things third words
D e a n C o o k e R a r e B o o k s L t d
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1. STOREY TIMES SEGAR, William, Sir (c. 1554-1633); augmented in manuscript by Robert DALE (1666-1722). Honor military, and ciuill, contained in foure bookes. Viz. 1. Justice, and iurisdiction military. 2. Knighthood in generall, and particular. 3. Combats for life, and triumph. 4. Precedencie of great estates, and others. Imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, printer to the Queenes most Excellent Maiestie, anno Dom. 1602. First edition. [STC, 22164]. Pagination [4], 256 p., [8] leaves of plates. Collated and complete with the eight engraved plates. Leaf F2 (blank) is bound after F4 and has manuscript additions to recto. Late 17th century interlinear annotations to 16 pages and 14 pages of manuscript in the same hand. The endleaves have been made up from ff193 6 of Sancti Ambrosii Liber de Nabuthe Iesraelita and leaf N from a book of acts Guilielmi & Mariae Anno Regni quinto (i.e. 1694 the same date as the annotations). Bound in late 17th century panelled calf, sometime rebacked, but front board since detached, original spine laid down. Apart from some very light damp staining to the margins, this is a very crisp, clean copy. Provenance: Armorial bookplate to pastedown of “Saml Wegg Esqr” . ¶ Heraldry likes to tell stories of neat, clear lines of descent (usually patrilineal, unless that proves inconvenient), but the reality of genealogy is messier. No one “line” can truly claim precedence over another; all members of the lineage play their part in the formation of the whole, and all “branches” radiate outwards to form their various connections and levels of influence.
This volume has a complicated lineage of its own. Ostensibly it is a book by the herald, William Segar. According to the ODNB, “Segar was a conscientious herald and a formidable scholar yet, like many other Tudor genealogists, he authorized many pedigrees giving most improbable descents from fabulous ancestors.”
Segar is best known for his Honor, Military and Civill (1602), published in 1602 by Robert Barker, “printer to the Queenes most Excellent Maiestie” (and later to James I), notably becoming the printer of King James Bible, one of the most important books ever printed in the English language. But this is not where the story begins: before the title page we encounter the binding, whose endpapers are both earlier and later than Segar’s text. It is bound in late century panelled calf (front board detached), and the binding’s structure is provided by Saint Ambrosius in the form of four leaves (two at each end) from Divi Ambrosii episcopi Mediolanensis omnia opera [Nürnberg]: Koberger, (1516). Meanwhile, William (1650 1702) and Mary (1662 1694) account for a sliver of our story in the form of a single leaf (N), from An Act for granting to Their Majesties an aid of four shillings in the pound for one year, for carrying on a vigorous war against France. [London: 1693 [i.e. 1694]]. [Wing, E1037D]. This leaf, from 1694, was inserted at the time of binding along with the leaves from Ambrosius. It is difficult to see what it contributes to the volume as a single leaf, it does not perform an endpaper’s usual task of adding strength to the structure of the book (although the book has been rebacked, so one or more leaves may have been removed). We can, however, be certain that it was inserted at the time of binding because it shares little red ink splashes to the fore edge with its neighbours. But it does bring us neatly to the annotations, which also date from 1694.
The British Library’s Egmont Papers include samples of Dale’s hand (Add MS 47175, f.132), which closely resembles the cursive hand here. Dale, one of the most active genealogists of his day, was clerk to Sir Henry St. George (Garter) from 1684 to 1688. The books of the four visitations which were made in person by Sir Henry (Cambridge 1684, Huntingdon 1684, Hampshire 1686, and London 1687) are in Dale’s hand. He developed a general practice largely directed towards tracing the origin of newly enriched mercantile families. He worked with Peter le Neve and Gregory King to make a catalogue of the books of the Office of Arms (circa 1690), which he copied and enlarged in 1694. The three volumes of officers of arms by John Anstis are largely written by Dale.1 By 1697 he was Blanch Lyon Pursuivant and Deputy Register of the College of Arms. Dale has augmented Segar’s text with annotations and additional pages to “The Second Booke. Of Knighthood”. Clearly intending his manuscript additions to complement the printed book, he carries over some of its conventions. For example, the catchword “CHAP.” to H5v has been crossed through and replaced with the first word of the following manuscript page, “This”. His neat interlinear annotations are often barely distinguishable from the text, and the manuscript pages are bordered and include running titles to match the book, or as extensions (“Addition to page
The annotations were probably written by Robert Dale (1666 1722), Richmond Herald. Although he does not inscribe the volume, he has a distinctive hand or rather, at least two distinctive hands: one extremely neat, resembling printed text; the other a neat cursive hand.
The largest addition is a group of eight numbered pages of manuscript notes bound in at the end of the second part and giving details of orders of knighthood including “Knights of the Broom Flower”, “Knights of Gladiators”, “Virgin Marys looking glass”, “Of the Elephant”, “Of the Saraphims”. They include historical details and notes on their arms and other details (“Of St Andrew. These knights are a Scotch order & are also called Knights of the Thistle [...] the collar is made up of thistles & Rue, the one being full of prickles, & not to be touch’d, without hurting the skin, the other is good against serpents & poyson”).
217 Treating of the Prince. Chap: 7”; “Addition to Page 68 Booke the Second”). Page numbers are frequently added as continuations of the text (sometimes causing duplication), and some catchwords are added in manuscript and a printed catchword amended. A single line to F3v, written to blend in with the text, reads “their number encreased since to 26”. This is followed up on a leaf bound after F4 headed “Addition to Page 68 Booke the Second ~ The Names of the Knights of the most noble order of the Garter, in this present year 1694”, with the 26 names listed. Leaf G2v, which is numbered “76” and continues the running title (“Of Honor. Lib: 2”), is headed: “Chap. 14. Of Knights of the Carpet, of the Chamber, of the Hare, Knights Marshall, St Sepulchre, of the shire, and of Novæ Scotiæ” with an explanation of each and how they acquired their names (e.g. “Knights of the Hare were fourteen Gentlemen knighted by King Edward the third in France, at the shouting of the French ~ which he thought was the signall for battle, but was only occasioned by the starting of a hare at the head of their Army”).
These and other such entries are not found in English 17th century heraldry books. Clues to some of Dale’s sources come from the interlinear annotations. Two short notes appear to reference Edward Chamberlayne’s (1616 1703) Angliæ notitia; or, The present state of England (first published 1669, followed by numerous editions into the 18th century): one on F5r. reads “Chamberlain calls them Equites Vexilliferi”; and a few pages later, “Chamberlain calls them Equites=Aurati from the Guilt Spurs usually put upon them” (G1v). But his favourite source seems to have been “Ross in his view of the Religions of Europe” (G4v), i.e. Pansebeia: or, A view of all religions in the world which first appeared in 1653 [Wing, R1971] and was reprinted throughout the 17 Some 20 years after Dale’s interventions, the book came into Esqr”, whose armorial and highly bookish bookplate is pasted to the title verso. Wegg FRS (1723 1802) was Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company between 1782 1799, after an early career distinguished by intellectual curiosity (graduate of St. John’s, Cambridge, admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1741, called to the Bar in 1746, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1753 and served as its Treasurer 1768 1802). Wegg played a pivotal role in the development of the Company, which functioned as the de facto government in parts of North America for nearly 200 years, and he strove “to meld certain new concepts with established procedure for the promotion of his Company’s interests” This beguiling artefact offers multifarious points of entry and raises questions of precedence in authorship and ownership. Was this text Segar’s, Saint Ambrosius’s, William and Mary’s, Wegg’s or maybe Dale’s? The latter’s annotations reach beyond the heraldry texts of the era, bringing disparate sources and authors into a new context, and adding to the intrigue of a volume full of paper trails. 8062
£6,000 Ref:
1.References:Wagner,A. R. Register and Collections of the College of Arms. 1952. 2. Ruggles, Richard I. ‘Governor Samuel Wegg. The Winds of Change’. The Beaver, 1976. With thanks to Dr Robert Colley for his invaluable assistance.
Provenance: Engraved armorial bookplate (“Terry sculp. Paternoster row”) to paste down of Anthony Highmore, with the family motto “Bello aptus Paci Intentus”. Ownership ink stamp to front free endpaper “A*Highmore Jun:r” .
2. HIGHMORALITY
[HIGHMORE, Anthony (1758/91829)] Late 18th century manuscript commonplace book. [Circa 1794 97]. Octavo (190 mm x 135 mm x 25 mm). Pagination [4, Lockean index], 144 numbered pages (including a tabulated index at the end). Contemporary green vellum, with contrasting red morocco labels (“COMMON PLACE BOOK” and “A. H. JR”).
¶ Commonplace books were a popular way for early modern readers to arrange their mental furniture, and this example houses an impressively eclectic collection, anchored by its owner’s professional preoccupation with matters moral, religious and legal. Most notably, Highmore’s active involvement in the movement to abolish slavery is reflected in several selections he has included in the book.
Anthony Highmore was born in London and named after his father (1718 1799), a draughtsman; his grandfather was Joseph Highmore, the painter. He began his 40 year career as a solicitor in 1783, and pursued several parallel concerns including charitable work (for example, serving as secretary to the London Lying In Hospital) and campaigning on social issues, particularly abolition (like his close friend Granville Sharp). He also wrote and published widely, contributing to the Gentleman’s Magazine and producing a number of highly regarded works on legal and social issues, beginning with A Digest of the Doctrine of Bail in Civil and Criminal Cases
A Succinct View of the History of Mortmain: And the Statutes Relative to Charitable Uses (1787), and continuing with works on libel (1791) and
Highmore’s reputation as a legal writer was further burnished by a series of volumes including A Treatise on the Law of Idiocy and Lunacy (1807), a pocket guide for attorneys and solicitors, (1814), and a handbook for the executors of estates (1815). He also weighed in on an 1808 parliamentary bill to prevent the spread of smallpox, though he supported vaccination. He published two volumes which gave an account of the charitable institutions established in London between 1810 and 1822. Highmore had clearly already embarked on his career when he began creating this book. There are several changes in ink colour through the volume, including the index implying that he augmented it over time. His inclusion of “Notes taken from Mr T Cooper’s Pamphlet of Information concerning America” (p.186) is dated “1794”, a year after the beginning of his career as a solicitor; and a series of reflective extracts from “Mrs H’s papers” (perhaps a relative?) are appended “Found 12 Oct 97” (p.214). These dates suggest the volume was compiled in the final few years of the 18th Highmore evidently planned to index his entries using the influential system invented by John Locke, in which a title or keyword is recorded by its initial letter and first vowel; he begins the book with a alphabeticalcomplete structure for doing this and makes a handful of entries. But he must soon have thought better of this, since he created a indexconventionalmoreattheback,
Highmore’s entries, neatly written, vary in length from half a page to half a dozen pages, and their headings are usually given in the margin (or repeated there in abbreviated form) as a further aid to navigation and rereading. Selections are mostly attributed, sometimes complete with volume, chapter and page references. They begin, as befits a lawyer, with several passages copied from the influential “Blackstone’s Comms”, including “Ridings of York” (p.1), “County” (p.1) and “Crown of England hereditary” (p.2). Christianity is represented, with separate entries for “Jesus” and “Christ” (p.4), then “Mary” (p.6), all from “Secker’s Lectures Vol 1” (presumably Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury); and morality is the topic of “Serious Reflections”, an extract from Samuel Richardson’s novel “Sr Chas Grandison”. He seems to bring a little of his legal side to bear on his faith in a lengthy entry entitled “Evidences of the 4 Gospels”, copied from “Paley’s Evidences” (p.198). Slavery and related topics make several appearances in the book: next to the marginal heading “Slavery”, he writes “What a high Value ought we to set upon Liberty, since without it, nothing great or suitable to the dignity of human nature, can possibly be produced” (p.24) this, and the entry before it, is copied from “Dr Smith’s Transln of Longinus on the Sublime” (1739), illustrating how as an abolitionist he reached back to antiquity for cogent philosophical arguments against slavery. Later, he fills five pages reproducing some of the “Letters from & to Sterne & Sancho” (p.96), a remarkable correspondence between two writers, one of them a former enslaved man; and a further two and a half pages under the marginal heading “Liberty & Slavery” (p.113), which copies several contiguous selections from “Loft’s Elements” (i.e. Elements of Universal Law by Capel Lofft (Vol 1, 1779)) that, in their turn, are copied from works by Lady Wortley Montagu, Matteo Beccaria and Joseph Priestley. Elsewhere, Highmore casts his net somewhat wider, recording passages on topics such as “Electricity” from “Brydone’s Tour thro’ Sicily & Malta Let: 11: Vol 1” (p.92); “Physiognomie” from “Lavater” (p.179) (one of several entries in French); “Olympiads” (unattributed) (p.3); “Causes of the Cold Climate of America” (one of a handful of passages copied from “Robertson’s America”) (p.151); “Turkish govt” (unattributed) (p.196); and a gloss on how “The Edda, the sacred Book of the Scandinavians accounts […] for Day & Night” (p.161). This last entry, together with a “List of the Books of the
going to the trouble of making tabs by cutting out strips of the pages concerned and marking the remaining edges from A to Z. It’s worth noting, however, that rather than excise the evidence of his abandoned Lockean plan, he has let it remain, implying a lack of vanity in leaving his flaws on view and perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates a willingness to adapt to changing needs and circumstances.
This commonplace book expresses aspects of Highmore’s character and core concerns the law, religion, charity, slavery and gives evidence of a wide ranging and inquisitive mind, as one might expect of a man whose ideas, particularly about abolition, were ahead of his time. His abandonment of the Lockean system of indexing he has created in favour of a laboriously rendered tab index suggests that Highmore, despite his legal vocation and often precise attributions, was not wedded to a practice that he decided was unsuitable, and was content to let the vestiges of his abandoned plan remain in the finished article, reinforcing the overall impression of Highmore as someone with an open mind and a fluid intelligence.
£2,500 Ref: 8054
Sectaries” (p.155) (“Pentateuch of the Jews” … “Shaster …. Brahmins” … “Koran … Mahomet” … “Edda … Scandinavians”) indicates that Highmore’s Christian faith did not preclude an interest in other beliefs and religions. Indeed, the book ends with a number of intriguing selections such as “Resurrection of the body” from “Sale’s Koran V2. p307” (p.223) and “Indian Idea of the Soul” from “The Mahabarat” (p.229).
Dashwood refers to himself on the title page as “Barrester att Law”, so we assume he was a practising lawyer at Lincoln’s Inn, before the completion of this volume and his move to Gray’s Inn later that year. Abridging 673 cases would have an enormous undertaking by any standards, but Dashwood has augmented his abridgments “With usefull quotations in the margent”, and indeed, the margins are liberally sprinkled with his scholarly notes throughout the entire volume. This monumental volume provides a remarkable insight into the intellectually demanding world of an 18th century “Barrester” practising law at two of the major legal institutions of early modern England.
The celebrated jurist Sir Edward Coke declared in his Reports: “This I know, that abridgements in many professions have greatly profited the Authors themselves; but as they are used have brought no small prejudice to others”; for as he says elsewhere, “Nothing is or can bee so fixed in mind, or fastened in memorie, but in short time is or may bee loosened out of the one, and by little and little quite lost out of the other: It is therefore necessarie that memorable things should be committed to writing”. Hence the importance to the legal profession of an abridgement defined by Black’s Law Dictionary (2nd Ed) as “A brief written work that manages to keep the meaning and essence of the original version.”
3. BRIEF CASES
This manuscript book is a feat of labour, with abridgements of 673 cases, the majority dating from the 1690s. Our abridger identifies himself in an inscription to the upper margin of the title page: “Geo: Dashwood de / Lincolns=Inn in Comit’ Middlx. 1707”; the title page ends “Finished anno Domini 1709”, indicating that he accomplished this enormous task in roughly two years. George Dashwood (c. 1679 1762) was born into a well to do family headed by Sir Samuel Dashwood, a merchant and Tory politician whose positions included both Sheriff of London and Lord Mayor of London. After his university career at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge (although he is also recorded as matriculating at Magdalen College, Oxford, 1698), he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1702 and to Gray’s Inn in 1709. He briefly served as Member of Parliament for Stockbridge (1710 1713), and during this period married Catherine Bristow, daughter of Robert Bristow of Micheldever in Hampshire. They had a son and two daughters. Upon his father’s death in 1705, he had become financially independent, and by all accounts retired from politics after 1713. He purchased an estate at Heveningham in Suffolk in 1719, eventually becoming Sheriff of Suffolk. In 1745 he sold his holdings in the country and, by the time of his death in 1758, resided in Hanover Square in London.
¶
[DASHWOOD, George (c. 1679-1762)] Early 18th century manuscript book of abridgments. [Lincoln’s Inn. Circa 1707 09]. Foliation [2], 282. Text to both sides (approximately 540 text pages). Bound in contemporary vellum, modern reback with upper half of spine laid down, endpapers renewed. Lower corner of text softened and frayed in the margins.
[2]. “Some Cases in the Court of Chancery Collected by Mr Justice Ventris. One of the late Judges of the Court of Common Please” ff 63 72. Cases extracted from: VENTRIS, Peyton, Sir (1645 1691). The reports of Sir Peyton Ventris Kt., late one of the justices of the Common pleas in two parts. London. 1696. [Wing, V235].
[6]. “Some Cases Reported By William Style of the Inner TempleEsq.r.” ff 193 253. Cases extracted from: England and Wales. Court of King’s Bench. [STYLE, William (1603 1679); ROLLE, Henry (1589? 1656). Narrationes modernæ, or, Modern reports begun in the now upper bench court at VVestminster. London. 1658. [Wing, S6099].
[7]. “Some Cases Collected Out of the 2: Modern Reports.” ff 254 265. Cases extracted from: COLQUITT, Anthony. The Second part of Modern reports, being a collection of several special cases most of them adjudged in the Court of Common Pleas, in the 26, 27, 28, 29, & 30th years of the reign of King Charles II. London. 1698. [Wing, C5416].
The title page is neatly laid out in the style of a printed book, complete with borders, and appears to confirm that Dashwood was practising at Lincoln’s Inn at the time: An Abridgement of Thomas Hardres's & Sir Thomas Jones's reports. Entire. as also Some choice cases collected by Sir Peyton Ventris, one of the judges of the Common Pleas. Viz In ye House of Lords. High Court of Chancery. King's Bench. Common Pleas & Exchequer. To which is added some few cases of Sir William Jones, Knight, William Stile, Esqr. & Modern Reports with usefull quotations in the Margent. by Geo. Dashwood of Lincoln's Inn. Barrester att law. This remarkably comprehensive volume contains seven abridgements, all written in a sure hand:
There are separate indexes to each of the above abridgments at the end of the volume (ff 266 282).
[5]. “Some Other Cases Collected By Mr Justice Ventris in the King’s Bench. Comon Please. & Exchequer &r.” ff 149 192. Cases extracted from: VENTRIS, Peyton, Sir (1645-1691). The reports of Sir Peyton Ventris Kt., late one of the justices of the Common pleas in two parts. London. 1696. [Wing, V235].
[1]. “Abridgment Des Cases en l’Exchqr Reports Per Sr Thomas Hardres de Grayes=Inn: Mich: 21: 2: fait Serj:t 1 Sid: 435. Fer. Epist: 88:” ff 1 62. Cases extracted from: HARDRES, Thomas, Sir (1610-1681). Reports of cases adjudged in the Court of Exchequer, in the years 1655, 1656, 1657, 1658, 1659, and 1660 and from thence continued to the 21st year of the reign of His late Majesty King Charles II. London: 1693. [Wing, H703].
[3]. “Some Select Arguments. Viz:t The Argument of Sr Francis North in B: R: en le Cas de Potter vs Sr HenryNorth. ~ The Argument of My Lord Ch: Baron Hale in Camer Sccij en le cs de Collingwood vs Pace ~ Also The Case of Sr Robt Atkyns vs Holford Clare. In Camer: Sccij. The Argument of Mr Justice Ventris in ye Excheqr Chamber upon a Writ of Error out of ye B: R: en le cs de Christophr Dighton Gent: vs Bernard Greenvil Esq.r All Collected by Att Large, By Sr Peyton Ventris one of the Late Judges of the Curt of Common Please. And Entred at Large in his Reports.” ff 73 89. Cases extracted from: VENTRIS, Peyton, Sir (1645 1691). The reports of Sir Peyton Ventris Kt., late one of the justices of the Common pleas in two parts. London. 1696. [Wing, V235]. [4]. “The Reports of Sr Thomas Jones K.t Ch: Justice de Comuni Banco. Abridged..” ff 90 100, 102 148 (text appears to be continuous despite break in pagination). Cases extracted from: JONES, Thomas, Sir (d.1692). Les reports de divers special cases en le Common bank & en le Court del bank le roy en le reigne de le roy Charles le II. London. 1695. [Wing, J999].
£1,750 Ref: 8059
There are several instances of network building and advice from agents and colleagues: a letter from “R. Gathorne”, from the nearby Portuguese island of “Fayal 13th Febry 1759”, introduces “Capt Carrill from Salim, who put in here to try his Markett, but not meeting with a price to his liking, proceeds to your Island. As he’s a Stranger there, I have recommended You to him to do his business”
4. SCOTS’ TIPPLE FOR INDENDENCE
[NEWTON & GORDON]. An Archive of Correspondence to Newton & Gordon Wine Merchants in Madeira. [Circa 1759]. 26 letters. Browned, one letter wormed, five of the letters are fragile and frayed at edges and torn along folds. Folded for posting, addressed, bifolium, quarto and folio. ¶ Newton & Gordon now Cossart Gordon is the oldest company in the Madeira wine trade. Madeira became an important wine in the history of the United States, especially after it was used to toast the Declaration of Independence. This collection of correspondence to Newton & Gordon dates from shortly after the formation of their partnership. In the mid 1740s, Francis Newton (d.1805), a Scottish clerk, was sent by the merchant Alexander Johnston to the island of Madeira; Newton set up a wine trading company there, and around 1758, established a partnership with a fellow Scot Thomas Gordon, newly arrived in Madeira. Francis’ brother Thomas Newton also joined the firm, and was based in New York City in the 1760s and 1770s. The firm’s changing roster of partners led to its later being known as Newton, Gordon, Cossart & Co and Cossart, Gordon & Co. We can form an impression of the fledgling partnership’s early fortunes via letters from a number of sources. The earliest, from Newton’s “mentor”, Alexander Johnston, and dated “London 23 January 1759”, is one of three copy letters to “Mess.rs Newton & Gordon / Merchants In / Madeira” concerning shipments of wine to destinations including New York, Philadelphia and Jamaica. The following month, a letter from one Thomas Doughty, “New York Feby 19th 1759”, requests that Newton “ship me a pipe of the Best Wine [...] should also be obliged to you to send my 2 Boxes of Cittron for my own use”.
A copy letter from Alexander Johnston & Co, “London 9 August 1759”, introduces “our Friend Mr Theophilus Daubuz who has frequently business to transact in your Island”; a copy of a letter from Daubuz himself on the same sheet, dated the next day, explains that “Our common friends Messr Alexander Johnson & Co, of this place, have very strongly recommended your house to me, at present am engaged for what Concerns I have on board The Adriatick Cap.t Culler...”; a third letter, again from “load Messrs Hallidays wines for Antigua on Board of Captain Culler, Daubuz is a man of considerable consequence here with whom it will But the wine trade, in common with most businesses in this or any era, is not all calm seas. There are delinquent debtors, such as “Dor Anto da Luz perr.a”, whom Parminter Montgomery & “Lisbon 6 Septr 1759”, lament as being “Such a troublesome fellow & has so little honor as to refuse to pay so just a debt”. Other letters refer to various kinds of nefarious maritime activity: a letter from William Dalrymple & Co, “Cadiz 10 mch 1759”, discusses the legal status of “some Oil Shippd on the Portuguese Brig retaken from the Moors, & brought in here”; another from Parminter Montgomery & Co, “Lisbon 17th March 1759”, recounts that a “M[an] of W[ar] […] has brought in lately a french East Indiaman outward bound laden with wine [...] they are continually picking up French frigates & privateers in the Channel, & lately a 64 gun Ship Le Comte de St Florentin”. Piracy notwithstanding, there are clear signs that Newton & Gordon are bound for prosperity. In April 1759, Johnston seems to report high demand: “I have orders from my Brother Samuel of the 31 January advising that Madeira wines were very scarce in Jamaica and at a great late July, he exclaims that “We really did not know the Quantity of Wines that Messrs Tullers orders but never imagined it was no more than three pipes [...] we make no doubt that their orders for the future will be more considerable [...] William Halliday of Antigua [...] desired to give you directions to ship for them by the first good opportunity for that Island, Fifteen pipes, Ten hogsheads and Ten Quarter Casks, West India Madeira Wines”.
Five of these letters, like many wines, have not travelled well, and are in poor condition; the rest are, considering their vintage, in good enough condition to convey a rich sense of the lively beginnings of a company that still trades today. £2,500 Ref: 7981
5. WEIGHING UP [SOMERSCALES, Hannah (?- c. 1781)] Manuscipt inventory and two related documents. [Culworth, Northamptonshire. Circa 1774 1781].
These three items trace the movement of possessions within a well to do English family, as they are bequeathed from mother to daughter, then from daughter to nephew. [1]. SOMERSCALES, Hannah and Alicia. Manuscript inventory. Single sheet, folded. This “Inventory of Hannah Somerscales goods taken February ye 8th 1774” presumably records possessions owned by Alicia to be left to her daughter Hannah. This theory is given further credence by crossed out lines on the reverse side: “an Inventory of William Somerscales goods taken February ye 9th 1774 given him by his Father.” suggesting that this second inventory, for Hannah’s brother, was abandoned and begun on a new sheet that could be kept separately. The hand in both cases is almost certainly Alicia’s (“all this I allow to be my Daughters right & hereunto I set my Hand Alicia Somerscales”).
[2]. SOMERSCALES, Hannah. Signed receipt dated “May 1779”. Cut sheet. Hannah acknowledges “twenty pounds in part of a Legacy Left me by […] William Somerscales My Great Uncle”, received via “Alicia Somerscales my Mother Executrix to my Late Father the Revd Mr Somerscales”. [3]. SOMERSCALES, Hannah. Three page will, signed to each page with wax seals, and witnessed by Elizabeth Lord, Lydia Lord and Thomas Fidkin. Now it becomes the “spinster” Hannah’s turn as bequeather. Her main beneficiary is “my Nephew Joseph Somerscales”, to whom she leaves “All my Messuages Lands Tenements and Hereditaments”. In a neat coda to the inventory, Hannah bequeaths “my Household Goods Furniture Implements of Household Plate Linen Chattles Effects and personal Estate” to her cousins “Charles Cotton and Holford Cotton”. Thus, the trio of documents traces both the passage of a family inheritance and the accidents of history shapethat it.
Many items clearly signify prosperity: “a Japan Tea table”; “6 red & white & Gold Tea Cups & saucers”; “the Beurow that came from Chippen Warden”; “the Marsailles Quilted Bed Quilt”; and “a silver coffe pot”. The inventory also features an instance of the mother gifting books to her daughter: “Baileys Dictionary in two volums” along with “Beveridges private thoughts, my whole Duty of man, & the spectators all Duplicates of her Father Books, & some others that are proper for a womans Closet”. Exactly what she considers “proper” is open to surmise.
£500 Ref: 8030
¶
[WIDDOWS, John (d. 1660)] Manuscript Inventory entitled ‘A True and perfect Inventory of all the goods and Chattles of John Widdows of Boule in the parish of Lower Swell in the County of Glocr taken valued and apprised the xixth of Aprill 1662’. [Goucestershire, Lower Swell. Circa 1662]. Vellum, two skins. Clumsily folded. It measures approximately 550 x 150 mm. “Boule” in the title presumably refers to Lower Swell Park (also sometimes referred to as “The Bould” or “The Bowl”). £500 Ref: 8002 ¶ The worldly possessions of people below the level of the gentry, even those whose “goods and Chattles” were sufficient to warrant an inventory, were generally restricted to items serving the basic necessities of sitting, sleeping, and eating. John Widdows appears to have been a farmer, so it is the latter which is featured most prominently in this inventory.
6. FARMER’S KEEPERS
Beginning with “his purse apparell” (£30), the appraisers move quickly in and out of the kitchen, where “Brasse and pewter & other necessarys there” amount to just four pounds. Although apparently not a large property, the house has both a “servants Chamber” and a “maids Chamber”, each containing “one bed & furniture” (valued together at one pound). There is plenty of linen for bed or table (“Eleaven paire of sheets”, “Two dozen Napkins”, “ffour Table Cloaths”), and storage space (“four Truncks one Chest one Coffer”) but few other possessions (“A Warming Panne”, “One chaire books one Box and small things” This was a decidedly working household where the production of food took precedence. The inventory records a “Cheese Chamber for Cheese” (well stocked with five pounds’ worth), “ffourteen flitches of Bacon” (valued at £12), “Barrells & Coopery ware” and “Plows harrows and Carts” (£15). Among the valuable farm stock are “Eight Yearlings” “Tenn horses & Mares with harnesse” (£70), “Eighteen Piggs” (£10) and “One hundred and ninety two sheep” (£100), but almost half of Widdows’ total wealth of just over £729 lies in “The Cropp of Corne in the field”, valued at £323 and 10 shillings.
The acts of resistance that followed included the raiding by local women of a ship loaded with corn for export and an en masse disruption of a Court session in which the protesters laid out their demands. Among these demands were that the price of wheat be lowered, tithes be reduced, and a range of oppressive fines and seigneurial rights be abolished. The Lemprières took their case to the Privy Council, prompting an investigation and, ultimately, the appointment of Colonel Rudolph Bentinck as Lieutenant Governor. The ban on exporting crops was reinstated, and a Code of Laws in 1771 divided judicial and legislative powers between the States of Jersey and the Royal Court, ending the Lemprières’ monopoly.
This manuscript is a copy by “Ph: Carteret. R.N / Trinity” (as inscribed to the front free endpaper) of an extremely rare, printed book, Anecdotes relative to the Island of Jersey 1767, which describes events leading up to the unrest of 1769. Whether Carteret copied the text from another manuscript or from the published book remains unsettled. It was published anonymously in Southampton in 1773 at Southampton, and ESTC records only one surviving copy, at the British Library (Citation No: T92621). Among this handwritten copy’s points of interest is Carteret’s attribution of the previously anonymous work to “Col: John Campbell then Commander in Chief in the Island”. From reading the text we learn that as commander in chief John Campbell played an active role in proceedings and had first hand knowledge of events. He would have been ideally placed to report on them as, unlike most of the participants, he does not appear to have had any vested interest in the outcome and could provide something like an objective eye on proceedings.
Philip Carteret (1733 96), a naval officer and explorer, was probably somewhat less objective. During a forced hiatus from the navy as a result of some bruising disputes with the Admiralty over the dilapidated state of a ship he commanded, Carteret returned to his native Jersey in 1770 to succeed his father as the seigneur of Trinity, “joining the rebels against the Lemprière
7. SEEDS OF DISCONTENT
[CAMPBELL, John]. Manuscript entitled ‘Anecdotes relative to the Island of Jersey 1767’ and early ciphering book. [Jersey. Circa 1770 79]. Quarto (195 x 160 x 12 mm). Dos a dos. Foliation Island of Jersey: [1, title and blank], 28 leaves (55 text pages); [Ciphering book]: 23 (several leaves excised, 39 pages of calculation and text). The two sections are separated by five blank leaves. Contemporary limp vellum, several slash marks to covers, amateur repairs (brown paper stuck to paste down), horizontal cut to first three leaves of the ciphering section, neatly repaired.
¶ The Corn Riots of 1769 were a watershed moment in the history of Jersey, prompting a loosening of the semi feudal conditions under which the Lemprière family had held sway over the island. Charles Lemprière and his brother Philippe had a monopoly of the judicial and legislative arms of government Charles as Lieutenant Bailiff, Philippe as Receiver General. The protests were centred on the repeal of a law banning the export of grain, which was seen as a ruse to create scarcity and thus increase the price of wheat; many Jersey landowners foremost among them the Lemprières stood to gain since the rents from their tenants were payable in wheat.
family’s hold over the island” (ODNB). But why might he have wanted to make a copy of Campbell’s book and why write it in an old ciphering book rather than start with a new, blank volume?
His handwritten, contemporary copy of a very rare printed book speaks to the degree of feeling he in common with his fellow islanders must have felt about the situation; and his attribution of the work to John Campbell, which we have no reason to doubt, rescues a first person account of the events concerned from anonymity.
£2,750 Ref: 7896
A possible answer to both questions lies in Carteret’s own situation between 1770 and 1779 (the period during which we assume the manuscript was written, since he left Trinity to take up command of another ship in 1779). According to the ODNB, Carteret left the navy in 1770 “with his health ruined and with scant reward from the Admiralty”, and moreover “he was left on half pay.” Since Trinity is known to have played an active role in the rebellion against the Lemprières, he may have wanted to find confirmation of a belief he already held about the Lamprières’ grip on power; or he may simply have wished to study the document in order to understand the situation better. In any case, it is exactly the kind of political text that would have engaged a man who had himself lately suffered from the heavy hand of aggressive authority. As to his use of his old schoolboy ciphering book, simple impecunity may well account for this decision.
London: Printed by John Haviland for William Lee, to be sold by Iohn Williams, 1635. Small folio. Pagination [24], 260, [32], 47, [5] p. Complete with the additional title page, engraved, dated 1631 and signed “Tho: Cecill sculp:”, the portrait frontispiece, and the final blank leaf.
Provenance: blue morocco roundel to front board with the Phelipps family (of Montacute, Somerset): a brazier or iron chest filled with fire brazier. The University of Toronto identifies three bindings with this stamp. Two are from books belonging to Edward Phelipps (1725 1797), but ours matches that of Edward Phelipps (1613 1679), whose crest, in keeping with the style of 17th century heraldry, is easily distinguished by its much thicker and more realistic torse than its later counterparts.
BACON, Francis (1561-1626) Sylva Sylvarum: or, a Natural Historie in Ten Centuries Annotated by a contemporary reader and experimenter.
8. BACON & EGGES
Signatures: pi² A 2B⁶ 2C⁴ a g⁴. [STC, 1172; Gibson, 174]. Contemporary full reversed leather with gilt stamp of a burning brazier to front board, amateurishly rebacked, worming to lower inner gutter, affecting a few of the annotations.
1 Ownership inscription to portrait recto: “William Phelipps booke”. Edward had at least seven children, among whom was William Phelips (d.1714). Gilt stamped morocco book label of Grolierite John Camp Williams (1859 1929) pasted inside the front board. ¶ Francis Bacon was one of the most influential English scientific writers, philosophers and statesmen of the 17th century. His method of gathering and analysing data collected from observation and experiment revolutionised a scientific discipline that was previously governed by logic based arguments, and helped to transform it into what we recognise as science today. His approach formed the theoretical basis of the Royal Society, and in the following century for Enlightenment philosophy. The annotations in this book reflect the way the new empiricism still coexisted with folklore and anecdote in the early modern mind. Bacon outlined the empirical method in Novum Organum (1620; “New Instrument”), and further popularized it in a series of publications which exerted an enormous influence on his own and later generations. Among these, his posthumously published Sylva Sylvarum proved
Although William Phelipps’s inscription is not a convincing match for the annotator, they were almost certainly 17th century, and may perhaps have been his father Edward, or another member of the Phelipps family. Whoever it was, they have thrown an experiment of their own onto this “heap” and continued to read the entire text, leaving evidence in the form of additional notes and observations throughout the volume. There are annotations and underlining to approximately 60 pages, ranging from manicules and short notes in Latin (“De Imaginiationes efficacia, viribus et Astro”) or English (“Emission or Emanation of Spirits”; “Sympathie and Antipathie of Sensate Spirits in there Emanation and action one uppon the other”) to longer, more extensive entries in English. The latter category includes details of an experiment which extend across the lower margins of 13 pages. The scribe has placed an asterisk against the printed passage “The Clarifying of Liquors by Adhesion is an Inward Percolation; And is effected, when some Cleaving Body is mixed and agitated”. Taking their cue from Bacon’s approach, they then begin a lengthy and elaborate account of their own experiment:
to be among his most popular works. Its arrangement betrays his fascination with numbers: it is arranged in ten chapters, or “centuries”, as they each contain 100 subjects, but it is less structured than this mathematical ordering might imply. Thomas Tenison (1636 1715) remarks in the introduction to Baconiana (1679) that Sylva Sylvarum is “an History not only of Nature freely moving in her Course ... but also of Nature in constraint, and vexed and tortur’d by Humane Art and Experiment. And it is not an History of such things orderly ranged; but thrown into an Heap. For his Lordship, that he might not discourage other Collectors, did not cast this Book into exact Method; for which reason it hath the less Ornament, but not much the less Use.” It contains a number of unusual experiments, and numerous passages dealing with medical treatments for the prolongation of life and the preservation of flesh. Appended to the work is Bacon’s New Atlantis, a brief, unfinished description of a utopian island and its scientific Ourcommunity.contemporary scribe appears to have been part of the burgeoning community of “Gentlemen scientists”, although not of the kind decried by Robert Boyle as unwilling to get their hands dirty in the lab (see later notes on the “terrestriall, fecall grosse part”).
Further, shorter experiments are outlined, for example on p.83, against the passage “The Apples in Hay, and the Straw ripened apparently, though not so much as the Other; But the Apple is in the Straw more. The Cause is for that the Hay and the Straw have a very low degree of Heat”, we are given the scribe’s own observation on the effects of close proximity in other materials:
“This clarifying wth the white of Egges, is best to bee performed; after the fermentation, or Worcking of any Decoction, Infusion, Liquor, or expressed Juyce; and not before; for it hath fermented, or wraught, the grosser, and fecall part is so united wth the fyner Spirit in to one entire Substance; that the One will not separate & part from the other so easily or so well by the sole adhesion to some Viscous cleauing substance”. The scribe continues diffusely until “By this meanes you haue your Licquor, or Juyce, not only freed from his heauie fæces sincking to the bottom; butt allso ^from his light fæces wch remayed through out the whole liquor, [con]fusedly mixed; whereby the same Liquor or Juyce is totally freed from all kind of heterogeneall, impure, terrestriall and fæcall substance; hauing mothing in it xxx resting butt pure fyne Spirit, wth a portion of the pure Element”. They then add a few final notes on refining the experiment.
“In a fyre coales layes together; burne; butt spread abroad and layed single by them selfs”. On the same page, Bacon outlines an early example of a controlled experiment: “The Apple in the Close Box, was ripened also: The Cause is, that for that all Aire, kept close, hath a degree of warmth: As we see in wooll, Furre, Plush &c. Note that all these were compared with another Apple, of thet same kinde, that lay of it selfe: And in Comparison of that, were more sweet, and more Yellow, and so appeared more Ripe.” The scribe then adds their own, similarly controlled experiment, which produces similar results: “4 or 5 buschells of Barberies hauing layen in upper roome uppon the flower, heaped up in one heape some 6 weekes; were become mellowish; sofft; the outward skin schrinck; the juyce within more fluid so that they yealeed by pressing, abundance of juyce; where being fresh pressed yealeed none; the berry beeing stiff and hard”.
But it is not all objectivity and experimentation. While some of the scribe’s notes are straightforward observations (such as text on p.5 which is underlined beginning “the Leafe of Burrage hath an Excellent Spirit, to represse the fuliginous Vapour of Dusky Melancholy” and annotated in the margin “The same is performed by the wooman in the Cloue gilly; and keepeth its sent a whole yeare very freasch is as red as blood”), others are more akin to folklore (“Duckes against Rayne or Snow, doe quack more then ordinary. When Duckes quacke more then ordinary in Summer looke for Raine; if in wynter Looke for Snow” (p.210), or racist asides (“Historia. 8 or 10 men choaked, & killed by the strong sent of a 100 Blackmores cooped up under deck in one place together; brought fro[m] S. Thomas for Lisbone there to be saued” (p.240)).
£2,750 Ref: 80611. <https://armorial.library.utoronto.ca/ordinaries/brazier>
As the annotations in this volume vividly demonstrate, the “scientific method” was still a work in progress during this period, with folklore, anecdote and empirical findings given more or less equal weight. As such, it beautifully captures a transitional period in the history of science.
Norris has collected contemporary songs and poems that were published as now rare broadsheets or slip songs (“Mary’s Dream or Sandy’s Ghost”, for example, appeared in a 1794 broadsheet). Some can be traced to late 18th century printed compilations (“Money is your Friend”; “Somebody” (first line: “Was I oblig’d to beg my bread”); “The Cowboy” (first line: “A f[l]axen headed cowboy, as simple as may be”); “A Martial Song” (“come ye lads who wish to shine”); and “The Chariot of Day” (“Bright Phoebus had mounted the chariot of Day”)). Others are of less certain vintage: for example, “Origin of Old Bachelors” (first line: “Dame Nature one day in comical mood”), does not seem to have been printed until around 1805, but it may have been published as a now lost slip song, and would very likely have circulated in manuscript prior to publication.
[NORRIS, Richard] 18th century manuscript ‘Song Book’. [Preston, Lancashire. Circa 1776 98]. Octavo. 17 leaves (34 pages of text). Contemporary sheep, worn and broken, text leaves loose in binding and lacking several leaves.
9. TUNES IN, DROPPED OUT
¶ This heavily used little book is a lively collection of contemporary songs and poems, probably intended for performing to an audience. The selection, along with plenty of rousing, irreverent or tender lyrics, notably includes two poems that attempt the perspective of oppressed peoples. A faint manuscript inscription to the front cover reveals the compiler and his location, and hints at the book’s likely purpose: Richard Norris Song FisherBookGate Lane Records1776LancashirePrestonin the National Archives corroborate this: there is a Lease and Release for a “dwellinghouse late of Richard Norris formerly occupied as a garden, on the north side of Fishergate Lane, Preston, formerly belonging to R.N” (Lancashire Archives: DDH 566. Dated: 2/3 Feb. 1816).
£600 Ref: 8001
The tone ranges from soldierly bravado (in the likes of “Corporal Casey”, which begins: “When I was at home I was merry and frisky / My Dad kept a pig & my mother sold whisky”) to sentimental pathos (“The Wounded Thrush”), but two poems strike a more sombre mood and convey a certain empathy for those outside the white European context. Anne Home Hunter’s (1742 1821) poem ‘Alknomook’ (circa 1780) (entitled shun the Day”) was written from the perspective of a Cherokee warrior being tortured by his captors. In “Desponding Negroe”, the poet John Collins (1742 1808) laments the conditions into which former slaves may find themselves after their emancipation. It begins “On Africas wide Plains, where the Lion now roaring / With freedom stalks forth the vast desert exploring / I was drag'd from my hut, and enchain’d as a slave / In a dark floating dungeon, upon the salt Wave.” While on the slave ship, he is blinded by “lightnings red blast”; and then, “As my value compar’d with my keeping was light / Had me dasht over board in the dead of the night”. He is rescued (or as he puts it, “reluctantly rob’d of that watery grave”), only to become a beggar in the land of his supposed saviours. These two poems were, of course, written by white Britons, but if they were indeed sung or recited to others (as the “Song Book” cover inscription may signify), it indicates a certain level of confidence that their sentiments would find an appreciative audience. Their inclusion, in any case, contributes to the degree of social conscience one gleans from this collection.
Although Norris has dated the final leaf “Finis The End 1798”, the leaves are loose in the binding, so this and some other sheets may conceivably have been added after that date.
10. BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE [HUNTER, William (1718-1783); HODGE, T[homas] (d. 1804)]. Manuscript notes entitled ‘Dr Hunters Anatomical Lectures’. [Circa 1775]. Quarto (196 x 165 x 29 mm). Foliation ff. [6, index and blanks], 1 4, 6 192 (numbered to rectos, f5 omitted, but text complete), [10], some irregularity in numbering in final section but complete. Text of lectures notes to rectos, with student’s additional notes to many versos. One leaf preceding main text with notes on “Lungs”, torn to lower section with loss. Bound in contemporary calf backed boards, heavily rubbed and worn. Watermark: Pro Patria; Countermark roundel, initials GR and scrollwork with horizontal base, matching Haewood 3700 (circa 1747). Ownership stamp of “T. Hodge” to front endpaper. Inscription beneath reads “Herman Boarheav Hodge”.
After abandoning his training for the Church, Hunter began a series of medical apprenticeships and lecture courses in Edinburgh, London and Paris, focusing on anatomy and midwifery, in the process learning from notable mentors such as Alexander Monro, William Cullen, and William Smellie. Shortly after setting up a surgery and midwifery practice in London, he began lecturing in 1746, advertising these initial forays into teaching “the Art of Dissecting” as following “the same manner as in Paris” namely, the use of human corpses for students to practice on. Hunter strenuously advocated working with cadavers and making “preparations” (i.e. preserving anatomical parts) as essential to “the advancement of anatomy”.
The lively but contentious milieu of human anatomical science reached fever pitch in the 18th century, as the transition from abstract concepts to the more empirical approach represented by the “scientific method” gave rise to conflicting theories on everything from female reproductive anatomy to the distribution of mind in the body. In an era marked by heated disagreements, priority disputes and bitter rivalries, Hunter’s determination to establish a bedrock of knowledge based on direct engagement with the dissected human anatomy was hugely influential (although, in the matter of priority disputes and disagreements, he himself was far from immune). This manuscript demonstrates both the impulse to create these foundations and through comparison with other extant notes from Hunter’s lectures the shifting sands of medical knowledge during this period of constant flux.
¶ The second half of the 18th century witnessed a revolution in the study of human anatomy. Pressure from the Royal College of Surgeons and the Barber Surgeons (who were only permitted 10 cadavers each per annum) led to the passing of the Murder Act of 1752, which legalised the dissection of executed murderers. This partial relaxation of the rules (aided by a supply from the infamous body snatchers) helped satiate the need for corpses, and a momentous transformation in anatomical teaching Atbegan.the forefront of these developments was the Scottish physician and anatomist William Hunter FRS (1718 1783). He was a major figure in 18th century medicine whose reputation would have been even greater had he not left much of his work unpublished. His investigation into the gravid uterus, which was published with illustrations and is still considered a classic, illuminated the relationship between the maternal and foetal blood systems in the placenta; but, as the ODNB states, “Pupils’ notes of his lectures are the only record of some of his discoveries”. Hunter lectured for nearly 40 years, and many notes by his students survive; but such was the fluid state of medical science at the time that every transcribed lecture of Hunter’s seems to differ in any number of details. Every transcription of these lectures is therefore important but this volume is particularly noteworthy as it includes annotations in two different hands, writing at different times.
ANATOMICAL LECTURES
Hunter’s lecture titles include “History of Anatomy”, “Lacteals”, “Appendages & Muscular Motion”, “Inside of the Skull”, and “Continuation of ye Muscles”. They give frequent real world examples and case studies that allow the tracing of courses of argument: in “Lecture sixth on ye Nerves”, Hunter is recorded (f.39r) as describing “a man with spina bifida who was deprivd of his senses by a pressure on ye part of & would recover as on as ye pressure was removd”; he then segues into the controversy as to “whether ye mind be every where in ye body or there be a common sensorium”, and we are told: “Dr Hunter thinks there is ^such a sensorium that it is seated in ye brain” He then performs a vivisection as crucial evidence for the theory: “Dr H cut off ye head of a Frog then Prickt ye spinal marrow & it occasioned violent convulsions their may be an incompleat Palsy that is apart may loose its sensation & retain its motion”.
Establishing the provenance of this manuscript is fraught with an ambiguity that is amplified by the presence of two distinct hands. The ownership stamp on the front endpaper (“T. Hodge”) is accompanied by an inscription, “Herman Boarheav Hodge” (a playful but significant nod to Herman Boerhaave (1638 1738), a famed predecessor of Hunter’s in the field of anatomy), which is a good match for the first hand; and we find a correlation in Wallis’ Eighteenth Century Medics (1988), which lists Thomas Hodge, MRCS, a surgeon and apothecary of Sidmouth, Devon. Wallis gives his dates as 1760 1826, but there is reason to doubt the accuracy of these: the National Archives records the will of Thomas Hodge, surgeon of Sidmouth, Devon who died in 1804 not 1826. Interestingly, Hodge had a son, Thomas Stokes Hodge, who was also a surgeon in Sidmouth, raising the possibility that the second hand is that of Hodge the younger, and that the book was passed from father to son to aid the latter’s medical education. This would explain the absence of a second ownership inscription, since their names are substantively the same.
The senior Hodge clearly had it in mind to make his own annotations from the outset: he has hastily written his transcriptions to the rectos, with subsequent interlinear revisions and corrections (probably after checking through at the end of each day); and has then added many (often extensive) notes to versos. Whether or not Hand 2 is his son, their annotations appear to be contemporary with the lectures themselves and add almost as many notes the versos.
HODGE AND SON?
The train of thought continues across the page, across species, and perhaps across the generations, as Hand 2 sets down a related medical case on f.38v: “Mr Bosworth, of Northamptonshire, had a nervous affection of his face which the french Authors call siedoleric, it was first thought that the pain was occasioned by soe Carious teeth which were removed without any good effect, he then applied to Mr Cruickshank whom who thought it to be an affection of the Nerves, he therefore ^divived several branches without much service, however after dividing the branches of the 1st 2d & 3d of the 5th pair & the anastomising branches of the partis dura of the 7th pair after it came out of the Hole between the mastoid & steeloid process of the Cranium he sat perfectly easy & well & remained so for six Months but he has had lately some return of the complaint owing no doubt to the regeneration of the nerves The Incisions made to divide the above nerves were 32 in number made by Mr Cruikshank & Thomas.”
The mention of “Mr Cruickshank” here and in other notes by Hand 2 is worth noting: earlier, in “Lecture 2d” (“On Blood”), where Hunter says of certain blood vessels: “Lewhenheck imagined their form was lenticular ye later writers say they are round” (f.9r), an interlinear note (in Hand 1) reads: “Mr Hewson says they are flat if not annular”. William Hewson was employed by Hunter, first as an assistant and then as his lecturing partner, but after a falling out, Hunter replaced him with William Cruikshank in 1770. Both Hewson and Cruikshank went on to become important figures in their own right, so these passing mentions may be of little use in helping us date the transcriptions or notes; but their names occur several times in the annotations, contributing to the sense of a continuum in the linked careers and discoveries of these medical pioneers. Also represented in the notes is William Hunter’s younger brother John, himself a surgeon and anatomist, with whom he often worked. Hand 1 notes on f.158v: “John Hunter says the Vesiculase Seminalis is not a reservois of Semen for it is not of the same Colour but that the Vesicule Seminal Secretes his own fluid which he shews by many experiments & preparations it is certainly Glandular”. On the same page, Hand 2 adds the note: “The prostate Gland has been compared to the ace of Hearts: It may become very large in disease & then total loss of the power of impregnating ensues; Mr Cruikshank was the first person who injected the prostate gland”.
Not surprisingly, both the transcribed lectures and the notes have their fair share both of grisly imagery and of dubious conjecture. In his lecture on muscles, Hunter insists that “if a person endeavouring to cut his throat cuts into ye larynx above ye pomum adami he devides ye upper ligament ye consequence of which will be that if he survives he will ever after speak with a hoarse voice” (f.172r). This elicits from Hand 1 the seemingly unrelated remark on the facing page (f171v) that “Mr Hewson say if any Animal remain under water 3 minuets, he is unrecoverable if he his hangd 5 minuets are also unrecoverable”, followed by a debunking of this with the (surely not empirically gathered) observation that “there has been instances of people recovering after dr being under water for half an hour there is no water gets into the Lungs untill he has been under water an hour or is unrecoverable”.
William Hunter was a key figure in the advancement of 18th century medical science. His remarkable lectures reflect the protean nature of 18th century medical knowledge, as shared ideas were tested and challenged against the reality of anatomised corpses. This manuscript apparently travelled from London to the provincial town of Sidmouth where Hodge opened up his medical practice as a surgeon and apothecary. Its proliferation of corrections, amendments, revisions and additions bear the marks of a book which played an active part of the spread of new medical understanding as ideas passed from one hand to the next, and then put this body of knowledge into practice.
£7,500 Ref: 8079
¶ The practice of keeping of commonplace books of recipes and remedies neatly encapsulates the early modern interchange between manuscript and print: each medium provided the source material for the other. Books were often compiled by individuals or households for personal use, and enterprising authors, in turn, moved into the same space by publishing readymade compilations of similar material. This manuscript captures part of that process; it was created, and probably intended for eventual print publication, by an author of a series of popular collections.
Some of the recipes he records seem to be ways of living frugally (“Imitation of the Chinese tea”; “Substitute for Coffee”; “An Economical Method of making Bread”), but many others seem to have simply piqued his curiosity. The erstwhile compiler of 11. POPULAR PYBUS [PYBUS, William]. Manuscript book of recipes, remedies, and experiments. [Hull(?) Circa 1815]. Folio (330 mm x 208 mm x 20 mm). Contemporary half sheep, marbled boards, rubbed and worn, boards detached. 188 text pages on 94 leaves, numbered to versos only. Paper watermarked 1809.
Given the manuscript’s contents, this is presumably the William Pybus known for compiling books in this period including A manual of useful knowledge: being a collection of valuable miscellaneous receipts and philosophical experiments, selected from various authors (Hull, 1810); The Family Useful Companion; containing a variety of domestic receipts, selected from various authors. (Hull, [1810?]); and The Ladies Receipt Book, (Hull, [1810?]). Pybus also published The amusing companion, containing philosophical amusements, and entertaining recreations for young persons (Hull. [1818?]) a rare, much sought after conjuring book. The closest match we can find in surviving records is a William Pybus (d. 1861) who was born in Hull and in the early 1800s moved to Caistor, Lincolnshire, where he is listed as a watchmaker but there is no reference to his publishing anything. We can therefore only conjecture that Pybus the watchmaker may also be Pybus the author. In his preface to A manual of useful knowledge, Pybus is honest in explaining his chief motive for this and his other compilations of “widely scattered” material: having become absorbed in “works of a scientific and philosophical description”, he confesses that he was “impelled […] by the hope of deriving from it some pecuniary advantage”.
The recipes and remedies Pybus has copied down here, although dated 1815 16 within the period in which he published his collections are not to be found in the printed books, but their sources here are just as “widely scattered”. He draws from volumes on science, such as Elements of Experimental Chemistry by William Henry, Chemical Essays by Samuel Parkes, and Accidents of Human Life by Newton Bosworth; and he raids a range of journals including Commercial Magazine, The Philosophical Magazine, Transactions of the Society of Arts, Monthly Magazine, and Transactions of the Caledonian Horticultural Society. In every case, he carefully notes date, volume and page number.
An inscription to the front paste down gives us the author’s details: “Willm. Pybus / His Book / Begun 2d. November 1815”
1. Caistor Heritage website: <http://www.caistor.co.uk/caistor j q/caistor p/pybus/> £1,650 Ref: 7908
The Ladies Receipt Book this time focuses less on culinary recipes than on scientific and craft based tips and instructions. The kitchen is certainly represented (“Method of making Lemon Vinegar”; “Rice Bread”; “Turnips to Preserve”, etc), as is the medicine chest (“cure for the Toth ache”; “Antidote against the poison of verdigris”), but the workshop features much more heavily. We find a “cheap and easy method of preparing Potassium in considerable quantities”; a “New method of varnishing Leather”; directions for making “Detonating powder”; and a “Method of making an artificial Fire proper for signals”. Projects vary in scale, from a “Remedy against leaf Lice” to the alarming “construction and management of a Gigantic Rat trap” to a “Mode of conveying steam from Boilers” (complete with diagram). Pybus pursues an interesting line in occupational health tips: “Invention to prevent prejudicial Effects to Persons employed in Pointing needles”; “A Method by which sash windows can be cleaned and painted without Danger to the Person employed”; “Method of Preserving Persons from Drowning when the Ice breaks under them”; and, perhaps in case these measures fail to prevent calamity, “An Improved set of Crutches for Lame Persons”. Somewhat less endangering, one hopes, are a trio of entries reminiscent of Pybus’ conjuring book: Phantasmagoria”; “Imitation of Phantasmagoria”; and “Remarkable imitation of Thunder by a sheet of Iron (for Phantasmagoria)”. The material in this manuscript seems not to have found its way into any of Pybus’ printed volumes, but it illustrates a transitional period when the sciences were becoming popular; indeed, it captures a moment in the process of popularisation something for which Pybus and his ilk were partly responsible.
The letter book begins in August 1698, when the two chief negotiators, Portland and Tallard, travelled to The Hague in order to complete discussions and draw up the treaty (Portland’s , at The Hague). One might expect a book kept by a senior member of government to be a more impressive and prestigious object; but this format notebook whose air of basic functionality is strengthened by a vertical crease. The book, it seems clear, was folded for carrying, and it may well be that it was a geographical ambiguity that the
12. LOO PAPERS
VERNON, James; Summers. Manuscript Letter book Concerning the 1698 Treaty of the Hague. [Circa 1698]. Small quarto (190 x 150 x 5 mm). 48 numbered pages on 26 leaves. Contemporary marbled wrappers, rubbed, century marks in Haewood, but with countermark of to inner wrapper. book records some of the strenuous diplomatic efforts by Great Britain, France and the Dutch Republic to prevent war if the ailing and childless Charles II of Spain died. These and other efforts were in vain; but during 1698, when all the letters copied here were written, the select group of negotiators (which included King William III, his Secretary of State James Vernon, the Earl of Portland and the duc de Tallard) were progressing towards the drawing up of the Treaty of The Hague the first of two attempted treaties that proposed a partition of Spain’s possessions in Europe. Some of these letters appear in later published works including The History and Proceedings of the House of Commons (1742) others apparently, do not.
As matters progress, the key players mull over the geopolitics of the treaty’s various provisions, the likely behaviour of the French, the uncertain political climate of Britain (Vernon to Portland: “We have a new Parliament and no body can make a fix’d judgement what temper they will be of”), the urgency of the situation (“Summer is almost gone, and the fall of the Leaf comes on, which is a dangerous season of the Year”) and the dubious prospects that any treaty will actually be observed (Portland to Vernon: “I confess experience has showed us too plainly, that Treaties have been ill kept for the time past”).
£2,500 Ref: 80761. <http://www.spanishsuccession.nl/>
Besides the chief topic, other issues are raised and addressed to varying degrees: the plight of Sir William Jennings, a loyalist of James II now seeking a royal pardon; a petition from one “Col Codrington” that he succeed his father in the governorship of the Leeward Islands; and a request from “Mr Elrington who was a Prisoner in the Bastille” that he be granted a military post.
The incremental steps of diplomacy and the preparation of the treaty are traced in these letters, which are mostly exchanged between Portland and Vernon. In an early letter, from King William himself to “Lord Chancelor Summers”, dated “15/25 August 1698”, the monarch stresses: “there is no time to be lost, and you must send me the full powers under the great Seal with the Names in blank, to treat with Count Tallard”. He emphasises secrecy, stipulating “that the Clerks who are to write the Warrant & the full powers may not know what it is”; and urgency, since “According to all intelligence the King of Spain cannot outlive the Moneth of October”. A few pages further on, we read Somers’ reply, from “Tunbridge Wells 28 August 1698” (in which Somers somewhat apologetically reminds the King that he had given him “Permission to try if the Waters would contribute to the Establishment of my health”). His response abounds in the kind of 17th century realpolitik evident throughout these letters: echoing his colleagues in this book, he points out the “Deadness and want of Spirit universally in this Nation”, whose people are “not at all to be disposed to the Thoughts of Entering into a new Warr”
The treaty was signed in The Hague on 11 October 1698; the reasons for its failure, and that of the second partition treaty, are a matter of historical record, as Europe was plunged into another costly war. This letter book preserves the correspondence between the key negotiators, and as an object which could be either shared or concealed, evokes the earnestness, urgency and pragmatism with which these failed attempts at peace making were pursued.
[CULINARY RECIPES] Late 18th early 19th century household manuscript. [Circa 1780 1840.] Contemporary vellum, stained. Slightly unusual vertical format (h. 20 cm x 10 cm x 2 cm). Foliation ff. [2, index (only listing up to f. 43)], [1, recipes], [2, blanks], 85 numbered leaves (text to both sides: approximately 154 pp recipes). Watermark: Pro patria.
UPRIGHT
¶ This unusually formatted household recipe book contains over 130 recipes on 154 pages. It is written in several different hands and extends over a period of approximately 60 years. The earliest recipes (and the beginnings of an index) are written in a very neat and legible cursive hand (ff.1 probably continuescontemporarytoff.43andadds their contribution to the index. From here on the volume becomes less ordered, as several different people make their additions, but no updates the index, leaving the reader to riffle through the pages unguided. Many of the recipes appear to have been copied or adapted from contemporary printed sources including the ever differentoftenHowever,andElizabethpopularRaffaldHannahGlasse.recipesappearedinbooks, with similar or even identical text; and interaction between manuscript and printed sources often makes it hard to determine the original source. Indeed, overlap can be seen in the works of Raffald and Glasse. That said, there is evidence of use and adaptation in this manuscript. The recipe “A Breast of (ff.3 4), which is similar to one found in Charlotte Mason’s The Lady's Assistant for Regulating and Supplying the Table, frequently differs in wording, especially the ending, which is noteworthy: Mason ends “Some like it sent to table, but it is better cut in slices”, but our manuscript includes the observation that “Some send it up GarnishedWholewithparsley but the Better way is to Cut it out in Slices and send 6 of them up on a Napkin ^wrong put it into a Small Spread over a China Plate Garnishing with Parsley”. This not only differs from Mason, but even suggests they were arguing with themselves over how best to present it.
13. COOK
An intriguing find is the recipe for “A StewedTurkey” (f.17). This can be traced to “To stew a Turkey” in A. Braidley’s The Complete English Cook, published in only one edition (1786) and now recorded in ESTC by a single copy at the British Library. Although we do not have details of how many copies of Braidley’s book were printed, it still makes for a neat reminder of how cookery books, which were often circulated in large numbers, were used to the point of disintegration leaving only a single surviving copy in a library and a single recipe in a manuscript book such as this. As is frequently the case, there is a preponderance of recipes involving meat, poultry, and fish (30 recipes including of Oisters” (f.12v), Head to Bake” (f.6v), Lobsters” (f.26) and Trotters Forced” (f.2v)). But this is narrowly overtaken by their apparent love of cakes, puddings, and flummeries including recipes for “None so pretty” (a pudding containing egg whites and roasted apples), “Cream Jelly” (f.9v), and “Rice cream” (f.10v), which features the pre blowtorch instructionerato“Heat a Fire shovel quite red and hold it over the Cups to Gloss the Cream” As is also frequently the case, there are only a small number of recipes that have fruit or vegetables as their central ingredient, and where they do, they are usually preserved (“Asparagus Pickled” (f.8v), “To Make Lemon Pickle” (f.34), “Apple marmalade” (f.52), “To Preserve Barberries in Bunches” (f.32)).
There are a few recipes and remedies attributed to unpublished sources (“Mrs Glenny’s Cure for Hooping Cough” (f.65v); “An Omlet” (f.66) is annotated at the end “Mrs Gurnston’s receipt”; “Le Poudine de Caramel” (f.73) the remarkably generic “Medicine” comes from “Catherine Drew”); and the pages are further enlivened by the occasional remark. For example, “Pidgeons Stuffed & roasted” (f.4v) ends with a bit of cross Channel carping (“The French usually send up a Raggoo of some kind with them but this is too much it runs into the common Fault of their Cookery which is the Confusion of Tastes”; and “Receipt to make Mayonnaise” (f.45) concludes with the judgmental declaration that “those who don’t like it are much to be pitied”. £1,500 Ref: 8028
A Manuscript Ordination Certificate (1659) An Edinburgh University Graduation Certificate (c.1722)
14. DISSENTERS’ ASCENT
A Fine Framed Oil Painting of Innes Pearse at the time of his Graduation from the University of Edinburgh
ARCHIVE CONTENTS
Together with various related items including a 17th century will, an early 18th-century manuscript map, and sundry related items from the late 18th and into the 19th century.
A more detailed list of the contents of the archive can be supplied on request.
Four Commonplace Books, one Dissertation, 10 Manuscript Sermons, a Catalogue of Sermons, and a Manuscript Book of 31 Hymns, by Innes Pearse (c.1698-?)
Two Manuscript Books by William Pearse (1625-1691)
An important and extensive archive of manuscript books, documents & items relating to a family of 17th & 18th century Dissenters.
Three Manuscript Pamphlets by Agnis Pearse (c.1667-c.1731)
Over 20 Letters from the 17th 18th century letters
During the Commonwealth period, English Dissenters enjoyed a degree of religious liberty. But after the Restoration in 1660, the political tide turned against radical activity, culminating in the ejection of nonconformist ministers in 1662. With the suppression of their religious practices, dissenting ministers necessarily became more insular and sustaining their beliefs became more challenging. As Virginia Smith remarks, one of the ways these dissenting ministers maintained their ideology was to bind together “the sect, the family, and the individual” into a cohesive and financially sustainable unit. “Even more important, however, with the long term influence of Puritan beliefs, were those who refused to join anything the sectaries who vanished after 1660; the groups of the population who provided the surge of revivalism” which began in the middle of the 18th century.
¶
INTRODUCTION
“Their public beliefs were either hidden or transferred publicly to orthodox Anglicanism; we can only guess at their private beliefs.”
1
William was ordained in 1659 in Devon (his ordination certificate forms a part of this collection); but with the passing of the Act of Uniformity in 1662 he became one of the many ejected ministers memorialised by Edmund Calamy in his An abridgment of Mr. Baxter’s History of his life and times. With an account of many others of those Worthy Ministers who were Ejected (1702), and the Pearses’ fortunes suffered a downturn.
The earliest item in the archive, dated December 1652, is a letter from John Pearse to his younger brother William Pearse (1625 1691), who is studying at Exeter College, Oxford. There is little sign of the trials to come, but we do find an indication of the supportive tone that emerges strongly throughout the archive: John expresses sympathy over “the much payne you have in yr teeth”; reports that “I haue deliuered Richard Bartlett eight pounds for you”; and promises that if William needs more for “the takinge yor degree […] ye nexte tyme god willinge & will supply it”.
This extensive archive charts just such a journey from private lives to public persona in a remarkable series of manuscripts, letters, documents, and an oil painting, together representing over a century of trials and tribulations experienced by the nonconformist Pearse family. Each item informs the others, building a portrait of a close knit clan united in their beliefs and grievances, and characterized by an unusually strong role on the part of the women of the family. A clear progression emerges, from enforced insularity to a re emergence and engagement with the world, embodied in the figure of young Innes Pearse, whose painted portrait eloquently expresses a new openness.
There are manuscript books, for example, clearly intended for exchange within the close circle of family and friends. An 86 page manuscript by William (1625 1691), entitled “The Saints hidden life. Or The Spirituall life of Saints unfolded to be both secret, & Safe; unseen, & Secure; out of Ken, & out of danger”, was written circa 1666 in a neat hand and preserved in a homemade binding of limp vellum cut from a 17th century legal document and amateurishly though securely stab stitched. Its long dedication begins: “To my Deare & Christian friends Clement Townsend & to all the rest of my Christian friends in Morton Hamstead. Especially those yt heard it”, in which he expresses surprise at having “met such A concourse of people; much lesse so many that would haue snatched from my mouth euery word that should be spoken, & commit it to writeing”, which apparently inaccurate recordings he now seeks to correct. William’s daughter Agnis Pearse (c.1667 c.1731) has added an inscription to the “This is some of My Dear Fathers works. Mr William Pearse Minister of the Gospel”, signalling the beginning of her curation of the family’s textual lives.
The archive illustrates how this nonconformist family maintained their beliefs, not to mention their material existence, while the world at large strove to limit their activities. Perhaps most importantly, several documents establish that the Pearses had a relatively sound financial basis in land ownership (see below); but beyond this, the archive’s many letters and documents resemble strands of a net that helps to bind the family together and preserve its identity.
KEEPING BODY AND SOUL (AND FAMILY) TOGETHER
A further point of interest is his remark that he has transcribed their father’s words “Which (According to your Desire) I have from his own (Short hand) Notes”, indicating that although literate, the Pearse womenfolk were not fluent in the form of shorthand used to record sermons. We get other glimpses of how the Pearses were educated, including several suggestions that, in keeping with their insulated lifestyle, the children were home educated. William (1664 c.1740) says of “Litty Betty” that “Shee took great Delight in Reading and in teaching her Little Bro” and as part of his emergence into the world, Innes apologises to his aunts: “I am sorry, that I could not follow your advise in being educated at home”, implying that he was breaking with family tradition (established perforce since the Restoration) in seeking an education at university.
Agnis’ brother William (1664 c.1740), by then living and working in London, also pays tribute to their father in various ways that reinforce the family bonds: a manuscript in his hand, entitled “The Substance of ffour Sermons Upon Repentance. By Me. Willliam Pearse Late Minister of the Gospel in Aishburton Devon” is bound with “A Sermon Preached att The Funerall of Mr. William Pearse”, and he prefaces these with a heartfelt, 14 page dedication “To My Dear Sister’s, Mary, Elizabeth, and Agnis Pearse”. He recounts how “all wise Disposeing Providence, Remoued me a great Distance from you”, and from “the Benefitt of My Dear ffather's Labours and Ministry”; and he presents a litany of their misfortunes, such as the “Persecution’s” their father endured “from Implacable Malitious persons […] who Sought not only his Ruine, but Even Life alsoe”; and the “Sicknesses and Contagious Distempers” that have carried off many of their kin. He enjoins them to “know, (and Doe) our Duty; & what ought to be our Deportmt under Such awakening Providences”; outlines six practices, replete with scriptural references in marginal notes and footnotes, and explicitly draws them all together as acolytes of “our Dear ffather”.
In a slim quarto volume, Agnis summarises various sermons delivered in Ashburton between 1708 and 1718, beginning “October the .14. 1708. Mr Robert Jeffery was Buried and Mr John Staddon Preached the funeral Sermon [...] the best of men, must die.” She continues in this vein providing further “truths” and the lessons to be drawn from them. In the earlier section of the volume, most of the sermons were delivered by “Mr Staddon”. This was probably Samuel Staddon (or Stoden), an ejected minister from West Buckland, Somerset. He is known to have been at nearby Budleigh in 1719, and died circa 1755, so he seems a likely candidate.2 He passed the mantle to Cornelius Bond, who was ordained in 1711. And indeed, the latter half of the volume (dating from 1711 to 1718) comprises Agnis’s summaries of sermons by “Mr Bond”. In another pamphlet (again in plain paper wrappers) she records Lord’s Supper services. She begins “The first time that I received the Lords Supper, was by the hand of John Mead Minnister of the Gospel in Aishburton [...] oh that the covenants that have been made and Seald betwen God the great Creator, and me A Poor mesarabel ^sinful Creature, here on Earth may ratified in Heaven. Agnis Pearse. A men.” Entries continue in similar vein (but frequently shorter), usually at least once a year, but often several times a year. The final entry reads “the .122. time was the .7. of nouember .1731. oh that the blessings of God might rest upon me”. This is the latest date she records, so it provides a likely approximate date of her death.
If William (1625 1691) is the patriarch and William c.1740) his successor in this position the Pearse women seem, from the evidence here, to have played a crucial role in the family’s survival and integrity by acting as a kind of glue that held all the parts together. Agnis’s assiduity in this regard is paramount, and in her careful record keeping we glimpse the outlines of a person who acted as the nexus of the family. She compiled manuscript pamphlets including “Old (inscribed at the end “Agnis Pearse / 1684”), extracted from the posthumously published book of the same name by John Dod (1549? 1645). A writer very much in keeping with the Pearses’ beliefs, the ODNB says that Dod was “converted to godly religion or puritanism as his opponents would have described it”. As with other Restoration period books in the collection, it is preserved in a cheap homemade binding (this one in plain paper wrappers).
THE PLACE OF WOMEN
Agnis has a highly unusual method of adding in text where she has forgotten to enter it into its correct place: she cuts slivers of paper, writes the missing text onto it and then tips these to the fore margin so that it extends out from the page.
Agnis’ other significant act of curation is her docketing, preserving and replying to letters. She annotates letters with the date received and the date of her replies. The turnaround was often quite quick: for example, to a letter from her brother William written “London March .7th 1723/4.”, she notes that “I sent A letter to my Brother Fryday the .10. day of Aprill 1724”. As well as acting as the ‘glue’ for the family, the Pearse women played a more powerful role often denied their gender in the early modern period. That the Pearse family’s principal income came from their ownership of land is clear from several documents here as is the fact that this ownership was controlled by the women, and intended to be so.
A copy of William’s (1625 1691) will (dated “the 12th May 1691 E P” presumably his daughter Elizabeth) directs that his wife receive “that part of Ermington Hills knowne by the name of Beacon parke and Well parke”, and his “three daughters; (viz) Mary Pearse, Elizabeth Pearse and Agnis Pearse those other parts of Ermington hills, known by the name of Culverhill, middle parke and three cornerd parke, equally deuided among them...”.
But the Pearse sisters do more than maintain the family property; they are evidently continuing to provide sustenance for their brother. In a letter dated “May ye 23th 1702”, William, who is bringing up his own family in London, writes: “I […] wish you did not Prejudice your selues in sending so much Money, & I now Desire you do not send the Remaining Part untill you can better spare it”.
Of the menfolk, William only leaves “to my son ffrancis Pearse ten shillings” and “my son William Pearse fiue pounds”. Confirmation that his wishes were fulfilled is present in the form of a later manuscript map, made by “Mee Wm. Pearse, of London. Now att Ashburton. June the 25th 1715”, which shows several plots of land in Ermington that constitute “My Dear Sister’s Estate. Mrs Mary, Elizabeth, and Agnis Pearse” The simple outline drawing records the locations of five plots, including “Beacon Park 8 ½ Acres”; “Three Corner park 4 ½ Acres”; and “Culver hill 8 Acres”. These are not large areas of land, so it seems reasonable to assume that the family were working the fields themselves. The ODNB, quoting Calamy, remarks that William (1625 1691) was “well skilled in Husbandry”, something he presumably passed on to his family.
FIRE, DEATH, POLITICS
Perhaps the most affecting example of the latter is William’s long description in May 1704 of the death of “Our dear Dear Litty Betty”. We read with dismay that he and Elizabeth so Cutting so killing as y being upon a Rack, and praying predictably ghastly results: a doctor orders that she be “bleeded under the Ears with Leech’s to Ease y Racking torment of her head”, but after a brief respite, “shee went out of her senses and Lost her speech”, and “Continued often groaning and sobing untill ye Day of her Death”.
William Pearse’s letters to his sisters cover a range of topics: his attempts at preferment, the finer points of male fashion (“I give you thanks for my dear sister’s hair, I added some to it and have a very good wigg made of it”), accounts of sometimes hazardous journeys, the political tensions of the period (“the Q. hath Changed the Ministers of State, Put out the Moderate Party, and Put in high Church men, and wee Daily Expect the Dissolution of the Parlmt. [...] the whole scheme of affairs is altered”), public calamities (“There was a great Fire at Whitehall, wch lasted one night, burned Many Houses, and all the Kings Palace (Except the Banquetting House)”), and private tragedies (“My Dear Sister Joan[n]a: She Relapseing into that Dangerous ffeuer; which was fatall to her.* [*dyed ye 14th Aug~ 1689]”)
Losses such as this must have deepened William and Elizabeth’s affection and concern for their son, Innes. But the climate for nonconformists has improved markedly by 1717, when Innes writes to his aunts that he is bound for “the University of Edenborough”, having been convinced “by the persuasion not only of Minister but many other Friends”. The reason Innes chose a Scottish university seems to have been the financial incentive of a Mr Williams who left a legacy “to bring up English youths in the University in Scotland”. On completion of his “Degree of Mr. of Arts” William writes that “Dr Calamy perswaded mee to Lett him Continue there one year longer” to have given Innes small sums of money.
Innes’s move to Edinburgh marks a change in the content of the archive: the world of ideas opens up, and intellectual curiosity is not just allowed but essential. Items from his university years include four commonplace books dated from “Oct: 20: 1718” to “Feb: 14: 1720”. Although not lavishly bound, their neat contemporary sheep bindings, which were probably obtained as blank notebooks from an Edinburgh bookshop, contrast with the humble bindings his family used in Devon. The topics, too, are markedly different. The books contain a wide and often secular range of subjects including history (“Of ye Spaniards Conquest of America”), geography and anthropology (“Of China”, “Of the Japanese”, “The Turks way of eating”, “The American’s belief concerning a Future State”, “Of ye mummies in Egypt”, “Of the South Terra incognita”), alternative religions (“Of Mahomet”, “Of the Druids”, “Of the Faquirs, in India”), science (“Of Gravity of bodies”, “Of hot Springs”, “Of Earthquakes”, “Of the Barometer”) and natural history (“Of Crocodiles”, “Of the Indian Fig tree”, “Of the Sloth”, “Of Elephants”, “Of the Coco nut tree”, “Of Pepper”), interspersed with moral and philosophical questions (“Whether Brutes are machines, or no?”, “Of Self murder”). The end of each volume features “A Catalogue of ye Authors from which the remarks of this volume are taken” including the likes of “Boyl’s Lectures”, “Montaigne’s Essays”, “Bacon’s Sylva”, “Lock”, and “Newton”. What makes these commonplaces especially interesting is that we see him employing what he has learned from his compilations in the construction of his arguments. In the tradition of the natural philosophers, Pearse uses many of the authors quoted in his commonplace books to assemble a sustained argument that evidence of a creator can be discovered in the order of the natural world. The earliest result is his “Several Dissertations in Natural Philosophy”, which was “Written, & Spoken, In Edenburgh, in Scotland.” It is a wonderful distillation of how contemporary authors were being taught, read, and understood in this prestigious university.
INNES IN THE WORLD
The archive includes a large, framed oil painting of Innes Pearse (measurement to inner edges of frame: 600 x 730 mm. Frame measures approximately 780 x 895 mm). This captivating painting shows a young man (in his late teens or early twenties) looking out from the picture. Although he looks directly at the viewer, his gaze is thoughtful and inward looking. This reflexivity is heightened as we see him in the act of slowly drawing a book from within his waistcoat. The book is a small leather bound octavo, much like those he has used during his time at Edinburgh. Given Innes’ age, his contemplative look, and the focus on the book being slowly revealed from his clothes (as if previously hidden), it seems highly likely it was painted around the time of his graduation as the book and the young man emerge into the world together.
After leaving Edinburgh University (his graduation certificate dated 1722, signed by “Matt: Crauford”, “Will: Wishart”, and four others is included in this archive), Innes became a dissenting minister at Tadley, Hampshire. In 1763, the posthumous Twenty One sermons, by the late Reverend Innes Pearse, M. A. of Tadley, Hants was published at London; but from this archive we learn that he was far more prolific than that volume albeit 492 pages long implies. Innes compiled “A Catalogue of My Sermons”, which lists over 1000 sermons, but even this does not cover them all because “great numbers have not been preserved”.
£27,500 Ref: 8052
CONCLUSION
Books and letters the reading and the writing of them played a key role in the preservation of the Pearse family’s identity.
There are many more stories, perspectives, subtexts and contexts to be explored in the varied materials that make up this rich archive. Survival of the family, of belief, of integrity is naturally one of its themes, and it seems clear that the survival of so many items from this troubled but fascinating period in English history is due largely to the efforts of the women in the Pearse family. Like the family members themselves, this collection of items is bound together by an urge to survive, and to record that survival.
The contrast between the outline “portrait” of Agnis picked out only by piecing together numerous texts, and the fine oil painting of Innes looking out with smiling eyes to an open world, strikingly captures the trajectory of the family’s journey; one that moved from hidden spaces to the visible realm. There is evidence of human agency in both, albeit presented differently: Agnis acted as the central figure in the safeguarding and curation of the family’s identity through a period of oppression, but largely effaced her own identity. In what is most likely his graduation portrait, a smiling Innes holds a book that he has drawn halfway out from the folds of his waistcoat a kind of early modern snapshot of a transitional moment in the Pearses’ progress towards openness.
¶ This 18th century household manuscript is a model example of handwritten recipe exchange, organised in conventional arrangement but with the unusual feature more commonly used in printed books of marginal titles, often abbreviated, as a simple and efficient finding aid. As is often the case with household manuscript books, the scribe has used a small quarto, vellum bound stationer’s book which they have arranged in two sections: one for remedies, the other for culinary recipes. The first section immediately declares itself as part of the culture of manuscript exchange in its title “An Extract of some Physical Receipts taken from Mrs Holmes’s Book.” This contains approximately 90 remedies on 47 numbered pages and was probably written at a single sitting, with another five added slightly later. Instead of the more familiar dos a dos arrangement, a gap of approximately 10 pages has been left before the second section, entitled “Some Receipts in Cookery”, containing over 100 recipes on almost 90 pages (numbered to 49). Most of the recipes were compiled by the same scribe, who has inscribed the front board “Receipt Book 1764”. The contents have been augmented by other hands, but these appear to be near Thecontemporary.recipesand remedies in the first section appear to be from unpublished sources, and we have been unable to trace the original manuscript by “Mrs Holmes”. The first recipe “to change red Hair to a beautiful brown or jet black” has similar wording to Peregrine Montague’s The Family Pocket Book (1760), but it is not verbatim, so it is difficult to establish precedence. Similarly, this recipe has been added by a different 18th century scribe, but despite its location, it is not certain at what time it was added. Other household recipes include “For Worms in Children” (p.6), “To make Treacle Water” (p.7) (which is apparently “good ags: an Infection & burns, Fever, ye: Yellow Jaundice, Convulsions, Faintings, swoong: Fits in Childbed, Worms in Children, & an Excellent Cordial on any Occasion”), “A Very good Plague Water” (p.21), and “A Powder for the Hick:hoops in young & old People” (p.25). Some recipes within Mrs Holmes’s section include attributions (“Mrs Baily’s receipt for a Hoarseness” (p.8); “For ye Vapours & Collick by Dr: Pitt” (p.10)), but these too appear to be from unpublished sources, extending the reach of circulation even further outwards. A few are derived from printed sources, for example “Dr: Boerhaves’ receipt for the Colick” (p.35) and the ubiquitous “Daffy’s Elixir” (p.43). It also includes several remedies for horses (“Hoof Ointment for Horses” (p.28); “A Receipt for the Grease in Horses” (p.29); “To prevent swelled Legs in Horses” (p.31)) and for the treatment of dogs (“For the Mange in Dogs” (p.29)) as well as injuries suffered from them (“For the Bite of a Mad Dog” (p.7)).
15. EXTRACTS AND FLAVOURINGS
[HOLMES, Mrs et al] 18th century manuscript book of recipes and remedies. [Circa 1764]. Contemporary vellum, heavily worn with loss to spine, text block separated from binding. Quarto (204 x 167 x 24 mm). Approximately 140 text pages on 100 leaves (of which approximately 30 are blank). Watermark: Pro patria.
The second section, “Some Receipts in Cookery”, continues the use of marginal titles alongside the full title, but appears to have been collected from a wider range of sources. These include “Jenny Simpson’s Receipt for Dough=Nutts” (p.39), “Nanny Stag’s Receipt for White=Bread” (p.47), “Mrs Messants Receipt To preserve Damsons” (p.48), and “Jenny Taylor’s Receipt for Bath=Roles” (p.42). Other less common regional recipes include “To Dress Shetland Salt Fish” (p.51), and, from even further afield, “Mrs Trattle’s Receipt for Indian Pickles” (p.60), before returning to the distinctly local “Mrs: Bast Popham Lane” (p.75). Recipes are added in no particular order but are occasionally clustered. For example, “To Make Cake Bread” and “To make a Whip Syllabub” (p.1) are immediately followed by “To Pot Beef” (p.2), “To pot Fowls” and “To make Saucidges” (p.3), but then the focus switches to “Sack Posset” and “Quaking Pudding”. Desserts are amply represented, with fruit a frequent feature (“To make Lemmon cream”, “Gooseberry Cream” (p.6), “To boil Apples the French Way” (p.7)). We also learn how to make different “Colours for Jelly”, including “Saffron tied in a fine rage for Yellow” and “for Red conchineal finely beaten” Somewhat out of place in the culinary section are directions to “colour a Gown Yellow”, using a simple method that involves boiling “a quarter of a Turmerick” without changing the colour of the Flowers”. This a nice example of a highly social manuscripthousehold whose reflectiveconditiondilapidatedisnot of neglect, but of a life of frequent use in an 18th kitchen.century
£1,250 Ref: 7902
It should be no surprise that such an inherently social activity as card playing should writerset,whimsicalandfeaturetransformationspawncardswhichcaricaturesoffriendsacquaintancesorcharacters.Butthiscreatedbytheclergyman,andpoetReginald Heber, has taken it further by penning a series of pastiches the poems of Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Campbell and then illustrating these in a series transformationof cards to accompany the narratives.
[HEBER, Reginald (1783-1826)] Highly unusual manuscript book of poems, drawings, and 22 transformation cards. [Circa 1815]. Contemporary sheep backed marbled boards, rubbed and worn. Quarto (205 x 165 x 10 mm). 48 leaves (including a few blanks) dos a dos, some leaves excised, corner of one leaf torn slightly affecting text. 22 transformation cards mounted onto versos (each measuring approximately 95 x 64 mm), with 36 pages of text mainly to rectos. 16 drawings (mainly pencil, but a couple in crayon).
16. PIPS AND POEMS
¶ Card playing was a highly fashionable pastime of the elite and the ‘middling sort’ in Georgian Britain, so much so that it famously features in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813). The popularity of this parlour room pursuit which, for some, exuded a whiff of immorality due to its gambling connotations gave rise to a striking craze: the creation of ‘transformation’ cards, in which the pips (suit signs) were incorporated into drawings as a kind of visual pun. The generally accepted theory is that individuals began to ‘customise’ plain sets by hand, using pen, ink, and watercolours, and that enterprising publishers picked up on the trend. The earliest published ‘set’, albeit not containing all 52 cards, was printed in Germany in 1801, with others quickly following in France, Poland, and England. An interesting aspect of this movement from manuscript into print is that the influence of printed cards can be then seen in manuscript examples that followed them and vice versa.
REGINALD HEBER: AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR?
The evidence for Heber’s authorship of the jeux d’esprit that comprise the majority of this volume is as many faceted as Heber himself. The hand is almost certainly his, based on a comparison with other sources (British Library. Add MS 25704; Claremont Colleges. OCLC 815860592); and several extracts from his biography confirm his partiality to this kind of creative light heartedness: he declares in a letter that “I have never touched a card except to draw a caricature upon it” (Vol 1, p.193), and his widow reproduces in the same volume several examples of her husband’s poetical “imitations” (alongside the remark by a friend that Heber “wrote what none but quick and clever men can write, very good nonsense” (Vol 1, p.345)). Also included in the book, after the parodies, is a handwritten draft of a one act play by Heber (published posthumously), “Blue Beard”, initialled “R H”.
LIFE AND WORK
Further evidence lies in the drawings that occupy the pages at the opposite end of the volume. One is signed “M Heber 1811”, and several others are initialled “M H”. Importantly, two of these depict the Heber family seat at Hodnet (“South View of Hodnet Rectory. MH. July 1812” and “North View of Hodnet Rectory. MH”). We are therefore confident that these drawings are by either Reginald’s sister, Mary Heber (later Macaulay aka Cholmondeley (1787 ?)) or his mother, Mary Heber (1757 ?). The cards and poems were likely created around the same time as Mary’s Hodnet drawings, before his departure to India in 1823, where he died a few years later. The images on the cards are all original, but they are reminiscent of the loose caricature style of the set published by John Nixon in 1803 (other similar sets appeared in the following decade).
Reginald Heber was born in 1783 at Malpas, Cheshire into an old Yorkshire gentry family. His father, also Reginald, was rector of Hodnet, Shropshire, and co rector of Malpas, and had also inherited the manor of Hodnet. His mother, Mary, was a daughter of the Revd Cuthbert Allanson. After attending Whitchurch grammar school and a boarding school at Neasden in London, in 1800 he went up to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he won acclaim with a recitation of his poem Palestine and in 1804 was elected a fellow of All Souls. In 1805, Heber and a friend embarked on a tour of Scandinavia and Russia, which seems to have done much to broaden his horizons; after his return, in 1807 Heber was ordained and succeeded his late father as rector of Hodnet. In 1809 he married Amelia Shipley, daughter of William Davies Shipley, dean of St Asaph, and his father in law’s influence landed him a position as prebendary of St Asaph Cathedral. In 1816, his Bampton lectures at Oxford were published under the title The Personality and the Office of the Christian Comforter Asserted and Explained. In 1822 he was appointed preacher to Lincoln’s Inn. In 1823, Heber’s long held and active interest in overseas missions led to his appointment as the second bishop of Calcutta, a diocese which at the time extended beyond the whole of India to include southern Africa and Australia. He travelled extensively as a result, and his journal of one especially long journey was published posthumously as Narrative of a journey through the upper provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824 1825, (with notes upon Ceylon) (1828). This two volume book went through several editions and is still valued by modern historians for its descriptive accounts of early 19th century India. Heber’s exertions probably led to his sudden death in 1826 while visiting south India. A number of posthumous publications included collections of his sermons (1829) and of his secular poetry (1841).
Though he was a man of the cloth, Reginald Heber was made of a complex fabric. His widow’s two volume biography of her husband allowing for its tendency to eulogise emphasises both his “reverence for every thing sacred, and a remarkable purity of thought” (Vol 1, p.10), and his “powers of imitation and of humour” (ibid, p.345). The latter aspect is what this manuscript brings out most colourfully.
It begins: Van Evert the Dutchman he stood up to shave His beard was all sable to view. Of Barbers the worst was Van Evert the slave
The blood of the stranger was red on his glaive And his hone was oily and blue
Full oft had he heard his poor customers rave
WORK AND PLAY
An annotation to the first page sets the book’s playful tone: “The following Paradies were written by R. W. Esqr. some years ago, & preserved contrary to his wishes.” The first poem, “Van Evert or Beelzebubs Barber”, runs to 16 stanzas and, a note in the same hand suggests, is based on “Vanevert the Dutch Buccaneer” (although we have been unable to trace this).
The stanzas occupy the rectos, and most verso pages bear two transformation cards that illustrate the action of the story. In this first poem, word and image are especially closely related: one card shows Van Evert using a razor or strop labelled “Packwoods” an allusion to a then famous manufacturer of strop and paste equipment and Packwood himself appears as a character in the tale
The subsequent poems all parody works by Walter Scott and Thomas Campbell, beginning with “The Silver Ladle”, in eight stanzas (after “The song of Fitz Eustace” from Scott’s Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field). Next is Bottom the Weaver”, an eight stanza parody of “Glenara” by Thomas Campbell, which gale” a good example of Heber’s fondness for letting the air gently out of some fairly windy works. The accompanying pasted in image is a line drawing depicting the opening scene of the poem, on paper folded owing to its length presumably a sketch for a transformation card that proved too difficult to fit the dimensions Thisrequired.isfollowed by “Ben Hide the Grangiers Daughter”, a parody of Campbell’s “Lord Ullin’s Daughter” that runs to 15 stanzas and includes a striking line in the fourth stanza: for Campbell’s “His horsemen hard behind us ride”, Heber substitutes “His Cowboys hard behind us ride”, accompanied by a card that shows three men on Thehorseback.lastparody, “Bragynys”, takes eight stanzas to migrate Scott’s “Song of Lochinvar” from Scotland to Wales: “Oh young Bragynys is come out of the west / Through all the Welsh Country his steed was the best”. Again, Heber’s preference for gentle ribbing is evident, no doubt partly owing to his friendship with Scott.
£7,500 Ref: 8060
Finally, the aforementioned “Blue Beard”, which reproduces Heber’s one act play (a “serio comic oriental romance”), is bookended by two transformation cards, again illustrating scenes from the story. A few blank pages are followed by the “M H” drawings some 15 of them, possibly added in slightly later than the poems and cards. Sets of transformation cards are rare, and rarer still when they have a coherent theme. But this group is exceptional as the cards were drawn to illustrate Reginald Heber’s own compositions of playful parodies on his literary associates and friends, which brings an extra dimension to this playful parlour room pastime.
17. COLONISING HOSTS [WEDDERBURN, Charles, of Pearsie (1748-1829)] Manuscript notebook on military and medical matters. [Circa 1770 1808]. Octavo (181 x 120 x 20 mm). 53 text pages on 77 leaves (one leaf excised). Contemporary reversed calf, in very good Watermark:condition.Hornabove
More commonly, the correspondents quoted are medical professionals, such as “Doctor Silvester”, who writes from “Fort St. George [Madras] 1771” about the case of one “Ensign Goddard”, the like of which occurs “every day in this Country & not
GR. Provenance: Armorial bookplate: “Charles Wedderburn of Pearsie”; two pencil inscriptions to front endpaper: “Charles Wedderburn Esq” and “Sir E Wedderburn”.
Diseases of the liver predominate, and sometimes it is from the patient’s perspective. For example, in a copied letter, “Lieutt Colonel Brewer” relates to “Hans Sloane, Esqr.” from “Bombay in the year 1769”: “I am just getting the better of the most dreadful disorder, we are subject to in this Country called the Liver I fancy it is almost unknown in England”. He explains “The Bile using to flow in its proper Channel is secreted in the Different parts of the Liver” causing “an abscess”; the usual treatment is “to Open the side, lance the Liver and so the matter flows off in a few Months”, and often repeat the procedure after “a year and a half”. He cautions, however, that “the least intemperance is certain Death”.
Captain Charles Wedderburn served with the East India Company as Commander of the 31st Regiment of Sepoys (native Indian infantrymen), until his retirement in 1785. He then returned to the family seat of Pearsie, in the County of Forfar, Scotland, where he resided from 1786 till his death. Some of the contents are in a hand that is a good match with letters written by Wedderburn at the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh; others in the volume are in a very neat cursive hand, suggesting either that he had someone else copy these in for him or that the volume previously belonged to someone else, and he added
¶ The unsavoury business of colonising a foreign land brought with it certain pitfalls not least an exposure to illnesses and afflictions not always familiar from one’s home country. This manuscript notebook records extracts from letters exchanged between military and medical personnel in 18th century India, concerning a range of conditions and treatments.
Other recipes include “Egyptian Opthalmia”, “Scot’s Pill”, and “Dr. Steers’s Oppoldeldoc”.
Although one of the downsides of being a colonial power was a marked increase in the kind of serious illnesses to which members of one’s occupying forces were already prone, the attempts to treat or prevent such afflictions had a familiar pattern, as evidenced here: exchange of ideas, invocation of authority, and sometimes dubious incursions into the human body, mirroring the iniquities of the British colonial project.
Also recorded are “Observations on the Gout by Doctor Fothergill”, which include tips on prevention (“do not walk in the dew”; “boil ten drachms of Bark and half and ounce of Ginger […] strain it and mix half an ounce of Magnesia”) and on detecting an imminent attack (“take three or four drachms of Magnesia. If there be an acid on the stomach, it will either purge, or cause a rolling of Wind in the intestines”
seldom I believe in Camps in every hot Climate”. Silvester warns against “the supposition that Fluxes are simple diseases arising from Infection” and the expectation of “speedy and effectual Cures”; his diagnosis is “an Obstructed Liver”, which “cou’d at no time have been Effectually Cured but by Mercurial Deobstruents”, although he allows that “a strict Diet, Exercise palliative and Laxative Medicines when the Inflammatory tendency ceased to blunt & evacuated Bile diseased in its secretion might relieve for time”. He adds that a “Mr Young who was under my care not many days since” was “a healthy florid young man” who was “taken suddenly with fever, a dry skin, his Tongue as white as a sheet, his Urine like Porter & of a strong Alkaline smell”. This culture of exchange clearly had an urgency to it, and any prospect of an effective treatment was leapt upon and disseminated. A case in point is the “Extract of a general Letter from the Hon ble Court of Directors [...] 1770”, which reproduces “a remarkable account of cure being affected in the Disorders of the Liver communicated to us by a Gentleman of Rank in our military Service at Bombay by the means of Castor oil, which we are told in the East Indies ^goes by the name of erindo oil”. The Court has “taken the opinion of a Physician of great eminence upon the case [...] we herewith send you […] Extracts of Letters […] both from the Physician and the Gentleman who received the cure”; furthermore, “should you at any time be made acquainted with any Extraordinary cases and any new method of cure […] you will do well to send us a circumstantial Detail of such cases properly attested”.
£2,500 Ref: 8077
[WHITEFIELD, George (1714 - 1770)] 18th century manuscript entitled ‘Whitefields Hymns transcribed in Short Hand by Arch. Bryson 1787.’ [Circa 1787]. Red morocco, gilt tooled spine, edges rubbed, original clasps in tact, text clean. Duodecimo. In two parts, 400 unnumbered pages (Part 1: 136 hymns; Part 2: 140 hymns).
¶ This small but perfectly formed volume is analogous to the experience of shorthand itself: the beautifully neat clasps require one to “unlock” the book, just as the pared down elegance of the hand can only have its meaning unlocked by a reader conversant with the shorthand system used to create it. It serves as an illustration of how shorthand, despite its invention for utilitarian purposes, can result in an object of minimalist beauty.
18. CLASP HYMN TIGHT
Beyond his name, the scribe’s identity is not established; conceivably he was one Archibald Bryson (d. 1807), a dyer, of Christ Church Middlesex (and subsequently Tottenham). (Will at National Archives: PROB 11/1468/69.)
Bryson used the shorthand system devised by the unitarian minister, John Palmer, published in the previous decade as A New Scheme of Short Hand (London, 1774). This was the first in a series of several late eighteenth century methods claiming kinship with Byrom’s
Bryson has transcribed a late 1770s or early 1780s edition of A collection of hymns for social worship, compiled by the leader of Calvinistic Methodism George Whitefield (1714 1770), famous for his sermons and his role in America’s “great awakening”. First published in 1753 and including (unattributed) material by Charles and John Wesley, Isaac Watts and others as well as Whitefield himself, the Collection went through over 35 editions by the end of the century. It was influential in the formation of English hymnology, but the complexities of its composition, publication and reception history have as yet been little studied; Bryson’s manuscript is an interesting piece of documentary evidence concerning the latter. The manuscript is divided into two parts: a hymn (to the Holy Ghost) numbered ‘0’, followed by hymns numbered 1 136; and ‘Book 2d’ of hymns numbered 1 140 , followed by the sections ‘Dismission’ (which Bryson has numbered) and ‘Doxologies’. Comparison of contents across the printed editions shows that the book Bryson used as his source text must have been one no later than the 30th (1786) and no earlier than the 24th (1779) edition (although we have not been able to consult the 24th 27theditions, and no copy appears to survive of the ; the 28th edition is dated 1783). The manuscript dispenses with the prefatory material and hymn titling that appear in the printed source, and a consequence of using shorthand it employs only very limited punctuation and none of the italicisations. There are occasional minor slips in the course of the numbering of the hymns, and a small number of uncorrected minor errors in this connection.
This small volume is a rich primary source for shorthand reception history and a little gem of a physical object, bringing an austere beauty to the material form of the devotional book that perfectly reflects its Methodist source.
stenographic principles: superficially the writing resembles many aspects of Byrom’s system, but Palmer introduced some significant variations. He still, however, attached importance to notions of beauty in shorthand, and this emerges in the neatness and clarity of Bryson’s penmanship. While he renders the shorthand painstakingly and sometimes rather literally with none of the advanced abbreviation techniques that a professional writer would use Bryson is by all appearances no novice: the ductus of his pen indicates established skill and confidence in handling the shorthand from the manuscript’s inception, although there is evidence of the writing becoming more fluent in some parts. The manuscript is written entirely in shorthand, with some exceptions beyond its title page and the numerals for each hymn: Bryson uses longhand for around 50 different proper nouns, some of which occur quite regularly (“Immanuel”, “Jehovah”, “Jesus”, “Zion” etc); and in a moment of carelessness, he begins a line with the word “Since” in longhand (Hymn 1.129). In a few instances the longhand is itself abbreviated (“Immal”, “Abrhm”), suggesting a desire for speed. Random text has revealed only a small number of very minor, non any scribal copying process conducted at reasonable speed. While it seems safe to assume that transcription was made from a printed edition as noted above (the preservation of line indentation is a clear indicator), there is some evidence that Bryso transcribed as another person read (or sang) out the hymns from the print book: a few spellings of the longhand words are not scrupulous replications of the print source (e.g. “Mana” for Manna, “Ebenezer” for Eben Ezer).
We are very grateful to Dr Timothy Underhill for his research into this volume. £850 Ref: 7888
¶ This manuscript played an important social role in a bibliophile gift culture. An inscription tipped onto the paste down reads: “The gift of Filial Love, and Tho. Rob. Wrench. To Paternal Affection and Jacob Wrench. 1798.” Jacob Wrench (1738 1808) is recorded in the City of London Poll Book as a draper. He was married to Elizabeth, and they had two daughters and five sons. One of their children was Thomas Wrench (1794 1836) who matriculated at Queen’s College, Oxford in 1784 (graduated B.A. 1788, and M.A. in 1792). He was ordained in 1788 and became curate of Horley in Oxfordshire until 1789 when he became Vicar of Shipton Bellinger, Hampshire. In 1793, Thomas was appointed rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill in the City of London, where he remained until his death. It seems to have taken Thomas a couple of years to get around to using his father’s gift. He has inscribed the opposite end “Tho Wrench 1800”, and the earliest entry dates from 1806, when he was living at Cornhill: “A List of Books, and to whom lent in this Collection. 1806.” There are around 30 entries which give brief titles and names of borrowers (“2 Vols Tales of Shakspear Mrs Rawstone”; “1 Vol Night Thoughts”; “Bowdlers Sermons John Newton B’ford”; “Miss Selwyn. Paleys Clergymans aps. One Vol: of religions Tracts”; “Oliver Capt Stone on ye Stomach”, as well as the unrelated, although clearly also loaned “Mrs Smith Silver Snuff Box D to W” and a sundry note: “Compose a prayer on Gratitude. Give us grateful Hearts O Lord”). Most have been crossed through, presumably indicating their
[WRENCH, Rev. Thomas Robert (1764-1836)] Manuscript commonplace including two book catalogues. [London? Circa 1798 1821]. Small quarto (205 mm x 170 mm x 20 mm). Approximately 145 text pages. Written in ink and pencil. 2 book catalogues. Contemporary marbled boards, recently rebacked.
19. BOOK TOKENS
Areturn.second list, which dates from a decade later, records “Books in this Collection. in the year 1818”. These are arranged in the conventional descending by size format from “Folio” to “Minor Volumes”. He lists some 97 titles (7 folios, 23 quartos, 53 octavos, 14 “minor volumes”) and includes a brief description of their arrangement, which, even allowing for multi volume sets, seems to include more books than his list accounts for: “Number of Volumes in this Case. On the right hand shelves on Entrance principally Medium 50 volumes. On the Centre shelves, Miscellaneous 132 Vol. On the Left hand shelve Religious Subjects 136 Vol. In the Whole ... 318.” This is followed by another list of books lent out. But this time, of the nearly 60 titles loaned, only around 25 seem to have been safely returned. In keeping with these lists, we also find Wrench mentioned several times in the “Register recording the gifts of benefactors to Sion College Library, written for the most part by successive Librarians of the College.” A 1797 entry reads: “Revd. Mr. Wrench, Rector of St. Michael's Cornhill [Thomas Robert Wrench]. Gift of a printed book”; and there is another, similar entry for 1798 (Lambeth Palace Library. NA1938. Sion L40.2/E64).
appreciation of her journal “Written at Hastings by Miss Selwyn”. Elizabeth Selwyn’s Journal of Excursions through the most interesting parts of England, Wales and Scotland, during the summers and autumns of 1819, 1820, 1821, 1822, & 1823 was published in London by Plummer & Brewis, in 1824. It is not clear from the dates whether Wrench is referring to the published work or manuscript journals, but either way he was evidently both her correspondent and admirer. £650 Ref: 7998
Several poems are written to a Miss Selwyn (who is mentioned above as a borrower of books, which she appears to have returned). The first of these is “Written in Dec.r on reading Miss Selwyns pleasant Tour thro’ Wales 1819”. He adds the note on the breaking up of the post the worst morning in the Winter for Wind Rain & Sleet” and clearly finds comfort in thinking about her travels: “Beguild by Selwyns Sumer Tour / Our Minds these Wintry storms endure” We encounter her again, when he pens a poem “To the Miss Selwyns on reading & returning their Northern Tour or Journey 1822”, in
Having accounted for his books, Wrench fills the following pages with poetry and letters. The poems appear to be mostly his original compositions. References to gifting, lending, and writing occur throughout the volume.
Examples include “To Julia Wrench on her birth day With a present of Masons Poem on a Garden 1818”, and “To a Young Lady, who found it difficult to rhyme the word ‘Silver’” (although, finding the latter task equally difficult, he settles on the less than satisfactory “pilfer”).
¶ In an age of revolution and Romanticism, Richard Polwhele cut a curious figure. Described by ODNB as “by turns, poet, topographer, theologian, and literary chronicler”, he is perhaps remembered chiefly for his controversial book The Unsex'd Females, a Poem (1798), in which he casts his friend Hannah More as Christ and Mary Wollstonecraft as the devil. These notebooks, which Polwhele began at the age of 12 as a pupil at Truro School in Cornwall, show him already in the act of creating his identity as an author forming his own literary circle, and as a producer of books in material form. The precocious scholar writes in Latin, Greek and English, and pursues a clear development from his initial notes and exercises, in a slightly chaotic hand, to more finished and self consciously “presented” work that includes engraved frontispieces and other characteristics of the physical book.
20. THE MAKING OF AN AUTHOR [POLWHELE, Richard (1760-1838)]. 17 Volumes of Verse, Translations, &c. Compiled by the Cornish poet and antiquary, between the ages of 12 and 17 while attending Truro School. [Truro, Cornwall. 1772 77]. 17 autograph manuscripts. Circa 930 text pages. Many retaining their original marbled wrapper. The first 10 volumes have been roughly stitched together (although much of the sewing is now broken). The following seven volumes are similarly sewn and numbered I VII.
Reading these in tandem with Polwhele’s memoirs (Traditions and Recollections (1826)), one finds not only confirmation of some of his declared early influences, but early manuscript drafts of poems, both original and translated, that he later included in this book and in the Anti Jacobin Review as examples of his youthful talent. The notebooks therefore serve as important source material for Polwhele’s later acts of literary self curation.
Meanwhile, Polwhele continuing a pursuit he begins early in the pages of these notebooks had joined a literary society in Exeter whose publications included Poems Chiefly by Gentlemen of Devonshire and Cornwall (1792), which he edited. Around this time, he began his History of Devonshire (followed a decade later by his History of Cornwall Polwhele’s youthful output had already included odes (‘The Spirit of Frazer to General Burgoyne’ (1778); ‘Ode on the Isle of Man to the Memory of Bishop Wilson’ (1781)) and longer works such as The Art of Eloquence (1785), The idylls, epigrams, and fragments of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, with the elegies of Tyrtaeus (1786), Influence of Local Attachment (1796), and The Unsex’d Females, a Poem Polwhele(1798).wasa prodigious letter writer, and counted among his correspondents William Cobbett, William Cowper, Erasmus Darwin, Anna Seward, William Hayley, Edward Gibbon, Catharine Macauley, and Sir Walter Scott. He also contributed often to periodicals including the Gentleman’s Magazine and the Anti Jacobin Review.
Polwhele was born in Truro, Cornwall, in 1760, the only son of Thomas Polwhele (d. 1777) and his wife, Mary (d. 1804). He attended Truro Grammar School and, according to the ODNB, “began to write poetry when about twelve years old” roughly the same time as these notebooks begin. Chief among his early mentors were the Reverend Cornelius Cardew, master of the school, and Dr John Wolcot, a local physician who went on to acquire notoriety as a satirical poet under the name “Peter Pindar”.
Shortly afterwards he was offered the curacy of Kenton in Devon, and subsequently took similar appointments in Devon and Cornwall. Loveday died in 1793, and later that year he married Mary, the daughter of Captain Robert Tyrrell (or Terrell) of Exmouth.
After his father died, the adolescent Polwhele visited Bath and Bristol with his mother, where he met several literary figures including Catharine Macaulay (to whom he precociously presented a birthday ode) and Hannah More. In 1778, he published The Fate of Lewellyn “a young gentleman of Truro School”. After leaving Christ Church College, Oxford without a degree, he was ordained in 1782 as a curate in Lamorran, Cornwall, and in the same year married Loveday, daughter of Samuel Warren of Truro and his wife, Blanche Sandys.
PROVINCIAL LIFE
Polwhele in his memoirs describes the Reverend Cardew’s “judicious method of reading portions from the English classics to his scholars”, which he believes helped nurture in him an “early taste for poetical composition”. These notebooks record many of those exercises and show Polwhele’s progress during that period.
POLWHELE’S PROGRESS
The second group shows an increase in ambition and a refinement of penmanship, and indicate that Polwhele conceived the set as more of a literary ‘production’ (as he optimistically notes earlier in volume VII, “Ambition thus makes writers of us all”). As if trying on a set of adult clothes, he begins to inhabit a writerly persona through the trappings of making: each of the notebooks from Vol III onwards features a frontispiece engraving pasted in from printed sources, generally as an illustration of one of that volume’s poems. For example, Vol III bears a frontispiece engraving “The Month of May”, opposite the opening poem, “The Poet’s Invocation on the Month of May”.
The notebooks have been divided by Polwhele himself into two groups: the first consists of 10 numbered volumes, the second has seven. The first group shows Polwhele getting to grips with the basics of literature and translation, in an often untidy hand that suggests a frantic absorption of information. He attempts translations of Terence, Virgil, Sallust and others into English, “Greek Epigrams” and “Some of 93 Psalm done into Latin verse”; he sets “Observations on Adjectives” and vocabulary lists for translating Sophocles; he “Friend to the Gods, hail”), possibly translated but heavily amended and struck through. “Volume IX” of this first group, an outbreak of carefully rendered penmanship “RULES OF THE SENTIMENTAL CLUB”, a school society whose “is to write our thoughts on Miscellaneous Subjects, to speak them with grace and emphasis, to talk with propriety and to debate on whatever subject the President chooses” that President being Polwhele, naturally. This signals the imposition, after the jumble of the first few volumes, of a kind of order upon the chaos of his early scribblings an act of organisation that foreshadows the consciously finessed presentation of the second group (and an indication of his early taste, soon to develop more fully, for literary societies).
MAKING AN AUTHOR
Polwhele then appends “Notes upon the foregoing Poem” (Vol III, p.5) which include references to Lyttelton and Thomas Gray whether simply to ‘show his workings’ or in a bid to elevate his poetry by association is open to conjecture. Further imitation of the form of the printed book comes in a concluding flourish (e.g. “End
There are also fairly unmistakable signs of Polwhele’s growing concern with posterity. This impression is partly a consequence of Polwhele’s having subsequently raided the volumes in this second group for a selection of juvenilia published anonymously in the Anti Jacobin Review (1810). Of the seven poems in his AJR selection, all but one appear in draft in these volumes, and of these, most notebook versions include revisions that are reflected in the print versions. For example, “An Epigram from Catullus. Foolish Laughter” (Vol I, p.12), begins: “Because Egnatius teeth are white, He’s always in a laughing Plight; Whether he’s cited to the Bar, Or when distressed Plaints he hear ^ Or plaints of dire distress he hear”. This and most of the subsequent manuscript amendments appear in the printed version (although both shorten the Latin original, largely, one imagines, to edit out Catullus’ scatological punchline concerning Egnatius’ habit of cleaning his teeth with urine). The other poems Polwhele later selected for his showcase of juvenilia include “An Epigram from a Latin one, translated from the Greek. Labour attends every Condition in Life” (Vol I, p.13) and “An Epigram from Petronius Afranius” p.32).
Polwhele evidently revisited these manuscripts more than once: another handful of poems from this second set appears in the first volume of his memoirs. “Ode to Harvest” (Vol III, p.29), which is heavily amended, appears with most of the amendments in place. Several other notebook pieces appear in his memoirs for example, a translation of Theocritus’ “19th Idyllium”, which Polwhele reproduces in a revised version, entitled “The Honey Stealer of Theocritus” (Memoirs vol 1, p.51). At the end of Vol VI, we find further evidence of Polwhele having returned to his notebooks in old age: a hasty mathematical note he has apparently made in 1833 (at age 73) leads him to conclude that “Between 14 & 15 these MSS. were written”. Thus, even in the last few years of his life, he was evidently revisiting his earlier steps in the practice of Thesepoetry.notebooks allow us to draw clear lines of evolution from Powhele’s initial attempts at poetry to the more evolved presentation of the second group and the clear emergence of his ambitions to be a poet, a maker of books, and socially connected literary figure. The collection vividly exemplifies Polwhele’s self conscious creation of what Dafydd Moore in his study of Polwhele calls “the self fashioning of the provincial man of letters” in carefully curated material £6,500 Ref: 8047
Volume II: “The Twelfth Ode of Horace paraphrastically translated into English verse, addressed to Augustus”. 20 pp.
Volume I: “Select Epigrams from Martial & Other Epigramists, done into English Verse, with other kinds of poetry; and a few Greek Epigrams translated into Latin verse as well as English”. 44 pp. Some corrections and amendments.
CONTENTS: GROUP I.
GROUP II.
Volume II: Includes “Greek Epigrams” (an essay); poem beginning “Friend to the Gods, hail”; “Verses from Virgil., 80 pp dos a dos. Corrections and amendments throughout.
Volume IX: “Rules of the Sentimental Club”. It begins with an “Introductory Article” stating that “The Business of the Sentimental Club, is to write our Thoughts on Miscellaneous Subjects, to speak them with Grace & Emphasis, to talk with Propriety, & to debate on whatever ^subject the President chooses to propose ...” It goes on to list 27 Rules in 12 pp; signed by “Richard Polwhele”, “John Arthur”, “John Painter”, “Richd Thomas”, “J. John”, “Richd Paul”, “John Mosley” and “C. Clutterbuck”. With “Notes for Club Discussions” “To be produced next Thursday the 26th of June. An Essay on Speech, subject proposed by Polwhele first president”, with the “Argumentative Subject” of “Whether Ambition might be suppressed entirely”. For the 2nd July, a “Declamation on Charity” is proposed, with the “Argumentative Subject” being “Whether America or Britain is in the Right”. 44 pp dos a dos.
Volume VIII: “Some of the Sixth Book of Virgil done into English Verse”; “Moral Miscellany”. 38 pp, three leaves with crudely drawn pen and wash sketches. Front inner wrapper inscribed “Rd: Polwhele”
Volume III: Includes “Remarks” (on Virgil); “Remarks on lectures”; “On collects”; “The Greek Collect”; “Greek Epigrams”. 76pp dos a dos. Corrections and amendments throughout.
Volume V: “Translations from Sallust”. 48 pp dos a dos. First leaf inscribed “Rd: Polwhele”. Volume VI: “A Book for Translations taken from Selecta e Profanis, &c.” (presumably Selectae e profanis scriptoribus historiae, a schoolbook anthology common at the time). 30 pp (including title). Inscribed at end “Rd: Polwhele”.
Volume IV: Includes “Some of Theognidis’s Thoughts, Addressed to his Friend, Cyrnus. Trans: fr: the Greek”; “Some Thoughts of Solon”; “Some Thoughts as an Avaricious Person”; “Epigram on ‘Pallas Bathing’”. 44 pp, engraved frontispiece. Some corrections and amendments.
Volume VI: Includes “Some Part of the 10th Satire of Juvenal translated”; “Ode to Contentment”; “Ode to Fancy”; “The Emmet and the Silkworm. A Fable”; “Poetical Chronology of the Twelve Caesars”. Later notes at end, apparently by Polwhele: “Between 14 & 15 these MSS. were written” together with a calculation by Polwhele of the 58 years between 1775 and 1833, when he presumably reviewed his juvenile writings. 76 pp, engraved frontispiece.
Volume I: Notes and translations, including Virgil and Terence in English, “A Dissertation on explaining the declining of Words”, “Observations on Adjectives”, etc. 80 pp dos a dos. Corrections and amendments throughout.
Volume X: “Scraps”, including, “A Poetical Chronology of the Kings of England” from William the Conqueror to James II (written vertically to rectos); “Memorandums” (written vertically to versos). 44pp (and continuing onto rear endpaper).
Volume IV: Includes “Pantheon”; “Moral Miscellany”; “Juvenal”; “Vocabula” (Sophocles, Lucian, Horace). 48 pp dos a dos. Corrections and amendments throughout.
Volume III: “The Poet’s Invocation on the Month of May. A Poem”, with translations from Aeneid and other pieces by Virgil. 44 pp, engraved frontispiece, annotated “The Month of May”.
Volume VII: “Moral Miscellany” (title to inner wrapper and inscribed “Rd: Polwhele”), includes “Ode to Harvest”, “Ode against Avarice”, “Blank Verses from Virgil” “On Cupid”; “To Himself”. 112 pp (and continuing onto rear endpaper and cover). Corrections and amendments throughout.
Volume V: Includes “Moschus’s Elegy on the death of Prion done into English Verse”; “1st Pastoral of Theocritus done into English Verse”; “The Sublime Description of the Horse in Job”. “Ode to the Coelestial Orbs”. 44 pp, hand coloured engraved frontispiece.
Volume VII: Includes “A Poem on the Birth of Our Saviour. Written December 27th. 1775”; “The True Use of Riches. A Moral Tale. 1776”; “Part of the Electra of Sophocles translated into blank verse”; “The Little Wish. A Poem. [August] 6th 1776”. 60 pp (and continuing onto rera endpaper), engraved frontispiece annotated “The Storm. Albouran Shipwrecked.”
Thomas Sheridan’s translation of Juvenal was first published in 1739; an early owner of this copy of a 1777 edition was evidently unaware of Sheridan’s authorship and has added “By Dunstan” to the title page, possibly thinking of Samuel Dunster, translator of Horace satires in the early 18th century. Whether our annotator is Sir Thomas Hesketh is uncertain, but he pasted in his bookplate in the last year of his life and the “Easton Neston Library” label dates from after his death. The scribe has gone through the text and added notes, including short summaries at the beginning of each satire, as well as frequent underlining, occasional corrections to the text (both Latin and English), and notes on the meaning and context of some of the Latin words and phrases.
Our annotator draws out similarities with contemporary customs and culture: in Satire [II] (p.36), they have underlined “Dives erit, magno quae dormit tertia lecto” and added the note “This Line is applicable to his present Majesty the Baby King of Denmark with his late Queen & Count Halk” likely a reference to Christian VII (1749 1808) who ascended the throne in 1766 aged 17 years. One strand of annotations suggests an inclination to compare the Roman and British empires: commenting on Satire [XI] (p.308), they write: “The Romans, after they grew refined, affected the Greek as much as we do the French Language” implying that the British have achieved a Roman level of refinement. The scribe is keen to point out parallels in the classical text with the customs of the colonial West Indies: in Satire II (p 42), they have underlined “Et pressum faciem digitis extendere panem” and added in the margin below: “It is a Custom with some of the Ladies at Montserrat […] to retire for a fortnight to
Provenance: armorial bookplate of “Sir Thomas Hesketh, Bart. Rufford Hall, Lancashire.” Library shelf reference label to paste down: “Easton Neston Library” (also a country seat of the Hesketh family). The bookplate is dated after 1761, when Sir Thomas was created Baronet. (A young William Shakespeare is thought to have performed in Rufford Hall for the entertainment of an earlier Sir Thomas Hesketh.)
JUVENAL. The satires of Juvenal translated: with explanatory and classical notes, relating to the laws and customs of the Greeks and Romans. Annotated in an a contemporary hand. London: printed for J. Nicholson, in Cambridge; and sold by C. Crowder, Paternoster Row, and J. and F. Rivington, in St. Paul’s Church Yard. [London], MDCCLXXVII. [1777]. Pagination xvi, 416 p. complete with the half title. Contemporary mottled calf, rebacked preserving original spine.
21. SATIRES ON EMPIRES
¶ This parallel Latin and English edition of Juvenal’s ‘Satires’ (written during the Roman Empire) includes annotations that pointedly refer to the British Empire’s colonial territories in the West Indies.
If our annotator displays some of the common prejudices of their era, they also indulge in some satirical jabs of their own. Against a line in Satire [III] (p.54), “Res hodie minor est, here quam suit, atque eadem eras. Deteret exiguis aliquid” (“since my means are less today than they were yesterday, and tomorrow will rub off something from the little that is left”), they observe drily (if cryptically): “An admirable picture of England in 1779”. £750 Ref: 8065
refresh […] The discipline is exceedingly severe. They rub their faces over with ye oil of ye Cusso ^Cushoo nut. This lying on for a fortnight brings off all the skin of their face like a Mask, but if they smile, or distort their face in the least during this painful operation, they come forth horrid Spectacles.”
These anthropological asides occasionally betray a certain callousness: in Satire [VI] (p.174), on the line “Altior hic quare concinnus? Taurea punit”, the scribe underlines “Taurea” and adds a note: “perhaps a Bull’s Pestile, or a long Thong cut out off a Bull’s, or Cow’s hide & twisted up hard & taper in form of a switch. This kind of instrument is used upon the domestic Slaves by the Mistresses in the West India Colonies”. Clearly demonstrating that people in Britain were aware of the appalling treatment of enslaved people. Homophobia, too, is a feature, in the note to Satire [II] (p.28), which observes: “Here the Poet scourges the Hypocrisy, Effeminacy, & Bestiality of his Countrymen, as contradistinguished from the vilest & most libidinous Turpitude of Women. He is particularly severe upon that abominable intercourse between the male Sex. Which was highly fashionable.”
[SWANN, James]. Late 18th century manuscript commonplace book. [Bristol, England. Circa 1793]. Contemporary full vellum, knife cuts to front board. Quarto (160 mm x 198 mm x 20 mm). Title page, 98 text pages, some leaves excised. A printed handbill pasted to front endpaper for “Willim. Slocombe, Linen QuiltedWomensSellsHaberdasherMercer,Draper,&[...][...]CloakshattsandPetticoats./
Such selections show Swann, at the very least, actively engaging with abolitionist texts whether to aid his own thinking or to display his humanitarian qualities is open to surmise. Ref: 7878 7926
£600 Ref:
¶ The text is divided into five sections: [1]. “Propositions on ye Globes” (includes questions concerning spheres, longitude, motion of the sun) and “Problems on ye Globes”. [2]. “Astronomy” (includes subsections on “Of ye System of ye World, & ye Sun’s Motions”, “Physical Cause of ye Planets’ Motion” “Of Comets”) [3]. “Mechanics” (includes subsections on “Of Matter & Motion” “Of ye Center of Gravity & its Motion”) and “Mechanical Problems”. [4]. “Hydrostatics” (includes subsections on “Of the Pressure of Solids”, , “Of the Resistance of Fluids” “Of ye Effects of Attraction upon Fluids”) and “Hydrostatical Problems”. [5]. “Optics” (includes subsections on “Concerning ye Motion of a single Ray of Light”, “Of Images”, ) and “Optical Problems”. The text is mainly to rectos, with references (including “Keill’s Desc:”,“Macl:“Newton”,Optics”,“Smith’sLect:”New:“Cotes de motu Pendulum” toandcalculations,),diagramstheversos.
¶ This commonplace contains an eclectic mix of poetry, plays, epitaphs and maxims, and the combination of humour and seriousness gives the air perhaps intentionally of someone both urbane and compassionate. He enjoys maxims on “Modesty”, “Virtue”, “Affection”, and witty epitaphs and poems (“Of Nell Bachellor, lately was shoven; Who was skill’d in the Arts of Pies, Custards and Tarts, And knew ev’ry use of the Oven”).
22. SWANN’S WAY
£750
23. WORDLY MATTER [FOLLIOTT, George (later owner)] Mid 18th century scientific manuscript. [England. Circa 1750]. Approximately 120 pages of text and diagrams on 88 leaves. Near contemporary sheep back marbled boards. Worming to spine, boards rubbed and worn. Watermark: Fleur de lis and IV countermark (Haewood 1706, which he dates to circa 1739).
Bombazeens and Norwich Crepes [Bristol. 1770].”
There are passages from Shakespeare and William Cowper, and Washington Irving. Cowper’s abolitionist stance is echoed in Swann’s copying of remarks by Buffon “On Negroes” from his Natural History: “Are they not already sufficiently unhappy in being reduced to a state of Slavery? […] must they be abused, buffeted, treated like Brutes?”.
hundredskilled,required,intensivelabourwasproductionhugelyandandof thousands of
An inscription to the rear inner board reads: “She had been A teacher At St Peters School upard of six years And was beloveddearly and regrettedgreatly by her Parents and freinds.” But we do not know for certain that this refers to Gill. 24. NOT SO SWEET [KEATE, Jonathan, Sir] Late 17th century manuscript accounts. [Circa 1695]. Folio (384 mm x 254 mm). Title (to cover), [8, text pages], [2, blanks], rear cover blank. Ruled throughout. Written in a neat secretary hand. Title to front cover: “Sr .
Jonathan Keates Account of Receipts and Disbursmts. of the ^Personall Estate of his Testator George Keate Esqr besides the stockes of his in the East India and Affrican Companyes” ¶ The early modern merchant class became wealthy and powerful largely through oppression and exploitation.
Jonathan Keate’s father was a sugar refiner and a major investor in the East India Company; Jonathan, too, became a merchant. These accounts, however, document the costs he incurred as executor of George Keate’s will another important vehicle for perpetuating wealth. George’s wealth derived from importing sugar from Barbados. Sugar
[GILL, Jemima] Manuscript notebook of knitting and lace patterns including original samples. [Manchester? Circa 1849]. A small cash book (159 x 100 x 7 mm). 27 text pages on 22 leaves, some leaves excised. With 13 original samples stitched in or loosely inserted. Contemporary marbled paper covers laid over cloth, rubbed, spine worn. Paper label to front cover with manuscript inscription: “Jemima Gill / July 12th /49”
Gill has opted for a simple cashbook, suggesting that economic appeal guided her choice. She has ignored the printed columns, written straight across the page, and inserted her fabric samples to the directions. These include “Leaf and Point Lace”, “Isle of Wight Lace”, “Irish Edge”, and “Antique Pattern for Anti Macassars”, with instructions like “Cast on two loops knit ^purl 3 plain rows 4th slip 1 bring the cotten forward [...]”.
¶ Jemina Gill’s small pattern book has been adapted from a pre printed cash book which, we assume, she purchased at “John Fletcher, Stationer, Manchester,” whose label includes “Ledgers”, “Day Books” “Journals”, and “Pattern Books”.
25. STITCHES IN TIME
Thefrompeople,enslavedlargelyAfrica.accountsshow
Jonathan clawing back expenses incurred (in “Tavernes & Coffeehouses”, in hiring coaches, etc) and recording disbursements to beneficiaries the minutiae of this process of wealth guarding by a small corner of the merchant class. £450 Ref: 8035£1,000 Ref: 7860
26. GATHERING WOMEN WITHERING, William (1741-1799) A Systematic Arrangement of British Plants; Corrected and Condensed, Preceded by An Introduction to the Study of Botany. London: Scott, Webster, and Geary. 1837. Fourth edition. Octavo. Bound in contemporary calf as two volumes. Pagination pp. viii, [5] 184; 185 407, [1, blank]. Complete with the frontispiece and nine engraved plates. Provenance: Ink inscription to frontispiece recto: “Anna Elizabeth Leigh / October 15th 1838”. Probably Anna Elizabeth Leigh (1812 1879). Pencil inscription to ffep reads “C. E. Sowerby 3. Mead Place / Westminster Road / Lecturer of Botany Guy’s Hospital / Remarks by Charles Johnson / Figures by James Sowerby F.L.S. G.S.” Inscription to paste 20th century bookplate and ink stamps of “Boekerij A.P.M. de Kluijs Tilburg” Augmented with 37 additional interlinearinterleaves;annotations286pencilmargins)smallinterleaves,illustrationswatercolour(29toandeightillustrationstoand27illustrations.pencilto273and marginal annotations.
In 1776, physician and botanist William Withering (1741 1799) published The Botanical Arrangement of All the Vegetables Naturally Growing in G. Britain, which in due course and over many editions (some under different titles) became the standard botany text. Withering was recognised as “the first to delineate systematically in English the flora of Great Britain, using and extending the Linnaean system of classification” (ODNB). After his death, further editions appeared under the title A Systematic Arrangement of British Plants, edited by his son and, after his death, by William Macgillivray. Charles Johnson (1791 1880), of whose early life we know little, devoted his life to botany after giving his first lecture on the subject in 1819. He was appointed lecturer in botany at the newly founded Guy’s Hospital medical school in 1830, where he remained until 1873, and is believed to have been the first to use living plant specimens in his classes. He was a fellow of the Linnean Society and a member of the Botanical Society of London.
Johnson edited an abridged version (in 12 volumes, 1832 46) of Sowerby and Smith’s English Botany, and published Ferns of Great Britain (1855, supplement 1856), British Poisonous Plants (1856), and Grasses of Great Britain (1861), all with illustrations by Sowerby’s grandson John Edward Sowerby. He continued to lecture until 1878, when he was 87 years old.
But how did Anna Elizabeth Leigh’s copy come to be augmented with “Remarks by Charles Johnson / Figures by James Sowerby”? The answer lies in the annotations and the unobtrusive inscription to the paste down: “A. C. Gresley”. Anna Elizabeth Leigh had five siblings, one of whom was Augusta (d.1903), who married in 1852 and took her husband’s surname Gresley. As to the connection between Augusta and the botanists, we learn from the annotations that she had an active interest in the science of botany. For example, against the classification for V. Anagallis, a note in the margin reads “Augusta gathered it at Melbourne Leicestershire 1844” (p.48). A few pages on, a marginal note regarding U. vulgaris stating that it was “Gathered by Augusta in a pool at Grappenhall Heyes (i.e. Heys) Augt 1848” (p.51) is accompanied by a watercolour illustration to the interleaf by Sowerby. The use of Augusta’s forename suggests a level of familiarity: other individuals are referred to more formally, by their surname (sometimes with a forename).
¶ This is a book whose additions have sown a puzzle in its material history. The inscription states that its initial owner was “Anna Elizabeth Leigh / October 15th 1838”; this is probably Anna Elizabeth Leigh (1812 1879), the daughter of Egerton Leigh (who served as High Sherriff of Cheshire in 1836) and Wilhelmina Sarah Stratton. Their family seat, Jodrell Hall, is mentioned numerous times in the manuscript annotations (e.g. p.102 P. lucens was found at “Jodrell Hall ponds & pits leaves all submersed”). But further inscriptions indicate that this copy of Withering’s classic work found its way into the hands of a celebrated pair of botanists, whose embellishments to the printed text amount to an unpublished collaboration between James Sowerby, Charles Johnson, and the deceased Withering.
James De Carle Sowerby (1787 1871) was the eldest child of James Sowerby (1757 1822), a botanical artist, and his wife, Anne de Carle (1764 1815). After home schooling by private tutors and learning science with input from his family connections, he focused on chemistry and mineralogy (with encouragement from Faraday, Humphry Davy, and Wollaston). His father’s work in natural history led to his also becoming a botanical artist, and his first published illustrations appeared in Dawson Turner’s Muscologiae Hibernicae spicilegium (1804).
POTTED BIOGRAPHIES
and copious annotations in pencil
clearly embarked upon as a serious undertaking: both volumes
1.ReferencesStokes,Jonathan. Botanical Commentaries (1830) 2. Women Members of the Botanical Society of London, 1836 1856 Author(s):
acquired additional 37 fine illustrations by
History of Science, Nov., 1980, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Nov., 1980), pp. 240 254. Leigh family: <http://www.thepeerage.com/p14177.htm#i141767>
These
interleaved
This has Sowerby by Johnson. were have been with for the purpose. D. E. Allen. Source: The British Journal for the
copy
blanks
COLLECTIONS & CONNECTIONS
Johnson’s copious notes all appear to have been entered into the volume at roughly the same time, so were presumably copied in from different notebooks (there are several references to notes from one “M.S.” or another). The illustrations are generally tucked into spaces left around the annotations, so the annotations clearly came first. Johnson records “sightings” of certain species: for example, Amphibious Persicaria (p.182) is garnished with the interlinear note “June 25th 1839. Coopers Pond”, as well as an observation to the interleaf that it is “a favourite food of swans & other waterfowl. Roots creeping, running deep into the mud” He notes of R. agrostidea (p. 68), that it was “Given to Mrs M. Stroin by Sir J. Smith found in Anglesea”) highlighting the significant role that women played in the collection of samples and the discovery of specimens. The aforementioned Mrs M. Stroin’s plant hunting is acknowledged several times, as of course is Augusta’s. Another key female figure acknowledged here is “Mrs M. Stovin”, who collects many specimens, some of which made their way into “Mrs M. Stovin’s herbarium”, and she is credited with having “first discovered” spartina alterniflora “on the banks near the Itchen Ferry Southampton” (opp. p.80). Indeed, Margaret Stovin (1756 1846) of Chesterfield appears in Botanical Commentaries (1830) by Jonathan Stokes, who describes her as an “investigator and collector of plants”1. She was the granddaughter of George Stovin, FRS, and second cousin of the leading botanist Richard Anthony Salisbury.2 An annotation opposite p.111 mentions “her garden at Newbold”, which we also learn from Stokes was “Newbold Garden near Chesterfield”. Margaret Stovin appears to have had many others gathering on her behalf over at least a couple of decades. In 1825 “Dr Gapper Bristol” gave her “A. cerulea”, and in 1844 “Mr Bower” gave her “Lysimachia ciliate” (opp. p.117 ). “M. repens” was “Found by Miss Rickman whose specimen is in Mrs M. Stovin’s herbarium”. (“Miss Rickman” also gave specimens to “Lieut Gerard Smith” among others (p. 187)). Certain specimens evidently involved a degree of difficulty in acquiring: one “Mr Bowman” is recorded as having told Mrs Stovin that one plant “is now ^1836 so rare a flower on Snowdon that it is to be obtained only by the letting a man down the precipice by ropes from above” (opp. p.162).
£1,750 Ref: 7951
Johnson takes evident pleasure in adding remarks and field notes that are often anecdotal: next to “Broad leaved Garlick” (p.160), he has annotated to the interleaf: “Cattle will eat it early in the spring especially cows, whose milk is rendered useless in consequence of the intolerably nauseous flavour it communicates”. On the interleaf beside “L. arvense” (p.111), he observes: “The red barks abound in a deep red dye, which will stain paper linens &c, it is easily communicated to oily substances. Linnaeus says the country girls in the N. of Sweden paint their faces with it”. In the same vein, on the interleaf opposite M. caerulea (p. 75) he writes: “This grass flourishes near the Copper Works in Anglesea […] IW Lightfoot says that in the Isle of Skye the fishermen make ropes for their nets of this grass which they find by experience will shear the water well without decaying”. This book’s history of exchange seems to have been greatly enriched by an ecosystem of (largely female) contacts who have acted, wittingly or not, as intermediaries of a sort between the published authors. The result is a highly attractive example of a collaboration between two generations of botanists, facilitated by a network of botanically inclined women whose contributions, as is so often the case, need to be unearthed.
27. CHEQUERED MYSTERY
An inscription to the pastedown reads “J. W. Rimington Wilson / Chess Library”. James Wilson Rimington Wilson “was well known for many years as an ingenious solver of problems, an industrious collector of fine (unpublished) games and the possessor of the best chess library in the world.”1 This library, which also contained sporting and gaming books, was sold at Sotheby’s in 1928, but in a fashion that did posterity no favours: many of the books and manuscripts were grouped together into small lots, often with only the first title mentioned, making exact matching almost impossible except for some of the named items.
Quaritch bought many of the lots and issued catalogues supplemented with books from other properties. Their catalogues were itemised but still brief. The closest reference we can find to our manuscript is: “949 Manuscript on Chess in English, Italian, and French. A Series of Games, etc., extracted from Carrera, Lolli, Salvio, &c. and the “Value and Chronicle of Players” in which most of the eminent players and writers are noted, from the earliest period to about 1640. 2 post 8vo. notebooks of 165 leaves, with a number of loose additions: eighteenth century Italian binding, richly gilt. 18th cent. [£]3 [s.]3 [d.]0”.
We do not have a volume entitled “Value and Chronicle of Players”, so it may be that the two were separated, or that our manuscript either did not appear in the catalogue or is not clearly identifiable. However, their binding notes are similar, as is the reference to “English, Italian, and French”, so it seems likely they are one and the same.
Provenance: Bookplate of Richard Penn Jr. (1735 1811) to pastedown: Pennsylvania in a ribbon above a crest (on a wreath [argent and sable], a demi lion rampant argent, gorged with a collar, sable charged with three plates), Richard Penn beneath.
The binding appears to be Italian, possibly a stationer’s binding. The first and final leaves are written in Italian on paper produced in Italy. The volume shows signs of having been augmented over time with English paper, and the text continues in Italian, French, and English the latter increasingly predominating. It therefore seems probable that the volume was bought in Italy in the mid 18th century as a stationer’s blank book and augmented over the period of perhaps a decade although by whom is far from certain, as we shall see.
[PENN, Richard (owner and compiler?)]
A highly unusual compilation of 18th century chess gambits. [Italy and England? Circa 1780]. Approximately 160 pages of text and chess notation on 126 leaves (some loosely inserted leaves). Bound in an Italian 18th century panelled calf with elaborate gilt tooling, rubbed. Text block loose in binding, with some leaves Watermarks:loose.afew leaves with Horn above LVG (similar to Haewood 2736, which he dates after 1714); thereafter, the volume is a mixture of Horn above GR with countermark IV (Haewood 2754, 2756, and 2758 without countermarks, which he variously dates between 1754 1800; Haewood 2745 for countermark IV, but with L V Gerrevink, which he dates 1755) and Bird below an F (no exact match for this watermark, but Haewood, Briquet, and Gravell record similar papers as Italian).
¶ Chess has been a source of fascination for well over a millennium. But as fascinating as it can be, it can also be a source of frustration for the unprepared. This remarkably rare 18th century manuscript represents an early attempt to conduct a systematic study of a particular variation by drawing on multiple sources. But it also takes us beyond the private study of one individual and reveals a social world in which competition thrived through shared knowledge a world at whose centre lay the nascent London Chess Club.
The most exceptional chess player of the 18th century was François André Philidor (1726 1795). Philidor travelled extensively throughout Europe improving his game against the likes of his countryman Legall de Kermeur, the Syrian Phillip Stamma, and his famous American friend, Benjamin Franklin. But from 1774 onwards, he was engaged to act as the chess teacher to an exclusive club based in Parsloe’s Club, London. This became known as the London Chess Club. It consisted of only 100 members, each of whom paid a subscription of two guineas; the proceeds were used to financially support Philidor. His talent for chess, his publications, and his role as a teacher, combined with his readiness to entertain (he would play history.figuresashehavegamessimultaneousblindfolded)ensuredthatisrememberedoneofthegreatinchess
INTRODUCTION
THE LONDON CHESS CLUB
During the early years of the club, three London editions of Philidor’s Analyse du jeu des échecs were published (one was a translation into English and two were in the original French. ESTC: T119798, N53069, and T145116). Of these, T145116, was published by subscription and included a dedication to the chess club (“Aux très illustres et très respectables membres du club échecs ... A. D. Philidor à Londres 4 Juin, 1777”). This edition forms a vital part of our story. It is quoted in our manuscript and some of its subscribers feature prominently, as we can see from remarks such as “Very adventurs: Says Payne” (f18r), “Bad Says Payne falso Cozio. C.30. p.234” ((b)f22r). Lady and Lord Payne are both recorded as subscribers, as is “Bernard” whose name occurs several times in the manuscript. But one of the most frequent names to appear is “Barwell”. ‘Edward Barwell, Esq.’ and ‘Nath. Barwell Esq.’ are both listed among the subscribers (Barwell is discussed in more detail below). These names provide tantalising clues about the original club members, not least because Twiss in his book Chess, published 1787 89, mentions only a few of its strongest players. The club itself seems to have become the catalyst for a step change in analysis and codification of the game. At least one member of the club, the mathematician George Atwood (1745 1807), is known to have recorded the games of Philidor and others in manuscript. It appears he was not alone: our manuscript demonstrates that, our compiler, not to mention Barwell, were also keeping records and exploring strategies in their own notebooks
The practice of compiling manuscript notebooks on opening theory only became a standard part of a grandmaster’s repertoire in the 20th century, and more recently such explorations of opening variations have become an integral part of the offerings of subscriber chess websites. This manuscript is an early work along these lines: it marks an innovation whereby an already experienced player is attempting to record in writing and study a variation exhaustively from all possible sources, in order to better prepare themselves and to improve their practical chances against similarly skilled opponents. The manuscript is arranged dos a dos. One end is entitled “Gambitt[s]” (prefaced by a brief section entitled “Considerazi.sa: Il Gambito Carrera M.C.XVII. p406”), and the other, “Gambitt[s] Refused”, making remarks to both sections along the way, like “Whether he takes or not tis all one since he can find no safe place”. Each line is meticulously recorded, noting player, game and page numbers, and many contain further annotations. For example, on f2v. he writes “1s. Gambett. [...] Carrera L.V.I. C.IX. p.388 copio”, and compares sections of the gambit (e.g. from moves 10 to 12 and another working through from move 8 to 14), to which he adds his thoughts on the possible outcomes (“Phillidor 1st Gambt Else if play The BLK gives up 1 [...] Gambet besides a better situation wd have attack [...] This is at Salvio p.21 [...] also Cozio p.390 3 Rec.g favor [...]How Wte might have playd ill”).
This manuscript contains a detailed analysis of the main lines of the Bishop’s Gambit opening, which derives from the King’s Gambit (1 e4 e5. 2 f4 ef 3 Bc4). It brings together notes from Philidor’s 1777 edition and compares these with variations from printed and manuscript sources. As well as Philidor, among the most frequently mentioned are Alessandro Salvio (c.1575 c.1640), apparently drawing from his La Scacchaide Tragedia (Lazaro Scorrigio in Naples. Re published in 1618) or Il Puttino (1634. Republished in 1723); Pietro Carrera’s (1573 1647) Il Gioco degli Scacchi (Militello. 1617); Carlo Cozio’s (c.1715 c.1780) Il giuoco degli scacchi (1766); Giambattista Lolli (1698 1769) and Philipp Stamma (1705 1755), as well as “Calabri” i.e. Gioachino Greco (1600 1634) and “Lopes” i.e. Ruy Lopez (1530 1580). These are juxtaposed with “Barwell”, whose name is referenced extensively
CONTENT
On the following page (f3r), he writes “NB from Rege. 4t The Remorq. (b) p.243. [...] Lolli. Difesa il Gambito. P.220 C.XXI. Carrera. P.392. Rgr p.390 Ouuero”, presents variations “if the Blk. 9 12 [...] Salvio L.III.C.VI.”, and adds notes like “NB The above is 1st Game of Calebrius .146. wth the Defence p.149. wth this addition. There he fills up the blank of 1bLK [...] This p.391 above is [...] Salvio Cap XX. P.22 [...] where he says tis best to play”. The scribe is clearly multilingual and moves from Italian, to French, and to English with ease, presumably guided by his sources.
OPENING GAMBIT
During the 18th century, a number of different notations were employed, which eventually settled down around two different variants: the descriptive (P K3; Kt KB3 and so on), and the algebraic (e3, Nf3). The author of this manuscript when surveying his sources was faced with both of these, including the very clumsy and long winded descriptive form employed by Philidor, and the early algebraic employed by Stamma. His answer was to use neither, but instead write in a form of shorthand, a partial key to which he himself includes. The secret to understanding this notation is to realise that the different signs of which it consists can be combined to elegant effect. Additionally, a superscript 1 or 2 after a pawn symbol means that the pawn moves forward one or two spaces, and just as in the descriptive system a symbol can be used to indicate either the destination square or the piece. The shorthand is unusual to our eyes today, but it is without a doubt a great advance on the Philidorian notation, and concise enough to record games, should that be required, as they are being played. The author himself is evidently thoroughly at home with it and writes quickly and accurately. The manuscript is persuasive evidence that, when writing the history of chess notation, we should take into account shorthand systems along with the more usual descriptive and algebraic.
1 e4 e5 2 f4 ef 3 Bc4 Qh4 (+) 4 Kf1 d6 5 d4 g5 6 Nf3 Qh5 7 h4 Bh6 8 Kg1 g4 9 Ne1 Ne7 10 Nd3 f3 11 Nf4 Bxf4 12 Bxf4 Nc6 13 c3 Bd7 14 Nd2 fg 15 Kxg2 0 0 0
NOTATION
The manuscript bears the bookplate of Richard Penn (1735 1811), the lieutenant governor of the Province of Pennsylvania from 1771 to 1773 who was later a member of the British Parliament. He was educated at Eton College and St John's College, Cambridge before joining the Inner Temple in in 1752. He was elected a trustee of the College and Academy of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) in 1772, serving as president of the board in 1773 and 1774. He returned to England in We1775.can find no record of Penn having an interest in chess. However, of his four children, Richard Penn, FRS (1784 1863) showed a notable aptitude for the game and an interest in writing in code. In 1829 he published On a New Mode of Secret Writing, on a ciphering system; and his Maxims and Hints for an Angler was published with Maxims and Hints for a Chess Player (London, 1833). The hand of our scribe, while bearing some resemblance, is not a close match for either Penn. Where similarities do occur, these seem more generic than specific, so the connection remains elusive. One further possible figure for our compiler is the aforementioned George Atwood (1745 1807). He was educated at Westminster School, and Trinity College, Cambridge (M.A. 1772, Fellow 1770). Atwood was elected FRS in 1776 and won its Copley Medal in 1796. He was a friend, and highly rated amateur chess opponent, of Philidor, and was regarded as a pioneer in that he began to write down games by Philidor and others, at a time when it was unusual to record them. Indeed, it is partly due to Atwood that we have a good knowledge of Philidor today. But, as with Penn, while there are similarities to Atwood’s hand, we are not confident in ascribing it to him.
What do we know of the mysterious Barwell who figures so prominently in this manuscript? Of the two Barwells mentioned among the subscribers to the 1777 Philidor, Edward is the more likely. He was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1751 (a year before Richard Penn, whose bookplate appears on the pastedown), and they were contemporaries at the House of Commons: Barwell served as a clerk there, and Penn as a Member of Parliament. Barwell was friends with Eva Maria Veigel (1724 1822)2 and with her husband, the actor manager David Garrick (1717 1779), both of whom were chess enthusiasts, and Mrs Garrick’s name appears as a subscriber to the 1777 Philidor. The numerous references to Barwell appear to stem from a manuscript either written by him, or in his possession. On f5v. following notation on the game (“Segue Salvio. C.III p.55 [king] Gambett”), a note reads: “NB (vid. Barwells Short hand MSS”, and on this same page he also records “Altrimte Barwl No 172”. This latter is representative of other similar notes which abbreviate Barwell’s name and state the game reference number. Barwell’s original “Barwells Short hand MSS” is probably now lost certainly we can find no other references to it but it is used continuously throughout this manuscript, both as the initial example and as an oft mined source for variations on gambits (e.g. “Sequel Barw. No 122 from here Autremt”, “Altrimte”, “Variation” here as elsewhere, he switches easily between different languages).
BARWELL
WHO WROTE THE MANUSCRIPT?
A tantalising note on f6v. reads “Segue my Variats. L preceedg page” raising the possibility that the author might be identified via this and perhaps other game variations contained in the text. But whether our author is Atwood, Penn, or another as yet unidentified scribe, our manuscript, along with that to which it refers the elusive Barwell’s “Short hand MSS” demonstrates that others connected to the London Chess Club were stimulated to seek to codify and systemise. Equally interesting are its notation and its attempt to draw upon multiple sources to produce an up to date opening compilation for individual use. To have a manuscript that epitomises the transformation of chess under Philidor at the London Chess Club at the end of the 18th century is a remarkable and important find. Sources: 1. “Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News”, Saturday 8th December 1877, p.22 2. http://www.davidgarrickhereford.org.uk/wp content/uploads/2016/07/1992 24_36 Mrs Garricks diary.pdf https://mathshistory.st https://www.chess.com/blog/batgirl/theandrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Atwood/manwhosavedphilidor £20,000 Ref: 8066
28. NEAR THE FAR SIDE [FARSYDE or FARSIDE (and other spellings)]. Manuscript Commonplace Book and Library Catalogue. [Thorpe Hall, Yorkshire. Circa 1615]. Folio (290 x 200 x 33 mm). 86 text pages (of which approximately 50 are full page or nearly so; other pages vary from just a few lines to half a page). [7 index], 172 leaves (numbered to rectos), [1, blank]. Contemporary full sheep binding, rubbed and worn, spine largely perished, boards detached, single, small worm track through text Provenance:block. An inscription to the pastedown reads “G. J. W. Farsyde 1826 found these M.S. amongst the papers of my Uncle Watson Farsyde, they seem to bear date (by the writing about the middle of the 17th Century & written by one of the family probably a parson Caro avenculo mio.” Library catalogue of the “Rev. Thomas Farsyde” (ff.3 4).
DATING AND INTERROGATING
¶ Commonplace books provide insight into the reading and thinking habits of the early modern mind. This early 17th century example is a mixture of the conventional and the inscrutable but contains several tantalising clues which may make it possible to connect the book to other volumes in manuscript culture of the early modern period. The library catalogue, added about a century later, extends the item’s material history in ways that trace the changes in how readers digested and thought about Itbooks.isunclear
whether the earliest texts in the manuscript were compiled by two scribes or by one scribe using two hands; similar letterforms occur in both, which, though hardly conclusive, at least suggests that it was the same writer. Both are neat and legible. The book begins with an eight page index, and the subjects are spaced out across the volume to allow further entries over time, but as is often the case with commonplace books, there are many unfilled sheets.
The manuscript was probably compiled in the first two decades of the 17th century. Support for this assertion comes from the hand, the books referenced, and the paper. The binding might usually help with dating, but it is a folio bound in full sheep with a double fillet border. Although it is certainly unusual to have a full sheep binding on a folio it is the kind of (relatively) cheap material usually encountered on small format volumes we can only confidently say that it was bound sometime in the 17th century. The binding is worn and broken, but this is probably due to the weakness of the material rather than a sign of frequent use. The paper is more helpful. It bears the watermark: small pot, crescent on trefoil, with initials: I/QQ. This combination is not found in Haewood or Gravell, but it is a good match for Folger L.f.956 and L.f.955, which they date 1598 and 1625 respectively. We cannot find any other examples of this watermark, but these two examples help support an early 17th century Thedate.most frequently used text is the Bible, but the majority seem to be précis rather than direct quotes, and where they do quote verbatim the segments are so short as to frustrate any (or at least our) attempts to identify which version they were using. But our scribe engages with his sources beyond mere précis: for example, “The Godly liues” (f.12), which begins by summarising passages “out of the Epistle of John”, continues in different coloured ink (presumably indicating he has returned to this section at a later date), as he interrogates the text (“whither may a godly man or ought hee to wish that others may bee saued, ‘though hee bee damned whither doth hee or shee well or ill if they do it or do it not”); in “Loue” he observes that “True loue is not hindred by distance of place Philadelphia a people liued much a purte because of Earthquakes in there Cities”; and in “Hypocrisy” (f.15) he remarks that “Hypocrites falling neuer recouer, The lamb skinne which the wolfe remoues being once shorne neuer growes agayne”.
One reference in particular helps to home in on the likely date of compilation. On f.6, the scribe includes a short excerpt on “Anger”, which reads “If they are blamed that let the Sun goe downe in their anger how much are they to be blamed that let the moone change on their wrath. Greenh: page 741 uide 289 notes of true anger.” This almost certainly signifies the Workes of Richard Greenham (1535? 1594?), an English clergyman who was well known for his strong Puritan doctrine of the Sabbath. Although only one sermon was published in his lifetime, his many sermons and theological treatises had a significant influence on the Puritan movement in England.
Greenham’s Workes were first published in 1599, with further editions in 1601, 1605, and 1612. Of these, only the 1605 and 1612 have page numbers above “page 741”. The 1612 edition contains the lines: “If they be faultie that let the Sunne go downe on their wrath, what shall become of them that let the Moone change on their wrath”, but they occur on p.67 not p.741. We have been unable to examine the 1605 edition, and therefore unable to identify the exact edition our scribe has used. But the textual match is promising, and “Greenh:” is surely Greenham. It is worth noting that the 1612 edition was the last, and the lines do not occur in the only work of his published after that date (A garden of spiritual flowers).
GETTING NEARER THE FARSYDE
The source texts themselves offer up further evidence for dating. There are several references to Eusebius (his Eccesiastical Histories were translated into English in 1577, and frequently reprinted throughout the following century and a half), but passages such as “what else made Dioclesian, and maxaminian (sic) Herculeus that […] when both of them burned with exceeding desire of raising out the name of Christians, that both ^of them should suddaynly put themselues out of the Empire, and liue a priuate life Eusebius .8. 13 admires it”, while commenting on Eusebius’s thought, do not appear to have been extracted from his work. Other entries include pithy sayings, including one which seems to absolve the clergy: “The phisition looseth not his fee though the patient dye nor the lawyer though the cause miscary whie then should the minister”; or they gnomically summarise the burden of clerical responsibilities: “Bells hunge downe to six feete to shew that A Ministers doctryne must reach to his life they must haue hands under there wings & eyes”. More general observations include the optimistic “In needle workes uppon sad grounds there is pleasant Coulours”. It seems unclear whether our scribe is précising Eusebius’ commentary or providing his own exegesis. For example “The tyme of the pure white gowne was 40 yeares till the tyme of Diocletian under Claudius Quintilie Aurelia” references “Eus: .8.1.2”, while other sartorial references seem to be his own “long white garments // longe as gownes to reach to the feete for the Couering of any defectiue thinge in it And white as tokens of gladnesse”. (f.105v).
The combination of the unusual watermark, the secretary hand, and the reference to a work from 1612 (or earlier), makes a date in the second decade of the 17th century highly likely. If G. J. W. Farsyde is correct, and the volume was indeed “written by one of the family”, then perhaps they can be traced through the library catalogue of the Reverend Thomas Farsyde, which is recorded on ff.3 4 (see below). According to Venn, the Reverend Thomas Farsyde’s father was John, gentleman, born at Fylingdales. This refers to John Farside (d. 1660), who married Jane (née Wilson). John was the son of William Farside. Any of these three could be candidates for the compiler of this manuscript. Unfortunately, there seems to be very little information about the Farsides from this period. Dugdale says of John Farside (d. 1660) that he was “of Pickering Lithe in com Ebor.” John’s parents were also of that county: William Farside was “borne at Langdane Bridge, wthin Whitby Strand, after resided at Ellis Close, wthin ye honour of Pickerg.” John’s mother, Mary, also from Yorkshire, was the “daughter of John Watson of Hakenes in Whitby Strand in com. Ebor.” Dugdale also tells us that “John Farside of Farside in the Realme of Scotland came into England in the time of K. James, and was made Bowbearer in the Forest of Pickering in com. Ebor.” The Farsides changed their name to Farsyde and built Thorpe Hall mansion in 1680. This was the home of George James Watson Farsyde at the time he wrote the inscription to the inner board of this volume.
THE LIBRARY CATALOGUE
A very similar inscription to the one in our volume is also in a volume now at the Brotherton Library, Leeds. Theirs reads “These M.S. were found amongst the papers of my Uncle Watson Farsyde”. The Brotherton’s volume is ascribed to “Jo. Tempest” (the name appears several times), and they date the volume to circa 1640 50. However, the hand is not a good match for our scribe, so however tempting it may have been to do so, unfortunately, we cannot pursue the connection further. That said, it seems likely that there are other volumes with the same provenance, which might help identify our scribe.
After its beginnings in the first decades of the 17th century, the book seems to have lain dormant until Thomas Farsyde (a.k.a. Farside or Fairside) (c.1695 1747) used several of its pages to record his library catalogue. It is simply entitled “A Catalogue” but a note (perhaps by G. J. W. Farsyde) clarifies that it is “of the Library of The Revd. Thos: Farsyde sometime circa 1735. Incumbent of perpetual curacy at Whitby”. (He also adds “A Sketch from Nature” dated 1836, after which his interventions cease.) According to Venn, “Thomas Farsyde was educated at Cambridge: Adm. sizar (age 17) at St John’s, 27 Jun., 1712. Matric. 1712, B.A. 1715/6. He was ordained deacon (York) 1717; priest 1719, Victor of Willerby, East Riding of Yorkshire, 1723. In 1725, he married Jane Hillard. Was Reverend of Whitby, North Riding of Yorkshire, 1734 36.” Thomas records his library in size order, beginning with folios and working downwards. There are 20 folios, 13 quartos, and 72 “Octavos & Duodecimos”. Of his 105 titles, only around 32 are of a moral or religious nature (“Caves Apostolici”, “Hammo [n]d’s Vindication of Episcopy”, “An Essay Concerning Preaching”, “Calamy’s Godly Mans book”, etc). These include two Bibles tucked at the end, “An English Bible” and “A nother large Bible”, which indicates either that the latter was noticeably large for an octavo or duodecimo, or that the Reverend had completely forgotten to include the holy book until last (it is immediately preceded by “Paracelsus of Occult Philosophy”, and further up the list by “The Marrow of Alchemy”).
First on the list is “The Institution Laws & Ceremonies of ye noble order of the Garter Collected by Elias Ashmole”. Although their pretensions did not reach to the Order of the Garter, the Farside family claimed to be armigerous. Dugdale does record the family in his Visitation of Yorkshire (1661), but he remarks that “This coate is sayd to belong to the family of Farsides of Scotland, but no proofe made.”
This largely secular library, although small, makes interesting reading. Books are predominantly English, with a few exceptions (usually small format classics). No obvious hierarchy other than size is imposed indeed, among the folios, “Sermons. The Title page being Torn out”, is placed several titles above “Sellar’s Attlas Maritimus”. Farsyde does not state the edition, but the fact that it is recorded under folios indicates it was probably 1670, 1672, or 1675. All editions are scarce, and nowadays it easily commands five figure sums at auction, so it is interesting to find it given equal status to a damaged book of sermons (if line space is an indicator).
The list takes in subjects such as science and nature (“The Compleat Surveyor by Wm: Leibown” (i.e. Leybourn), “The Azimuth’s Compass and Plain Sailing”, “Markham’s Master piece”, “The Mysteries of Nature & Art in 4 parts” (i.e. John Bate’s The mysteries of nature and art. In foure severall parts London, 1635 and 1654), “Vinetum Britanicum”), travel writing (“Ogleby’s Affrica”, “Sandy’s Travils”), and military (“Richard Deltons (i.e. Elton) Compleat art Body of ye Military Art”).
Thomas Farsyde’s “Catalogue”, besides offering an interesting take on 18th century book collecting (such as the equal status apparently given to a title page less book of “Sermons” and the rare “Sellar’s Attlas Maritimus”), provides a ‘bridge’ between the 19th century inscription and earlier text. It marks a point in the evolution of intellectual interests from the almost purely pious concerns of his ancestor’s commonplace entries to the more eclectic, empirical and secular approaches that emerged in the culture during the 18th century.
Dictionaries and language reference are represented by “A Quadruple Dictionary”, “Schrevelius’s Dictio:” (presumably the Lexicon manuale Græco Latinum, & Latino Græcum first published at London in 1663 (numerous editions into the 18th century) and “Robertson’s Phrase book” (i.e. Phraseologia generalis published at Cambridge 1681 and reissued with cancel titles in 1693 and 1695). Works of literature include “The Arcadian Princess by Ri: Brathwait”, “Ovid’s Metamorphosis” and that remarkable 17th century book, which amounts to a library in itself, “The Anatomy of Melancholly”.
Dugdale’s Visitation of Yorkshire, with additions. Edited by J. W. Clay. 1917. <https://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/Documents/acad/2018/search 2018.html> £5,000 Ref: 8083
[ST CROIX, Sarah de and Mrs A. GREEN] Manuscript culinary and remedies. [London? Circa 1783 1847]. Quarto (203 x 163 x 13 mm). Approximately 90 pages on 46 leaves, numerous pages excised, and some loose, two leaves cut in half. Contemporary vellum, remains of clasps, text spotted, overall heavily worn.
The inscription to the front pastedown declares this to be “Mrs Sarah de St Croix’s book of Receipts copied into by her from the time she married in 1783”. A note below, in a different hand, adds that it was “Contind by Mrs A. Green who died 1847”.
The name de St Croix suggests that Sarah was descended from French Huguenots who migrated to London, but we have no further information about her, or about “Mrs A. Green”. fly’ method of creation: the numbering is sometimes by page, sometimes by leaf, and out pages, before stopping entirely after 102. Sarah’s hand suggests fairly hasty composition, and she uses a distinctive ampersand that can resemble ‘or’. The pastedown inscription lists as sources several popular authors of the era (such “Mrs Glass”, “Mrs Mason”, “Farley of London ), but many individual recipes cast the net of attribution much wider, plotting points in a wide social network. For example, we have a recipe “To make Milk punch” from “Mrs Trowe of Clapton” (11); “To make a Trifle” from “Mrs Webb very good” (45); “To
¶ If recipe books can partly be judged by how thoroughly they have been used, this manuscript volume of “Cookery Receipts” shows clear signs of quality. It bears evidence of heavy use and revision, with light burn marks to some edges, notes and comments added over time, crossings out and some pages removed. The book also conveys another kind of busyness, with many attributions and references that suggest an integral and lively connection with the community not just other households but local businesses.
29. BURN AFTER READING
There are also remedies, whose exchange between households was probably driven by a certain anxiety. “A Nourishing Broth for sick people which the stomach will bear when it cannot take any other food” (89) is attributed to “Mrs Aubers” (and dominated by “Veal and Turnips”); “Miss Beaufoys Receipt” (90) recommends “The Wight of a new laid Egg” beaten with sugar and mixed with “half a pint of Bristol Hot well Water, this quantity to be taken three times a day” (the Hotwells’ water of Bristol briefly enjoyed a vogue as an 18th century medicinal water); and “Mrs Charles Curtis’s Receipt for a Fomentation for a pain in the side or Chest” (91) involves “Poppy heads & Camomile flowers” plus “any kind of Spirits about a Quarter of a pint while hot & use it with flannel, as hot as the patient can bear”. Confirmation that this was a well used (and re used) book comes in the notes, many of which have clearly been added after certain recipes have been tried and judged. “Miss Jervois’s housekeepers receipt” for “Red or black Currant Jelly” (93) is deprecated with a note in the margin: “Farley or Glass is better”; and a recipe to “Pickle Onions” has been graced with an afterthought: “NB if you chuse to go to the Expence the double distilled Vinegar makes them look whiter and take the skins of the Onions with a silver knife”. Sometimes, the commentary is more blunt, as in the case of “A plain Cake” (17), all of which recipe has been crossed out and a terse note added: “not good”. The recipe “To make a cake for Children” is annotated at the end “NB if you wish to Make it a little Richer you may put four Eggs in all”, and “Another Richer” is added immediately Occasionallyafter.anote gives some interesting local context. A recipe for “Spruce beer” (70), besides requiring a sizeable tub (“20lb of Treacle, 6 Gallons of warm water”), is very specific about the key ingredient: “The Proper spruce is bought at Ward & Chard late Butt & Chard Removed from Bartlets buildings to Bread Street”. Bartlett’s Buildings were in Holborn and Bread Street is in Cheapside; both are in central London just north of the Thames, giving us a possible area for the de St Croix Thathousehold.thisrecipe book saw considerable action in the kitchen is obvious from its condition, and the profusion of “NB”s, revisions and excisions speaks to how highly it was valued as a resource on the culinary front lines. Its many strands leading to other households reinforce the importance of social networks in this area of manuscript culture. £1,250 Ref: 7921
Make Shrub” from “Mrs Slade” (81), and a handful of seemingly higher echelon attributions, such as “Mrs Clark Jervois’s Receipt” for “Clear Lemonade” (perhaps the wife of the Whig MP Jervoise Clark Jervois (1734 1808)) (91), and “A Dutch Rice Pudding”, credited as “Henrietta’s receipt from Chillam Castle” (94).
30. SHORE LEAVES
[CUNNINGHAM, Master] Exceptional 18th century mariner’s manuscript workbook. [England. Circa 1757]. Folio (326 x 220 x 60 mm). 636 pages of text and calculations on 328 leaves. Numbered in two sections: Rebound in full calf incorporating contemporary lower board new endpapers. Watermark: Pro Patria. Countermark: GR within a roundel. Haewood 3700 (circa 1747) or LVG. Provenance: Armorial book plate of George Crompton. Inscribed within the first vignette “Mast: Cunningham E. November the 2nd 1757.” ¶ Any mariner in the 18th century who wished to earn his credentials needed to undergo exhaustive training. Central to their education was rigorous, text based learning. Methods acquired in the classroom could make the difference between life and death at sea, where even a small miscalculation could result in ships being trapped, stranded, or blown off course. Young trainees would ensure that these vital skills took root in their minds by producing handwritten textbooks. The detailed manuscripts that resulted are often very attractive, but few are as beautifully produced or as charmingly illustrated as this volume.
Master Cunningham’s comprehensive and detailed workbook contains the whole spectrum of knowledge required of a mariner. His education begins with simple (but crucial) skills such as “Reduction” (for example: “Two Island situate under the Equinox 31270 Seconds asunder; When is 8 oClock at the E:rmost, what is it oClock at the 88th most?”), “The Rule of Three Direct” (“What’s an At Seamans Ticket from ye 21st Janry 1757 to 22d March 1758”), “The Inverse Rule of 3” (“How much Shalloon 3qrs wide will line Yards of Cloth 1 ¾ Yard wide?”), and “The Double Rule of 3” (“If 600 Seamen eat 1500lb of Beef & Pork [...]”). Things gradually move on to the more complex topics of “Plane Trigonometry” (with “Theorems, Demonstrations, Corollaries, Problems”), “Logarithmes”, and “Altimetry and Longimetry”. These are embedded through numerous calculations, further “Practice” (“Case[s] 1 9”) and “Miscellaneous Questions”. Ships themselves must be protected, hence Cunningham learns “The Names of the several Parts, or Members of a Piece of Ordinance” (illustrated with diagrams), and rehearses a range of related tasks: “To adjust a Shot to a Cannon or, To extract the Wind of a Shot”, “To find the Weight of a Shot”, “To find the Powder for Proof, for Service; and Length of Cartridge”, “The Length and Fortification of a Cannon and what number of Men is necessary to attend each Piece in time of Service”.
The grandly titled “An Abstract of Navigation” provides general principles in the art and science of seafaring. It comes complete with a vignette of a sea battle and a full page illustration of a compass. “Nautical Problems” sets out exercises in “Plane Sailing” and “Mercators Sailing By Meridinal Parts”, accompanied by vignettes, diagrams in outline, maps illustrated with ships, and hand coloured compasses. Two full page illustrations show the method of creating “Mercator’s Chart” (with maps of coastlines around Britain, France, Spain, Barbary, Guinea, Azores, etc), and a diagram of the measurements required for a sea chart.
The perennial problem of how “To rectifie the Course” includes detailed examples of logbooks, demonstrating how to record and correct directions. Once a ship has arrived, the mariner will need to have a full understanding of “Barter”, “Foreign Bills of Exchange”, “Commission or Brokerage”, “Insurance”, and other important financial matters. All of these must be recorded, so Cunningham is instructed in keeping accounts books in “The Waste Book”, “The Journal” and “The Ledger”, using the fictional example of “An Inventory of the Money, Goods, Debts, &c. of Robert Start, of London Merchant, taken 22nd Nov:r 1758”. Every kind of knowledge, art and competency required of the 18th century mariner seems to have been addressed in this large folio volume.
Judging by this thorough and striking volume, Cunningham was on course to become a highly competent mariner who was gifted with a fine sense of aesthetics and a masterly eye for detail.
But what really sets Cunningham’s workbook apart is his care and attention to aesthetics. He uses calligraphic flourishes throughout (some extended into line drawings), includes approximately 150 diagrams and two full page illustrations, and takes additional time to include over 60 vignettes and inset illustrations. It is these latter, often elaborately produced grisaille paintings, that make it such a singular volume. His beautifully executed vignettes depict a wide range of subjects from rural and riverside scenes to ports and seascapes. He carefully depicts contemporary villages, cottages, churches, fishermen, gunships, lighthouses, windmills, and hilltop towns. He even includes a hunter with his horse and hound, and a fashionably dressed gentleman, in what amounts to a series of carefully painted microcosms of 18th century life.
£4,500 Ref: 8074
Among these entries is one of several anomalies: a page recording “Charitys Belonging to Rushal &c 1700 In Walsall Church” donations by parishioners to the community. The exact date, or indeed the reason, for this entry is difficult to determine, but its interest for us lies in the mention of Rushall: a Thomas Huxley is recorded as living at Rushall Hall around 1781.1
[HUXLEY, Thomas]. 18th century manuscript book of remedies for cattle and horses. [Circa 1766 1866]. Quarto (210 mm x 168 mm x 20 mm). Approximately 40 text pages and almost as many blanks.
Contemporary vellum. Stain to outer margins of later leaves. A faded manuscript inscription to front board reads, “Recipes Books / of all Kinds” Watermark: Pro patria.
Provenance: inscribed to endpaper “Thomas Huxley / His Book December 11th 1766” and at opposite end “Thos. Huxley His Book / the 20 of June 1769”. Manuscript inscriptions to boards, one again claiming ownership, the other reads “Receipts for Cattel / London 1774”. ¶ This book bears the signs of having been compiled ad hoc, to the extent of having two ‘front covers’, arranged dos a dos an impression amplified by many excised pages and by the addition of a small number of entries from about a century later. The disparate nature of its contents conveys the notion that this was a working manuscript, whose contents only retained their place if they were actively useful.
Huxley’s remedies begin with “For a Cow that Getts Cold in or after Calving or is fardel bound”, and “For a Cow that is tail sick sore upon the Chine & sinks of her Milk & seems to be have Cold”. In due course, the topic ranges further afield into recipes “For the Gripes or Collic” for a “horse, or beast”, and “A Purge for a Horse”, then a new section begins, with the heading “Receipts for Horses”. These include “A Comfortable Drink for a Horse” (largely repeating the content of the identically titled entry at the 1766 end), “To stop a Horses Wind”, “To Cure the Grease” and “To Cure a sprain in Horses Leggs”. A second section on the same topic follows, under the heading “Some Valuable Receipts for Horses” (with a note above it: “These Receipts Came from a Farrier in the Army”). Remedies here include “A Pissing Drink”, “A Receipt for a Body Strain”, “Bruises with the Saddle”, “For ye Belly Ake” and “An Infallible Rect for ye Wood Evil in Swine or calves”.
31. PRESERVING ANIMALS
After a couple of blank pages, Huxley sets down figures and a diagram to calculate the acreage of a field. This appears to have been part of a ciphering book (perhaps from the “1766” date) and the fact that Huxley has signed this page below his calculations does suggest a conscientious pupil’s pride. If so, it seems likely that a few years later, Huxley tore out all but one the pages from his old schoolbook, inscribed to the endpaper at the opposite end: “Thos. Huxley His Book / the 20 of June 1769”, and repurposed the volume as a book of remedies which he subsequently inscribed “Receipts for Cattel / London 1774” (to the front board).
The ‘earlier’ end of the book, with the pastedown inscription “Thomas Huxley / His Book December 11th 1766”, begins with the stubs of several excised leaves and “A Receipt to Destroy Rats”, and shortly thereafter there are a handful of equine remedies: “A Famous Receipt for ye Grease Horses”, “A Comfortable Drink for a Horse” and “A Pissing Ball for a Horse”. These are followed by “For a Bruise, Blow, or Swelling” whether for a horse or a human is not specified, but perhaps for a human after attempting to administer one of the above.
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There are 19th century additions scattered around the middle section, a few of which continue the theme of animal husbandry (“Lord Leigh’s Specific for the Cattle Plague 1866”); others roam more freely, setting down the first part of an old folk song sometimes known as “Travel the Country Round”, and recipes and remedies (for humans) including “A Receipt that Greatly mends Port Wine” This curious miscellany is nonetheless tethered by its core concern with the practicalities of keeping livestock. As a book, it began life as an 18th century, vellum bound stationer’s volume, but its limed calfskin binding is an apt reminder of the unwritten law that governed the fate both of farm animals and of the text: their preservation depended on their usefulness.
1. https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/d8df49c6 148c 4a9f 80c5 1fa8564dd679 £1,000 Ref: 7920
32. BREAKING INTO SONG
¶ Adam Banckes’ manuscript notebook contains a transcription of part of William Laud’s Summarie of devotions (two editions in 1667, at Oxford and London) together with music notes. In copying Laud’s text, he has faithfully followed the layout of pages, even to the extent of reproducing the title page in its entirety (complete with the imprint). He includes borders and sidenotes and even retains catchwords and signatures from the original text.
[LAUD, William (1573-1645); BANCKES, Adam] Scribal copy of ‘A summarie of devotions, compiled and used by Dr William Laud’ together with transcriptions of songs. [Circa 1667]. Oblong octavo (147 x 97 x 20 mm). 94 pages of text (and some music) on 100 leaves. Contemporary sheep binding, very worn, lacking spine, boards detached lacking leather to front board, text dusty, some pages loose. Watermark: pot; crescent on quatrefoil, with initial M. not in Haewood, but similar to others he records from the mid to late 17th century. Ownership inscription to rear inner board reads: “Adam Banckes the soon of thom Banckes is Booke /” (partially repeated below).
Every detail seems to have been attended to, which makes it all the more surprising when he stops at p.83 of Laud’s text (the printed edition of which continues to p.333). This curious cut off does not seem to have been the result of forgetfulness or distraction, but a deliberate act: after the end of his transcription, he has inscribed the next page “Adam Bancks, 1670”. He has, it seems, completed his task as far as he wished, and is now moving on to another theme. This second theme turns out to be musical. He has copied out scales (“The Bass Gamut”, “Perfixed Measure or Common Time Rests”, “Triple Time Augmented & Diminished”) and hymns probably from the book of psalms, including John Holmes’ (d.1629) “All laud & praise with heart & voice”, John Mundy’s (c.1555 1630) “Ye people all with one accord”, and George Kirbye’s (1565 1634) “How pleasant is thy dwelling place”.
£950 Ref: 8080
It is not clear why Banckes copied out the text, but cost may have been an issue; it may also explain his choice of a cheap, sheep bound stationer’s book for the purpose. The script is clear and assured, in a sloping secretary hand entirely commensurate with a young man, as is his identification of himself as the “soon of thom Banckes”. Although the names Adam and Thomas Bankes (also Banks, or Banckes) are not unusual, the combination yields surprisingly few results on genealogy sites. The most likely candidate is one Adam Banckes (1646 1690), who was born in Wigan, Lancashire to Thomas and Ann. Adam married Ann (née Gerard) and they may have emigrated to Virginia. If this attribution is correct, Adam would have been around 24 years of age when he made the partial copy of Laud. However, a large number of Bankses emigrated to the USA in the 1600s, so we cannot be certain, especially as this little book was acquired in the UK. This notebook’s fastidious but curtailed presentation of Laud which then breaks into songs, together with its unsolved provenance, is an extremely appealing example of the inscrutability that can arise in early modern manuscript culture.
LAST WORDS &THINGS 33. RIDER, Cardanus. Riders (1694) British Merlin: bedeckt with many delightful varieties and useful verities, fitting the longitude and latitude of all capacities within the islands of Great Britains monarchy, and chronological observations of principal note to this year 1694 : being the 2nd after bissextile or leap year : with notes of husbandry, physick, fairs & marts, and directions and tables to all necessary uses / made & compiled for the benefit of his country by Cardanus Riders.
¶
ESTC
¶
The title page reads “Epigrammata / Mark Stuart Pleydell / His Book / Anno Dom 1703. / Novem: 17th.” Sir Mark Stuart Pleydell, 1st and last Baronet, married Mary Stuart, daughter of Robert Stuart. The Pleydell Baronetcy, of Coleshill in the County of Berkshire, was created in 1732 for Mark Stuart Pleydell. It became extinct on his death in 1768. Pleydell was the owner of the Inigo Jones designed Coleshill House. His book of “Epigrammata” contains what appear to be translations into Latin. Although he attributes his sources, they do not appear to be from published texts. For example, “In Brotheum”, which begins “Quum nemo voluit brotheum appelare venustum” is attributed to “Davenant”, and “In Helenum” by “Wroughton”, first line: “tindaris infamis furto subrepta defando” and “In Numantinos” by “James Wall” (“Hortibus infestis obsessa numantia clara”). These and numerous others appear to be unpublished. £1,000 Ref: 7870
London: Printed by Edw. Jones for the Company of Stationers, 1694. Ducodecimo. Pagination [48] p., printed in red and black, anatomical woodcut in text, interleaved with manuscript additions to approximately 17 pages. Contemporary sheep, heavily rubbed and worn, upper cover detached. Cropped along lower margin with loss to final line of text on later pages. [Wing, A2262]. Manuscript additions include financial accounts for the year 1694 (“Mr. Mylam ye coachmaker”; “I hiered a Maid at Dingly ye 14th of May & gave her halfe a crowne”) and three short veterinary remedies on two pages (“To Cure a sore Udder”; “A cure for choped teats” and “To Cure ye teats only sore just at first”). records one copy in the UK (Oxford University, Bodleian Library) and two in the USA (Folger Shakespeare; Harvard University Houghton Library). £600 Ref: 8072 34. [PLEYDELL, Mark Stuart, Sir (c.1692/3 1768)] Manuscript entitled ‘Epigrammata’. [England, Coleshill House? Circa 1703]. Small octavo (156 x 100 x 11 mm). [2, title], [146], [4, index]. Contemporary limp vellum, very good original condition.
These three letters, written by the British peer, naval officer and politician George Edgcumbe to a Mr Birt presumably his steward relate to the management of his house and garden during his extended absence.
¶ Mount Edgcumbe House is a Grade II listed stately home in Cornwall, originally constructed in the mid 16th century; its gardens and parkland are Grade I listed in the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. The formal gardens were developed from 1750 to 1820. Highlights include Milton's Temple (c.1755) an Ionian temple with a plaque bearing lines from Paradise Lost and an Orangery (c.1760).
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“My Lady has written by this Post to your Wife, asking her many questions as to her ability of discharging the duty of Housekeeper, and desiring to know if she is willing [...] consider it well, and assist Jenny in giving clear & distinct answers […] both together I am sure you would keep every thing in good order both within doors & without [...]” Quarto, bifolium. Sealed and stamped, folded for posting. Three pages. Letter addressed to: M : Rob : Birt / Mount Edgcombe / Plymouth London July 23 : Dec 1784.” the next great work to be taken in hand must be the new Green House [...] perhaps it may not be amiss to employ some people to clean the Bricks and pull down some of the walls of the old Garden, if they can be of use in the new Green House [...] I hope before this letter gets to you, Jenny will have brought you a Fine boy […] if it is a boy, you may call it George if you will [...]” Quarto, single sheet. Folded for posting. Single page. No address panel. Jan 4 1785.” am glad to hear your wife is so well […] but I wish it had been a Boy, and you might have call’d him George [...] I hope you’l fill the Ice house of which Tomlinson & you may ^be very proud […] the first attempt of the kind, lett me know where you have collectd all the Ice 7897
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35. [EDGCUMBE, George, 1st Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, PC (1720-1795)] Three autograph letters on the subject of gardening. [Bath, Paris. Circa 1783 85]. Three letters signed “Mt: Edg:”, two with address panels. A total of six pages.
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[1] Quarto, bifolium. Sealed and stamped, folded for posting. Two pages. Letter addressed to: “Mr: Birt / Mount Edgcombe / Plymouth”. “Saturday 18th: Decr: 1783.”
“Bath
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[...]” £600 Ref:
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London: Printed by Benj. Motte, for the Company of Stationers. 1722. 24mo. Pagination [48], p. Interleaved. Contemporary calf, rubbed, original clasps intact, front blanks torn out, duty stamp to title page.
£600 Ref: 8088 37. GOLDSMITH, John. Goldsmith, 1722. An almanack for the year of our Lord God, MDCCXXII. Being bissextile or leap year. Wherein are contained necessary rules and useful tables. With a description of the high ways, marts and fairs throughout all England and Wales. The like not extant in any other. Calculated, by John Goldsmith. To which are added, divers tables, and other useful things, not in former editions
36. [DAWSON, J.] Manuscript recording the names of ‘Commission of the Peace’. [England, Surrey. Circa 1761]. Octavo (162 x 118 x 24 mm). Approximately 64 pages of text on 98 leaves. Tabulated manuscript index to fore edge. Contemporary gilt tooled morocco binding, clasps intact, rubbed and worn, hinges cracked, children’s scribbles to a couple of pages.
¶ The manuscript comprises “The Names contained in the New Comision (sic) of the Peace for the County of Surrey 1761.” Written in a neat hand in ink with additions in pencil. A workaday record, which would presumably only be found in manuscript form. This humdrum legal record was rather elaborately bound in dark green morocco with gilt tooling, Dutch gilt endpapers, and all edges gilt.
£500
Phillipps Library 7073 & 6982, with the numbers in pencil to paste down and in ink to title page.
¶ ESTC records editions of Goldsmith’s almanac from 1650 through to the end of the 18th century. The earlier editions are intermittent and often represented by only a few copies, and frequently only one. This 1722 edition unrecorded in ESTC. It contains only a few pages of manuscript notes (“3 yards And A half of Cloth It comes to 40d”).
£400 Ref: 8087 38. [FREWEN, Thomas.] Manuscript notebook containing Epitaphs and Monumental Inscriptions. [Sussex. Circa 1741]. Octavo (180 x 120 x 17 mm). Title and approximately 26 text pages on 33 leaves. Approximately 27 text pages in a very neat, upright cursive hand, plus two loosely inserted copies of inscriptions in different hands. Contemporary green vellum wallet binding, section missing from fold over flap.
¶ A later (probably 19th century) note to the front paste down reads “Epitaphs and Monumental Inscriptions, principally from Churches in Sussex, collected by Thomas Frewen 1741 xx small 8vo”. However, it would be truer to sat that the inscriptions are principally from Westminster Abbey and various locations in Sussex, together with inscriptions copied from Eton College, Gloucester Cathedral, York Cathedral, Kent, Merton College Oxford, Buckinghamshire, and Middlesex. Ref: 7848
Our scribe records her reading, which includes just published novels like “mysteries of Udolpho” (p.39), “Herman of unna” (p.35), and “Mrs Macaulays History of England” (p.24); she appreciates the picturesque, but rarely gets worked up over scenery. From time to time, we glimpse little cracks in her well bred demeanour: during one church sermon, “I did not know how to forbear laughing several times” (p.15). She can be severe if someone fails to meet her standards, tutting that “Mrs Wm Harwood […] could not join in any conversation, do not think she spoke three times” (pp.19 20); and a Mr Cleaver is “the stupidest young man at Cards I ever saw” (p.24). She is charmed by local customs (Nottinghamshire women milk cows “in the Fields and it is carried home on their heads, the Poorer sort wear flat round hats” (p.7)), and intrigued by the ritual of “the fund plough”, in which the men, “dressed in Womans cloths […] go about the streets with music & colours flying carrying the plough they gather what money they can and make a feast” (p.30). She concludes with her own lyrical ballad, “The Adieu to Kirby moorside”, which neatly exemplifies the idiom that the generally well off especially women were expected to inhabit: picturesque and restrained. An odd feature of this artefact is that the journal, once a single item, has been “married” dos a dos with a later commonplace book and a scrapbook, although the Britannia watermark is consistent throughout. The commonplace book features late 18th century poems including “The Thief by G A Stevens” (The Lady’s Magazine 1796); “On a kiss” (i.e. Robert Burns’s 1788 poem, ‘The Parting Kiss’); “Poems by Christopher Smart”; and “Written at an Inn, by the late Dr Horne, Bishop of Norwich” (The Universalist’s Miscellany 1797). The rear paste down bears the armorial bookplate of “Ligonier Treadway” (1797 1831), who was vicar of Gayton and rector of Westwick, both in Norfolk. Whether he was the commonplace compiler, and whether this helps with establishing the identity of the journal writer the Reverend’s mother, perhaps? is a matter requiring further research.
Provenance: early 19th century armorial bookplate of Ligonier Treadway. 20th century pencilled inscription of “Mrs W Latham Hughes, Kyrewood Grove Road, Sutton, Surrey”. Kerrison Preston Esq. and by descent.
39. [TREADWAY, Ligonier] Manuscript journal of a young lady, together with a commonplace book of poems. [Circa 1794]. Quarto (206 mm x 170 mm x 21 mm). Pagination 86; 35, [33, blanks], [12, pages containing pasted in newspaper scraps, engravings]. Contemporary full calf, red morocco label to front board, rebacked.
¶ While Romanticism in England made its first salient appearance in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, this young lady’s journal reminds us of the era’s milieu of gentility which provided the backdrop to the poets’ ecstasies and outrages. Our diarist describes travelling by coach from Norwich to Kirkbymoorside in North Yorkshire and her eight month stay there. This may be her first long journey: every change of horses and stop for meals is recorded, along with the mixed blessings of public transport. Of her co passengers, one “entertained us with his Travels thro Wales”, but the rest “I did not like one old man had a Bottle of Geneva of which he was often taking a sip” (p.6); and in Spalding they are “obliged to drink tea in a bed room the House was so full” (p4). On reaching “Kirby moorside” (p.12), she begins a lengthy round of social visits, tea, walks, reading, card games, church services and occasionally feeling “indisposed”
£1,500 Ref: 8026
¶ As its title states, Bradley’s book is clearly aimed at the rural reader. Its diverse recipes are arranged according to the months of the year, and its Arcadian frontispiece is teeming with country folk working in the fields and farms or relaxing with a pipe. However, this copy’s owner, a Miss Stain, appears to have resided in London. She mentions “[a] Lady at Wandsworth” and although she also mentions a “Mr Taylor of Norfolk”, she has added the word “Thames” in superscript to another recipe “Twenty Gallons of Cold ^Thames Water” as if indicating that water must be obtained from that river. Miss Stain has inscribed the title page and included a loose leaf of six manuscript recipes for wines (including “A receipt to make Elder Wine” and “To make a Small Wine”). Although the book has recently been rebound, it is clear from her handwritten references to Bradley’s text that the manuscript and the book are old companions. Her notes are conversational: “We made our Wine according to this quanti[ty] only wee bruised the raisins stalks […] & then pour’d the Cold Water to them wee us’d Malaga Raisins”. Some of this conversation is with the book itself: “Our White Wine we made according to the Receipt of Bradley, only wee gently bruis[ed] the Raisins with the stalks, and then pour’d the Hot Water on them we used Velvedore Raisins”. In a slightly different ink, she adds “Pag 66”. The recipe on page 66, “To make Raisin Wine”, recommends Malaga. Since Miss Stain mentions using Malaga raisins in the preceding recipe, she seems to be experimenting from choice rather than necessity. £1,000 Ref: 7941 41. [ADAMSON, Andrew] Manuscript entitled ‘A Collection of Sentences, Moral, Divine etc. etc. for the benefit off [sic] and extracted by me, And[re]w Adamson, Vol. Ist’. [Cliftonhall, Edinburgh. Circa 1777]. Duodecimo (146 x 98 x 10 mm). Pagination [4], 123 (numbered pages), [3, blank]. Contemporary sheep backed marbled boards, rubbed. Paper label to spine. ¶ Scottish 18th century commonplace book. Apparently the first volume, but of how many we do not know. It comprises gatherings of classical maxims from the “sayings of Theophrastus”, “Seneca’s Morals”, and “Sayings of Cato”, together with contemporary publications like the Spectator and extracts from “Dr. Dodds Directions to Servants”, £450 Ref: 8078
London: Printed for Woodman and Lyon in Russel street, Covent Garden. [1728]. Third edition. Octavo. Pagination pp. xi, [1], 187, [1], collated and complete with the engraved frontispiece. [ESTC T184839; Bitting pp.55 56; Maclean pp.11 13; Oxford pp.58 59]. Modern sprinkled calf, holes from where the text was originally stab stitched, occasional spotting and staining Ownershipthroughout.inscription to title page of “Miss Stain” and loosely inserted leaf of recipes in the same hand, browned and frayed with loss to some words.
40. BRADLEY, Richard (1688-1732) The country housewife and lady’s director, in the management of a house, and the delights and profits of a farm.
The marginal and interlinear annotations are written in a tiny hand; perhaps following Pascal’s style, they also combine a seriousness of purpose with a “lightness of the manner”. They display evidence of close, scholarly engagement, with approximately 50 pages of sparingly annotated and underlined text, and around eight pages of denser annotations. These range from laconic exclamations (“O horrid?”; “O damnable?” (B5r and v)) to amused remarks (“the Dominicans juggle about sufficient grace.” (B11v)) and delight in Pascal’s wit (“the Authors wittye abuse of the Jesuit” D7v). Elsewhere, against Pascal’s description of his visit “to the Convent of the Dominicans” they give a précis: “The divers acception of the next power among the Molinists themselves” (B5v), and further on, note that “the Dominicans agree with the Jesuits in tearms and sounds of words but with the Jansenists in sense” (C6v). Points are raised, and sometimes answered, in which case this is noted. For example, after commenting on p.60 that “5 perticulars must bee transacted in the soule to mak an action sinfull” (D6v), they follow this up on p.65 with “this objection of the Epicurians answers fullye and confuts the Jesuits 5 perticulars that mak an action sinfull in page 60” (D9r). Several of the longer annotations recapitulate and reference the preceding chapter (“the Jesuit reconciles his doctrine with the contradictions of scripture, Pope and Councells by the interpretation of some tearme vide page 104. or by some favorable circumstance vide page 106” (G4v.)).
42. PASCAL, Blaise, 1623-1662. Les provinciales: or, The mysterie of Jesuitisme, discover’d in certain letters. Faithfully rendred into English. London: printed by J.G. for R. Royston at the Angel in Ivie lane, 1657. FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH. Pagination [22], 504, 405 409, [7] p. engraved additional title present, but lacking the folded plate found in some copies. Bound in 20th century grey boards, additional title slightly shaved along fore margin, light toning throughout. [Wing P643; PMM 140]. Annotated in a 17th century hand.
¶ This book shows Pascal in his element as a vocal advocate of Jansenism, a movement that sought reform within the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th century. His defends Jansenism by attacking the arguments of the Jesuits, who condemned Jansenism as skirting close to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. As Printing and the Mind of Man says, Pascal’s “weapon was irony, and the freshness with which the gravity of the subject contrasts with the lightness of the manner is an enduring triumph”. His salvos, issued clandestinely between January 1656 and January 1657, were swiftly translated into English and published in 1657. Although the annotator of this first English edition does not date their notes, they appear contemporary. They seem to have read the entire book, judging by their addition of chapter summaries to the front endpaper (“the 3 poynts concerning grace videlect Next power, sufficient grace, Actuall grace, ar handled in the 1. 2. and 4 letters […] the 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. and 10. explicate the Motalitye of the Jesuits”). If their annotations are an indication of their interests, then it is Letters 1 7 and 9 that they find particularly engaging.
This early annotator of Pascal’s attack on the Jesuits is a fine example of engaged study of an early modern text. Though the annotator’s identity is lost, their enthusiasm and hints of an inclination to emulate Pascal’s style in their own notes come through strongly.
£1,650 Ref: 8025
43. [WATTS, Isaac (annotator) (1674 1748)]; BUTLER, Joseph. The Analogy of Religion Natural and Revealed. London: Printed for James, John and Paul Knapton, at the Crown in Ludgate Street. MDCCXXXVI. [1736]. First edition. Pagination [12], x, 11 320, complete with the half title. [ESTC, T67971]. Contemporary full calf, marbled endpapers, early reback, rubbed, corners worn, occasional scattered spotting to text. Annotations by Isaac Watts to over 100 pages. These range from simple notes like “Objn: Ans:” to longer, the more sustained and detailed notes discussed below.
£10,000 Ref:
¶ Can reason and faith can co exist? This copy of the first edition of Joseph Butler’s major work, annotated by Isaac Watts with a high degree of rigour, illustrates some of the cross currents in one of the intellectual conundrums of the Enlightenment period. John Locke and Joseph Butler were major influences on the thinking of Isaac Watts. In The Analogy of Religion, first published in 1736, Butler argued that a reading of scripture and of nature shows that God was not a provable certainty which would leave no role for faith but rather a probability. In his annotations to this volume, Watts assesses whether Butler’s arguments are robust enough to counter the materialism in Lockean philosophy, while preserving its empirical core. He concedes in one passage that “This Argt: drawn from our Intellectuall Ideas & Reflecting Powers not being injur’d by Severall Diseases” has “weight” (D4r), but he still considers it still too weak and he points out that “since some ^other Diseases & even Sleep do hinder ^ weaken or stupefy our reflecting Powers, ye Materialist will say, the Analogy of Nature here is as Strong Agt:: ye immortality of ye Soul as it is for it.” Watts often uses this ‘devil’s advocate’ strategy, apparently to anticipate future objections.
The importance of Watts’ annotated copy seems to have been recognised even at the time: a note to the rear endpaper reads: “I bought this book from Paterson Auctioneer London at the sale of the Library of Nathanael Neal Esq […] C.S. London March 1766” (Samuel Paterson (1728 1802) was a noted bookseller and auctioneer). It appears that, after Watts’ death, this book found its way into Neal’s ownership, and became part of an auction entitled The Genuine Library of Nathaniel Neal Esq. […] Lately Deceased, held in February 1766, where it was bought by “C.S.”, who recorded on the endpaper that the book “belonged originally to Dr. Isaac Watts whose name ^is in his own handwriting & also Notes in the Margin, exemplifying his directions in his book on the Improvement of the Mind”. Watts’ inscription (“I Watts. 1736 / Pret 8r: ”) has been grafted to the front free endpaper most likely retained from the original endpapers, as the inscription and publication date are both 1736. The marginal marks and annotations are in Watts’ distinctive hand throughout, embodied in his eccentrically curlicued “ ye” . Watts keeps his questions coming. He even appears to query the role of Christ (at least in terms of the general argument), when he asks: “Why by a Mediation?” (2P3v), and he even verges on scepticism: “Why Christty: not universally reveald? Why not stronger Evidence?” (2P4r). It is not clear whether this is simply part of his overall strategy to anticipate opposing arguments, but it typifies Watts’ relentless logical engagement. The annotations deepen our understanding of the development of the ideas of one of the key figures of the 18th century and help to trace some of the nuances in a complex and long running intellectual debate that endures to the present day. 8049
¶ This highly engaging group is a striking example of the fashion for parlour games in nineteenth century England. All appear to be sui generis, with no published versions traceable (besides one or two riddles then in circulation).
£3,000 Ref: 8034
44. [ENGLISH GAMES] A collection of four Georgian parlour games. [England. Circa 1820 30]. In very good condition, with their original silk ties. Undated, but probably span the Georgian and Regency periods. Presented in a modern clamshell box.
“The Dream” is a set of 16 numbered cards, apparently for a young, female audience, who take turns reading their cards aloud. It begins with a Carrollesque scene: “Young Alice” is struggling to “learn her book” of mineralogy. Falling asleep, she dreams that “the rarest stones around her lay”, and asks them “From whence ye came and what ye be?”. The game cycles through stones via their cards, beginning with the “Ruby”, which boasts of being “Most valuable and rare”, then observes “the Diamond’s envious Glare”. The “Diamond” card duly recounts its likely origin (“Deep in the Mines of Prealconda & Caulour”), and gestures to the next card, “the Jargoon”, sniffily deprecating “its dusty, brown, presumptuous Airs”… and so on. After all stones have spoken, Alice awakes and vows “To Study Mineralogy!” a field, like botany, considered an appropriate leisure pursuit for young ladies.
Among the many striking things about these games is the degree to which they are designed to ‘break the ice’ by stimulating discussion, interaction, even flirtation. They also give us a vivid picture of the cultural hinterland of a fairly well to do East Anglian household.
A little booklet, entitled “Which Poet?”, contains 29 numbered verses, each giving clues. Verse 1 begins: “The Bard sublime first please to tell / Who wrote of Heaven, of Earth & Hell”. A later hand has helpfully written the answer (“DANTE ALIGHIERI”) and several further riddles. Others alluded to include Thomas Gray (1716 1771), William Cowper, (1731 1800) and Robert Bloomfield (1766 1823), the latter credited in the verse with writing “On subjects like the Fak’nham Ghost” lending further weight to this collection’s East Anglian provenance.
A set of nine double sided cards presents “Questions with answers for Ladies and Gentlemen”: each has 12 numbered answers, from which, one presumes, the player must choose. Questions range from the immediate (“What do you most frequently think of?”) to the relatively distant (“Where will you live when married?”, with answers mostly related to the East of England: “Norwich”, “Yarmouth”, “Bury St. Edmunds”, etc). The game seems intended for gatherings of the young unmarried; possible answers circle fretfully around issues such as “The dread of being an old Bachelor”. Some questions (“How long will it be before you make a Conquest?”) and indeed some answers (“You never go into company but you do”) take the players somewhat beyond the bounds of ‘polite’ conversation, creating a space for spontaneity and candour.
A set of 28 double sided riddle cards challenge players with gnomic verses for example: “My first receives the Miser’s treasure / My next affords him not much pleasure / Strange for my whole he’ll part with gold / And values it as much I’m told.” Although most appear to be original compositions (or at least, not discoverable in collections of the period), at least one was in circulation at the time: “Form’d long ago, yet made to day / I’m most employed when others sleep” (a close variant was collected in The Nursery Rhymes of England by J.O. Halliwell, published in 1844).
£8,500 Ref: 7954 A more detailed list of the contents of the archive can be supplied on request.
Other manuscripts treat of sundry Westminster adjacent themes: deliberations on appointing “scavengers for cleaning ye streets in ye p[aris]hes of Lond Midx & Westmr”; a rundown of some of the byelaws for the area (“No ps shal hoop wash or cleanse any Barrells in any […] Lanes or open passages”), and what appear to be rough drafts of warrants for the prosecution of negligent scavengers. This archive opens a window into an early modern legal mind, as Wynne marshals his arguments to support his bid for preferment, and as he pursues his working practices and historical interests (which frequently inform that bid). The autograph draft of a rare published pamphlet both demonstrates his compositional methods and identifies him as the author of a previously unattributed work in ESTC.
45. [WYNNE, William (bap. 1692, d. 1765)] A small archive of manuscript notes and letters. [City of Westminster. Circa 1719 27]. 28 manuscripts (circa 69 pages in autograph and circa 14 pages in other hands). Folio and ¶quarto.These 28 manuscript notes, drafts and letters illuminate the professional world of William Wynne, lawyer, author and Serjeant at Law. The papers are all geographically anchored in the district of Westminster and include an autograph draft of a rare, hitherto anonymous published text, but the centrepiece is a set of documents relating to Wynne’s vain attempt to secure a coveted post at Westminster Abbey. William Wynne (whose father, Owen Wynne (1651 1700), was under secretary of state to Charles II and James II) graduated from Jesus College, Oxford in 1712, and called to the bar in 1718. He was created Serjeant at Law in 1736 and became an adviser to Church leaders including Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London. ESTC records two works by Wynne: The Life of Sir Leoline Jenkins (1724); and Observations Touching the Dignity and Antiquity of the Degree of Serjeant at Law (1765). We can now add a third work which is anonymous in ESTC but exists here in autograph draft: an extremely rare, printed pamphlet, “An answer to a printed libel, intitled, A letter to a member of Parliament concerning the bill for regulating the nightly watch in the city of Westminster and liberties thereof” (circa 1720). Wynne defends Joseph Cotton, Deputy Steward of Westminster and Clerk at Cutlers Hall, against the “libel” by “N.M.”, who argued that “a Domestick Servant to the meanest Company of the City of London” should not fill the role of Deputy Steward. Wynne considers the remarks “writ wh too much malice & gall to convince”, and guesses that the author is “some Candidate for award offrd of ye Liberty of Westmr. & yt he has met some disapointmt therein” an ironic remark in light of his own failed candidacy for a similar position two years later: Steward of the Courts of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey. Among these papers is an autograph draft of a letter to John Wynne (1665/6 1743), Bishop of Bath and Wells, in which “WW” asks his exalted relative to use his influence as a Prebend of Westminster to help secure him the position. He couches his request in the form of a complicated argument from precedent concerning the roles of steward and receiver, drawing on his own research. The archive contains ample evidence of this antiquarian legwork: three documents recording his trawl through “Register & Chapr books”; and another three on the legislative origins of the Church at Westminster (“Queen Eliz: […] founded & erected the Collegiate Church of St. Peter Westmr. & Constituted therein a Dean & twelve Prebends”).
£300 Ref: 8086 47. EDWARD III, Law reports for 40-50 (Hilary, Easter, Trinity, and Michaelmas terms). Regis pie memorie Edwardi tertii a quadragesimo ad quinquagesimum, anni omnes a mendis quibus miserrime scatebant repurgati et suo nitori restituti.
¶ Three examples of the fashionable Georgian amusement of creating transformation cards. Card playing was a favourite pastime of the elite and the ‘middling sort’ who would play in card rooms at balls and parties, at gentleman’s clubs, and in parlour rooms across the country. It features in the novels of Jane Austen, perhaps most famously in Pride and Prejudice (1813), in which she uses cards to bring people together and to reveal aspects of their various personalities by describing how they play (or abstain from) card games. One fascinating offshoot of this parlour room pleasure was the creation of ‘transformation’ cards by adding drawings to incorporate the pips (suit signs) into a kind of visual portmanteau. One of the cards (two hearts) features two gentlemen meeting. The other two cards (three diamonds) feature a lady with a fan and a gentleman. It is incomplete, but the same theme is repeated and completed more successfully on a second card.
46. [GEORGIAN PLAYING CARDS] Original artwork designs for transformation playing cards. [England? Circa 1800 20]. Three cards (each measuring approximately 93 x 64 mm). Pen and ink with red water colour washes. Cards appear to have been removed from an album (remains of paper and glue to reverse of each card).
This is the second edition of the year books from the 40th to the 50th, and last year of the reign of Edward III. The year books are the first English law reports and are not just one of the foundations of English law but of every legal system in the world which has taken the common law as its model. “Tottell’s greatest claim to distinction was that he was the printer of Year Books par excellence.” (Bolland. A Manual of Year Book Studies. 2013). £1,500 Ref: 8039
Anno Dom 1565. Londini: In ædibus Richardi Tottelli, [1565 (15 Aug.)]. Colophon reads: Imprinted at London in fletestrete within Temple Barre at the signe of the hande and starre by Rycharde Tottel, the xv. daye of August. An. 1565. Folio. ff. xlix, ii xxxi, xxvi, xxxvi, ii xlvi, ii xxviii, ii xxxiiii, ii xxvi, xxxiiii, xxvii, xxvii, [1] leaves. Signatures: A⁶ B 3Z⁴ ²A T⁴ ²V⁶. Black letter, text in Law French. [STC 9583. Beale R44]. Modern half morocco, gilt title to spine, a few marginal tears (affecting blanks margins only), some light staining and occasional ¶spotting.Edward III (1312 1377) reigned from 1327 until his death and is “widely regarded as a gifted administrator, military leader, and legislator. His best known legislative acts include the Statute of Laborers (1351) and the Treason Act (1351). He is also credited with the establishment of effective local law enforcement by increasing the powers of the Justices of the Peace after 1350. Year Books were a series of notes on debates and points of pleading in Norman England. As such, they are crucial primary sources for medieval common law.” (Tarlton Law Library).
London: Printed by S. Bailey, No. 50, Bishopsgate within. [Circa 1804]. Octavo. Pagination 90, [2, advert and blank], complete with the frontispiece. Contemporary sheep backed plain boards, rubbed and worn, but sound and probably the original binding. Frontispiece frayed in the fore margin with some loss.
ESTC locates three copies (Cambridge, Leeds, US National Library of Medicine) with the imprint: London: Thomas Bailey, printer, [1785?]. OCLC identifies three issues of this book: one copy at University of Iowa Libraries with the imprint: London: Printed and sold by Dean and Munday..., [179 ?]; two copies (Cambridge, Library of Congress) with the imprint, London: Dean and Munday, [18 ], has different pagination and one copy of this edition by S. Bailey (National Library of Wales).
Burford’s notebook contains religious notes including “Evediences by it appears that no man is free from the being of Sin in this life” and what appear to be preparations for sermons “Psal 5.3. My voice wilyt thou &c” (“method, I shall attend to the words as they & my voice wilt thou hear”), but I can find no record of his having preached. Ref: 7845
48. BAILEY, Mrs Guide to preferment, or the complete art of cookery, made plain and easy... ornamented with engravings shewing the art of trussing and carving.
£400
¶ This satisfyingly ergonomic notebook was written by Edmund Burford who gives his address “Larans Lane Cheapside Blossom Inn”. Lawrence Lane, is a street in the city of London running from Trump Street to Grisham Street. It was the site of a well known coaching house known as Blossoms Inn, from the 14th century onwards.
¶ According to Potter, in his Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797 1830. (2021). S. Bailey is probably the printer and publisher, Susan Bailey. On 22 September 1767, she married the printer William Bailey whose family had been in the printing and bookselling business since 1702. Bailey is said to have been the originator of a cheap method of printing, by which he at first hopelessly cut out rivals. He made up a large forme of type containing a number of small advertising bills for different clients and printed them all off at one time. Before this each job had been separately printed. William and Susan had four children. In 1790 William and Susan moved the firm to 50 Bishopsgate Within, where William died in November 1794, leaving the firm to his wife, who operated as bookseller and printer under her own imprint, ‘S. Bailey, No. 50 Bishopsgate within.’ She relocated to 35 Threadneedle Street in 1806. This would date the Guide to Preferment anywhere between 1794 and 1806. However, we are able to date this book a little more precisely because it has at the end A List of Books Printed and Sold at No 50 Bishopsgate within, London which includes The Valentine Writer for 1804 priced at 0s 6d. Of the 20 books she lists as being for sale at her shop, we have located only two in library collections: The oddest of all oddities, which she published in 1797, and Barrington’s Voyage to Botany Bay, which she published 1791. Given that our book appears to have been published circa 1804, she seems to have held unsold stock for at least a decade.
49. [BURFORD, Edmund (?d. 1762)] 18th Century Manuscript Notebook [Cheapside, London. Circa 1761]. Oblong octavo (165 mm x 105 mm x 44 mm). Approximately 218 text pages on 180 leaves. Text most to rectos but at the end the text continues onto verso of 38 pages. Contemporary vellum, boards with simple borders and decorative fleurons to corners, soiled, wear to corners, brass clasp in working order. Damp staining to text, some tape repairs.
[Little Ryle Whittingham Northumberland. Circa 1732]. Two sheets (323 x 206 and 208 x 164 mm) Elizabeth was born in Little Ryle, to Alexander (1665 1745) and Dorothy (nee Lawson) (1669 1707). Her two inventories are each dated “June the 12 1732” appear to have been taken on account of her move from her birthplace in (one is docketed “Things taken from Little Ryle to Acton in 1732”). They are quite specific, so possibly formed part of a larger group. One gives “an account of what my plate Comes two that I take with me from ye house” (six items) followed by “What my China and tables comes to that I get new at the same time” (10 items). It includes such things as “my Coffie pote fourten pound ten shillings”, “my sarviter ten pound eighteen shllings”, “six Coffie Cupes eight shilling”, and “my mahogany table six shillings and six pence”.
Her second inventory of “What my Close Comes two that I by at Newcastle” includes “my new nightgown five pound”, “my new wastcote & pettycote three pound”, “a fan mounting three shillings & sixpence” and she ends with the coda “thure is al the things that I get new from newcastle when my Sister was there in May ye 23 1732”
£400 Ref: 8068
50. [DAY, Charles William (fl.1815–1859); MACKENZIE, Henry (1745-1831)] Portrait of Scottish Novelist Henry Mackenzie. [Circa 1824]. The painting measures approximately 300 x 250 mm. Frame measures approximately 385 x 335 mm. Watercolour on paper, walnut glazed frame. Light spots and marks to paper. Not examined out of frame. Inscribed on the reverse: “Henry Mackenzie Esq Author of Man of Feeling”; “Painted by CW Day London 1824”; “C. W. Day 1824”. ¶ Henry Mackenzie FRSE was a Scottish lawyer, novelist and writer. He was born, lived, worked, and died in Edinburgh. He was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; became its Literary President in 1812 1828 and Vice President in 1828 1831. He derived his main income came from legal work, but is chiefly remembered as an author. Charles William Day was a traveller, writer and artist. He published The Art of Miniature Painting, comprising instructions necessary for the acquirement of that Art, (London 1852). A fairly prolific painter of landscapes and portraits, he spent several years in the United States and in the West Indies writing and painting. Among the works that followed are Five Years’ Residence in the West Indies (1852) and in the same year: The American ladies’ and gentleman’s manual of elegance, fashion, and true politeness £250 Ref: 8089 51. [COLLINGWOOD, Elizabeth (1703-1782)] Two manuscript inventories.
¶ Wandesforde’s ‘Instructions’ were written in 1636 but remained unpublished for well over a century. They were published as A book of instructions, written by the Right Honourable Sir Christr. Wandesforde, Knt. Lord Deputy of Ireland, [...] to his Son and Heir, George Wandesforde, Esq; in order to the Regulating the Conduct of his Whole Life. (Cambridge, 1777). ESTC (T110256) records five copies in the UK (British Library, Cambridge, Bodleian Library, John Rylands, York Minster) and two copies in the USA (New York Public Library, Newberry). This manuscript copy precedes the published version by nine years and includes “A Funeral Sermon” on the occasion of Wandesforde’s death, which is unpublished. It was written by “H.S.” of York and a nine page dedication to “The Revd. Dr. Wanley, Dean of Ripon” explains that “The following papers were transcribed by from an old Manuscript which I accidently met with at B*****p a little while before I left that place.” It makes for interesting reading, as he suggests that the manuscript he is has copied from was itself a scribal copy, and that “the antique Orthography made use of in it, and its being Sewed in a Parchment Cover, containing some Proceedings in the Court of Chancery, concerning the estate at Kirklington belonging to the Wandesforde Faily are Circumstances which make it probable that it was copied immediately from he originals soon after Sir Christopher’s Death [...] Since when I guess it has come into the Possession of Mrs. J*****’s” who was, apparently, a distant relation of the Wandesfordes. “H.S.” goes on to explain that the manuscripts which he transcribed “were not so correctly taken but that they carry in them many Marks of the haste and Inadvertency of the Transcriber”, and although he has felt obliged to “change a Word or more, as best agrees with the Contact” and “leave out Latin Quotations” because the “Transcriber has rendered visciously from the Original”. But he claims “these are Liberties which I have used but sparingly”. In all, a fascinating glimpse into scribal manuscript culture, transcribed before the published version and including the funeral sermon which has never appeared in print.
52. [WANDESFORD, Christopher (1592-1640)]. Scribal copies of ‘ Sir Christopher Wandesforde’s Instructions to his Eldest Son [and] A Funeral Sermon. Preached at the Burial of the Right Honble Master of the Rolls, Lord Deputy of Ireland. [York. 1768]. Octavo (205 x 135 x 23 mm). Pagination [2], ix, [3], 96, [2], 22 (numbered in manuscript). Contemporary calf, gilt, rebacked with the original title label laid down, damp staining throughout and resultant spotting to later leaves.
£1,250 Ref: 7918
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