TWENTY-FOUR

[CHARLES I] The Acts made in the First [& Second] Parliament of our most high and dread soveraigne Charles, together 2 works in 1 vol.

Edinburgh, by Robert Young; Robert Young and Evan Tyler, 1633-41. Folio. Pagination 66, [10]; 160, [20] p. (Containing 31 and 110 Acts respectively). Both volumes collated and complete, with an additional manuscript table at the end. [Goldsmiths 644 and 718; STC 21902; Wing S1168D].

Profusely annotated and with a 12-page manuscript table bound in at the end in a 17th century hand.

¶ The judicious but anonymous Scottish annotator of this collection of acts has created a perfect example of pen-in-hand reading. We can be reasonably confident that the scribe was Scottish, by their use of such words as ‘anent’ and ‘ane’ (“anent ye Copper coyne”; “15. Anent ye act of oblivion vide s. J. Ma. Parl.9.c.67”; “Ane Table of ye Principall Matters”).

Their notes run the gamut of textual interaction: most refer to parliamentary sessions or other legal texts (“vide i.ses.2c.25. of Parl.3.Ses.1.c.28”; “Vide. K. Jam. 6. Parl. 10.c.13”); some pages have been simply underlined or marked with a cross; others have brief finding “Power of ye Counsell”; “Exc. 1. [2, 3]”; “piuiledges of all Erecters and maintainers of Manufacties”; “power of ye Commission”), or brief commentaries (“rents gifted heerby by ye king To ye maintenanne of ye Ministerie of ye Uties & Colledges”).

Certain acts seem to have particularly caught their attention.

The most heavily annotated section is pp.22-32 (Acts IX-XII), which covers “The Kings Generall Revocation”, “Anent the Annexation of his Maiesties Propertie”, “Of Dissolution”, and “Ratification of the Acts of Interruption”. The copious notes here are densely packed, which combined with some bleed-through make some of the wording difficult to decipher, but it offers an interesting mixture of précis and commentaries on the text. We offer a few small samples here: “And g[ene]rally All Acts & dispositions made in detriment of the King soule & conscience or of the Crowne & church, and contrary to the Lawes of the Kingdome”; “The Superiorities of all Kings lands erected & temporall Lords”; “Acts of Counsell and Session ratifying the Kings will, and declaration, conteined in his letter, anent the Interruption of the Act of prescription, sent to his Majas uocal, & by him presented to them, [...] to saue the force & power of a Loyall [...] aginst all parties hauing Interest, In the particulars following”

This was intended as a working document that would be consulted repeatedly, to judge by the inclusion at the end of the volume of an index entitled: “Ane Table of ye Principall Matters contained in ye 21.22. & 23. Parlts of K. James 6 and all ye Parlts of K. Charles I”, which is arranged in columns detailing the subject, monarch, parliament, session, chapter, and date.

The manuscript notes remain within the scope of the acts covered in the printed section. The latest manuscript date is 1649, which marked the end of the life of the acts’ nominal author – Charles I – and coincided with the prelude to the invasion of Scotland by the army of the New English Commonwealth.

£2,500 Ref: 8154

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BROWNE, Thomas, Sir (1605-1682) Pseudodoxia epidemica: or, Enquiries into very many received tenents, and commonly presumed truths. By

Thomas Browne Dr of Physick.

London: printed by A. Miller, for Edw. Dod and Nath. Ekins, at the Gunne in Ivie Lane, 1650. Second edition. Folio. Pagination [16], 329, [11] p. Collated and complete. [Wing, B5160; Keynes, Browne, 74]. Contemporary sheep, rebacked with the original spine laid down, new label, recornered. Scattered spotting to text, but paper quite crisp. Inscription to title page “Sam:[uel] Wight: pr.”

¶ Just as Religio Medici established Thomas Browne’s reputation as a religious thinker, his subsequent and most extensive work, the Pseudodoxia, earned him fame as a scholar, naturalist and – to borrow a modern phrase –debunker of misinformation. Browne applies a Baconian methodology (outlined in Bacon’s Advancement of Learning) to a plethora of misconceptions and false beliefs.

After setting out general observations concerning the manner of mankind’s falling into error and misapprehension (“Of Credulity and Supinity”; “Of obstinate adherence unto Antiquity”; and so on), Browne tackles specific “Tenents”, divided into six sections, including “Minerall, and vegetable bodies”, “Man”, and “Historicall Tenents generally received, and some deduced from the History of holy Scripture”. He brings his signature combination of pious observance and rigorous enquiry to a wide spectrum of received wisdom, giving equally serious consideration to “the food of John the Baptst in the wildernesse”, the contention “That a Diamond is made soft, or broke by the blood of a Goate”, the notions “That the Tower of Babel was erected against a second deluge”, and that “our Saviour never laughed”, and the popular belief “That a Brock or Badger hath the legs on one side shorter then of the other”.

The Pseudodoxia’s eclectic early-modern myth busting, shot through as it is with its own wrongheaded arguments, is nevertheless a crucially important and influential document in the development of the scientific method as conceived by Bacon and his contemporaries.

BROWNE Thomas, Sir (1605-1682) Hydriotaphia, urne-buriall, or, a discourse of the sepulchrall urnes lately found in Norfolk. Together with the garden of Cyrus, or the quincunciall, lozenge, or net-work plantations of the ancients, artificially, naturally, mystically considered. With sundry observations. By Thomas Browne D. of Physick.

London: printed for Hen. Brome at the signe of the Gun in Ivy-lane, 1658. FIRST EDITION. Octavo. Pagination [16], 102 [i.e. 202], [4], p. errata trimmed and pasted to blank area of final text leaf, lacks vertical half-title.

¶ Sir Thomas Browne’s influence on subsequent generations of writers and thinkers is incalculable, not least among the leading lights of Romanticism such as Coleridge, Lamb and De Quincey and their peers Hazlitt and Carlyle. The diversity of his interests, the embrace of Baconian ‘new learning’ and the wit and imagination of his writings were praised (not without reservations) by Samuel Johnson, and his cultivation of a variety of literary styles resulted in writings that ranged from quick sketches to lengthy, elaborately wrought works.

If Browne’s most popular work was Religio medici – a two-part exploration of his “relationships to his God and fellow creatures” – Hydriotaphia “may be one of the first archaeological monographs in English” (ODNB). It begins with a description of a large number of Anglo-Saxon pots discovered in Norfolk, after which Browne gives an overview of funerary and burial customs, both ancient and contemporary.

Browne's luxuriant style and ... are more widely known and read than perhaps any other of his work.”.

This is a copy of the first edition of a work whose flawed factual accuracy (he mistakenly reckoned the pots, for instance, to be Roman) is more than compensated for by its combination of wit and solemn lyricism: as, for example, in his famous, double edged description of man as “a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature”. Such passages have led to Hydriotaphia’s being praised and quoted in the works of Borges, Poe, Melville, Derek Walcott and WG Sebald, among others.

£1,000 Ref: 8108

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

Thomas Fale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timing Is Everything

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

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

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

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

£1,250 Ref: 8145

References:

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

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

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