” and “Of the Comparison of Weights and Measures”. Most of the examples are accompanied by fairly sparse calculations with occasional longer passages of text.

32. HAND CARE

[MARRIOT, Samuel, owner] Manuscript ciphering book.

[Circa 1740]. Octavo (160 x 100 x 20 mm). Approximately 159 text pages on 90 leaves. Contemporary sheep binding, rubbed and worn, small tears, browning to text. Watermark: Pro Patria, Honig (Haewood 3697, Circa 1724-26).

¶ The level of detail and the care given to presentation in this little 18th century ciphering book is highly appealing. An inscription to the front endpaper reads “Saml Marriot Thorney”, but this looks later so we assume he was not the original scribe. The mathematical rules contained in the volume are in themselves elementary (“Addition” “Subtraction”, “Multiplication”), however, the level of rigour in which they are covered is striking. Precise and detailed tables accompany the text in some sections. Geometry is covered in some detail and embellished with intricate diagrams and illustrations, adding to its appeal. The last pages relate to specific work (“Of Masons work”, “Of Carpenters Work”, “Of Joyners work”), which would have equipped the student for life in a skilled manual trade.

33. THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES

FALE, Thomas (active 1604); annotated by RHODES, William. Horologiographia. The art of dialling: teaching an easie and perfect way to make all kinds of dials vpon any plaine plat howsoeuer placed. With the drawing of the twelue signes, and houres vnequall in them all. Whereunto is annexed the making and vse of other dials and instruments, whereby the houre of the day and night is knowne: of speciall vse and delight, not only for students of the arts mathematicall, but also for diuers artificers, architects, surueyours of buildings, free-Masons and others. By

Thomas Fale.

At London: Imprinted by Felix Kyngston, dwelling in Pater noster-Row, 1627. Quarto. Foliation [4], 60, [16], Signatures: A-Q⁴ (R)⁴ R-T⁴ leaves, lacking leaf D4, fragment of rear endpaper remaining.

Contemporary limp vellum, very heavily worn and since bound into an early 20th-century buckram binding. The text is browned, and the margins very chipped and flaking, loss to the letter “T” in the word “ART” in the second line of title, and to edges of some annotations.

Provenance: Two ownership inscriptions to final leaf and stub of endpaper: “Wm Higgenson Booke 1666” and “Will: Higgenson”. A scrap of paper and pasted to title verso “George Pares’s Book Nov. 19 1879” with a calculation of the time since the was printed. Inscription to R1v: “Wm Rhodes his Book Bought this present Nov: 26 Anno Domini 1778”. Copious 19th-century annotations by William Rhodes throughout, some initialed “WR”.

¶ To describe this heavily worn copy of Fale’s Horologiographia as having been annotated by William Rhodes hardly does it justice. His annotations are numerous, and most pages feature date calculations by Rhodes; so far, so horological. But Rhodes’ notes go far beyond that, combining the objectivity required of his vocation with a touching and emotional subjectivity – and both, at times, have a compulsive quality that, had the term existed in the 19th century, might have earned him the descriptor ‘neurodiverse’.

Rhodes was notable enough in his sphere to merit a mention in Gatty’s Book of Sun-dials: “At the beginning of the nineteenth century, one William Rhodes, a tobacconist and pewterer, was living in Liverpool, and he possessed several works on the art of dialling, by Fale, De la Hire, and others, which he annotated in his own writing with mottoes from dials. He bought Fale's work in 1802, but the copy had belonged, in 1675, to ‘Thomas Skelson,’”1. Ours is another of his copies, the fourth edition, 1627, which Rhodes in his inscription says he bought in “Anno Domini 1778”.

Before Rhodes acquired this copy, its 17th-century owner, “Will: Higgenson”, appears to have made notes of his own, such as “How to make a earth(?) for your moulds to cast Brass which will bee cleare : Soe you may cast your brass into any forme as plates for Horizontal Dyales, or for quadrant Dyalsor round plates for night Dyals” (Q4v); beside the illustration for “The West Diall erect”, “Devide the midd line in 5. […] likewise Devide the middle Circle in 6. […] the bottom of ye pl[ate] that is the Distance Devides in 2 / one for the Left quadrant from side of the plat” and marked up the illustration according to these instructions (D1r); and the cryptic “c. & h. is the same yt. e & I is it is c.f. e. k is L.M. for stile Least distance from L.& the stile as L unto O” (D2r).

Rhodes was by all accounts a prolific annotator: among many other books he is known to have given the same treatment (besides the above) are The Art of Shadows; or, Universal Dialling by John Good (1771), The Art of Dialling by William Leybourn (1669), and Horologiographia Optica. Dialling Universal and Particular by Silvanus Morgan (1652).2 The nature of his annotations, too, was similar to those in our volume: they reportedly included “family memoranda and commonplace Latin mottoes”.

Rhodes’ manuscript notes confirm Gatty’s description of him as “a tobacconist”, for example in his memos “Our Little Tobacco Engine Sold from Wharehouse this present 2 June” (N1r), and “Aug 9 1783 put up Brass Dial North Declining West …” (E2v). But “pewterer” is less certain: in burial records for his children he is recorded as a “brazier”3 – a point confirmed in notes such as “Aug 9 1783 put up Brass Dial North Declining West” (E2v) and “Put up New Brass Dial dated Nov 1st on Nov 6 1781. Now Nov: 14 1782. made first Rocket pridie” (I1r). He records having installed many such sundials, including a clutch of them in one entry: “July 15 1783 got stone Pillar Horizontal Dial pridie Put up New B. to Dial on it 15 of Spet: 1783 now Sept: 17 1783 it was the 15 Mar put up one on the kitchen Door Date May 1 1784. Decl 48.50 4 May 5 1784 Glorious Day put up 2 Dials on the pump Rec. 51-3 Decl: 39 the other an Horizontal on the Stone in the yard Sept: 3 1784 now Sept: 7 1784” (E2r).

His attention to dates and their calculation borders on the obsessive: sometimes these are relatively trivial, as when he shows his workings to estimate that it has been “200 years since this book was printed viz 1727”, and that he “Bought it in

1778” (E1v, which also features a long note concerning weather and dates). Since he is clearly accomplished at such calculations, one gets the impression that Rhodes is deriving satisfaction from writing them out. This seems deeply rooted in his character, and all the more so because these work-related notes are inextricably bound up with a much more personal seam of annotations in which he applies his skills to the working-through of his own grief.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

Rhodes clearly had much to grieve over: among his notes is one dated “Sept: 24 1822” which reads: “Little Martha ON died Sept: 21 1822 and buried at the Church along [w]ith her poor grand mother and uncle hodie”, with a calculation of years between 1822 and 1779 (B2v); another, sharing space with notes on a “Barometer”, calculates the duration between 1821 and 1784, and adds “Longum nunc videtur præsentem post mortem Martha Charæ uxorem who died March 17 1820” (B3r). Similarly, his work shades into his emotional life in the entry: “July 30 1802. the 3 Sun Dials in Coln Church yard made in the year 1672. Mater mea ibi nata anno 1722 / 1672 put up 50 years before she was born” (Rhodes’ frequent lapses into Latin perhaps signifying an attempt to solemnize his loved ones’ passing or, paradoxically, to create a little distance from the distress he so compulsively revisits).

Rhodes is also blessed (or perhaps cursed) with a prodigious memory, judging by his recollections of affecting little details: having noted “Friday Sept: 3 1813 Julia Ann Rhodes my dearly beloved daughter was buried that day”, he adds that he “bought Apples at a small cottage in Aintree when going fetch Maria home Sept: 23 1812”, and “showed Julia the foot road over the long field which her brother John so very like her walked over with –(?) Sept: 11 1791, never –(?) again. WR”. A note elsewhere clarifies this brother’s sad fate: “March 10 1812 Johannes filius departed this life Tuesday March 10 anno 1795. being just 17 years since this day. Sec fuget irreparable tempus” (M1r).

Grief sometimes manifests not just in Rhodes’ evocation of such poignant moments but in his repeating them: in an entry dated “Dec: 11 1833”, he writes “that’s Dadda’ Dilay book not touch it. Poor dear Elizabeth Mary used to say in old kitchen below many a time. she died May 1780” (F4r); he tells this anecdote again a little further on (H1v). That he often writes these passages in letters larger and bolder than the printed text contributes to the impression that these are not just annotations but heartfelt engravings.

The annotations to this somewhat battered and sadly incomplete volume show their author to be a fascinating mix of detailobsessed, process-driven and emotionally raw – the last of these apparently impossible to separate from the rest. This remarkable artefact shows the sometimes-uneasy interplay between public and private in the mind of an artisan for whom time was a defining preoccupation.

SOLD Ref: 8145

References:

1. Gatty, Margaret Scott. The Book of Sun-dials. (4th ed. 1900).

2. ‘Bibliography of Dialling’ in Notes and Queries (no. 191, 1889)

3. Burial: 6 Jan 1792 St Nicholas, Liverpool, Lancs. Martha Rhodes - Daughter of William Rhodes & Martha. Died: 5 Jan 1792. Age: 12 days. Abode: Pool lane. Occupation: Brazier. <https://www.lan-opc.org.uk/Liverpool/Liverpool-Central/stnicholas/ burials_1792i.html>; Burial: 13 Nov 1793 St Nicholas, Liverpool, Lancs. Sarah Rhodes - Daughter of William Rhodes & Martha (formerly Moorhouse). Died: 11 Nov 1793. Age: 10 mths. Abode: Pool lane. Occupation: Brazier. <https://www.lan-opc.org.uk/Liverpool/Liverpool-Central/stnicholas/burials_1793i.html>

34. FOOD MIXER

[CULINARY MANUSCRIPT] Early 19th century culinary manuscript

[Circa 1800]. Slim quarto (210 x 175 x 10 mm). 55 text pages on 28 leaves. Numbered to p30. Lacking pp5-6 in paginated section, two stubs before unnumbered section. Modern half calf, marbled boards, some staining and marking to text. Watermark: Britannia seated in an oval, surmounted by a crown, I Furness & Co.

¶ The anonymous compiler of this Georgian manuscript cookbook appears to have been comfortably off, but not wealthy. The 100-plus recipes cover dishes featuring meat, fish, cakes and puddings, but although there are many attributions, using these to establish our scribes’ identities or location proves decidedly difficult.

The book’s creator clearly had no interest in presentation or even rationalization, and no index or other finding system. Neither is there an overall order to the manuscript: “Dutch Flummery”, for example, is paired incongruously with “Pickled Fish” on p16, and “Damsen Cheese” accompanies “To Hash a Calves Head” on p19. There are no dates, but hand varies a little, so we assume it was compiled over a period of several years.

Some sections or recipes are, however, arranged together. “To make Curry” (“take a Chicken or Rabbit scin’d fricasse it rub every piece all over with Curry Powder” add a “strong Veal gravy” and “stew gently” (p10)) is complemented on the facing page by instructions “To Boil Rice for the Curry” (for the familiar 10-minute cooking time, after which the rice is “Covered up for Half an Hour and not uncovered till sent to Table” (p11)). Likewise, the recipe for “Oyster Sausages” offered by “Dor Hunter” conveniently occupies the same page as a method “To feed Oysters” (p[39]).

A larger exception to the unstructured nature of the book is a group of over 20 recipes (pp18-29) which all originated from a “Mrs Rasher”. These have been entered in together, so were likely copied in from her recipe book. She mainly supplies recipes for cakes and puddings, including several types of “Cheese” (“Damsen”, “Lemon”, “Citron), a couple of flummeries (“Italian” and “Duch”) and puddings (“Orange Puding”, “Baked Apple Puding). Conspicuously savoury among this group is a recipe for “India Pickle” which, once you have prepared “Ginger”, “garlick”, “Pennywoth”, “Turmereck”, “Vinegar” and other ingredients, veers from the particular to the general: “put in the following things the Inside of Cabage Cut in quarters Appels Cucumbers or any thing you please” (p27).

The enigmatic “H H” provides several recipes, including “Calves Feet Jelly” (p[38]), “Stewd Eel” (considered “Excellent” (p [33])), and “Risoles” which, “if wanted particular nice”, one should “cover with Bread Crumbs twise and be sure not to put in two much gravy as you Cannot work them into nice shapes if you do” (p[38]). Other attributed recipes include “To Preserve Cucumbers Mrs Edwd Evenes” (p[48]), “Mrs Davises Receipt to Preserve Mellons” (p[49]) and “French Bread Mrs Moleneaux” (p[53]). The mononymic “Simpson” (perhaps a servant?) has recipes for “Giblet Soup Simpson” (p[40]), “Risoles” (p[55), and “Sorrell Sawse”, also judged “Excellent”. The most specific name reference is a “Mrs Brooke at the Revd Mr Dowsings North Balsham” (p17), (who also have a recipe for “Calves Feet Jelly”), but despite their names and location, the Reverend Dowsing of Balsham and Mrs Brooke prove surprisingly elusive.

£650 Ref: 8116

35. RESTORATION OF ORDER

[PENYSTON, Thomas, Sir (c.1622-1672)]. A manuscript volume of legal notes on laws and regulations relating to Non-Conformists.

[Cornwell, Oxfordshire? Circa 1655-63]. Octavo. Text block measures 142 x 90 x 15 mm. Pagination [1, manuscript armorial shield], [7, blanks], 41 (numbered text pages, including 2 blanks), 2 loosely inserted notes. Contemporary limp vellum with yapp fore-edges, original vellum tie attached to upper cover, some soiling. Watermark: Fleur-de-lis. Similar to Haewood 1679, but the sides of the shield curve out slightly at the top. Provenance: manuscript coat of arms to first page (three Cornish choughs). Crest: gryphon statant. Motto: “virtus invicta viget”, inscribed beneath: “Tho: Penyston, Brill 1655”. Probably Sir Thomas Penyston (d.1672), son of Sir Thomas Penyston (1591-1644), and Elizabeth Penyston (nee Watson) of Cornwell, Oxfordshire. “Brill” is possibly a contraction of Brilley, Herefordshire home of a branch of the Penyston family. A pencilled note opposite the coat of arms reads “Mr(?) Franklin(?) over against the Golden Ball in Bedford Street”, and a similar note to the rear paste Nicholas x Estoelle at one Bacons next door to the Lion in the Wood in picadille” above a red wax seal and beside this: “ x Esto”.

¶ Wrapped inside this little pocketbook are manuscript notes on the rules introduced in the 1660s that curtailed the freedoms of English people who, during the Commonwealth, had enjoyed a period of relative toleration.

The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 was accompanied by the restoration of the Church of England as the national church. The 1662 Act of Unity reinforced this by demanding adherence to the rites and ceremonies prescribed in the revised Book of Common Prayer issued in the same year. Those who refused to do so became the known as “Nonconformists”.

Our scribe is probably Sir Thomas Penyston, a magistrate, who fulfilled his anti-Nonconformist duties assiduously. He was born circa 1622 in Cornwell, Essex, to Sir Thomas Peniston (1591-1644) (whose knighthood in 1612 made him the first Penyston baronet) and Elizabeth Watson. He graduated from Oriel College, Oxford (the precise date is unclear), and in 1647 married Elizabeth Penyston. They had two sons, further muddying the waters of posterity by naming them Thomas Penyston and Thomas Fairmedow Penyston.

We learn of Penyston’s preference for pocketbooks from his will, in which, as well as leaving his wife Elizabeth his “best ve Bible marked with E.P.”, he also bequeaths her “Three little Books I used to carry in my Pockett”.

A TOOL FOR THE PROSECUTION

While these manuscript notes clearly detail the laws regulating the behaviour of Nonconformists, they do not strictly conform to any printed text; rather, they appear to be precise and succinct summaries which the user could consult without having to search through vast quantities of legal tomes or documents. The volume was also clearly created with portability style vellum pocketbook with its original tie that neatly wraps and secures the volume by a nick cut into it –perfect for the prosecutor on the move. Its use reference

“who have power to heare & determine”, “upon default seasure of all goods & 2 parts of lands”, “father & Mother in want” manicules to salient sections.

The volume summarises laws and regulations relating to “Conventicles”, “Quakers” nonattendance at church to “hear com[m]on prayer etc” and that “one Justice upon Confession or oath may be call the offender before him”; if the Nonconformist in question “without Excuse or proofe”, they may be prosecuted, and imprisoned if they fail to pay a fine. While the rules stipulate that this applies to “Every one above the age of 16”, further down they note “noe woman shall be nor her husband for her chargeable by this act for not receiving the sacrament” School masters are singled out for close attention, especially those “presuming to teach contrary to this act”; “shall be imprisoned without bayle”.

The rules governing “Conventicles” (here taken from “35 Eliz:”) were given additional power in the 1664 Conventicle Act which forbade religious assemblies of more than five people (other than immediate family) outside the auspices of the Church of England. Penyston notes infractions such as “Not coming to church for a Mounth” and the punishments meted out, which range from being “com[m]itted to prison without bayle till they conforme & yield to come to church etc & heare divine service & make such open submission as is hereafter declared” to the punitive measure taken against the recidivist who “shall forfeit all his goods & chattels to the king for ever & shall further loose all his lands during his life & noe longer”, although his “wife shall not loose her dowry Nor any Corruption of blood”.

Quakers are notably given their own section. They are subject to the same rules, and in the first instance, the same punishment (a fine, or imprisonment for failing to pay it). But thereafter, the rules become more specific and more stringent (“6 mounths & kept to hard Labour”, transport […] beyond the sea to any one of [the King’s] plantations” which a sidenote tells us is applicable to “male & female”). These harsher measures were soon incorporated into the Conventicle Act of 1664, and their appearance here contributes to the general impression that Penyston has created this volume not just as a compact aid for dispensing “justice” but as a digest of disparate injunctions that were yet to be codified together in the 1664 Act.

employed to disrupt dissenting congregations. It begins topically for a Restoration document, with a pointed reassertion that “the sole power of the militia of this kingdome is & ever was the undoubted right of the King” and the “house of parliament can noe way pretend to it, nor ought to levy warr against the King ether offensive or defensive though the contrary of late has bine practised”. The topics covered are highly specific “pikemans armes to be a pike made of ash not under 16 foot”; “offensive armes are a sword & a case of pistols not under 14 inches in the barrels”) and the window of time narrow: “that ther may be time to put this act in execution, the former forces to continue till March 25 1663 & no longer”.

For all the power that this little book could represent in the hands of an official who wielded it, the pages are also dotted with the banalities of everyday life. The endpapers, for example, bear a “note of money due to me this quarter”, along with the names and addresses of

“Franklin” and “Esto”; and a as living in “Gun[powder ally, next [to] a seale Cutter, the 2nd house of the new quicke buildings” – all people who were presumably significant to Penyston at the time, for reasons now long forgotten.

An anecdote about Penyston as an apt postscript: after he consigned a Baptist pastor to prison, the man’s father petitioned Penyston for his son’s release. “Let him rot in gaol”, came the reply. On hearing that another magistrate, since dead, had said the same, Penyston is supposed to have replied: “Even though he be dead, yet his work shall not die”. Ironically, Penyston died in the same year King Charles II’s Act of Indulgence swept away the repressive measures that he and his fellow magistrates enforced with such alacrity; and the Penyston baronetcy itself became extinct in 1705 with the death of his youngest son, Sir Fairmedow. One of the scant survivals from Sir Thomas Penyston’s life’s work, therefore, is this “little Book” that shows some of the minutiae of intolerance that lay at the centre of the early Restoration.

SOLD Ref: 8131

References:

1. www.hook-norton.org.uk/history

2. Thomas Penyston’s will: The National Archives: PROB-11-345-311. (Foster, Oxford University Alumni, 1500-1886 states that he “died about 1644”. However, he says that his son, Sir Thomas [II] matriculated at Oriel in 1664-5 aged 16. This would make his birth year 1648, some four years after the death of his father). We have instead used the will in the National Archives for his date of death.

[HARRIS, Mrs] Eighteenth century English manuscript of culinary recipes and household remedies. [England. Circa 1772]. Quarto (204 x 163 x 16 mm). Approximately 127 text pages (including 13-page index) pages on 102 leaves. Lacking one leaf of recipes.

Contemporary wallet style vellum binding with working clasp, binding soiled, damp staining throughout, some pages loose, but in good original condition.

Watermark: Pro Patria

Provenance: inscription to front paste-down reads “Mrs Harris / May 1st 1772”. Contains over 200 recipes (a complete list of the recipe titles is available on request) in the same neat hand throughout.

Mrs Harris’ culinary collection, at first glance, betrays little in the way of provenance, but after the unpromising inscription

“Mrs Harris / May 1st 1772”, the entries themselves yield a host of names and references that place Mrs Harris within a lively social network and allow us to ‘triangulate’ the connections in order to suggest a likely identity for our scribe who has particular taste for chocolate.

All the recipes are written in the same neat hand over about two decades, beginning with the out-of-sequence “To clean Plate” and a handful of other tips over six numbered pages for cleaning or stain removal. The odd one out – perhaps explaining why it has been crossed out – is “To manage Brawn” (p.2), which also gives us our first attribution: “from Mr Wardell fishmonger London”. The page numbering then restarts from “1” as the culinary section begins, with “To make a St. Quintin.

FAMILY CONNECTIONS

Subsequent attributions include “Plum Cake Mrs Bird” (p.10), “A Christening Cake by Nurse King” (p.46), “Mock Turtle from Lady Baker” (p.52), and “To Stew Eels from Mrs Goodwin in Derbyshire – very good” (p.73). A further group of attributions are of particular help in establishing a likely candidate for our scribe: “Fish Sauce Mrs Cust – Oxford” (p.48), “Fish Sauce from Miss Sleech” (p.85), “Potatoe Pudding from Miss Sleech” and “Apple Pudding Baked Miss Hawtrey” (both p.65), and “Macaroon Puffs – Mr Hawtrey Ringwood” all plot points in a constellation that takes in Eton and Oxford, and all reward further research.

The Hawtrey, Cust, Sleech and Harris families were evidently interrelated: several members of the Hawtrey, Cust and Harris families married into the unusually named Sleech family, and the records yield several contenders for the “Miss Sleech” and “Mrs Sleech” attributed here. “Mr Hawtrey Ringwood”, also referred to in the manuscript as “Revd: Mr Hawtrey”; is the Rev. John Hawtrey (1736-1817), Vicar of Ringwood, Winchester (and great-great uncle of the economist Alfred Marshall). “Mrs Cust – Oxford” is likely to be Mary Harris (1732-1791), who married the Rev. Dr. Richard Cust (1726-1783), Canon of Christ Church, Oxford (an inference supported by the recipe on p.96. “To Fricassee Chicken” which we are told came “from the cook at Christs Coll Oxford”). Of the several mentions of Harrises in the manuscript, one neatly combines the two coordinates above: “Oxford Sausages Mrs Harris Eton” (p.31). It’s surely no coincidence that both the Sleeches and the Hawtreys could boast a staff member of Eton College, a mathematical master and Provost among their number.

The upshot of these correspondences is that our most likely candidate for “Mrs Harris” is Mary Greathed (b.1751), who married John Harris in York on either the 27th or 30th of April 1772, very shortly before she inscribed this manuscript “Mrs Harris May 1st 1772”. This seems all the more likely given the inclusion of the recipes “To make Smyrne Raison Wine from Mrs Greathed” (p.55) and “To make a Tansey Pudding – From Mrs S. Greathed” (p.79).

WIDER CONNECTIONS

Mrs Harris’ connections are in evidence throughout her book, making this a fine example of a recipe collection drawn from disparate sources. A few are taken from printed publications (for example, “To make Treacle Beer – From Thompsons book on Sea Scurvy”(p.89) – perhaps a work by Frederick Thomson, author of An essay on the scurvy (1790)), but, while they both use treacle bear the remedies differ significantly; a couple were apparently gathered from visits to hostelries (“To make Water Sucey (i.e. souchy) from Staines Bridge Inn” (p.26); and “Receipt for fish Sauce from the three Tuns Inn at Hungerford” (p.27)).

Most of the recipes emanate from a culture of manuscript exchange between family and friends. Where locations are given, they cluster around Oxford and Eton, but other places are also mentioned, especially when she is recording regional recipes (“To Pickle Pork the Kentish Way – Mrs Churchill” (p.27), “Kentish Cherry Jam from Mrs Cust” (p.57), “To Pot Lobsters as they do at Whitby” (p.9)), and she’ll cross the border for “A Good Scotch Cake – from Mr Feaver’s Housekeeper” (p.72), and travel even further afield for “A Livonian Ragoue” (p.1) or “To dress Rice the Chinese Way” (p.104).

and appears to have

Certain recipes are drawn from more than one source and illuminate aspects of consumer culture from the consumers’ point of view. “To Make Chocolate” (p.78) is annotated “from Saunder’s Directions”, presumably referring to Richard Saunders, who ran “Saunders’s chocolate house” from No. 85 St. James’s Street, London from 1758 until 1764. But the attribution has been crossed out, and the recipe extended with the direction: “if The Chocolate is made with new Milk, it will, if well milled Work up into a fine white froth which will stand on the Cup”. This is subsequently credited: “To make Cocoa from Mr Fry’s Receipt Patentee at Bristol”, a reference to Dr Joseph Fry (d.1787), a Quaker apothecary who purchased a patent on a water engine and recipes for making fine chocolate, and built a world-famous cocoa and chocolate business that eventually merged with Cadbury. Here, Mary Harris is herself merging two methods to arrive at her preferred recipe for hot chocolate.

MAKING AND TASTING

Such signs of use, adaptation, and occasionally rejection are also visible elsewhere: “Rice Bread” (p.105) is annotated “This is better than Potatoe Bread & goes further”; whereas “To Dress a Large Eel either Roasted or Boiled” (p.60) is annotated at the end “taken from Wartons fishing book – but an indifferent method of Dressing”. On the other hand, “To Stew Eels from Mrs Goodwin in Derbyshire” (p.73) merits the encomium “very good”, and she recommendations that “Virjuice if you have it, or Vinegar, to give it quickness (the first is best)” (p.10).

Cooking instructions range from those which could be easily followed by a novice (“Lemon Pickle – continue over the mouth of the Oven or any other slow heat for a fortnight” (p.25), “Tie it up in a cloth & Boil it 4 hours” (p.26) to others which require experience: “Black Pudding”, says you should “Let it be the thickness of a Suet Pudding” (p.34), which assumes the reader knows the consistency of the latter. The recipe for “Yorkshire Cakes” is satisfyingly the particular and thrifty: “roll it into little Cakes prick & lay them before the fire to rise put them into the Oven half Bake them – When you eat them nick them around the edge & Toast them, then pull them open & Butter them; they will keep a week or more when stale dip them in boil’d milk before you put them to the Fire to Toast” (p.36). To crisp the skin on a roasted pig “without Roasting the Cook” recommends “When the Pig is stuffed, before it is put down to the fire, let the Cook take the white of an Egg, whip it up, with a feather or soft brush” and to achieve the right consistency in your “Honey Comb Cream” one should “put it into a Tea Pot & pour it as high as you can into the Juice” (p.3).

While culinary recipes predominate, there are also a few remedies, for conditions including “the Ague” (p.110), and “a Cough –from Mrs Clavell” (p.99). Meanwhile, “An approv’d Poultice for giving ease in a Cancer and has been known to Cure” (p.76) relies on a sole ingredient: “Carrots boil’d tender […] bruised while they are hot in a marble mortar”, then applied “to the sore part as warm as they can bear it”. The directions conclude with the reassuring message that “it will do no harm if it does no good but it is much used in the Hospitals and approved of by the Faculty”.

The inclusion at the back of an “Index to the Several Receipts” doesn’t quite deliver on expectations: the recipes appear here in the same miscellaneous order as in the body section, by page number, so are effectively a list of contents. Some recipes have a little cross in the margins, and these have not been added to the index, and we suggest it was added slightly later, perhaps in the 1790s.

This wide-ranging collection of recipes is still neatly contained in its original wallet-style vellum binding with its clasp intact. The apparently recently married Mrs Harris has drawn on an extensive list of social connections, who have not only contributed to the creation of her richly textured volume but also helped to establish her own identity.

References:

https://downrabbitholes.com.au/marshall/the-clerical-connection/ https://theclergydatabase.org.uk/

Hawtrey Florence Molesworth, The history of the Hawtrey family (1903)

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols29-30/pt1/pp459-471#h3-0011

http://vll-minos.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/evancoll/a/014eva000000000u06253v00.html

SOLD Ref: 8124

37. CUT FROM A DIFFERENT CLOTH

[PACK, Josiah (1714-1768)] 18th-century manuscript ciphering and accounts book.

[Alton. Circa 1727-66]. Quarto (200 x 165 x 38 mm). Approximately 95 pages of text and accounts, and approximately 102 blank leaves. Bound in contemporary full vellum with brass clasps intact. Fine calligraphic inscription to the front board: “Josiah Pack Liber Septembris rrvi. ad 1727”.

¶ This unusually well-preserved volume presents a two-part picture of an early Georgian Quaker mercer, shopkeeper – and later, yeoman – in a rural English market town.

Josiah Pack (1714-1768) was born in Alton, Hampshire to Mary and Samuel Pack, “in ye Presents of Frances Clark Midwife” (before the (male) medical establishment seized control over midwifery). He appears to have spent his whole life in Alton and was buried in the Quaker burial ground adjoining the Meeting House.1

The text is arranged dos-a-dos and represents two different stages in Pack’s life which are separated – materially and symbolically – by 102 blank leaves. The earliest section of the manuscript (several times inscribed “Josiah Pack his book” and dated October and November 1727) comprises basic mathematical exercises; the headings (“Addition”, “Subtraction”, “Multiplication”, “Division”, “Reduction”, and “Rule of Proportion”) are written in fine copperplate similar to the cover’s ornate calligraphy, and threaten to overwhelm the more pedestrian material below them. Over 49 leaves (text to rectos only), Pack sets down the “Rule” for each topic, followed by exercises calculating “English Money”, “Cloth Measure”, “Troy Wt.”, “Avoirds”, and “Long Measure”.

The book provides no evidence as to whether the young Josiah was tutored at home or at school, but his ciphering would have served as early preparation for his future career as a dealer in cloth. Indeed, it’s in this guise that he begins his entries at the opposite end of the book, some 20 years later. Beginning in 1746 he records a series of accounts, mainly concerning the sale of cloth (“middle drab corded Druggtt” (p.1), “Black French Barragon” (p.6), “fine Shalloon” (p.9)). Also recorded are interest payments, exchanges of cash, investments in “National Stock” (p.21), property management (“In the Houses wch: King of Swains hill Mortgaged to me” (p.39)) and mercantile activities (“wine from Gosport” (p.?), “one fourth part of my share Jno Churchills, vessell of Pool” (p.4)).

Several factors work against the neatness of this dos-a-dos, bookended arrangement. Pack’s accounts are mostly ordered by the surnames of his customers, who are listed in a one-page index at the front; consequently, the chronology jumps around somewhat. Although the section’s final entry is on p.46, a note concerning “National Stock” (p.35), dated “1767”, appears also to be in his hand. The next line on p.35, however, is in a different hand: it is dated “1769 April” (almost a year after Pack’s death) and is the first of several that seem to touch on the handling of Josiah’s estate (“Augt 14th 1770 I sold out five hundred pounds being ye whole of what my Cousn left me in ye stocks” (p.36)).

Adding a further layer to the engaging nature of this volume is the presence, just after the ciphering exercises, of an original, three-page poem, “On Chewing Tobacco Written for the Benefit of G. H. by J P”. Possibly motivated by his Quakerism, Pack begins: “Awake O Muse attempt to sing / The ills which from Tobacco spring” and develops his couplets into a condemnation

of tobacco-chewing as a practice that “[…] yealds a most pernicious juice / Which thirst promotes & hurts the Brain / The liver heats & Lungs inflame”.

The lives and prospects of those from the lower social ranks were often circumscribed by the type of education they received, which fitted them for certain kinds of work and limited other possibilities. Pack’s education took him on a short journey from learning how to calculate money and measure cloth, to becoming a draper in his hometown. But despite this seemingly narrow scope he has lifted this workaday volume into an object of beauty which hints at the quiet creativity of the individual who fashioned it.

SOLD Ref: 8082

1. https://www.ancestry.co.uk

38. LADIES IN WAITING

[QUEEN'S

BINDER

A]. The Book of Common Prayer [...], Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David [bound with] The Whole Book of Psalms: Collected into English Metre.

London: Printed by the Assigns of John Bill, Thomas Newcomb, and Henry Hills, Printers to the Kings most Excellent Majesty, 1680; London: Printed by J.C. for the Company of Stationers, 1676.

Octavo. Collation: A-U8, X4 (Royal Arms of Charles II to verso of X4); A-E8, both texts printed in double-columns. Signature B4 of BCP defective with loss of text (from one to three words of approximately 20 lines), C4-D8 tatty with marginal chipped losses of letters, some marginal stains. Contemporary red morocco, richly gilt, marbled endpapers, lacking front endpaper. Fine Restoration binding, probably Queen’s Binder A. (The name derives from the style of book bindings found in the libraries of Catherine of Braganza and Mary of Modena).

This volume has moved through the hands of several owners, playing a notable role in the gift culture of a trinity of early modern women. One of these owners had it bound by Queen’s Binder A, and another expanded it with manuscript poems and catechisms.

There are four inscriptions to the front free endpaper:

“R Walton”

“Mary Temple 1682”

“Frances Lloyds Book given her by her worthy friend ye Lady temple 1687”.

“Dorothy Myddelton her Book Left her by from her Aunt ffrances Lloyd 1725”.

Given the date of Mary Temple’s 1682 ownership inscription, we assume she precedes “R Walton” and was its earliest owner, and that it was she who had it bound so beautifully. Although Temple was not an uncommon name, the fact that she is referred to in the following inscription as “ye Lady temple” narrows it down, making our most likely candidate Lady Mary Temple (d. 1726). Her date of birth is not recorded, but she was the daughter of Henry Knapp (whose wife’s name, as too often with details of early modern women’s lives, is also unrecorded).

In 1675, Mary Knapp became Lady Mary Temple by marrying the 40-year-old Sir Richard Temple (16341697). It has been suggested that “the conjugal yoke may have been involuntary, for a son was born only two months later.”1 Despite the imputation, they went on to have no fewer than four sons and six daughters.

Sir Richard was an English politician who, from 1654, sat in the House of Commons in the First Protectorate Parliament, and from 1659, in the Third Protectorate Parliament. He was elected MP again for Buckingham in 1660 for the Convention Parliament. He was re-elected in 1661 for the Cavalier Parliament and sat until 1679.

According to the History of Parliament website, “Temple inherited an estate of £6,000 p.a., but large families, long-lived widows, extravagance, and litigation had encumbered it with debts of £26,000, and for many years nine-tenths of his income had to be set aside to pay them off.” Pecuniary pressures seem to have come even from his own family and he “was thrown into a debtors’ prison by his half-sister, Lady Baltinglas”2 but released on obtaining a seat in parliament, with its associated privileges. By the 1670s, Sir Richard’s “own exertions, backed by a handsome salary, had extricated him from his father’s debts”. His “own exertions” may also have benefitted from Mary Knapp’s inheritance.

The fine Restoration binding was made around the time of publication of Prayer (1680). It is bound in contemporary red morocco, richly gilt, with a design of linked “drawer handles” around floral bosses, tulips, other meandering scrolling foliage, and stars, many petals, volutes, and scrolls painted black. The composition is divided into quarters (with traces of the binder blind scoring) and framed within a blind fillet border. The spine is divided by raised bands into six compartments, alternately tooled and gilt with foliage and geometric motifs, and painted black.

An examination of the tools suggests that this binding was probably by Queen's Binder A. The visual similarities to the tools illustrated in the Bindoff Catalogue coupled with their assertion that bindings by Queen’s Binder B “appear to date from the 1670s”, whereas ours

dates from the early 1680s, make the ascription to Queen’s Binder A highly likely. It has been postulated that this anonymous binder was William Nott, from whom Pepys acquired a binding. The attribution is based on a brief entry in Pepys’ diary: “I took [W. Howe] in my coach with W. Hewer and myself towards Westminster; and there he caried me to Nott’s the famous bookbinder, that bound for my Lord Chancellor’s library; and here I did take occasion for curiosity to bespeak a book to be bound, only that I might have one of his binding”4. The most elaborate bindings in Pepys’ library are either Bibles and Prayer Books, or books dedicated or gifted to him. Our binding was probably commissioned by Lady Temple, who seems to have

The inscriptions record the sequence of exchanges:

gifted this volume to subsequently passed it on to a relative, Myddelton. Sadly, despite Dorothy’s “Aunt ffrances Lloyd individual, because families were both interrelated. What we can say with more certainty is

that Frances Lloyd, whose inscription closely matches the manuscript, has clearly made use of the book. She has added poems gleaned from her reading, but also apparently composed short pieces of her own. From this we learn something of her reading habits (or at least what she valued from her reading) and the uses to which she put this.

Among the copied poems are “Though all Churches in the world [have] and ever had fforms of Prayer; yet none was ever blessed with soe Comprehensive, soe exact” – lines transcribed from the preface to Thomas Comber’s (1645-1699) Companion to the temple (first published 1672, with several 17th-century editions). Frances herself has attributed another, “Hardly can the pride of those men That study novelties allow former times any share or degree of wisdome [...]”, to “King Charles 1st . Meditation i6”; and the rhyme beginning “When thou afflicts mee Lord, if I repine / I showe my selfe to bee my owne, not thine”, can be traced to Francis Quarles’s (1592-1644) Divine fancies (15 editions between 1632 and 1723); and the note “Ana= {MARY ARMY}=gram” is from George Herbert’s The Temple.

However, the majority of manuscript additions appear to be original works. These include rhymes such as “Gods Grace and Blessinge are my Lands and rents / My Wealth, my Riches, and my Tenements […]” and “Patience is a Contented endurance of Painfull Evills / or / A quick sufferinge under Affliction / Or / Patience is the blinde mans eyes / Patience is the Lame mans thighs / Patience is the Prisoners walke / Patience is the dumbe mans talke / And sacred story tells” (followed by some lines copied from scripture).

There are short devotional texts like “O Lord Holinesse becometh thy Howse and dutifullnesse becometh mee to goe to thy Courts and waite upon thee. and this is the great day of thy service; Thou that hast given mee to see the light of this day [ ] Amen”(which borrows a phrase or two from the Psalms), and constructions such as “JESVS that most Blessed name Consists of five Letters, the midle most of which beinge .S. seemes to stande most emphaticall; as a Saviour betwixt Jehovah and us, Amen”. But the majority of manuscript notes are catechistical and apparently original:

“The Creed / The Command / The Lords Prayer

Twice six Beleeve, but therein doe not Rest Ten thinges performe, above all things the best Thy want and duties, how soe ere the vise

In sixe Petitions thou maist all Comprize

To ^these adde love and soe thou maist ascende

Higher then faith and hope wch here have ende

This is untraced, as is

A shorte Catechism}

Wee must Beleeve Twelve, and wee must doe Tenn And pray for six if weele be Godly men.

Others borrow Biblical imagery, but appear to be original:

And are the Ravens Greate God sustained by thee

And wilt thou clothe Lilies and not mee

Ile neere distrust my God for clothe and breade

Whilst Lilies flourish, and the Ravens fedde

These catechisms may have been written for the instruction of children – and the book has certainly come into the hands of a child who has drawn a figure of a man smoking a pipe and a marsupial (or a badly drawn horse) to the rear endpaper. The man is flanked with the inscription “Thomas Roberts 1749/50”, so we assume it is a portrait of him. A pencilled note above the drawing reads “Cusen Jenken Evens”, and on the verso of the same sheet there is another pencil drawing of a man, this one flanked with the name “Robert Price Esqr”. The appearance of these three male characters at the end inadvertently balances with the three female figures at the beginning, although with a far weaker and less explicit sense of interconnection.

The fine binding is clearly a highlight of this volume, but its role in expressing and reinforcing the bonds of female friendship is equally notable. The manuscript poems demonstrate their author’s responses to the book’s printed material, and the artefact as a whole bears the signs of its own journey from an object for private devotion to an object in a sequence of exchanges between women, to – it would seem – a child’s study text and a repository for some fleeting juvenilia.

SOLD Ref: 8128

1. http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1660-1690/member/temple-sir-richard-1634-97

2. ibid.

3. [Nixon, Howard M.] Sotheby's, Catalogue of Valuable Printed Books Comprising the Property of the Late Professor S.T. Bindoff and Other Properties. London, 1981, pp 53-55.

4. Nixon, Howard M. English Restoration Bookbindings - Samuel Mearne and his Contemporaries. British Museum Publications, London, 1974, p 34.

39. METALLIC NOTES

[BARD FAMILY] 18th-century manuscript book of recipes and remedies. [Vermont? Circa 1786]. Octavo (** x **). Stitched sheets. 74 text pages on 37 leaves (some leaves excised at end with only stubs remaining). Provenance: according to the previous owner, the manuscript came from the Bard family of Vermont.

¶ This unusually formatted volume opens with a handful of remedies, including two for horses (“An Infallible cure for Spavin”; “A Cure for Ring bone Thistolow [fistula] & Pole [poll] Evil” Before this, several pages are devoted to a remedy “In Pursuance of A Resolve of the General Assembly” for a “Method of Curing Cancers [which] have been found efficacious by the Committee appointed to make trial of it”, which has been “published exactly from Mrs. Mary Johnson’s Receipt” – apparently copied from an item by one Theophilus Grew in The Virginia Almanack for 1754. Other remedies include “How to make Ointment for the brest” and “A Cure for worms in Children”.

These soon give way to what seems the main concern of this collection: the treatment and manipulation of various metals. The page format also changes to something more unusual: each spread is treated as one sheet, so that the text runs across the gutter to the opposite page. The hand, too, is much neater, and may be that of a different scribe. Many of the entries in this section are copied from The Laboratory; Or, School of Arts by Godfrey Smith, which appeared in several editions around the mid-18th century. Indeed, the section’s main heading “Choice Experiments on Iron and Steel” is itself drawn from Smith’s volume.

Our scribe’s keen interest in working with metals is clear from the 30 or so items that follow, at first in a batch of around 10 that include directions “To temper steel so as to cut

iron like lead”, “A particular secret to harden amour”, “To temper steel or iron, so as to make excellent knifes thereof”, “To bring gravers and other tools to their proper temper”, “A Solder for brass”, and “A water to tin all sorts of metals, but especially Iron”. The topic then shifts again, to adhesives (“A wood glue, which stands water”; “An excellent glue for wood, stone, glass, & Metal”; “A good stone glue or cement for grotto work” – again sourced from Smith’s book) and miscellaneous household tips (“Soap of Naples”; “Balls to take out Spots of oil or grease”; “To make vinegar”; “To harden fishing Hooks”; “To prepare yellow ink”; “To prepare ink so that what is writ therewith cannot be read but in a dark place”) before circling back to matters metallic (“To melt copper and brass, and give it a quick fusion”; “A particular secret to gild silver to the greatest perfection”) and indulging in a final flurry of miscellanea that ends with instructions “To catch Pigeons”.

The predominance of material on metals may suggest an owner with a vocational interest in such matters; the presence of more conventional domestic recipes and remedies indicates that the book’s use ranged across a household rather than being confined to the workshop.

SOLD Ref: 8127

SHAW, Frederick Manuscript journal kept by a British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars.

[Circa 1814-5]. Narrow folio (290 x 105 x 5 mm). Approximately 20 pages of text on 26 leaves. Heavily worn, a very small piece of the remains of the original limp vellum binding at end, text damp stained and some tears with loss, some leaves have been excised at the end with only stubs remaining.

¶ Journals can catch the ephemeral nature of human life and fix it on the page; this soldier’s journal also captures the fragile existence of its owner, both in the delicate state of this survival from the Napoleonic Wars and in the everyday concerns that predominate in the text (marching, eating, money, etc). The chronicler alludes to this precariousness in his inscription to the first leaf, in which he is moved to memorialise the tragic passing of friends:

“Fred Shaw His Book. Toulouse April the 11th 1814 France George Smith, Job Tayler, Lucy Tayler the Happiest Couple in the World was Ship wrecked in Falmou[th] Haber on the 14 day of February 1814”.

The manuscript was, it appears, kept by a British soldier named Frederick Shaw, probably a junior N.C.O., serving in the allied columns marching on Paris in June and July of 1814. The opening word of the journal is missing thanks to a torn-out fragment, but is probably “6th”, as the text begins “March’d at day Break six Leagues to a small Village called Mongaion [Montguyon?] Alted that Night”, continues “7th Proceeded to Beabezue [Barbezieux-Saint-Hilaire?] A fine Large Town and pleasant situated 6 Leagues from Mongain”, on the “13th Marched to Poitier” and so on as they traverse France by foot.

Shaw describes the towns and villages through which they pass (most of which he pronounces “Beautiful” or “Pleasant”) and their reception (usually friendly) by the locals. He records a minor altercation in Tours, when “me and two more of my friends went into one of their cook shops to get something to eat they brought us a plate of giblets worth about one shilling to the best of my opinion.” Hunger prompts them to call for more, “which they brought we eat that and bread too and drank four bottles of beer and then called for the reckoning”, only to be brought a bill for “not less than

nine shillings the beer at six pence per bottle. I told the woman I would take her to the Marie”. Eventually, however, “the Lady Reduced it to Six Shillings”. The confusion of armies on the march supplies some vignettes: near Montreuil, he sets off in the wake of the Sargeant Major to collect “billets” but goes many miles out of his way and is sent back by Lut. Col. Jenkinson, “Commandant of the Artillery of that collum”; the plan to halt at Abbeville is superseded by “ a fresh order for the whole of the German to proceed to Brussells on their way to Germany as we was informed that the Emperor of Austria would not suffer the allies to pass the Rhine”; and Shaw’s detachment, “being the only troops with the third collum was ordered to march the next morning to join the second collum which has been one days march in front all the way from Bourdeaux”.

The final words of the manuscript are “that Night 6th Marched to Boulougne”, which, save for a torn page of accounts, are followed by blank pages – an expressive lapse into silence from a soldier on the ground contemplating an uncertain fate.

£950 Ref: 8118

41. EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSION

[SHELSWELL, Thomas (1671- 1706/7)] Manuscript entitled ‘Miscellanea or A Collection of seuerall Attempts in Poetry occasionally written by Thom: Shelswell’.

[Authorial publication. Jamaica? Circa 1700]. Folio (308 x 200 x 30 mm). Pagination [8], [1, blank], [3 (“The Table”)], [4, blanks], 22, 27-59, [1, blank], 65-84, 91-101, the remainder (numbered 102-262) blank. Page 21/2 cut down with slight loss of a few letters. Pages 23-26 appear to have been excised and crossed out in “The Table” at or near the time of composition. Pages 85-90 were probably removed by Shelswell as the poem appears to be uninterrupted and catchword follows. The other gaps in pagination are errors rather than excisions, as although some leaves have been removed, all the poems (apart from those crossed through) are accounted for in “The Table”.

Watermark: Arms of London. Countermarks: EB (to front endpaper) and CT (to text).

Provenance: the manuscript is dedicated to “G. Frere”

1806. She is related to Matthew via her father, John Raper (c.1708 1748), to whom this manuscript was dedicated. Inscription to endpaper reads meque cui me esset devinctior alter. Hor. Sat. v. l.42” me” and was probably added by Matthew Raper.

¶ Poet, slaver, entrepreneur, homosexual, queer, LGBT: which if any of these terms might the author of these poems have considered appropriate to his sense of self and his place in society? The answer remains elusive, but it’s a question eminently worth exploring.

Modern discussions of the horrors of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans aim to uncover more fully the experiences of those enslaved, and to interrogate the practices and the psychologies of their enslavers. This manuscript publication, written by an independent slaver in Kingston, Jamaica, touches on the question of how small-scale and often isolated individual traders maintained their social connections – an important consideration, since the cohesive social networks that resulted radically altered the structures of the trade and led to its massive expansion in the 18th century.

But a closer reading suggests that there is still more to glean from these pages: an intriguing undertone of sexual ambiguity

The use of classical and private allusions, together with the author’s often circumspect, ambiguous language, and redacted sections, all contribute to the impression that its author is both suppressing and expressing his homosexuality.

BREAKING THE MONOPOLY

From 1672, the Royal African Company, under the patronage of Charles II, held a monopoly over English trade with the west coast of Africa, and over the transportation of enslaved Africans, predominantly to the British Caribbean. But an increase in ‘independent’ slavers challenged this monopoly, provoking first a policy of capture and prosecution by the Admiralty and then a concerted campaign by independent slavers for the deregulation of the Atlantic slave trade. The passing of An Act to Settle the Trade to Africa in 1698 accomplished that deregulation, opening the way for an unprecedented rise in the transportation of enslaved Africans by “separate traders to Africa”, as the 1698 Act called them. According to Pettigrew1, the debates leading up to the Act “played a critical part in entrenching African slavery as the preferred solution to the American problem of labor supply” (p.15).

Pettigrew estimates that this rush reached its first peak in 1701 – roughly the time that Thomas Shelswell wrote this manuscript (“from my Compting house March 25th 1700”). That he compiled this volume in Jamaica is given additional credence by the heading of a poem on p.9: “Writt on the Lid of this Box wherein I kept my Books” – an arrangement suited both to someone travelling and needing to protect his books from a hot climate.

Shelswell was one of the newly thriving independent slavers, although very little biographical information is readily available: records yield a Thomas Shelswell born in 1671 to John and Hannah Shelswell2, and the ‘Will of Thomas Shelswell, Merchant of Kingston Island of Jamaica, West Indies’ (dated 29 October 1707), which mentions friends and relations but no spouse, is recorded in the National Archives3 .

However, his “seuerall Attempts in Poetry” collected here include dedications and references that enable one to trace a network of family and acquaintances – a group that may have been all the more important to him in light of his probable unmarried status.

Chief among his friends was Matthew Raper (1675-1748), to whom this manuscript is dedicated and “at Whose request and for Whose Sake many of them were writt”. Raper was a businessman involved with the East India Company and with the importing of Chinese silks. His younger brother Moses Raper (d.1748), who served as Director of the Bank of England and President of Guy’s Hospital, is mentioned several times in this manuscript as a friend. Another member of the family, Henry Raper (probably Matthew’s son), is also recorded by Pettigrew as an independent slaver. The merchant class are, not surprisingly, well represented in Shelswell’s circle: besides the Raper brothers, his will mentions “Henry Peil and Joshua Crosby Merchants” of Kingston, Jamaica. Peil and Shelswell himself were among the correspondents of Humphry Morice (c.16711731), a merchant, MP, and Governor of the Bank of England who did more than most to turn an already appalling trade into something truly horrific.

Family members also figure in Shelswell’s manuscript: the poem “Looking on Mr Henry Loader lyeing in Convulsions the Effect of Love” (p.11) is “Humbly offered to my Sister Mary Shelswell”, and “Abraham’s Oblation of his Son” (pp.13-18) is similarly dedicated “to my Sister Elizabeth Shelswell”. A set of “Instructions for the better performance of Public (especially English) Speeches, gathered out of Du Gard’s Rhetorices Elementa”, meanwhile, is assigned “for the Vse of my Younger Brother” – the same sibling, perhaps, referred to in the title of “A Short Oration on the Sufferings and death of Iesus Christ translated and abridg’d. Pronounced Publickly by my brother John Shelswell (a Lad of Twelve Years Old) On Monday in Easter Week Anno Domini 1700”.

EDUCATION AND CONTRADICTION

The first seven pages are taken up with “the small and poor Remains of what I writt at School”, which he retrospectively dates “Anno. 1694”, and one of which, “An Epitaph”, was written “att School. On the death of the reverend Mr. Starky” who was perhaps a schoolmaster. In another, he offers Acrostick on Miss Jones”

“An Acrostick on Mr Munger, occasionally sent to a publick School within 20 Miles of London”

Shelswell puns on the name in the line

*REGNUM has advanc’d so near”

asterisk points to a note at the end which reads

“*MUNGER reverst who liv’d just by ye school at that time”). But his most

direct reference comes in the form of a long vilification (pp.53-57) against Eton College, which is indeed approximately “20 Miles of London” – offering an avenue for further biographical inquiry. The invective includes such lines as “To Eaton’s (O Curst Name) to Eaton’s Publick School: / Let’s look what Conduct They use there” and “What a Confus’d, Tumuluous Dun / Thro the whole School does run” where “Excessive Senseless Cruelty / Will flushing meet your loathing Eye”. He seems to speak from bitter experience when he asks: “What does such inconsiderable Harshness mean, / What is’t that such extream severity avails, / What Benefitt is in such merc’less Vsage seen” and declares that “Never, no Never was the Rod / Brandish’d with Terrour to so little Good”.

One wonders at the moral dissonance that allows a man to copy out his complaint against the treatment meted out by the “Pedagogue’s” of Eton (“This is the Pregant Nursery of Vice; / the dire Contagion’s Spread, / And thro our Isle from Hence th’Infection Rolls”) very time he was trading in the lives of enslaved men and women. Does he think the school itself is responsible for his later moral turpitude or for normalising abusive treatment?

But perhaps, when copying out “The Celebration of the Birth Day of Hugo Grotius” (pp.33-34), he took solace from the mental contortions of this Dutch thinker (1583-1645), who reasoned that if individuals may sell their labour, then they should also be able to sell their liberty, and if they sell their liberty, they are slaves (a fallacious argument at best, since said individuals are sold by others and do not profit from the transaction). Grotius’ fondness for quoting Aristotle, who was still more in favour of slavery for certain classes of people, hints at another kind of network: that of historical precedence for one’s actions.

Shelswell certainly wrote defensively when he penned “To the Poet ..... Authour of the Trip to Jamaica. Humbly offered to Mr John Moore of D Island” (pp.18-20). This riposte to Ned Ward’s A Trip to Jamaica (1700) accuses him of falsehood for monetary gain (“Such false, such Odious, spurious Subject choose: / Provok’d, Thou eternall Drudge of Press and Purse”). Ward “shares his love of extravagant similes and his knowing masculine jocularity represented Jamaica”4 – or as Shelswell puts it, “In thy Trip (stuft with Nauseous Similes, / Strain’d Senseless Words, Superhyperboles)”. Ward, “who seems to have visited Port Royal, obviously targets Jamaica, an English plantation vigorously promoted since the island’s capture from Spain in 1655.” He considered the place “a hell on earth in

which the criminal dregs of English society now prosper.”4 Shelswell claims Ward had never visited the island, for “why wouldst Thou vent Thy Spleen / (To shew Thy Witt) against an Isle unseen?”; he goes on to admit that Ward may actually have been there, but “If It receives bad Men, It sends out None / Except Thy Self, who was too bad to bear”.

THE ART OF AMBIGUITY

In a coda to the school poems, Shelswell remarks that “The rest are Either lost and forgotten, or were torn out by Kissæon, who had too great a byass on me, to be deny’d the Cancelling of those papers, which (on private Reasons) ^he most . Indeed, as one can see from the physical details above, Shelswell did a fair amount of tearing out, which, given the volume’s appealing presentation, could be seen as surprising; but the fact that the imperative to excise overrode aesthetic considerations tells its own story.

Who was the mysterious Kissæon? One possible candidate is Bacchus, since “Kissos” (Greek for ivy) was one of Bacchus’s names.5 Besides acting as allegorical editor, Kissæon appears numerous times within the text: on pp.20-21, “A Song. Sett to Musick includes the line “So when Kissæon, whose fame rings, Chief of ; and again, “Under Kissæon’s Picture drawn lying a Sleep p.73, we find the lines “The Mirrour. As Vsum carisimi mei Francisci Moore. Hos lege Kissæon Versus, animoque revolve”, which roughly translate as “The Mirror. The use of my dear Francis Moore. Read these verses of Kissæon and turn your heart”. The identity of Kissæon may be a red herring, but the frequency of this character’s appearances and the ambiguity they evoke suggest that they lie close to the heart of Shelswell’s psychology.

It’s notable that this apparently unmarried scribe nonetheless feels qualified to “In Praise of MARRIAGE” (pp.35-40). After some conventional sentiments (“Marriage! That Sacred Honourable Name!”), he quickly moves to the bedroom where the newlyweds may “Wittness th’unparall’d, and vast Delight; / That does attend the Nuptiall Night” and “Then, with th’extinguished Lights, soon disapear / The Virgin’s Doubts, and all her Maiden Fear” Despite his own apparent lack of experience, he

No all those Phantomes of a Virgin’s Heart Follow Her to the Bed, but there they part. These false created Notions Subside

To the experienc’d Pleasures of the Bride.

Her Soul and Senses in new joys drown’d, Joys in the Bed, or no where to be found.

He then describes the pleasures of family life, and warns the “few neglected Beaus, / Who Know no Pleasure, that’s beyond their Cloaths” of their fate: “Mistaken, Blinded Mad, They cannot see, / But ignorantly hugg Virginity.”

But these rather loftily expressed sentiments make curious reading when juxtaposed against the poem that immediately precedes it: “Amicus non in Connubiali lecto. A Translation. (pp.34-35), which may be roughly translated as “A friend not in the marriage bed”. The language is more violent than in his paean to marriage: he seems to be struggling with conflicted emotions when he cries:

Stabb me, my Freind, plunge me in endless Night, Rather than dare t’Invade my Nuptiall Right. [...]

You should, Companion of my Life, receive Share of the Joys, and Bliss that I could give: Within my Roof a Lodging I’de afford, Freely I would, and hugg Thee to my Board: But from my Bed begone. I cannot bear To have the Best of Freinds a partner there. He claims it is a translation, but we have found no such poem in Latin or English.

The same tortured vacillation is evident in “Song” (p.100), which also uses the brusque instruction “begone”: Yes we were sat, and in my Breast

His head kind Daphnis gently shov’d. He lookt, he prest, he touch’d, he kiss, All pretty Signs to shew he lov’d.

2.

I pusht the youth, and rashly said, Away, I think you’re rude, begone. With Sighs the Lad too soon obey’d: Thus I was Coy and was undone.

Further examples emanate from poems such as “Achilles’s Complaint for his immoderate Love for Briseis a Captive Maid when he might be more happy in ye enjoyment of his Freind Patroclus” (pp.94-97). Invoking the ancient Greek hero and his bosom companion is sometimes a conceit used to suggest homosexual undertones, and in Shelswell’s writings they combine with the more forthright expressions of troubled sexuality. It’s plausible to interpret “Kissæon” – depicted as both writer and censorious editor of these poems – as a persona created by Shelswell to embody his own competing impulses.

Reaching back to ancient Greek and Latin culture, while hardly unusual for early modern poetry, in this instance could be said to aid Shelswell’s placing of himself in a network of historical precedent, both for homosexuality and for justifying slavery. That he does so while at the same time tracing a contemporary network of friends and relatives through his dedications is a confirmation of how deep into the roots of contemporary English society certain trails of influence and connection may lead (“And thro our Isle from Hence th’Infection Rolls”).

As readers, we remain appalled at the activities of slavers such as Shelswell and the inhuman edifice of commerce they established, but our own competing impulses may also prompt us to seek insights into the workings of their minds – and by extension, the moral equivocations that still characterise human behaviour today in its often contorted and conflicted attempts at self-justification.

SOLD Ref: 8092

1. Pettigrew, William A. Freedom’s Debt: The Royal Africa Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 16732-1752. (2013).

2. https://findmypast.co.uk

3. https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D673547 (PROB 11/497/132).

4. https://www.grubstreetproject.net/

5. We are extremely grateful to Prof David Kastan for pointing this out.

42. BIRTH OF A NEW ERA

CLARKE, John (1760-1815); HEAD, Samuel (c. 1773-1837). Manuscript medical lecture notes.

[London. Circa 1802-3]. Octavo (205 x 135 x 35 mm). Title page and approximately 305 text pages on 202 leaves. Lectures mainly to versos and annotations to rectos, but from pp163-223 the lecture notes occupy both rectos and versos. The lower half of f.37 has been excised with loss of text. Contemporary sheep, rubbed, rebacked with fragments of the original spine laid down. Manuscript title: “Lectures on Midwifry on Diseases of Women & Children &c by Doctr Clark at No 1. New Burlington Street, London 1802 & 1803 – by Samuel Head”. The text is written in a hasty italic hand throughout with corrections deletions, presumably written up immediately after or even during the lectures.

¶ The professionalisation of medicine in the 18th century came with a wresting of control of pregnancy and childbirth from the female sphere to the male, which brought forth a new phenomenon: the man-midwife. The increasing involvement of men in overseeing the process of childbirth was a source of great argument and controversy, with critical commentary running the gamut from concern over immodesty and opportunities for sexual impropriety to outrage at the symbolic blurring of genders inherent in the term ‘man-midwife’. Meanwhile, the Royal College of Physicians granted a Licence in Midwifery to around ten practitioners, among them John Clarke (1760-1815).

Clarke’s publications included An Essay on the Epidemic Disease of Lying-in Women, of the Years 1787 and 1788 (1788), Practical Essays on the Management of Pregnancy and Labour (1793) and the textbook, The London Practice of Midwifery, first published in 1803. Along with his colleague Dr Osborn, he delivered courses on midwifery and the diseases of women and children, at St Bartholomew's Hospital and at his home in New Burlington Street. These lecture notes were taken – at the latter venue, according to the title Head (c. 1773-1837), a Canadian doctor, merchant and judge. Head was born in Halifax,

Nova Scotia but received his medical training in England and in 1803 became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of London. He moved back to Halifax and started a practice in surgery and medicine in about 1804, and took over the running of a pharmacy established by his father.

The lectures follow a roughly chronological path from menstruation to conception through to childbirth and post-partum topics, with considerable attention given to disorders and complications along the way (including “Treatment of Diseases during Pregnancy”, “Labors, signs of approaching labor”, “Diseases in consequence of Parturition”). Despite the creeping influence of men in the process of birth, the lectures are striking for their sometimes-nuanced approach to the woman’s experience, with remarks that suggest a slightly more enlightened attitude than one might assume for the era. Making an assertion that still echoes in the culture today, Clarke says: “Pregnancy is not to be considered as a state of disease” (p97) –although in an earlier lecture, he (or perhaps Head in a careless transcription) commits the same fallacy he will warn against when, discussing “obstructions” (especially if they have become “dropsical”), he comments: “The only disease you may be liable to mistake this for is pregnancy” (p15).

Clarke makes clear that “The Bulk of your practise will be natural labors” (p114); Head also records Clarke’s insistence that “Natural labor will require no assistance at all & the principal object is to keep it a natural labor”. Indeed, the medic’s role is to create the conditions for this to happen by ensuring their mother’s “comfort & safety”. This is fully the responsibility of the man-midwife, who should keep in mind that “real difficulties must occur very seldom” – and when they do, it is “generally from mismanagement on ye part of ye accoucheur” (p123). Clarke gives detailed instructions on how to make a bed well and keep it dry, and prescribes the support and reassurance that a man-midwife should provide to avoid unnecessary complications. He sagely warns against making hasty predictions, saying that he “never would prognosticate ye time of a labor untill I had ye head of ye Child in my hands” (p128v).

But sometimes “real difficulties” do occur, and Clarke stresses the importance of making accurate diagnoses and anticipating complications. Contingencies must be put in place and prudent actions taken, at the same time being judicious about how much to intervene. In cases where “the powers of ye mother is too weak to be delivered by her own efforts, but when she can be delivered without danger to herself or child”, these can be considered “arrest or Forceps cases” (he discusses the use of forceps in detail on pp148-150 and elsewhere); but if the situation becomes more dangerous, for example “Where ye woman cannot be delivered by her own efforts, but where ye life of either mother or child must yield to ye safety of ye other”, matters may require “Caesern. opern” (the Caesarean operation and its history are discussed on pp152-153 and elsewhere).

BEARABLE BIRTHING

Clarke stresses the importance of maintaining the woman’s strength throughout labour (for instance, by “taking frequently broth, gruel, Barly gruel, or any nourishing”), and of administering sustenance at the appropriate time (“spirits or cordials are here improper at ye first stages – but supposing ye Childs head is out of ye Patient is not sufficient to expel it: then wine or any such stimulus becomes usefull”). Complications may be due to such things as “irregular contractions of ye Uterus” – but “a Dose of Opium may in this case be of service”.

Opiates also come into play during labour pains, although these are evidently held to be both inevitable and useful for staging progress. If simply keeping the mother comfortable fails to prevent the pain from becoming overpowering, he recommends “a dose of laudanum at night”, and, to be on the safe side, “I wd tell ye woman she probably may have such another attack & leave an opiate to take” (p124). Not that Clarke considers the poppy a recourse in all cases: in his discussion of remedies for nausea and heartburn, it comes as a relief to find him pronouncing: “opium is of no effect & rather seems to do harm” (p84).

Clarke recognises that some issues are psychological in nature: “Depressing passions” may be caused by “ye patient losing confidence in the practitioners”, so the “Young Practitioner” should be careful not to appear “anxious or confused or calling for consultations if not actually necessary”; instead he “should support ye strength ^ & spirits of ye patient”

Instilling confidence in the patient is an important theme running throughout the lectures, not just through what the practitioner does but how he does it. For example, in cases of leukorrhea, Clarke notes that it “often arises from want of cleanliness or proper attention to washing the parts”; and suggests that the man-midwife ‘enhance’ the water “to give it color, taste or smell”, which will help to engender “confidence in it & make them more attentive to its use” (p20).

Clarke himself appears to have no confidence in the relatively recent innovation of using electricity in medical practice: “Electricity no doubt has emmenagogue powers, sparks & shock, shd. be made to pass thro the Utero – but it is often inefficacious”. He prefers instead a more enjoyable and holistic form of treatment: “The most powerfull thing that I know is dancing, not only from exercise but also because there is always a Determination of Blood to the head parts of Generation”.

FOR AND AGAINST

Clarke highlights an important aspect of their role as medical professionals: acting as an expert witness to help settle legal questions. “Medical Men are often examined before a Court of Justice to give evidence of children supposed to be destroyed at Birth”, he explains, before presenting a series of arguments for or against the mother, but his presumption notably tends to be for the former: he asserts that “You should at a Coroners Jury, argue the case generally in favor of ye mother” (p75) – an attitude one might not expect in a senior male physician of the period.

It would be remarkable not to encounter in these lectures some less appetising instances of the established (male) view of female reproduction. On the same page as his endorsement of dancing to bring on menstruation, Clarke also commends “the Bishop of Munsters remedy, which was that all girls should be married at sixteen years old”; and in a section concerning “Painfull menstruation”, Head has added a note opposite: “This is a never original disease but always an acquired one & one that would never take place in a state of nature, arising from the uterus not being impregnated in the time nature intended” (p25). In the same vein, Clarke’s lecture on “The circumstances necessary for propagation in females” includes the contention that prostitutes conceive less frequently than might be expected because “the venereal passion” is missing (p61).

The title of the final section, “Gravid Uterus Mr Wilson”, presumably refers to James Wilson (1765-1821), who had studied under William Hunter (1718-1783), author of Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus (1774), which is considered “one of the finest anatomical atlases ever to be produced”. After Hunter’s death, Wilson taught anatomy at the Great Windmill Street School (originally Hunter’s house, where Hunter gave anatomy lessons). This section includes “Nerves & Absorbents”, “Muscularity”, “Placenta”, and “manner of impregnation” and was probably taken from lectures at Windmill Street.

These lecture notes offer a wealth of first-hand evidence for the training of medical professionals at the turn of the 18th century. Sometimes dogmatic and misogynistic, but often surprising in their subtlety and attention to psychology, they introduce a note of nuance into the early history of the man-midwife.

SOLD Ref: 8119

The Royal College of Surgeons of England have eleven manuscript notebooks of Dr John Clarke's lectures on midwifery kept by William Prosser, ref. MS0081/2.

Beinecke Library, Yale have a volume entitled ‘Lectures on the practice of midwifery’ (1813). Gen MSS Vol 813.

43. FLORILEGIUM OF FAIREST FLOWERS

[THOMPSON, John] Late 17th-century manuscript commonplace book.

[Circa 1694]. Quarto (text block measures 195 x 153 x 20). 12-page table, [4 (blanks)], 233 (numbered pages), [17, (blanks)].

Contemporary panelled calf, neatly rebacked (probably in the 20th century), rubbed, occasional browning and minor marks to text. A few pressed leaves loosely inserted.

Watermark: Coat of Arms (similar to Haewood 369, but not an exact match).

Provenance: three ownership inscriptions to front endpaper of “JohnThompson” and dated “1694”.

Commonplace books were compiled with varying degrees of organisation or intent, sometimes over years or decades: this example seems to have been a project conceived and executed by its owner within a relatively short time span. The only date (“1694”) is the one to the endpaper, the clear hand and the layout are consistent throughout, and some sections of text have been copied down in batches from their sources.

Those sources are not always easy to identify, given the frequency with which texts – especially epigrammatic or aphoristic ones – were anthologised and recirculated, either in print or in manuscript. But Thompson’s first entry, which begins “Garrulity is soe Irksome to Society, that we seldom find it welcom’d”, is taken from Daily observations, or, Meditations, divine, moral, by Arthur Capel (1604-1649), a contention confirmed by his paraphrasing of Capel in his title to this section: “Daily Observations. Divine & Morall”.

Thompson’s rendering of extracts in batches from certain sources is far from indiscriminate: for example, the passages between p 175 and p 216 were copied from The courtier’s oracle: or, The art of prudence. Written originally in Spanish, by Baltazar Gracian; and now done into English (two editions: 1685 and 1694), and set down in the order in which they occur in the printed work. But Thompson is selecting and curating, and has included only those which he considered pertinent. The inference is that he has exercised his own quite specific set of criteria in choosing which to include and which to leave out. Among those that do make it into his book are: “To be always usefull”, “The thing and ye Manner of the thing”, “The judicious and Penetrating man”, “The joviall Humour”, “The way to live Long”, and “Silken words”.

Thompson’s personal touchstones can be gleaned to some extent by looking though the topic headings in “The Table”, his alphabetically arranged, 12-page index of contents at the front of the volume which includes a wide variety of headings. We list just a few here give a sense of topics covered which range from “Arguing and passion”, “Apparell”, “Beauty”, “Business”, “Contradicting”, “Charity”, “Death”, “Ears”, “Flattery”, “Gaming”, “Happiness”, “Jests”, “Love”, “Memory”, “Oppression”, “Patience”, “Reason”, “Speech”, “Silence”, “Tears and Pain”, to “Women”.

His selections regarding “Women” are brief, but they all too clearly represent the misogyny that characterised the culture of this period (and, of course laid the foundations for later generations), via a liberal quantity of illiberal epigrams such as “He yt: can abide a curst wife, need not fear what company he liveth in”, and “If women be butifull, they are won with praises, if proud with Guifts; if covetous with promises”, and one which might resonate with today’s incels: “Women oft in their Love resemble the Apothecary’s in their Arts, who choose the weeds for their Shops, when they leave the Fairest flowers in the Garden”. These all appeared in Nicholas Ling’s (active 1580-1607) Politeuphuia, wits common-wealth, an enormously popular book first published in 1597 and followed by at least 30 editions. Other catchy phrases to prop up the patriarchy reach back to ancient times: “Trust not a woman when she weepeth, for it is her nature to weep when she wanteth her will” appeared in several 17th century works but can be traced as far back as Socrates.

Commonplace books can offer an opportunity to examine the aesthetic, literary and moral palates of their owners, and to illuminate parts of the larger world of early-modern publishing and manuscript culture. Thompson’s contribution to the genre is admirably thorough; through his curated selections, we gain an insight into the thoughts and attitudes of a 17th-century reader and their wider society which in turn formed the substratum of the world in which we live today.

SOLD Ref: 8133

44. CHANGING HANDS

[CULINARY MANUSCRIPT] 18th century manuscript book of culinary recipes.

[Circa 1770]. Quarto (187 x 153 x 13 mm). 32 text pages, 50 blank leaves. Contemporary full vellum binding, spine chipped with small areas of loss, small cuts to front board. Some spotting and minor marks to text. Watermark: Coat of Arms with motto: Honi soit qui mal y pense.

¶ The first 34 recipes in this manuscript were written in the same neat italic hand with calligraphic flourishes. They appear to have been completed in one or two sittings, after which a second, less-practiced hand has enlarged the volume slightly and numbered the culinary recipes to 44 to the right of the title. It seems likely, if unproveable, that the volume was produced by the earlier scribe for the use of the second. Indeed, the recipe for “White Sauce for Fish” has been used by the second scribe, and then, to judge from their note at the end, improved: “Two spoonfuls of Wine is better than three, & a little more Vinegar than the above”.

A recipe for “Indian pickle” is copied from Ann Peckham’s The complete English cook, a book first published in 1767 and followed by five editions between 1771 and 1790, all of which were printed at Leeds. All editions are scarce, with library holdings varying between two and six copies depending on edition. However, although there is a strong resemblance, especially in the first few lines, our scribe edits the recipe down and changes the order in which ingredients are added and how long they are steeped – indicating that their rendition of Peckham’s text is informed by personal experience.

Other recipes appear to have come from manuscript sources. “To Stew Beef”, which is coyly annotated “This is one of Mrs K by’s Winter Dishes”, is the only recipe attributed by the first scribe, whereas the second scribe is keen to flaunt their social connections, naming four out their 10 contributors including “Mr J Wheel”, “Lady Biddulph”, and “Mrs R. Wilmot”.

Others include “To make Shrewsberry Cakes”, “A Pickle for a Sturgeon”, “To make Dutch Blomouge"”, “To make a Hare Cake”, “New College Puddings”, “To make a Bride Cake”, “To make a Lemmon Cheese” (which you should “Lay over sweetmeats that are light as fancy pleases”) and “Orange Jelly” which includes the note “Mrs Pill says instead of Grat^eing the peel, tis’ better to rub it against the Sugar, it gives the flavous and make it look better” and ends with the gentle command: “above all Don't make it too stiff, tis' a Dilicate Mouthfull, Oh, beyond Expression”).

At the opposite end of the manuscript and inverted, on two pages the second scribe has added three household recipes: “Rose Pomatum”, “Green Paint” and “Soap for washing the hands”, the latter amended to include the instruction “if you like it add 2 ounces” before continuing “of bitter Almonds that are very finely pounded”.

Although fairly slight, this manuscript includes some nice recipes from print and manuscript sources that have clearly been tried, tested, and even improved, providing interesting evidence of use, interaction, and experimentation.

45. STOICAL SCHOOLBOY

SENECA, Lucius Annaeus, (circa 4 BCE-65 CE); FARNABY, Thomas (1575?-1647) (editor); WRIGHT, John (annotator). L. & M. Annæi Senecæ tragoediæ: post omnes omnium editiones recensionesque editæ denuò & notis Tho. Farnabii illustratæ.

Londini: Excudebat Thom. Snodham, 1624. Second edition. Pagination pp. [8], 366, [10]. Signatures: [superscript pi]A⁴ A-Z⁸

2A⁴. The last leaf is blank. Collated and complete. [STC (2nd ed.), 22219]. Contemporary English sprinkled calf, neatly rebacked with original spine laid down. Paper flaws to a few leaves with loss of two or three words to T2, lacking endpapers. (ESTC S117123).

¶ This second edition of Seneca’s tragedies, edited and with Latin commentary by Thomas Farnaby (“the chief classical scholar as well as schoolmaster of his time” (ODNB) whose editions were popular textbooks in the 17th century), has been annotated by its young owner, who has inscribed the title verso “John Wright his book” and dated the title page “1677” (his name can also be made out faintly on the front cover). Seneca was considered an apt author for study in Restoration grammar schools, since his “rhetorical bombast and dramatic violence” contrasted with his stoicism to provide “pleasingly contradictory tools to think with” (Fleming & Grant, p.10).

Wright has made annotations to some 90 pages, often attempting translation of a phrase he has marked in the text; for example, he renders the vengeful Medea’s “paria narrentur tua repudia thalamis” as the rather awkward “let thy divorce sound as great as thy marriage” (p.3)). Some annotations share with this example an epigrammatic quality that suggests he is

collecting pithy or striking sayings with which to impress his peers (“nothing pleases for she [Phaedra] is so unconstant” (p.47); “let ye stars be driven out of yr courses” (p.55)). Occasionally, he even ‘corrects’ the venerable Roman’s text: on p.84, for instance, he has crossed out the printed text “Quod varda fatum lingua” and replaced it with “qu varda fatu est lingua” – either at the urging of a master or out of his own sense of precocity. Among the pen trials and miscellaneous notes at the rear (which include the vertically written and decidedly Senecan phrase “riches are good but learning better”) is an inscription, reversed, on the final leaf: “H. S. E. Johannes filius Guliel: Berkenhead. d: Henstridge in Cont Somerset: hajus Collegii Chorista qui animam Deo Efflavae 12o Feb: Anno {Salutii 84 Ælatii 18”. This solitary reference to a young man of presumably similar age to Wright was probably copied from a tomb and suggests they were perhaps friends or acquaintances, but we have found no evidence of a connection.

This carefully kept volume, with its original binding, survives as an artefact from a Restoration classroom that not only confirms elements of the school’s curriculum (Seneca, along with Greek and Hebrew, judging by some of Wright’s pen trials), but shows its young annotator seemingly coming to terms with the death of a friend –something for which reading the Stoics would have been ideal preparation.

£750 Ref: 8033

46. HOUSE RULES

SMITH, John Late 18th century manuscript book, including notes on building and surveying. [Maidstone, Kent. Circa 1796-1820]. Octavo (165 x 110 x 50 mm). Approximately 480 pages of text, illustrations, and pasted-in printed tables on 304 leaves, with two additional leaves folded and stitched in at end. Contemporary calf, modern plain reback.

¶ This working manuscript notebook, entitled “A Collection of useful Information on Various Subjects but Principally relative to Surveying & Building” was compiled by “John Smith”, a “House & Land Surveyor, Maidstone”. It is dated on the title page “1796-7-8” but has been continued beyond these dates.

Smith has arranged his entries alphabetically: early headings include “Cornices of Plaister”, “Canal Surveys”, and “Coppers”, and he devotes several pages to various kinds of “Cements”, indicating a methodical approach with his inclusion of “Results of Experiments”. His other topics range from “Dilapidations In Houses”, “Flues”, “Floors” and “Gilding” “Joiner’s work”, “Intercolumniations”, “Levelling”, “Land Measuring”, “Ponds”, and “Land Surveying”. He lists “Measures” for various objects and substances and sets down design for a “Pentagraph To copy Drawings”; and indeed, many entries feature small inset illustrations.

Smith takes in related areas familiar to a modern readership: “Estimates – Brief method of making”, and “Nuisances” he encounters in his work, including “Neighbours” to adjoining properties and, especially, “Party Walls” (so much so that he has bound in a copy of the statute concerning them). He also engineers a few connecting passages of his own by cross-referencing: for example, the section “Architecture – Proportions of” is annotated “Analysis of Stone (see Cement)”; and “Bricks” is annotated “see the weight of two Sorts of Bricks in Article Measures, last page”.

As if to acknowledge that homes are made of more than bricks and mortar, Smith includes many recipes and remedies, also dropped in alphabetically: remedies for “Cough”, “Convulsions” and “Hydrophobia” appear, as do recipes for “Bitters for Wine”, “Elder Wine”, “Ginger Wine – Mrs French’s receipt”, and Orange Wine”. Household hints are represented

by the likes of “Blacking – excellent”, “Kettles – how to prevent from furring”, and “Linen - To mark it indelibly recommended by Dr Smellie”. Mixed in with all these are some miscellaneous entries, including “Balloons”, “Gunpowder”, “Navigation”, and “optics”.

Smith makes occasional remarks concerning effectiveness, from the brief, familiar “Probatum est” against his remedy for “Fevers” to more forthcoming comments. “Ague Infallible Remedy for” is annotated in faded ink “NB I prescribed the above to a poor Woman (a soldier’s wife) & it cured her J Smith”. Infallible it may be, but he has noted in different ink: “see another Remedy over leaf”, where he has added two further remedies for the same condition. Similarly, there are two recipes for “Boot Tops”, but having pronounced the second an “Excellent liquid to Clean”, he notes at the end “the opposite page – a better receipt”

This collection offers a survey of one man’s practical preoccupations and suggests that its owner was as much concerned with household and health as with houses.

47. THE EDEN WHERE SHE DWELT

[JONES, Sarah (1768-1849); EDEN, Arthur (1793-1874)] A collection of correspondence addressed to Arthur Eden. [Circa 1807-1813]. 65 letters, a few octavo, but mostly quarto. Folded for posting, some with address panels, and a few with seals.

¶ This collection comprises correspondence to Arthur Eden (1793 1874), later to become Assistant Comptroller of the Exchequer and Deputy Auditor of Greenwich Hospital. He lived with his second wife Frances Baring at Harrington Hall, Spilsby, the inspiration for “the Eden where she dwelt” in Tennyson's poem ‘The Gardener’s Daughter’.

The largest portion of this collection is the correspondence from his aunt, Sarah Jones (née Webber) (1768-1849), whose engaging collection of 37 letters run to some 140 pages. Sarah Jones married into a Welsh family and has the dubious honour of being the likely inspiration for James Gillray’s satirical print, “Venus a la Coquelle or the Swan-sea Venus” of 28 March 1809. This parody shows “a middle-aged sea-green block of a woman” driving her sea-shell chariot across the waves. – supposedly an allusion to Jones’ public profile as “a celebrated whip, frequently seen in Hyde Park who made herself elegantly conspicuous by driving about in a smart chaise and pair”.

In this series of letters, written in a clear hand, Sarah dispenses news and advice to her nephew. The earlier letters are addressed from “Belle Vue” (c.1807-9) and afterwards from “Hill House” in Swansea (c.1810-3). She touches on domestic topics including her dogs, her husband’s hunting, and news of friends, neighbours and family (such as “the sudden Death of Mrs Dixon who apparently in perfect health dropped off her Chair whilst at Dinner on Wednesday last & instantly Died”); after her move to Wales, she sometimes describes both dogs and children as “Rustics”. She often seems beset by melancholy (“I suffer’d materially in my health & spirits by great Anxiety & Afflictions two years since & I lost much of my good looks”) and preoccupied with the bad health of her husband (“my whole time has been taken up in nursing him”), but often articulates her thoughts with a certain liveliness (““Thinks I to myself”, Arthur is very angry with me”).

Sarah is particularly exercised by troubles with servants: “Our man William Edwards”, she reveals, “turned out a great rogge”. She goes on to recall that “we placed so much confidence in he that he managed every thing in the way of Marketing, Bees, Coals, &c in every article of which he cheated us most grosly, nor did he content himself with this but he used to fill his Pockets with Bread Meat &c” and “Eliza Pierce the Cook has left us some time she was a most extravagant Servant she now ). In another letter she mourns “the Death of my good and invaluable Servant Sudden […] an “3 youngest Children”, who “still fancy she is Ill in the House”.

If this collection is anything to go by, Sarah’s husband, Arthur Jones (1768-1842) was a less frequent correspondent. He contributes four letters, which also cover domestic matters (especially their dogs), but with less vivacity than his wife, and in a comparatively untidy hand.

There are also 25 letters to Arthur Eden from his side of the family, including 10 from his sister, Lady Dorothy (Dora) Moore (née Eden) (c.1790-1875), whose emotional openness is often on display. She tells her brother: “I have suffered a great deal since I last wrote to you […] If I don’t give vent to my grief my heart bursts, you will imagine my sufferings” Her deeply felt experience of life has its consolations, as for example when she declares: “I think it is impossible for any body to love another better than I do Graham […] I sometimes think of him with wonder that a man can be so perfect”

Dora is well read, judging by her reference to Adam Smith’s idea of the “impartial spectator” or “man within” which is central to the philosophy in Theory of Moral Sentiments. She writes: “I am very sorry that you d d(?) with Eliza however the wisest cannot always command the impulse of the moment. & I & you “the man within” will forgive you if you promise us not to ere again. I like that expression of Smith’s “the man within” it is so expressive, there is something so dignified in it [...] there can be no real misery when the “man within” is satisfied”.

These letters represent one part of an extensive social and familial network, and give a more realistic portrait of Sarah Jones than the imperious figure parodied by Gillray. Moreover, since we have no corresponding replies from their recipient, the voices are predominantly female, a fact that nicely upends the usual state of affairs in matters historical.

£1,750 Ref: 8114

t h i n g s &w o r d s

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