w o r d s
& t h i n g s
S I X & t h i n g s w o r d s n u m b e r
ONE
¶ Early modern households were complex business operations which required careful management of health, finance, and social connections. The earliest contributor to this household manuscript was clearly equal to the task.
Elizabeth Preston was a shrewd 17th-century businesswoman who not only reversed the declining fortunes of her late father’s estates but, as is evident from our manuscript, passed her accumulated knowledge to her granddaughter, making this an heirloom manuscript, whereupon the latter enthusiastically added to the contents.
PROVENANCE AND CONNECTIONS
An inscription to front endpaper verso reads “Eliz: Preston Resept Book” in dark ink, with a note beneath in lighter ink: “which I giue to my grandoughtor Mrs Kathren Lowther June ye 26 (1721”. Other names – such as “Pennington”, which occurs several times in the manuscript – help us to triangulate these clues and establish our scribes.
[PRESTON, Elizabeth (née Bradshaigh) (1650-1732); LOWTHER, Katherine (b.1698)]. English Late 17th-early 18th-Century Household Manuscript. [England. Holker Hall, Lancashire? Circa 16701730]. Folio (320 x 200 x 30 mm).
Approximately 313 text pages on 220 leaves, including endpapers, including two leaves inserted (presumably sent as separates): f.130 folds and bearing Arms of London watermark; f.137 folds and bearing Pro Patria watermark. Fore-edges tabbed, torn with loss to original text, but “Distill’d W[aters]” and “Swett[s]” extant.
Contemporary blind-stamped full calf, rubbed and worn.
Elizabeth Preston (née Bradshaigh) was the daughter of Sir Roger Bradshaigh (1627/8-84) and Elizabeth (née Pennington) (1640-67), daughter of William Pennington of Muncaster. Elizabeth and Roger married in 1647 and had four sons and given her name she was probably the eldest of their three daughters. Elizabeth married Thomas Preston (1647-97) in 1675.
The Prestons lived at Holker Hall near Lancaster and at Marske, Yorkshire. They had one child, Catherine Preston (d. 1701), who was their sole heir, and was said to have brought a fortune of £30,000 to her husband, Sir William Lowther, 1st bart, of Marske (1676-1705). The Prestons and Lowthers were already linked in marriage prior to this: Mary Lowther, sister of Sir John Lowther of Lowther, married Thomas Preston’s (1647-97) elder brother George.1
Catherine and Sir William had two daughters, Katherine and Margaret. Katherine married Sir William Lowther (c.1699-1745), and they resided at Holker Hall. So we assume that the manuscript was given to Katherine, the younger daughter by her grandmother Elizabeth Preston, to continue the successful running of their estates.
Watermark: Foolscap with seven points; Countermark: LD (this combination not in Haewood, but see 1988-2087 for similar, which he dates to the second half of the 17th century).
Provenance: inscription to front endpaper verso reads “Eliz: Preston Resept Book” in dark ink, with a note beneath in lighter ink: “which I giue to my grandoughtor Mrs Kathren
Lowther June ye 26 (1721”. (certain sources –possibly including the family itself – have confused Catherine with her daughter Katherine, but we have adhered to the C / K distinction as above).
Elizabeth’s business acumen was conspicuous enough to merit a prominent place in at least one piece of published research that examines the Lowther family’s vicissitudes as an example of the experience of the English landowning class. Sir William died in 1705, four years after his wife, leaving their four children’s maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Preston, not only to act as their guardian but to address the parlous state of the family’s finances. The scale of Sir William’s debts made this a daunting undertaking; according to J. V. Beckett, “Elizabeth Preston had to redeem these debts and also meet the cost of an expensive Exchequer case relating to the manor of Furness. By careful management she not only redeemed the debts, but also managed to finance repairs at Holker Hall and buy a couple of small properties”.2 Elizabeth thus stands as an example of a 17th century female head of the family clearly a highly competent one.
The recipes are separated into sections, often demarcated by blank leaves. These sections have been tabulated with section titles pinned to fore-edges. These are, unsurprisingly, mostly lost, but two remain, and although torn with some loss, they retain some of their original text (“Distill’d W ” and “Sweet ”). However, despite this careful attempt at arrangement, the subjects as is often the case with receipt books have not been maintained, and the contributors overlap each other’s work, so no neat and easy separation is possible. Nonetheless, a brief summary might look something like this:
Hand I. Elizabeth Preston (1650-1732): (17th century): contributes around 400 recipes and around 34 remedies and miscellaneous household receipts on approximately 180 pages. Numerous attributions.
Hand II. Preston household member: (17th century): approximately 20 brief recipes to four pages.
Hand III. Katherine Lowther (b.1698): (early 18th century), adds another 285 or so recipes and 13 remedies to around 128 pages.
We can deduce from a note by Elizabeth that most entries were likely completed before 1701 (see below), and that after a hiatus, she passed it to “my grandoughtor Mrs Kathren Lowther June ye 26 (1721”, perhaps to mark a coming-of-age event such as her marriage.
Elizabeth’s contributions are the most straightforward: her inscription is written in a distinctive hand, which enables us to confidently attribute over 400 culinary recipes and more than 30 remedies to her. There are also some 20 brief remedies and culinary recipes written in another hand, which we presume was a contemporary member of her household – her husband, perhaps. Attributions are made throughout the volume and by all three hands, giving abundant evidence of Elizabeth’s family and social connections.
THE CONTENTS
The approach of all three scribes to arranging their material is erratic to varying degrees. Elizabeth (Hand I) often groups recipes by category – her addition of tabs, as we shall see, indicates at least an intention to do so – but not always; the anonymous household member (Hand II) is similarly inconsistent; and Katherine (Hand III) is perhaps the most hit-and-miss of all. We have chosen to follow the sequence of the manuscript itself, using the tabs (or their remaining pinholes) as waypoints, in order to elucidate the points at which order has been imposed and those where it has apparently been abandoned.
Hand I: ff.1-2v; Hand II: ff.2r-5v; Hand I: ff.5v-8v.
Elizabeth begins the volume with five entries, and immediately two characteristics of her approach are apparent: a concern with attributing her sources (“Derections from my Lord Duck Hambletons gardner for ye soing of ferr seeds” (f.1r)); and the aforementioned inconsistency in maintaining the order she often seems to bring to her contents (we jump from “ye soing of ferr seeds” to four remedies beginning with “my Unkell Dr Resept of a Jelly for strenktning ye back uerry good” (f.1v), the first of three consecutive remedies attributed to her maternal “Unkell Dr Pennington”, and of a number of entries that acknowledge family members).
Elizabeth concludes this brief selection with “A Receipt for the Wormes and may be giuen to Children: Dr Baynards”, after which Hand II takes over, initially continuing the theme of remedies – and doing so explicitly, since the first remedy is presented as “Anothr for the Wormes, wch is stronger and in some Cases more Effectuall, yet Safe. Dr Baynard” (f.2v). This hand records a further three remedies, including another vouchsafed by “Dr Baynard” and two from “Dr Kitson”, before going back to the kitchen for “A Receipt to make a Sacke Possett:, Mis ffleetwoodes” and a further eight recipes attributed to this same “Cosne fflett” (f.3v-f4v). Their final culinary handful, however, is interrupted halfway by the eructation of “A Gentle Purge. Mis Penningtons” (f.5r).
Elizabeth now resumes for a more substantial section (f.5v-f23v); and after a pair of recipes for a “bakt puding & uerry good” and “a good Jelly from my Lady Boyer” (f.5v), she begins a section entitled “Resepts to make Cremes”, consisting of eight recipes for the likes of “Sack”, “Cherry”, “hunney Come Creame”, and “a shugar lofe Creme”, attributed to “my Annt Rigby” (f.6r). There follows another lapse into miscellanea, albeit with some admirably detailed instructions (f.7v. “To pickell Cowcumbers ye best way I euer saw Mrs Bigland”; “Take Cowcumbers yt are gadred drye & lay them in water wth a lettell salt […] drye them in Clothes uerry well then take ye best whitt wine Vinieker as much a yu think will Couer them […] boyle it 3 seuerall times 3 days aftor one a nother”), or added remarks indicating use (“an Excellent Cordiel water Mrs Jolly”, annotated “I think Ale maks but a small water soe I always make is half wine” (f.7r)).
Tab at f.9 (text lost). Hand I: ff.9r-17v.
The categories stabilise somewhat with this first tab, as we find around 25 drinks recipes, mostly alcoholic (wine, cider, mead). First, a pair of recipes for “Couslop wine”, one from “Sistr Brads:”, the other from “Madm Standish” (and annotated “if yu make yr Couslop wine ye same way yu make yr Cloue gillyflowore wine it is best”) (f.10r). An air of conviviality prevails, as characters are acknowledged – and often commended – for their contributions: “Dr Lower” for “meaed […] & uerry good” (f.10v), “Excolent Sieder”, and “Sage wine” (f.11r); and “Mrs Mary Armstrong” for “Corren Wine”; and, traversing social classes, Elizabeth sets down directions “To Make Mead my Lady Lowedrs way” (f.11v), and shortly thereafter, “Coren wine for Keeping Long my maid Mulnixis way & uery good”. The latter’s exacting instructions, no doubt owing to familiarity with the recipe and proximity to the contributor, include the important final note to “put into each bottell a lettell suger yu must not fill ye botells too full this is too much suger”
Elizabeth sometimes adds a bit of context in her attributions, as in her entry “To make Elder bery wine my Lord Darbys way hee gaue mee it him selfe” (f.14r) – which can’t help but read a little like a social brag – or alludes to her own background, for example with “To make Wiggen Braggitt” (she grew up near Wigan where, according to this recipe, she would have drunk this “Liquor for Christmas & Lent”) (f.13r). She also adds herself to the attributees with “To make meaed my one way” (f.15r) – an unusual expression, probably a misspelling of “own”, but either way one subsequently used by her granddaughter Katherine.
Tab at f.20: “Distilled w[aters]”. Hand I: ff.20v-23v; Hand III: ff.24r-26v;
This second tab, labelled but with text partly lost, marks the beginning of half a dozen recipes for medicinal cordials and waters including “Red Cherry Watter” (“good in ye smalle pox & for fanting fiotts & may be geuen a womon in Labor” (f.21v)), “ye Milke watter good” (“You may leue outt ye Rue if yu Like it nott butt it is uery good for Children” (f.22r)), and “Rosemary Wattr to rub ye hed & make ye hare groe” (f.22v). Another physician gets his due here, in the directions “To still ye snalle Wattr Dr Askew gaue Mastr Lowther” (f.23v).
Katherine (Hand III) then makes her first appearance in the running order, immediately disrupting her grandmother’s category scheme by adding recipes for 11 varieties of wine (“Oringe”, “Sage”, “Damaseen”) (ff.2426) to blank pages left by Elizabeth.
Pinhole (tab lost) at f.27.
Hand I: ff.27r-43v.
Elizabeth begins a new set of entries, with a solid run of cake and biscuit recipes (a.k.a. “Kakes”, “Kaks” and “Keaks”), together with “Wafers”, “Biskitts”, “Puffes”, “Wiggs”, and “Mackaroons” (ff.26-44).
The menu here takes in puff pastry (“wch will allsoe make into pretty Keakes & Jumbells. Cosen Bradell good” (f.26v)), “Allmond Gingerbred” (f.27r), “Allmond Biskitts ye frensh way” (f.28r), “pastt of Apriecocks the
Italian Way or Whitt pare plums” (“uery good & when drye will be as Oriant as Ambor” (f.27v)), “Pistaches paestt” (f.27v), and a handful of recipes employing chocolate, such as “Chocolett Jumbells” (“Lay itt upon papers buttord thin & bake them in a Marchpane pan” (f.29r)), “Chocolette Allmonds” (f.29v), and “Jockellett Waffors” (f.28v). Attributions here are numerous, if not quite as plentiful as in some earlier sections: thus, we find “ye Countess of Arendells Oring biskitt” (f.28v), “Lettell Cakes my Lady Chumbleays way” (f.29v), “Mrs Leadbettors possit for breakefast uery good” (f.35v), and “my Cosen fflettwoods Chese Kakes” (f.39r). Other personages getting their due include “Mrs ffranklen” (or “Mrs ffran:”), “madm Leese”, “madm perepoynt”, “Mrs Kenyon”, “Mrs Harison”, more relatives such as “my Sistr Brad:” and “Cosen Bradell”, and a further smattering of titled ladies (“La: Denagall”, “Lad: Nut”).
Tab at f.44: “Swett[s]”. Hand I: ff.44-57; Hand III: ff.57-85.
The section title “Swett[s]” here signifies fruit, and accounts for 77 recipes, as Elizabeth (Hand I) records differing methods of preserving fruit (“plums”, “Apriecocks”, “Cherrys”, “pechis”, “pares”, “quins”, “Apells”, “Oringis”, “Swett Margrom”, “Sitterones” (f.44v – f.49r)). The section includes recipes for marmalades (“Marmalett of Cornelians”; “Marmorlett of Apriekocks Lady Nutton”; “Red Marmalett of quinsces”, which you should “bring to ye Collor of Clarritt”). Her final entry in this batch gives directions “To make swett baggs to Ly a mongst Linin”, featuring ingredients such as “a bushell of Damask Rosis […] beniamen & storix of each anouns & Amborgresce & Musk of each 4 graens”, to be powdered and, in a glass, placed in “an ouon aftr bred is drown & ye Ouen nott soe hott as to breake ye glass”. The final products, we are assured, “will keepe there sentt maney yeares” (f.48r).
Katherine (Hand III) again takes advantage of her grandmother’s blank pages to append a long section of 141 numbered recipes, none with attributions, all apparently copied out at one or two sittings. The “Sweets” theme is dropped in favour of a miscellany of recipes from puddings (“Apple”, “fine Lemon”, “Sweatmeat”, “Oringe”, “New College”) to sausages, collops and sauces (“Oister”, “Mushroom sauce for White Fowls”, “for Boild Rabbits”), pies (“Lamb”, “fish pyes”, “Artichocke”), pickles (“Walnuts”, “Colliflowers”, “Samphire”), soups (“Peases”, “Crayfish”), fish (“drest a Cods Head”, “Rost a Pike with a Pudding in its Belly”), and cakes (“Ginder Bread”, “Portugall”, “Plumb”).
Elizabeth has begun another section here, with 51 more recipes for creams, including two to make “Chocollat Creame” (“swetten it to yr taestt & soe whip it up & dish it or mill itt wth a Chocollatt mill” (f.86r)), another from a well-connected source (“To make Chocolate ye Duke of Boofords way” (f.92r)), and a “Spanish Creame” recipe garnished with comments that indicate this has been put to the test (“beate itt wth a spoone till it bee pretty thik but haue a Care it doth not tuorn to buttr soe putt it into yr Dish yu may lay it Like a rock or steepell […] please when yu send it to ye tabel yu may putt lettell Creame in ye bottom of ye dish but it is as well wthoutt” (f.87v)).
Katherine yet again abandons her grandmother’s scheme, adding a miscellany of fruit recipes (“Preserve Oringe Flowers”, “Golden Pippins”, “Quince Marmalade”) and meat dishes (“Sausages”, “Savoury Patties”, “To hash a Calfs head”) (ff.93v-96v).
Pin hole (tab lost) at f.97.
Hand I: ff.98r-102r.
Elizabeth’s next section begins here, with a group of 22 fish and meat recipes (ff.97r-102r), opening with “To make a good boyld blud puding” (“Take sheeps blud or wat blud yu Like best make it thin by stering it”) (f.97r) before switching to fish. Details abound, whether “To ffrigosce Sallmon” (“when ye Liquor is allmost gin take a lettl whitt wine or Aelle & put it in to ye pan”) (f.98r), “To dres a Carpe” (f.98v), or “To pickell Oysters ye Very Best Way”, a page-long recipe – but worth it, as “itt will keep a boue a yeare” (f.102r).
Stub (with pin, text lost) at f.111. Hand I: ff.111v-114r.
After several blank pages, this stub signals a batch of recipes for “Pickels” (ff.111v-114r), beginning with “Vinicker” (“for ye Kitchings youse lett yr Vescell be sett a lettell of ye ground”, with a note added in lighter ink: “som puts a litell safron in Just to giue it ye Collor of wtt wine Viniker”). Elizabeth commends this for use with the likes of “To Dooe Musmillons Like Mangoe”, “quins to Keepe all ye yeare”, and “Sparlings”.
Katherine then anticipates Elizabeth’s upcoming large group of remedies with a trio of her own: “The Rhumatick Tinture by Doctor Boerhaven” (f.123v) and two remedies for piles (“Plane hiera=piera” and “A medicine for an Ague by Doctor Mead” (f.124r.)). The addition of “Dutch Blamangee” here – not a euphemistic name for some nasty condition, but a dessert recipe – is one of her more anomalous choices.
Pin hole (tab lost) at f.125. Hand III: ff.123v-124r; Hand I: 124v-136r; Hand III: 136v; one tipped-in leaf.
The subsequent group of 67 remedies is mostly by Elizabeth but also features seven from Katherine and two in another 18th-century hand. Heading the roster of cures, salves and nostrums is a 17th-century panacea, in the form of Woond drink”, requiring an impressive 23 different herbs, among them “Southerenwood”, Singellfoile”, “stroberey leaues”, and “Villitt Leaues”. These are to be gathered month of may”, dried “in a Closce Roome from y and turned “ons a day till ye bee drye”. After instructions for the making and applying of the liquor, a final note declares: “This drink will Cuore all soors Ould & nue & soore brests putriefied bones Achies in ye stumak Impostumes fistaleays & it will stop bleding aplying a scere Cloth” (f.125r).
There are several remedies related to childbirth, each illuminating in their own way. A tipped-in leaf headed “My Sister Lowthers Directshons for ye pouder for my Doughter in Labor & for ye Speritts & drops for ye Child for grips & Conuolshons” helps us date this remedy – and presumably many of the others by Elizabeth – to between 1698, when her “Doughter” Catherine bore her first child (Katherine, our Hand III), and 1701, when Catherine died. The “watter” serves double duty, being both “for ye Child if ocasion bee” and for the mother “if shee should be trubelled wth Vapers upon ye tuorn of her milk” (f.130r).
The mythology that breeding creates a ‘finer sort’ is evident in “My Lord Chesterfields Resept for Labor pouder” (“take halfe an anouns of graynes of parides wch yu may haue at ye Apoteycareys of Safron
Dayttes stons Comine sceeds & of Whitt Ambor of Eache half anouns […] 24 graens for persons of a fine quality & for Ordnorey persons 32 or 34 granes” (f.131v); and one of the after-effects of childbirth is addressed with “ye Batth I Cuord Will: Berrys wife whoe Could not hould her water of half a yeare aftor her Lying (f.125v).
Other remedies treat conditions such as “greene woonds goutt Sceatticall or Rumatism” (thanks to “Cosen Shakrleay”) 126r), “a Coff” (“an Excolent Sceroup”) (f.129r), “ye Saiatikay” (from “ye Lady Dalyuall”) (f.129v), “Sore Eays or headache” (relieved by “Mrs Dorethy Bellinghams Snuf”) (f.134v), and “an Ague” (to be eased by “Mr Booshers medson”) (f.136r). Some entries supply a little more commentary: the remedy “for ye Bludy fluocks” appeals to the power of the ‘exotic’ in its addendum “& found out in the West Inde to bee ye Onley Cuore for it” (f.134v); closer to hand, a family connection graces “To make a pouder for Stone wch will Desolue it soe yt it comes a way in Grauell as my Cosen Heber found by taking itt” (f.135r); and both medic and patient are cited in “Dr Askews Direckshons for eating ye dead flesh out of Tom: Robinsons finger yt was Stung” (f.136r). Another response to an encounter with hostile fauna has a sting in its tail: “For ye Bitting of a Mad Doggs tooth” has, apparently, “neuer falled nether Christion nor Dum Beasst” – presumably lumping in the unbaptised with the rest of the animal kingdom (f.133r).
Katherine bookends her grandmother’s sizeable collection of remedies with a few more: “To Cause Sleep” (f.136r), and four formulations for teeth and gums, including “Excellent Medicine to fasten ye Teeth in Scorbutick Gums” (f.136v).
Tab at f.182 (text lost). Hand I: ff.182v-192v; Hand III; 192v-218v.
This final tab marks the beginning of a series of miscellaneous recipes set down by Elizabeth (ff.182-192). The mostly savoury dishes range from “stued Ollieues” (f.185r) to “a Hagouos puding” and “a fastingday potaedge” (both f.186v) to “my Lad: Monmorths Sosingis” (f.187v) and “pankeaks my Lady Lonsdells way” (f.185v). Katherine this time outdoes her grandmother by adding some 24 recipes, continuing the miscellany with the likes of “A Crayfish Pottage”, “Portugall Cakes” (both f.193r), “Oyster Sausages” (f.193v), “a HedgeHog” (f.194v), “Usgebaugh” (f.196r), “Oringe Puding” (f.196v), “Crème Bruille” (f.200r), and “Ice-Cream” (f.194r) – all of these acknowledged as “my Sisters” – this, one assumes, being her younger sister Margaret.
Katherine credits a gamut of sources for other recipes, from the ‘middling sort’ (“To Make a Plumb-Cake. Mrs Wills way” (f.195v); another “Oringe Pudding”, this time “Mrs Gowlands way”, likewise “To Make A Cake” (both f.200r)) to the more exalted (“To Pickle Hams. Lady Catherine Taylors way” (f.194v)) or their staff (“To Make Bombards of whole Apples By the Queens Cook” (f.194r)). These social strata collapse briefly with “To Make Ragoo of Oysters. King Williams way and Mrs Scott” (f.196r). Katherine rounds off her culinary selections with five recipes – covering meat, fowl, fish and pudding – all appended “my one way”, in apparent imitation of her grandmother’s earlier, insistent sounding phrase.
The last section, though lacking any visible surviving tab or pinhole, shifts to general household matters, and again Katherine has inserted a couple of her own entries before Elizabeth’s: “To do Lace After ye Manner it is don in Holland” (f.219r), and “To Make Veal or Cake Soup to carry in they Pocket” (f.211r). Her grandmother, though writing earlier, has been allowed the last word, with a brace of household hints concerning the care of pictures (“To Make A Varnish to Ly on picktours” (f.219r); “Mr Bonifellds way to take spotts out of picktours wch Lookes like mould” (f.220r.)), linen (“To make ye best pastt to Ly Lasse on beds wch ye London Abholsters yousis” (f.219r)), rockeries (“To Make Correll to putt in Rockworck” (f.219v)), odours (“To porffume Rose budds”; “To make a Swett Porfume” (both f.220r), and lips (“To Make ye Red Lip Salue” (f.220v)).
Of particular note is a set of directions “To Mak ye best putty to fasten Glass in Sassh Windows” (f.220r), reflecting a growing taste among the aristocracy for sash windows, after early adopters in England set the trend at places like Hampton Court and Trinity College, Oxford in the early 1690s.3
CONCLUSION
Elizabeth Preston’s formidable management of the family finances would have been of a piece with her running of the household. To judge by this impressive volume, her initial ordering served its function as a heuristic to be adapted or replaced as context or needs changed. Her inscription at the beginning signals the handing of the now successful family business to the succeeding generation in the person of Katherine Lowther. Katherine’s contributions amount to an act of consolidation, which takes the work of the greater authority and adopts Elizabeth’s pragmatic attitude. Katherine’s significant expansion of the contents expresses her ascendancy to a position that merits her having an authoritative household book of her own.
£15,000 Ref: 8280
References:
1. < https://www.ancestry.co.uk/genealogy/records/elizabeth-bradshaigh-preston-24-4t0t3r? geo_a=r&o_iid=41013&o_lid=41013&o_sch=Web+Property>
2. Becket, J. V. ‘The Lowthers at Holker’. Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1978. pp. 47-64.
3. A. P. Baggs, ‘The Earliest Sash-Window in Britain?’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. VII, 1997, pp. 168–171
TWO
¶ The anonymous author of this epistolary manuscript combines travelogue with amateur anthropology, occasionally grisly sightseeing and at least one sighting of a famous literary figure. He conveys his impressions with a lively eye, strong opinions (especially concerning architecture and landscaping) and a good deal of snobbery. His particular focus is on Scotland, where he travels at a time when the country’s infrastructure for transport and tourism was at an early stage of development; and the principal genre within which he operates here is the picturesque tour.
Our scribe records seven journeys, written on different papers and bound out of chronological sequence. But, this appears to be either an oversight or eccentricity, as the binding is almost certainly contemporary with their composition.
1. 1771: Newcastle to Scotland. 111 pages. Watermark: Pro Patria.
2. 1778: London to Portsmouth, then to Oxford, Stratford, Kedlestone, Matlock, Sheffield, Wakefield. 42 pages. Watermark: Britannia; Countermark: S. Lay.
3. 1780: Scotland, a third tour (out of sequence – bound in before the second Scottish journey): Cairngorms, Inverness. 70 pages (page numbering continues from Journey 2, so this begins at p.43). Watermark: Britannia; Countermark: S. Lay. Later pages watermarked: Pro Patria.
4. 1781: “a little Tour”. London to “Godalmin”, Waltham Cross, Burleigh. 18 pages (page numbering still continues from Journey 2, so this begins at p.95). Watermark: Pro Patria.
5. 1777: Scotland, a second Scottish expedition. 32 pages, numbering restarts from 1. Watermark: Britannia; Countermark: W A.
6. 1783: “Devonshire”, (18 pages) a tour “which I recollect without much Pleasure or Spirit” (p.18).Watermark: Crown M D; Countermark: F Cap.
7. Undated: Peterborough (starts p.19, 5 pages). Watermark: Crown M D; Countermark: F Cap.
THE PICTURESQUE TOUR
The Grand Tour, which gained popularity during the Restoration, required two conditions in order for it to flourish: a steady supply of moneyed, aristocratic young Englishmen in search of cultural enlightenment; and relative peace in those areas of the Continent – chiefly France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany – so that this leisured but studious travel could be safely undertaken. The less elevated had an option closer to home, and one increasingly adopted by their ‘betters’ after the French Revolution and its lengthy repercussions made European travel inadvisable: the Picturesque Tour.
¶ [PICTURESQUE TOUR]. Manuscript
Account of Seven Tours In England & Scotland.
[England & Scotland. Circa 1771-1783].
The notion of domestic travel as a cheaper, safer route to self-education took hold following the publication of William Gilpin’s Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty (1782). Gilpin’s conceit was to present scenes, using both prose and illustration, that promoted their suitability as subjects for painting by the amateur traveller – thereby providing “a new object of pursuit”, as he put it in this first of his series of books on the subject. The notion of picturesque tourism caught on – some of the most popular areas included the Scottish Highlands, the Lake District, and Snowdonia in Wales.
Folio (328 x 220 x 28 mm). Pagination 111, [5, blanks], 113, [19, blanks], 33, [35, blanks], 23, [25, blanks], plus 4 loosely inserted at end. Contemporary half calf, heavily rubbed and worn, front board detached.
Watermarks: the sections are written on different papers (see notes opposite).
Our anonymous author makes seven ‘tours’ of varying lengths, taking in the Midlands, the West Country, northern England and – in three separate tours –Scotland, to which he evidently takes an especial liking. He writes his accounts in epistolary form, explaining in his first letter that he is undertaking this “as you seem desirous of learning a more particular account of our late Journey than I could write you from the road” (p.1). Over one hundred pages later he concludes this first letter: “I write from memory, & […] I may have made some mistakes, but I hope not many, I have described things as they appear’d to me, I have always been particularly delighted with the great works of Nature” (p.110).
SCOTLAND
Our scribe is an observant, oftentimes critical author, clearly keen to demonstrate his cultural capital and confident – or wishing to seem so – of his opinions on matters of taste and judgement. For this first journey, he takes up his narrative in Northumberland, and immediately establishes a practice of orienting his path by referring to the owners of the estates he passes: “Sir Matthew Ridleys House” near Morpeth “seems a pretty place, Morpeth is in a Romantic agreeable situation on the woody Banks of a River”; from there to Alnwick “is nineteen miles of improved Country, & abounding with Gentlemens Houses … the most pleasing situation was Felton Bridge (Mrs Riddalls) it stands near a Small River & is well wooded. Mr Grieves’s is also a pretty looking Place” (pp.1-2).
A few pages later, they have reached Edinburgh, where our scribe relates the proceedings at “a Ball” attended by “a great deal of good company who deserv’d a better Room”. Ever the curious observer of local customs, he describes the interactions of those present and the quality of the entertainment, noting: “the managers always send a medal to some Lady of Fashion who is call’d Lady Directress for the time […] when the twelve Couples have danced they call one Country Dance […] they have a very good Band at the Concert & generally some Italian singer is engaged for the season” (pp.9-10). He is favourably impressed, too, by some of the shops, which are “plaister’d on the outside yellow, white red or some other Colour & then painted all over with figures of what they sell, the Bakers are particularly ingenious in this way, Cakes & Bread of all kinds covering all the front”
He finds himself less taken with the trappings of poverty, pronouncing extremely dirty”, while delivering an implied criticism of “the better ^sort”, observing of “their under maids” that many “go without shoes or stockings & generally wear Linen Gowns, Tuck’d through the Pocket Hole, which ^gives^ them a trolloping look” (pp.11-12). A richer environment, in every sense, greets him in “the Law Library” and nearby rooms where “they show you a Mummy & some other curiosities”, including “some manuscripts, some Drawings, & the Engravings of the Antiquities of Herculaneum in four volumes which the King of Naples sent them”. To complete the scene, we witness the fleeting appearance of “Mr Boswell […] who has made himself known by writing an account of Paoli, the brave but unfortunate General of the Corsicans” (pp.16-17) – this being, of course, James Boswell, whose book An account of Corsica, the journal of a tour to that island and memoirs of Pascal Paoli (1768) is among the earliest of Boswell’s travel writing.
Having encountered a few sights that score low against the criteria for the picturesque (including, “in the Anatomy School”, several “skeletons hanging over the seats” and “a muscular body, & several Limbs &c preserv’d in Spirits, which are really a sight to turn ones Stomach” (p.17), our guide brings his critical faculties to bear on Amisfield House, which Francis Charteris had had rebuilt in the Palladian style to a design by the English architect Isaac Ware. The exterior, however, fails to impress, being “a very Clumsy Building of Red stone with a Portico the same, & two white stone wings, all this does not prepossess you in its favour”. Inside is another story: he declares it “one of the best habitable Houses I ever saw […] I did
not see one Room that any body need scruple lying in, so perfectly well is the whole furnish’d, even the Garrets are Paper’d the drawing Room is hung with Brussels Tapestry” (p.21). At Hopeton House, he again makes a show of his discriminating eye, allowing that “there are some exceedingly fine Pictures”, but “some modern Portraits that are abominable” (p.23).
Thus our scribe proceeds, weighing the attractions of various locales with disdain (Dundee “seems very little to deserve the name of Bonny Dundee” (p.31)), and taking a supercilious view of certain landed types (“a Baronet who lives in the Old Town [of Aberdeen], insisted on showing us his Place, as he told us it was in a new taste which few People in that Country had done much in […] he seem’d so very much delighted with it himself, that I believe he had not time to find out that we were rather impatient to get out of it to see something much better worth our while” (pp.34-5)), but also noting points of interest beyond the purely scenic. Near Falkirk, he relates that they “stay’d a night to view the Iron there, which are the most extensive in great Britain, the cast Cannon for some foreign Potentates, & send great quantities of Vessels Sugar Plantations, the method of casting those Vessels is very curious, […] they burn all their Coals to Cinders, before they use them in the Foundary” (p.25).
OUR TRAVELLER
Our scribe gives away next to nothing about himself or the recipient of his letters, and it is only in the odd aside that we infer some very general background: he is travelling in company and is attended by at least a couple of servants (whose diet while near “Linlithgow Loch” includes “the largest & finest Perch I ever saw”, of which “our Servants had a great many dress’d for their Dinners” (p.44)). He delights in comparing one place with another (Warwick Castle “puts me in mind of Alnwick” (p.37)), and is clearly very taken with Scotland, as his return visits indicate: his comparisons of particular locations there over time are evocative of the ‘opening up’ of the Highlands to tourism, as we shall see.
As for his correspondent, they are certainly familiar with at least some of the places he visits; on his second journey (1778, 42 pages), an “intended Tour to Portsmouth &c” (which continues to Oxford, Stratford-onAvon, the Midlands and Wakefield), he tells his reader: “we went to Matlock & Buxton the Romantic Beauties of the former, & the dreary situation of the latter you know, so I will only mention that the Duke of Devonshire has a liberal Plan for the improvement of the latter” (p.41).
TOURISM ASCENDANT
After the living apparition of James Boswell in Edinburgh, our scribe encounters in Portsmouth the displayed remains of a famous saboteur executed the year before: “we saw John the Painter on a Gibbet on the shore between Portsmouth & Gosport, he was carried in a Cart before his execution to all the Places he had been the means of destroying”. (James Aitken (1752-1777), aka John the Painter, mounted an arson campaign in Royal Navy dockyards during the American Revolutionary War.) History, both recent and ancient, is a frequent ingredient in these narratives, no doubt as a consequence of being promoted by local guides – a key feature of what we have come to know as modern tourism. Thus, in Oxford, our scribe reports “a fine prospect” from the top of “Bodleian & Ratcliffe Libraries”, where “they pointed out to us the Spot, where the two Bishops, Cranmer & Ridley were burnt” (p.30). His three sections on Scotland make frequent reference to that century’s Jacobite rebellions, which, as historians such as R.W. Butler have pointed out, “indirectly helped to open the Highlands to visitors”, thanks to the government’s “attempts to improve communications and make it more possible to establish control in Scotland”.
Soon afterwards, he gives his impressions of Stratford, and particularly of Shakespeare’s house, where souvenirhunters and at least one famous champion of the Bard’s legacy have demonstrated other faces of tourism: having met the house’s current owner, “I observed that her Floors were almost dangerous to walk upon, she said it was true, but that Mr Garrick charged them to make no Alterations, she complain’d that People cut away Pieces of his ancient Chair that stands in the Chimney Corner” pp.35-36.
Our volume is as valuable for these contemporary observations of human behaviour as it is for the more Gilpinesque qualities of our scribe’s travelogue. Indeed, he exhibits certain traits of his era in many of his own scenic assessments: “prospects” and “views” are usually more valuable to him than practical function, and on his second journey he writes approvingly of measures at “Kedlestone” near Derby, where a village next to the estate has been “entirely taken away, which must be a great improvement for the Place […] the situation was not a good one till the alterations were made” (p.40).
IMPROVING EXPERIENCE
Our scribe’s two return journeys to Scotland (for some reason bound into the volume out of sequence) build a kind of narrative of their own, as he revisits places and sees signs of development and improvement. On his shorter “second expedition” in 1777, he pronounces himself “more pleas’d with Alnewick this year than I was six years ago […] partly from the situation being really improv’d, by the view of the new Bridge […] & by the Pains that has been taken to give the Lawn an uncommon fine verdure” (p.1).
1. Quoted in Hagglund, Betty, Tourists and Travellers: Women’s Non-fictional Writing about Scotland, 1770-1830. Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Channel View Publications, 2010. pp16-17.
His third Scottish journey abounds with both ruggedness and the presence of the modern landowners who are subduing the wilderness by degrees into something more picturesque and accessible. He describes a walk above the river Spey “surrounded with mountains of the most uncouth Shapes imaginable” (p.63), and some nearby woods “from thence to Inverdruie, are wild and romantic” (p.65); soon afterwards, he observes: “the Glen is so narrow that it has the apperance of a Rock divided by an Earthquake” (pp.66 -67), and the landscape around Loch Moy is “inexpressibly wild” (p.67). His view of the northward spread of ‘civilisation’ is sometimes ambiguous: he notes that “the Superstitions of the Highlanders are innumerable, but are wearing out by degrees as the more frequent communication with other Countries gives their ideas a different turn” (p.66) –whether with an undertone of regret is hard to determine.
The upgrades to access and aesthetics, however, are mostly reported approvingly: “the Duke of Athole has built a Bridge over the Rocks”, as well as “a little Temple on one of the neighbouring Mountains which makes a good object from this walk” (p.51); and “some arches have been thrown over Roads to make a communication between different parts of the Pleasure Grounds” (p.52). Inverness, meanwhile, “had a much better appearance than when I saw it before, there are really some improvements in it for travellers, the Gentlemen of the Town having built a very large & handsome Inn, it is not yet quite furnish’d, when it is, it will be the finest in the Country, it is also to serve for the Free Masons Lodge, of which there is one in almost every large Town”( p.68).
CONCLUSION
As the extracts above indicate, the picturesque is not our traveller’s sole concern – history, politics and human behaviour often pique his interest – but it serves as the chief motivation for his travels. The beginnings of mass tourism in the UK (especially Scotland) are glimpsed in this manuscript, whose author is by turns curious, intrepid, patronising, complacent and entertaining – in short, an early-modern forebear of a recognisable kind of modern tourist.
£3,750 Ref: 8281
THREE
¶ Magic, medicine, print, and manuscript are uniquely combined in this volume. Around the time of its publication, the purchaser – with a clear purpose in mind – had their new book bound up with additional leaves on which to extend Wesley’s already comprehensive text. They have added a 22-page index at the end which treats the printed and manuscript remedies as one continuous text, creating a unified medical resource.
Wesley published the first edition of his Primitive Physick in 1747. He included over 800 remedies to treat nearly 300 disorders, and our industrious scribe has more than doubled this. As with Wesley’s material, most conditions merit only one or two remedies, but exceptions include “Jaundice”, “Menses obstructed”, and “Worms”, which have four each; and no fewer than nine each for “Rheumatism” and “Venereal Disease”.
There are panaceas such as “Canada Balsam” (p.256) and “Scots Pills” (p.258), and the even more general “Balsam of Life”, a concoction comprising “Gum Benjamin”, “Camphire”, “Storax”, “Balsom Peru”, and “Dragans Blood” of which they claim “I know none like it for aither Man or beast” (p.239). More specific treatments include one for “Women Rupter’d or a Bearing down” (p.266); remedies for scurvy (“Roasted Eggs ^the yock fresh Butter made into an Ointment Anoint the Head with this once a Day without ever washing it” (p.336)) and a “cure” for “A shittering Cow” (p.273).
¶ WESLEY, John (1703-1791). Primitive Physic: or, an easy and natural method of curing most diseases [bound with] contemporary manuscript book of remedies.
London: Printed for Hawes, Clarke, and Collins. 1796. Manuscript: Circa 1796.
Duodecimo (158 x 90 x 18 mm). 120 p., with 139 manuscript pages on 72 additional leaves bound at the end. Some errors in the page numbering.
Contemporary sheep, rubbed but sound, text heavily used, soiled and dusty, some tears and repairs, one manuscript leaf torn, with loss to lower half of page.
Provenance: ownership stamped initials “I B” to lower margin of title, 20th century bookplate of Terence H. Aldridge to paste-down.
Attributions are few, but some remedies have apparently been tested (“Probatom”) and even deemed “Infalible”. A “Dr Cook”’s cure for “Blindness” (p.271), requires the patient to “Shave the top of the Head size of a Crown Piece and beat the Yock of an Egg with Salt to a stiff past bind it on the top of the Head 1 Day the 2d Day repeat the same atop of the other and also the 3d Day after which take of the whole and dress it as a Blister”. This is improbably annotated: “Probatom”.
There are eccentric or plain inadvisable remedies, such as one of several for “Venerial Desease” which prescribes a “Solution of Mercury” (p.294) but recommends avoiding “Asids”. A concoction “To make Hair grow” supposedly works “in any part of the Body even the Palm of the hand” (p.278). Afflictions such as “Outward Piles” can be discharged with a mixture of “Gun powder” and “Hogs Lard” (p.284); and “Pulvis Fulminans or Thundering Powder” (p.259) seems not to relieve any condition, but “great will be the explotion”.
Unusually for a text from this period, a belief in magic seems to persist. Among several incantations, one invokes the symbolic power of blood in Christianity: “Blood to stop –When Adam die’d his Blood run chill. when Christ die’d his Blood was spilt A. B. J. Adjure thee in the name of Fathar Son and Holy Ghost to flow no more. repeat 3 times” (p.279); and sympathetic magic is invoked in “Bleeding at the Nose to stop –With the same blood Write the following word on their forehead Conxumatumes” (p.245). The material and the magical combine in “Blood to stop” (p.284): “Bruse Vitriol grease sise of a Nut put it in a Clout let the Pati[ent] (smudged) Bleed a drop or 2 into in it then burn it in the fire”. For burns, rather than cold water, the patient should instead repeat the following mantra: “Two Angils came from the East the one brought Fire the other Frost” three times “with your Hand on the place” (p.280).
Witches, too, apparently persisted as a problem in the late 18th century. For “Witchcraft evil speaking &c Charms” you must “Put in your Hat […] a little Earth thrown up by a Mouldwarp, this is a certain cure” (p.245). “Cattle Witched” requires something more complicated: you should “Take 7 Sprigs of Rice 9 Sprigs of a Wickin that does not bear berries ge the Wicken before the Sun rise […] say the Lords prayer while getting the wickin & boiling &c a friday morning is best to give the Cow”.
Wesley believed that only physical and spiritual health combined could make for healthy people, and our scribe clearly also subscribed to this view, although the distinction between the spiritual and the magical – never entirely cleared up to everyone’s satisfaction – is especially blurry in some of these remedies. Our hybrid volume is both impressive in its comprehensiveness and illuminating in its suggestion that magical belief co-existed with the new orthodoxies of medicine for longer than we sometimes assume.
£1,650 Ref: 8279
¶ A clandestine child marriage, abduction at pistol point, bribery, bigamy, political corruption, royal debts, a wastrel aristocrat, and an extended court case the affair of Bridget Hyde combined these and other elements to produce a remarkable 17 showed the darker side of the English Restoration. It was, according to the poet Andrew Marvell, “a detestable and most ignominious story”.
This voluminous manuscript work belonged to the family whose son found himself in the dock. It gives a detailed contemporary account of the Bridget Hyde case, which speaks volumes about attitudes to women in early modern English society. The woman at the centre of this vortex was one of the inspirations for (1682), a play by Hyde’s contemporary Aphra Behn.2
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
Mis Bridget Hyde, A young, wealthy heiress, married at the age of 12 in a clandestine marriage with John Emerton, is involved in a protracted legal case, is kidnapped at gun point, becomes pregnant by Viscount Dunblane, elopes to a secret wedding, dies in poverty.
Lady Mary Hyde, Bridget’s mother. Dies when Bridget is 12 years old, gives posthumous testimony (mediated by the Emertons) of her wishes for her daughter.
Sir Robert Vyner, Bridget’s stepfather. Goldsmith and banker; Lord Mayor of London. Motivated by financial self-interest, he mishandles his stepdaughter’s legal case.
John Emerton At age 15, he marries his cousin, Bridget Hyde, in a clandestine ceremony, a marriage contested by Sir Robert and the Earl of Danby, vehemently defends his marital rights in court, exits following financial settlement.
Sara Emerton Lady Mary’s sister, Bridget’s aunt, and mother of John. Together with her husband, William, choreographs the wedding of 12-year-old Bridget to her son John.
Susan Emerton Lady Mary’s sister, Bridget’s aunt. Together with her husband, Richard, choreographs the wedding of 12-year-old Bridget to her son John.
Viscount Dunblane Second son of Danby, marries Bridget in secret, enjoys marital bliss, becomes a rake, squanders Bridget’s fortune.
Earl of Danby Lord Treasurer, father of Viscount Dunblane, while locked in the Tower on charges of impeachment, takes control of Bridget’s legal case after Sir Robert’s mishandling.
SCENE, The Court of Delegates, London, and Swakeleys, Hertfordshire.
AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE
Some of the details of this extraordinary case are still disputed, particularly where the agency of its main subject –and that of her mother – are concerned. We present an outline here, before illustrating some of the ways in which our manuscript offers points of departure from the generally rendered version of events.
Bridget Hyde (1662-1734) was the daughter of Lady Mary (d. 1674) and Sir Thomas Hyde (c. 1597-1665). They lived at Swakeleys, Hertfordshire. Lady Mary’s two sisters, Sara and Susan, were not as socially successful; they married the brothers William and Richard Emerton (respectively) who worked as bailiffs on the Hyde estate.
As an only child, Bridget was to become heiress to a large fortune, and consequently a pawn in the machinations of her adult relatives. Soon after the death of her father, Bridget acquired a stepfather in the form of Mary’s second husband, Sir Robert Vyner.
¶ [HYDE, Bridget (1662-1734); later Duchess of Leeds] Manuscript Record of a Remarkable 17th-Century Legal Case.
[London. Circa 1677]. Folio (357 x 220 x 85 mm). Pagination [4, blanks], 306 [4 inserted pages, each numbered 306], 307-696 [4 inserted pages, each numbered 696], 697-935, [9, blanks], [4, index], [1, blank], [1, table of contents].
Vyner was a goldsmith and chief banker to Charles II. He lent large sums of money to the Crown, but the King had frozen repayments, and as a result, Vyner had to secure debts against monies owed to him. Fortune seemed to have smiled when Vyner was approached by Lord Danby, seeking a match for his second son, Viscount Dunblane. Vyner’s stepdaughter Bridget was heir to a substantial estate, and Dunblane had a title. This quid pro quo manoeuvre was especially appealing to Vyner, who hoped Lord Danby would use his influence to speed up the monarch’s debt repayments.
In 1674, Lady Mary became seriously ill and moved to their London home, leaving Bridget at Swakeleys in the care of her aunts Sara and Susan. With Lady Mary indisposed and Bridget in their care, her aunts arranged for Bridget to marry her to one of her Emerton cousins, thereby keeping the Hyde fortune in the family.
Contemporary blind-ruled vellum, rubbed and wear to corners, some soiling, occasional minor marks to text, overall very good original condition.
Provenance: By indirect descent from the Emerton family, via the Byron and later the Seymour families, at Thrumpton Hall, Nottinghamshire.
There are conflicting accounts of exactly what happened next. It was asserted during the court case that Bridget’s aunts tricked her into a kind of marriage (“this p[re]tended marriage” as Sir Robert Vyner called it), or that she was intimidated by her aunts and felt coerced into agreeing to a ceremony whose significance was beyond the 12-year-old girl.
But, as we note below, the Emertons swore under oath that both Lady Mary and Bridget were party to their plans; indeed, in their evidence recorded in this manuscript, they even assert that Bridget insisted not on a match with her elder cousin William supposedly the more eligible but with the younger John, who had neither money nor property.
Lady Mary died in December 1674, so whether or not she knew of her daughter’s marriage is a secret she took to her grave. But her husband was soon apprised of the information and received the news of the marriage with fury. Bridget, now in London, was returned to her stepfather’s care, and the case went to court.
The Emertons in their testimony attempted to prove two things: the validity of the marriage; and John Emerton’s right to her property. Jean Davis, in her pamphlet entitled The Pretended Marriage, sums up the proofs submitted on behalf of John Emerton at the King’s Bench as resting “on three salient points: that both Lady Vyner and her daughter Bridget were determined upon a marriage between Bridget and John Emerton; that the girl was of marriageable age; and that the ceremony was suitably performed, witnessed and consummated.”3
Marriageable she may have been, but it was apparently felt necessary to supplement this simple legal fact with evidence of the involvement of Bridget’s mother, most likely to circumvent any arrangements subsequently made between Vyner and Danby. Perhaps this is why the Emertons in their statements emphasised that the Lady Mary had devised the whole plan to be carried out in her absence.
The case went first to the Court of Delegates, which declared in favour of Bridget’s marriage to Emerton and awarded him temporary possession of her property while the morality of the case was being tested in the Court of Arches. Bridget immediately lodged an appeal and the case dragged on for some eight years, becoming first a cause célèbre and then a full-blown scandal with elements of farce.
RUCTIONS AND ABDUCTIONS
While the legality of her marriage was being debated, several attempts were made to kidnap Bridget. The most notorious bid was carried out in 1678 while she was as Swakeleys, when Vyner’s supper guest, Cornet Henry Wroth, kidnapped her at gunpoint. She was soon found and returned safely, but Wroth’s motives remain a mystery: he had no known connection to the Emertons, and was apparently pardoned by the king.
The marriage ceremony was said to have been conducted by the minister John Brandly (or Brandling). Lord Danby subsequently had Brandly abducted and tried to bribe him into denying that he had conducted Bridget’s marriage ceremony. Danby had a reputation for bribery or simply riding roughshod over opponents; in this instance, his actions formed part of charges of impeachment, and in 1679 he was locked in the Tower.4 With time on his hands, and despairing of Vyner’s efforts, he took command of the case, and probed the credibility of Emerton’s witnesses. The Emertons were said to be Anabaptists, as was one of their prime witnesses, Anne Glasscock, who had been promised a promotion if the case went in favour of the Emertons.5 Danby also questioned the validity of a marriage of such close relations, especially as there were rumours that John Emerton’s mother, Sarah, was once Sir Thomas Hyde’s mistress.
Despite his efforts, in July 1680 the Court of Delegates, which consisted of many of Danby’s enemies, upheld the marriage of Bridget with Emerton. Nonetheless, Lord Danby was still determined that Bridget should marry his son, Viscount Dunblane. However, in April 1682, Dunblane took matters into his own hands and eloped with Bridget, this time willing (and now aged around 20) to St Marylebone Church for a clandestine marriage.
Abduction and bigamy transformed a cause célèbre into a full-blown scandal. In an act of face-saving, Danby offered the Emertons 20,000 guineas to withdraw their claim, and April 1683, the Court of Delegates reversed its decision and declared the Hyde-Emerton marriage null and void.
17th-CENTURY LITERATURE AND GOSSIP
As these events played out in the public realm, they were bound to attract attention, whether considered, prurient or satirical. Bridget’s familial and social connections, and her importance as a ‘prize’ in the contemporary marriage market (being an heiress of both land and capital reputedly worth £100,000) made her a focus of fascination, all the more because of her being a woman – and an aristocrat to boot.
Andrew Marvell was among those to mention the case in his letters; longer treatments included an anonymous account of her abduction entitled A relation from the Old-Bayly, of the tryal and condemnation of the persons who the 21th day of July last, made that barbarous attempt upon Mrs. Bridget Hyde, near Uxbridge (1678), and a pamphlet by the lawyer, Thomas Hunt (1627?-1688), Mr. Emmertons marriage with Mrs. Bridget Hyde considered (1682). The Hyde case, and similar ones during this period that ensued as a familiar result of inheritance and the lack of a male heir, were topically satirised in Aphra Behn’s drama The City-Heiress (1682).6 According to Robert Markley “In The City Heiress,
Behn brilliantly stages the comic struggles of her characters to come to terms with their cynical participation in social rituals that mirror those of fashionable Restoration society: her heroes and heroines recognize that they, like the audience, are complicit in the very practices and beliefs that frustrate their desires.”7 The topical references to Hyde’s protracted case, which ended the year Behn’s play was performed, would not have been lost on
EXTANT MANUSCRIPTS
In contrast to these very public events, Bridget Hyde’s household manuscript of recipes and remedies compiled between 1676 and 1690 is preserved at the Wellcome Library (MS.2990). It is, according to the catalogue description, a folio volume of around 240 pages: “The first part is mainly concerned with cookery receipts, in the second there are many medical receipts, household remedies, cordial waters, etc”.8
Records of the legal proceedings are extant in different forms: Lambeth Palace holds a copy of the case notes for the Court of Arches (Arches Eee 5 ff. 713-757. Microfilm: Lambeth Palace Library. MS Film 150); the British Library holds letters and documents (Egerton MS 3384, 3390; Add MS 28050, 28051, 28072), as well as records of the Court of Delegates at the National Archives, Kew (DEL 1/146 and DEL 8/76). Our manuscript volume is similar to the documents at the National Archives. However, their records contain sections of the case written at different times, and in varying degrees of completion, whereas our volume collects and collates the relevant material into a single volume and includes substantial material that does not appear to be in the other extant manuscripts. It also has the distinction of being the Emerton family’s own copy.
OUR MANUSCRIPT
This material was drawn together by a contemporary (aided by several legal scribes) into a large folio volume which runs to well over 900 pages, including an index. The transcripts that form part of it ostensibly confound the notion that Bridget’s mother was ignorant of the wedding. The testimonies offered by the Emertons suggest that she was herself enmeshed in a marriage plan hatched by her aunts – but they needed to show that the marriage had the consent of daughter and mother alike. Since the latter was now dead, she was unable to refute their story.
In laying out the case, the Emertons’ counsel asserted that “Mr Wm Emerton and Mis Sarah Emerton his wife” were aware of “the constant desires of the said Sister to have a marryage completed betweene her sayd daughter and one of their ^said^ sonns” (p.18). There was supposedly even a discussion as to “how much a Younger brother was beneath such a Match as the said Mis Bridgett ^Hyde^ would be”, but the account restates that the Emertons noted “that the sayd Lady Vyner and her sayd daughter were both willing and desirous” (p.18). Mary Vyner is also cited as having wished to “putt another Coachman and other servants to attend upon her sayd daughter that the sayd businesse might bee the lesse Suspected for shee did much desire to keepe it Secret as long as shee could from her sayd husband Sr Robert” (p.21). Her parting words to Bridget before returning to London are reported to have been “Farewell Bride goe along with your Aunte and bee marryed and then come to London as soone as you will or words to that effect” (p.21).
Despite their young age, Bridget and John were “both Sufficiently capable of the Lawes of this nation to contract and give their consent in marriage” (p.28). But there is no escaping the suspicion that this rendition of the deceased Lady Mary’s actions and utterances might amount to posthumous ventriloquism on the part of the Emertons, who were keen to establish that the now silent mother had not just willingly given her consent, but even encouraged a match between the two young people.
Furthermore, the ceremony itself was conducted in subterfuge: it was determined that “the sayd marryage should bee solemnized in the passage betweene Swakeley and Albury and that some person should carry the Coachman and Servants to some house thereabouts to drinke, dureing the time of ye Solemnizacon, that soe they might have ye Lesse opportunity to observe or suspect what was doeing” (p.22). This seems at odds with the assertions that Bridget was “willing and desirous”, and that these nuptials were all above board.
Our manuscript relates that the secret union was kept from Bridget’s stepfather for several months: Bridget is reported to have visited her mother on her deathbed, and after the latter’s passing, “the said Sr Robert Vyner hath been informed & heard of the marriage aforesaid”, at which he “very seriously Examined and asked the said Mis Bridgett his daughter in Law whether shee was really marryed to the said Mr John Emerton and shee the said Mis Bridgett did absolutely declare and acknowledge unto him shee was marryed”. In response, “Sr Robert Vyner … told her shee had ruined ^or undone^ her selfe in her fortunes and p[re]ferments unlesse this p[re]tended marriage could bee made void and null” (p.38-9).
The Emertons took the case to the Court of Delegates in 1674, but despite Sir Robert’s fury, he did not offer any defence at the original trial, apparently believing that nothing would be decided until it had passed through the Court of Arches. He was wrong: the judgement was almost unanimously in favour of the marriage. A retrial was obtained in 1676, and as Davis writes, “In all, five Commissions were to be granted, for each of which new Delegates were appointed”.9 This may account for certain differences detectable in the extant accounts.
The records in the National Archive are contained in DEL 1/146 (a small folio of written-up records, in a 19thcentury binding), and DEL 8/76 (two volumes bound in contemporary limp vellum, folded). These documents are in a quite different order to our volume, and Bridget’s responses seem to conflate her four replies into a single answer, whereas our slightly later volume offers a much fuller rendering of her four answers:
“Mis Bridgetts Answer to Mr John Emertons first Allegac[on] – 847”
“Mis Bridgett Answer to his Second Allegation – 847”
“Mis Bridgetts answer to his 3d All[egati]on – 855”
“Mis Bridgetts answer to his 4th All[egati]on – 858”
She refutes the notion that there was ever any intimacy between herself and her cousins, insisting that her interactions with the Emerton brothers were solely cordial, and when she “did sevlly converse wth either of them at such times as she was in ye company of either of them in the Matter of ordinary conversation but not concerning any Love or affection nor anything tending thereunto or otherwise” (p.848). In this, as in most of her replies to the Emertons’ allegations, she closes with a phrase along the lines that “she doth not believe this p[re]tensed position to be true”.
As to the ceremony itself (annotated in the margin “ye Mock marriage”), she swears that she was deceived: “Sara Emerton haveing a Booke in her hand did abt some short time happening before ye first of octobr 1674 speaking ye p[re]sence of this R[esp]ondents footboy & one of her Aunt Emertons Maydes say ye words”. On the next page (annotated the margin “Bridgett told at Swakeley yt she was to be Married yt day”) she recounts a series of events, suggesting she was coerced into “ye p[re]tensed Marriage in question” as she “was in & under the power of her Aunt Sara & Susan Emerton who told her she must goe to be Married to her Cousen John [but] this R[es]pondent trying & refusing it they urged & told her she must goe or else her Mother would not abide her and upon their urgeing & importunity she tho much agt her will yeilded to goe wth them not dareing to gainsay them who carried a sharp & seveere hand over her & used to terryfie her”.
EPILOGUE
Dunblane’s squandering of Bridget’s inheritance makes for a sorry postscript to the whole affair. His military exploits – which included “pursuing a naval career with flamboyance” – seem to have gone hand in hand with his “riotous living and wanton extravagance” in both France and England; and after his debts mounted beyond the estate’s ability to settle them, Danby “sent £100 to his daughter-in-law and apologised for his son’s behaviour”.10 Further costly legal trouble arose when a mistress of Dunblane’s claimed that he had bigamously married her, and Danby, again showing solicitude, “sent her instructions on how to act if the bailiffs seized her property”.11 Dunblane continued his downward trajectory, styling himself the first Duke of Leeds but missing out on his father’s inheritance owing to estrangement and instead becoming reliant on his son, Peregrine Hyde Osborne, for support.
Bridget died penniless in 1733, four years after her husband; her final title of dowager Duchess of Leeds was likely cold comfort indeed.
As to our manuscript – multi-faceted enough to qualify as a virtual character in its own right – it has been in the possession of the Emertons’ descendants at Thrumpton Hall, Nottinghamshire. John Emerton (1685-1745) acquired Thrumpton Hall in the 1690s, and presumably brought this manuscript with him. The house was inherited by a nephew, John Wescomb Emerton, who resided at Thrumpton until his death in 1823, then by Lucy Wescomb (1822–1912), who married George Byron, 8th Baron Byron (1818-1870). It passed to the 9th– and then to the 10th – Baron Byron, who married into the Fitzroy family, who in turn married into the Seymour family in whose possession the house still remains.
References:
1. Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678). The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell: 1672-1673. Edited by Annabel M. Patterson, Martin Dzelzainis. (2003). p.463.
2. Behn, Aphra (1640-1689). The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Aphra Behn. Volume IV. Plays 1682-1696. Edited by Rachel Adcock. (2021). p.10.
3. Davis, Jean. The Pretended Marriage. (1976). p.18.
4. Allen, David. “Bridget Hyde and Lord Treasurer Danby’s Alliance with Lord Mayor Vyner”. Guildhall Studies in London History. Volume 2. (1972).
5. Davis. Ibid. (p.26).
6. Behn. Ibid. (p.10).
7. Markley, Robert. “Aphra Behn’s “The City Heiress”: Feminism and the Dynamics of Popular Success on the Late Seventeenth-Century Stage”. Comparative Drama. Volume 47. No. 2. (2007).
8. <https://wellcomecollection.org/works/jsy2hhm6>
9. Davis. Ibid. (p.19).
10. Davis. Ibid. (p35).
11. Davis. Ibid. (p36).
12. Adcock. Ibid. (p.1).
The Emerton family’s image fares poorly in these pages. But as noted above, the ruling went in their favour, and they received a handsome financial settlement to withdraw from the legal proceedings. Hence the manuscript, with all its dramatic contents, could rest quietly on the shelves of their fine Jacobean house.
CONCLUSION
Despite the undoubted importance of this case, no full-length study has yet been attempted. In the brief written accounts, several points of ambiguity remain; in view of this, our manuscript offers perhaps the most detailed and comprehensive contemporary account, complete with its ambiguities and competing claims to truth.
Rachel Adcock remarks that Aphra Behn’s The City Heiress raises “questions about such politically contentious issues” as “arbitrary rule, force, and consent”.12 Her words could also serve as a summary of our manuscript formerly the property of the Emerton family which captures the complex interplay of vested interests, class tensions, misogyny, deception and underhandedness that characterises the Hyde and Emerton case.
£27,500 Ref: 8273
¶ The embittered blackmailing of a rejected Queen; the scandal that ‘threatened to blow the roof off the Nunnery’ by revealing the secret, lascivious goings-on of George III’s locked-up daughters; disastrous royal marriages; incendiary writings from secret sources; hush money and century-long political cover-ups as panic swept through the corridors of power… It all sounds like ripe fodder for a sensationalist, bestselling story. And that is exactly what Captain Thomas Ashe produced, in two forms: a hefty novel, and this extraordinary manuscript poem.
Ashe’s two very different versions of The Claustral Palace are among several gleefully prurient revelatory pieces he wrote about the Hanoverian royals over half a decade, as the nation keenly followed the conflicts between George, Prince of Wales, and his wife, Caroline of Brunswick. But where many of Ashe’s other sordidly detailed (often epistolary) writings ran to several editions by dint of their popularity (for example, The Spirit of the Book (1812) and its abridgement, The Spirit of the Spirit)1, this early verse rendition of The Claustral Palace Ashe’s was, like its subsequent ‘novelisation’, quickly seized by government agents, suppressed and remained unpublished.
Our manuscript is literary testament to a powerful union between Ashe, an Irish army officer and writer, and Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick-Wolfenbuettel – the estranged wife of King George IV – to whom Ashe became a ghostwriter2. Not long after the ‘ideal’ match between the two royal first cousins was forged in 1795, the marriage deteriorated, and the king’s supporters made Caroline a political scapegoat. A growing sense of powerlessness, of being used, and of ignominy at being officially investigated, pushed “the injured Queen of England” (as the inscription on her coffin described her) to use the only weapon at her disposal: access to the royal family’s greatest and dirtiest of secrets.
Ashe, similarly, deployed his high-society connections and interactions to feed his penchant for writing blackmailing novels and satirical journalism. Through his relationship with Queen Caroline, he recognised a monarchy in decline, a state of affairs that offered ample storytelling material – not to mention financial opportunity through a bit of wellwritten blackmail.
Britain was in a vulnerable position thanks to a perfect political storm created by the French Revolution, an unfair Royal Marriages Act challenging the succession, and the King’s escalating mental illness. As an anxious George III confined Queen Charlotte and their six unmarried daughters at Frogmore House, scandalous rumours began to fly about their reclused lives. There were whiffs of politically unacceptable romantic dalliances, violent disagreements, fatal attractions and even venereal diseases – a goldmine of outrages from which Ashe forged the contents of The Claustral Palace.
Ashe’s verse manuscript is an intriguing companion piece to his novel. From the very outset, there are several marked differences between this earlier poetic version of The Claustral Palace (written circa 1811) and the 1812 manuscript of the same name. The latter is a three-volume “political romance” set in Denmark, and narrated via the epistolary form (Ashe’s preferred device for evoking the power and vulnerability of letters when used as blackmail),3 whereas our manuscript is a 64-page poetic piece; the novel bears Ashe’s name on the title page, along with an epigram about “Wedlock forced” (from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part I), but the title page of our
This verse work invokes one of the greats of classical literature in its subtitle: “An Ovidian & Political Poem”. Below it are reproduced the lines “Dicique beautus / Ante obitum memo, supremaque funera debet” (“True happiness or fortune cannot be determined until a person’s life is fully complete”) – a sentiment found in the works of Herodotus and in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The manuscript is dedicated to Princess Charlotte, the only child of King George IV and Caroline of Brunswick, who in turn is acclaimed as “her Royal Highness’s most persecuted & most Illustrious Mother” – a more personalised opening than that to the novel. As the poem begins, we find ourselves not in Denmark but in England, near “proud Windsora”, our eyes (and ears) quickly drawn to “A stately Palace [that] rises to the sight… From this, from that, from ev’ry quarter rise / Loud shouts, and sullen groans, & dreadful doleful sighs; / Heartrending plaints demand the pitying ear, / And tales of hideous portent shock the ear”.
References:
1. Travers, James, A Blackmailer at Frogmore: The Adventures of Queen Charlotte’s Ghost, Amberley Publishing (2022), p. 13.
2. Ibid., p. 13.
3. Ibid,. p. 117
4. Although Ashe claimed four volumes for his novel, only three have come down to us (TNA TS 17/1388) and there is no sign it is not complete. Volume three ends with the death of Amelia which must have been only months before the novel was written and there is a flourished ‘Finis’ on the final page which does not appear on the final page of the other volumes. (James Travers, email correspondence.)
5. Ashe, Thomas, Memoirs and Confessions of Captain Ashe, Vol. III (1815) pp. 147-148.
6. Redding, Cyrus, Fifty Years’ Recollections, Literary and Personal, Vol. III, London (1858), pp. 63-64.
It is with these mock-classical – if not downright melodramatic – tones that the two texts (novel and poem) begin to align, as both quickly dive into the sinister gothic undertones of popular sensationalist literature of the period. In the earlier part of our poetic manuscript, “Mad” King George appears as “A Shiv’ring Monarch [who] keeps his awful Court”; his wife, Queen Charlotte, “a Witch to Avarice assign’d”. The melodrama ripens, as “fragrant sighs”, “plaintive cooings”, and “swelling breasts” pervade the poem, and Ashe contemplates the princesses behind the walls. His sympathy towards “the blest Nymphs, whom rural graves confine” reaches exclamatory heights in the third part, echoing Homeric invocations of the Muse: “Oh, World! Oh, Fortune! Vainly ‘tis your charm, / Against the Conqueror, Death, there’s none can charm”. But beneath this overblown and brutal imagery lies reference to the very real and pitiless Royal Marriages Act (which Ashe’s novel also uses explicitly to lend coherence and topicality to his narrative), trapping the princesses in both texts and making a gothic horror show of their fate. On this grave note, Ashe offers his final thought in the poem: “As / None happy call, in this uncertain state / Death only sits us safe beyond the reach of fate”. The predicament of the royal children is clear. Ashe’s Memoirs and Confessions (1815) speak frankly of his “most deplorable state of poverty” and the “spirit of avarice and ambition” that led him to write his salacious literature: “I had no treasure but my talents; no instrument
but my pen… I sat down, and, in the course of three months, composed a large work in four volumes,4 entitled, ‘The Claustral Palace; or Memoirs of the Family’.” He goes on: “I received several proposals respecting it, and was visited by several violent characters from London… I closed with the offer of a Mr. C , and sold half of my copyright for the sum of seven hundred pounds. Mr. C was to print and publish at his cost, and give me half the profits, clear of all demands.” 5 Did Ashe ever intend, as with his suppressed novel version of The Claustral Palace, to publish the earlier poem? The 18th-century journalist, Cyrus Redding, wrote of Ashe as “a notorious scoundrel” who “wrote false memoirs of living people, to get paid for their suppression. One of these, I remember, was ‘Memoirs of the Countess of Berkeley’; another was called ‘The Claustral Palace’” 6. Perhaps our poetic manuscript, which has been folded as though for posting, or for just carrying around, had only ever been meant as a handedover warning? Perhaps the desperate Ashe, spurred on by the success of The Spirit of the Book, decided to put aside this earlier poetic version and exercise his ‘talent’ further by extending it into another Hanoverian hit novel? Neither possibility necessarily accounts for the contemporary morocco binding.
Ashe knew its power to rock the already unstable royal politics of the period – a power confirmed by the government’s actions taken upon its discovery. Its suppression, and the small ink stamp to the title page (possibly that of Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, second son of George III), marked its value as a work for safe keeping and not to be taken lightly.
Our manuscript complements not only its later novel version but Thomas Ashe’s related papers in the National Archives at Kew. The poem abounds with fantastical Gothic imagery and intrigue, but its impression of blackmail dressed up as literature is all too real, and gives a flavour of the kind of unsavoury profiteering that attended the crisis-ridden Hanoverian dynasty.
£2,000 Ref: 8241
¶ These letters were written during the American Revolutionary War by a key figure in the British government: the fourth Earl of Sandwich, a highly gifted and industrious figure who, as first lord of the Admiralty, helped to transform the British Navy during this important period of Anglo-American history. The correspondence brims with the day-by-day business – large and small – of managing a maritime fleet that had yet to reach the strength required of a nation with a growing empire. The recipient of these letters shared with their author both a friendship and a bruising experience of the political machinations of their era.
The politician and statesman John Montagu, fourth earl of Sandwich, began his ministerial career in 1744 as a member of the Admiralty board under the patronage of the Duke of Bedford, where he was instrumental in reforming many aspects of the navy, from training and discipline to ship design and dockyard management. His debut as a diplomat at the Breda peace talks in 1746, and his deft manoeuvres during the framing of the resulting treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, left his more seasoned contemporaries impressed.
Almost concurrently, he became first lord of the Admiralty, but his determination to intensify the reform of the navy, particularly its management practices, proved unpopular and led to his dismissal in 1751. He briefly returned to the post in 1763, then began a third stint in 1771, this time meeting with greater success in reforming the dockyards and increasing the navy’s shipbuilding capacity. Our collection of letters dates from this third term, which coincided with the British response to the American Revolution, and all of the correspondence is concerned with naval matters – the greater portion of it relating to the American colonies.
¶ [SANDWICH, John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792)]. Twenty-four Autograph Letters and Notes.
[Circa 1774-81]. Folded for posting (240 x 375 mm unfolded). Address panels, some seals intact. 23 letters, each signed “Sandwich”; all but one headed “Hinchingbrook” (i.e. Hinchingbrooke House, Huntingdon, formerly the home of the Earls of Sandwich), and one letter signed by Captain Hugh Dalrymple.
Watermarks: Fleur-de-lis in shield, surmounted by crown, GR, over a bell, (Strasbourg lily), lettered “JUBB” in bell, others lettered “LVG”.
NB: despite writing over 20 years after the introduction of the new calendar style, Sandwich rather eccentrically dates his letters according to the pre-1750 calendar; Jackson, however, when
Two of the letters have an integral address panel addressed to “George Jackson Esqr.”; this, we assume, is Sir George Jackson, 1st Baronet. (1725-1822), deputy secretary of Admiralty and first clerk of the marine department between 1766 and 1782 – and a friend of Montagu’s.
Jackson entered the Navy Office as a junior clerk in 1743 and progressed steadily upwards, until in the late 1760s he transferred to the Admiralty to become second secretary to the board and first clerk of the marine department. Around this time he was also appointed judge advocate of the fleet – a position that, alongside his friendship with Sandwich, eventually cost him dear, thanks to what has come to be known as “the Keppel-Palliser affair” – a court martial apparently rooted in political animosity. All but one of these letters from Sandwich to Jackson predate the Keppel Palliser affair; docketing does not. In our transcriptions we have used the ‘new style’ date shown on Jackson’s docket.
Numbering in square brackets below refers to our sequencing of the letters. A complete transcript of the entire collection is available on request.
Provenance: formerly in the privatecollection of the Montague family.
SHIPS
A good deal of the correspondence conveys instructions relating to the disposition of ships: in the first letter, dated “Dec. 30. 1774”, Sandwich writes (with a note of urgency that becomes the norm in the dispatches that follow): “I must desire that orders be immediately given for the Romney to be fitted for a voyage to Newfoundland, and to receive a Commodore; she is now in the dock & will soon be put out which makes it necessary that these orders be given without loss of time.” Other vessels mentioned in the early letters include “the Active” (which he considers “a proper ship to be sent to America” [3]); “the Cygnet” ( which, if nearly ready, Sandwich decides “may as well be commissioned as her captain will be getting men”); and in the same letter, “the Rainbow” (which he also wishes to commission “without loss of time”, and orders “Sir George Collier be appointed to command her, and Michael Hindman to be her second Lieutenant.” [5]).
At times the ships’ names come thick and fast, as Sandwich directs them around various portions of a particularly complicated chessboard, balancing strategic priorities with other considerations. On “Dec: 26. 1775”, “The Fox & Greyhound must be kept for North America, as their Captains have particularly requested that voyage,
In the same letter (“Dec: 26. 1775”), the moving of pieces continues, as Sandwich approves Jackson’s suggestion of “docking the Romney Surprize & Martin, & sending the Alborough immediately to Gibraltar”, noting that “If we are pressed for seamen for any of our outward bound ships we might take a few from the Surprize & Martin, & possibly a few more from the Romney.” [6]
HUMAN RESOURCES
This last comment hints at the serious manpower issues that compounded the problems of an underprepared fleet; the matter arises several times elsewhere, with Sandwich, at the urging of Sir Hugh Palliser, sanctioning “a bounty” to attract “voluntier Seamen, and I think able bodied landmen should allso be included […] You will therefore put this matter into proper execution without loss of time.” (“Dec: 26. 1775”) [5]. In a letter soon thereafter, he cites a remark from “Admiral Graves” that “the ships of his squadron are in great want of Marines”, and asks Jackson to
supernumerary private Marines”, to be reassigned “to such ships […] as are most in want of them.” Each Admiral concerned should also continue his practice of “taking out the private marines from all the ships he sends home, and adding them to the Battalions on shore till they are compleated to 500 private each.” (“Dec: 30. 1775”) [9]
Sandwich seems again to be weighing urgent priorities against other considerations when, despite the need for personnel, he declares: “I cannot agree to receive any of the apprentices or men who have been expelled from the yards for their late misbehaviour, these examples will hereafter make their masters more attentive to keeping them to their duty.” [7] In other, often more senior cases, he makes a different call: responding to “Lieut: Duncansons” request for a “leave of absence”, he decrees that “Marine Officers are so much wanted, and their numbers since the augmentation to 80 per company so inadequate to the services required from them that I can by no means agree [5]
Everywhere in the letters we find evidence of the extent to which Sandwich, as first lord, covers the waterfront. He forwards to Jackson several requests for commissions, including for “John Nash to be a Master at Arms” (and he instructs that Nash be posted on “the Rainbow”), and for “Lieutenant William Bett” to relieve “the Lieut: of the Hazard” [9]. He likewise relays a petition “from Captain O’Hara desiring to quit his ship”, with instructions that end with an intriguing allusion to another matter entirely: “you will therefore inform him that he has leave to retire; and appoint Captain Wilkinson to succeed him. If the Captain Smith is the person who sold his ship in America when Commodore Gambier commanded there, he & I shall not easily make up our quarrel.” [12]
The unpredictability of human behaviour – from personality clashes to outright criminality – accounts for some of the more diverting passages in Sandwich’s letters. He stresses the importance of informing “Sir Peter Parker” that “it is not intended he should have the appointment of officers, otherwise something disagreeable will happen between him and Admiral Shuldham”; seeks to
soothe the ruffled feathers of “Sir George Collier” with a long-winded apologia regarding “the appointment of his Lieutenant” [7]; and directs an official response following “the escape of Brown from the Marshalsea Prison” [5].
WORSE THINGS HAPPEN AT SEA
Such minutiae jostle for Sandwich’s attention while larger dramas are played out: a “very disheartening” accident involving HMS Triton; the “disagreeable subject” of the “misfortune that has happened to the Deal Castle” [15]; the “victualler for Sir Peter Parkers squadron that proves leaky in Ireland” [10]; and running throughout the correspondence is the worsening situation in America. He demands of Jackson rather tersely: “Should not the order to the Navy Board for taking up transports for 5000 men have mentioned that they were to be sent to America” [2]; and with almost palpable irritation, remarks: “as to the encreasing the compliments of the ships in America, Ld G: Germaine must be informed that that has been done long ago” [15].
There are, however, pieces of good news: Sandwich rejoices that “Captain Hamilton’s account of the state of things at Quebec gives me spirits, and I most exceedingly approve of every part of his behaviour, I agree with you that if the place is saved it will be entirely owing to the arrival of the Lizard” [6]; and once the conflict is further advanced, glad tidings are dampened a little by poor media management, as Sandwich tells Jackson in a letter sent from “Blackheath Monday night” (and docketed “31st Decr. 1781”) “as the account of the Agamemnons success comes directly from the Captain of one of the Kings ships, I think allmost the whole of his letter should be printed in to morrow nights Gazette; therefore I could wish that no extract of it had been sent to the morning papers, but I fear it is too late to stop that arrangement.” [20]
CONCLUSION
These letters make clear just how much came over the desk of the fourth Earl of Sandwich during this period, and how able a multi-tasker he was, with an eye for the details as well as the big picture. His perceived failures in the American Revolutionary War – which are still a matter of dispute – were counterbalanced by the lasting foundations he laid for the British Navy in the following century; and the sheer multiplicity of problems and complex scenarios he is seen tackling in these documents serves as a corrective to any impressions of ineptitude or incompetence on his part. This insightful set of correspondence complements other manuscript collections dealing with this momentous conflict, and adds significant nuance to the portrait of one of the key figures in the American Revolutionary War.
£12,000 † Ref: 8270
SEVEN
¶ At the heart of this remarkable manuscript book of remedies, lies a network of exceptional social connections that draw together major figures from the English Civil War, several prominent families, and an assortment of other acquaintances, many associated with the Royal College of Physicians.
Its most immediately striking feature, however, is the presentation. The highly attractive walletstyle morocco binding is a form rarely used for household receipt books, and the careful, consistent, unhurried hand are not qualities one usually encounters in a remedy collection intended for everyday use. Moreover, the
¶ [PYE, Ann (née HAMPDEN) (c. 1616-1701)].
Fine Late 17th-Century Manuscript Book of Remedies.
[England, Norfolk? Circa 1690]. Small quarto (200 x 155 x 25 mm). [12, index], 263 numbered pages.
Last page of index and following leaf stuck down. At some point, an attempt has been made to separate the leaves, but abandoned before causing too much damage. Recipe clippings (probably 19th century) pasted to endpapers.
WHO WROTE IT?
There are approximately 370 remedies, of which over 150 are attributed. On an initial reading, and in the absence of a contemporary ownership inscription, the clues to authorship seem scant. But within the attributions, certain clusters begin to emerge. There are several closely related families – Hampden, Hammond, Claypoole and Cromwell – together with three leading figures from the world of science – Wright, Paston, and Rant – giving rise
A fine and unusual red morocco walletstyle binding, marbled endpapers, lacks rear marbled endpaper.
Watermark: Pro Patria. Provenance: later ownership inscription (19 th century) to front endpaper of “James Lane / Silk Mill ”.
Among the most useful attributions are those referring to the scribe’s siblings: Hammond” most frequent is around 20 mentions seven references to “Mrs Cromwell” Claypooles and Cromwells were related by marriage: Elizabeth Claypole (née Cromwell) (1629 the second daughter of Lord Protector members who were cousins of the Hampdens and the Hammonds.
The only individuals who had sisters named Hampden and Hammond and cousins named Claypoole and Cromwell were the children of John Hampden (c. 1595-1643), the English politician sometimes known as “Patriae Pater” (“Father of the People”). John was an ally of Parliamentarian leader John Pym and a cousin of Oliver Cromwell. He was also one of the Five Members whom Charles I tried to arrest in January 1642, a significant step towards the outbreak of fighting in August (all five are still commemorated at the annual State Opening of Parliament).
In 1619, John Hampden married Elizabeth Symeon (1600-1634). They had nine children: Ann Pye; Elizabeth Knightley; John Hampden; Mary Hammond; William Hampden; Judith Hampden; Mary Hampden; Ruth Trevor; and Richard Hampden.
Of these, Elizabeth Knightley, John Hampden, William Hampden, Judith Hampden, and Mary Hampton all died before the likely composition of this manuscript. This leaves us with Ann Pye, Ruth Trevor, and Richard Hampden. The latter was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and both Ann and Ruth married MPs, so there is a plausible connection with politician and scientist Sir Robert Paston (of whom more below).
Ruth Trevor (née Hampden) (1628-1687) married Sir John Trevor, Kt., MP (1637-1717), a Welsh lawyer and politician; they lived in North Wales. Ruth has two remedies for “Convulsions” attributed to her (“The Lady Trevor”): one is a simple mixture of “Cristall” and “Broth” (p.122); the other is a more appetising “Black Cherry Wine” (p.15) which she says “Should be made early in the Morning”. Similarly, “The Lady Trevor” seems rather distant; and the matter of their geography makes Lady Ruth and Sir John unlikely candidates as they were a well-connected Welsh family, but there are no other references to Wales.
Richard Hampden (1631-1695) married Letitia Paget (c1649- 1714), and they lived in Buckinghamshire. The Pagets are mentioned several times in this manuscript: a “Dr Paget”, who has “A Glister for Winde”, is probably Nathan Paget (1615-1678), who, like several others in this volume, was both a graduate of Cambridge and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Nathan Paget married Elizabeth Cromwell (daughter of Philip Cromwell) around 1643. There is also a “Mrs Paget”, who could be Letitia or Elizabeth Paget (née Cromwell) (1614-1678). Either way, “Mrs Paget” supplies “The Golden Oyntmt for ye Gout” (p.147), along with two receipts passed on from other sources: one from “Dr Burges” who has a “medecin for ye Plague” (p.116), and the other “an Excellt Oyntment” (pp.145-6) obtained from “Sr George Hastings”. More socially elevated than her namesake is “The Lady Paget” with “A very good Consumption Water” (p.27). The moniker “The Lady Paget” seems a little distant for Richard to use for his wife, but he is not to be discounted as our scribe on that alone.
Ann Pye (née Hampden) (c. 1616-1701) (we are uncertain about the date usually given for her birth, as it precedes the Hampdens’ marriage by three years) married Colonel Sir Robert Pye, Knight., MP (16221701). They lived in Berkshire. No remedies are attributed to the Pyes, but we suggest that the references to “My Sister Hampden” and “My Sister Hammond”, not to mention the more distant “The Lady Paget” and “The Lady Trevor”, make her the most likely candidate. She also lived until 1701, making a match for an early use of Pro Patria paper. We are therefore confident in naming Ann Pye as our scribe.
John’s wife Elizabeth Hampden died in 1634; four years later, he married Lady Letitia (née Knollys) Vachell (1591-1666), widow of Sir Thomas Vachell of Coley. This accounts for the several mentions of “Lady Vachell” in the manuscript: she supplies a “Plague Water” (p.19), “A Snaile Water” (p.20), and a method to “To Stay the Whites” (p.109).
One Dr Wright is cited no fewer than 17 times (either as Wright” or more frequently as context in which this relatively common name appears, we ascribe these remedies to Laurence Wright (1590-1657), yet another Cambridge graduate and member of the Royal College of Physicians.
Wright was physician in ordinary to Oliver Cromwell (a cousin, as we have said, of the Hampdens), a connection that further strengthens this arm of the network plotted out in our volume. He is acknowledged for a range of remedies, whether to be drunk (“Water for ye Stone” (p.6), “Dyet Ale for a Consumption” (p.30), “Water good in many Violent feavers or Sickness in ye Stomach” (p.29)), eaten (“Digestion Powder to Ear half a Spoonful before Meat” (p.235), “A very good powder in Convulsions or falling Sickness” (p.84)) or applied (“A Plaister to help Digestion” (p.234), “his owne Plaister for any bruise or Spraine tis’ an approov’d excellt Medicine” (p.243), “A Plaister to Strengthen & open the Liver” (p.235)).
Some of Dr Wright’s formulations come with detailed directions. “A Drink for a Chincough” (with ingredients such as “China rootes”, “shavings of hartshorne”, and “marshe mallow rootes”), once prepared, should be administered thus: “give a quarter of a pinte warme morning & Evening and lett the Child sleep after it, & into every Draught, putt a Spoonfull, either of Syrrup of poppyes or Syrrup of jujubes”; and the dosage directions sneak in a final, grisly ingredient: “halfe an ounce to Child of 3 yeares old, & so proportionably to ye Childrens age, put also into ye Drinke ye powder of 2 or 3 dryed Mice” (p.39).
His “Broth for a Consumption wth a loosness” calls for further carnage, with a list of ingredients that includes “prepared Wormes” (“Cut the Wormes throughout the middle & lay them abroad in Clarett wine … the biggest are the best”), and “8 or 9 Snailes” mixed with fruit (“Strawberry leaves”, “Sloes”, “Barberries”) – this to be drunk “in the Morning, and Sleep after it again, in the Afternoon about 4 a Clock” (p.244). Marginally less unpleasant for all concerned is “A very good drying Salve for any old Sore”, which requires “6 Spoonfulls of thick Sweet Creame & as much of ye Juice of plantyn, Sheeps Suett” thickend with “chalke”; the salve is to be applied “2ce a Day, then let the Party be purged wth 2 parts of a Dramm of pulvis … [and] keep himself very warme the Day he takes it, as also ye Day following”
Among the most frequently cited individuals is the scientist and politician, Sir Robert Paston (1631-1683), one of the original fellows of the Royal Society. A scion of the family of Norfolk gentry now known for the ‘Paston Letters’, he served as an MP for two constituencies in the county. He later became Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk and was created the 1st Earl of Yarmouth. A combination of lavish spending, support for the exiled king, and fines by the Commonwealth brought the formerly wealthy family to financial ruin, and in an effort to restore their fortunes he expended his scientific energies on a search for the philosopher’s stone.
There are at least 15 remedies ascribed to Sir Robert – all, thankfully, more grounded than his alchemical experiments, although perhaps no more successful. He contributes a receipt for “Plague Water” (p.37), and following the 17th-century tendency to pack such concoctions with a multitude of herbs, prescribes no fewer than 18 into his remedy, which he recommends be sweetened “wth white Suggur Candy”.
Certain of Paston’s remedies are supplied with a genealogy of their own: “Angell Water” was “given to Sr Robert Paston by Mr Trore Secretary to the Venetian Ambassador at Paris” (p.41); and on the same page and from the same
Spraine, for Stoppage of y Stomach, green Wounds, Aches in the Sinnews or Veines proceeding from a Cold Cause, Devised by the Physitians and Chyrurgeons, meeting att Waltham on purpus to consult it when King James lay Sicke” (pp.188-90). However, although it is annotated at end “Sr Rt Paston”, James VI and I died in 1625 – six years before Paston was born – and Sir Edward Denny in 1637. Clearly, then, Sir Robert must have copied this “Oyntment” from an earlier source.
He reaches back still further to retrieve “Sr Walter Raleighs Great & famous Elixir or Cordiall”, which we are told was “copied out of his owne Manuscript by Sr Rt Paston” (pp.231-232). Raleigh’s ‘great cordial’ was indeed famous and appeared in many remedy collections, but few people could have boasted of copying it directly from Raleigh’s own hand. There are accounts elsewhere of Paston having had access to Raleigh’s manuscripts via his son, Carew Raleigh.2
Several other remedies are attributed to “Mrs Paston”; whether this signifies Lady Paston or another family member is uncertain, but she was clearly part of the social circle. She, too, seems keen to provide provenance of at least one of her contributions, explaining that she obtained the recipe for a “Dyet Drink” (p.63) from “Sr Wm Courtneye”, who recommends a mixture of sage, rue and, a little alarmingly, “400 wood lice (as some call them)”. In the unlikely event of isopod dearth, “Sr Wm” relates a useful technique: “I have by ye Drs been ordered to bruise ye Sowebugs 10 or 15 of them & give it in a draught of Ale or Beere sometimes wch I doe sometimes, when I cannot gett a quantity together as they are scarce to be had”
RANTS, PILLS AND PURGES
The genealogy of the remedies themselves becomes a feature of other entries besides those attributed to the Pastons; a note midway through “For the Dropsies” informs us: “Sr Francis Acland said that yt Dr Buttles of Cambridge cured him by this means” – and the attribution at the end to “My Sister Hammond” (p.118) helpfully supplies the familial connection to the Hampdens.
Indeed, sometimes a note concerning a remedy’s journey will help to clarify the identity of the attributee. The surname “Rant”, though it appears in relatively few attributions, adds another co-ordinate to the map of connections, signifying an East Anglian family who made a strong 17th-century showing in the field of medicine. Dr William Rant (c.1564-1627), was succeeded in this profession by his sons Sir Thomas Rant (1604-1671) and Dr William Rant (1604-1653) and by the latter’s son Sir William Rant (1642-1711) (and again, Cambridge and the Royal College of Physicians figure prominently in their biographies). This proliferation of “Dr Rants” makes it hard to match certain attributions in our manuscript to their correct namesakes.
There is at least one exception to this, thanks to a contextual remark: “Mrs Rant” is credited with a “Purge wch my Brother Dr Burwell gave to Mr Rant my Husband to purge Choler” (p.10). The aforesaid “my Brother Dr Burwell” is almost certainly Thomas Burwell (1626-1701/2), younger brother of Mary Rant (née Burwell), which would make “Mr Rant my Husband” Sir Thomas Rant (1604-1671), whom she married in 1630. This remedy thus represents an exchange between professional in laws.
“Horse or Man”) (p.5) is ascribed to “Mrs Rant”, and “Pills for the Stone in ye Kidney” (p.91) to “My Lady Rant”. These could be one and the same person (“Mrs Rant” is probably Mary, née Burwell (c.1611-1675), whose husband
OTHER CONNECTIONS
As will be evident by now, the connections traced in this manuscript, whether familial, social or professional, are profuse, and yet often laconically signposted; so much so that even mapping the more immediate Hampden family members onto the attributions (“My Sister Hampden”, etc) can be a challenge. At one edge of this universe of relatives lies the Ward family, who provide a remedy “For a Great Cough” (p.111), annotated at the end “My Cousin Wood Ward”. The records show that Dr William Rant (c.1564-1627) married Mary (née Ward) (1570-1627) in 1595; and his granddaughter Jane Rant (c.1640-1714) married Edward Ward (1642-1686). “Wood Ward” may be a contraction of Edward Ward, though further work is needed to tease out this and other correspondences.
References:
1. Whittle, Jane and Griffiths, Elizabeth. (Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth-Century Household: The World of Alice Le Strange, OUP 2012, Ch 4. 2. Beinecke. Osborn Osborn fb255. <https:// hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/12225850>. The manuscript was sold at Bonhams in 2019. <www.bonhams.com/ auction/20751/lot/71/recipes-household-and-medical-afinely-bound-recipe-book-belonging-to-robert-paston-firstearl-of-yarmouth-of-oxnead-hall-and-his-wife-rebeccac1680-1695/>
3. References to members of the Royal College of Physicians: <https://history.rcp.ac.uk/inspiringphysicians>
Scores of attributions still remain to be plotted, and their links with the Hampdens, Cromwells, Rants and so on researched. The receipt for “Ruby Water, Sr Theodore Mayern’s great Cordiall” (p.39) must surely refer to Sir Théodore Turquet de Mayerne (1573-1655), another Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and “A Dyet Drink of Sr Theodore Mirams after an Ague” (p.44) may well be a garbled attribution to the same worthy personage; another Fellow, Sir John Micklethwaite (1612-1682), was the likely source of “Dr Micklethwaits purging Drink of water or Whey” (p.7), and probably of “Dr Michelltherts Snaile Water” (p.59). Other remedies obtained from physicians include “Dr Hinton’s Dyet Drinke” (pp.249250); “Dr Bates’s Dyet Drink” (specifically intended “For the Emoroids”)(p.71); “A Water to washe ye Mouth good against the Scurvy. Dr Hawes” (p.228); and on the same page, “An approov’d Medicine for the Piles Inward and Outward. Dr Mathias”. Several of these and other surnames appear on Munk’s Roll with plausible dates in the latter half of the 17th century.
Attributions from members of the aristocracy are plentiful: “My Lady Ruttlands Caudle” (p.59) could signify the spouse of one of several Earls of Rutland in the 17th century, and “Lady Blagrave” (“To Still mint Water or any other Hearb” (p.15) invokes a name familiar from the Rump Parliament of 1648 (Daniel Blagrave was also a signatory to the King’s death-warrant and was executed in 1649). “Lady Corbet” (“A Cordiall water for a Surfett or any other Extremity” (p.17)), “My Lady Cohly” (“Poultis for Wormes in Children” (p.90)), and “My Lady Bruce” (“The Green Balsome” (p.96)) are among the others, connections with the Hampdens inviting further investigation. Further down the social ranks, we find the likes of “Mrs Wyndham” (“The Sciatica Plaister” (pp.1634), “For the Gout” (p.165)), “Mrs Flettcher” (“Oyntment for ye Wormes” (p.157)), “Mr Mitchells Poultis to break a Sore”, and the jointly credited “Mrs Coke, Mrs Coray” (“The Powder for ye Stone” (p.85)).
CONCLUSION
Our volume offers a multitude of angles on its contents, its cast of characters, and the body of social connections and interactions that it represents. There are valuable insights into the state of medical practice in the 17th century, gathered by a member of one of several prominent, interlinked families. Though the evidence we have presented makes Ann Pye the most likely candidate, in another sense this rich collection of remedies, dense with attributions, is the work of a complex community of relatives, friends, acquaintances and colleagues, all concerned with maintaining each other’s health after the fevers and agonies of the English Civil War.
EIGHT
¶ The interplay of manuscript and print in the early modern period produced familiar artefacts like miscellanies and receipt books, but it also sprouted some unusual, cross-fertilised, hybrid texts. This remarkable home-made compendium embodies the blended nature of some of the artefacts that such a culture produced, both textually and materially. It neatly combines print and manuscript, but in both cases the pages have been created by mounting handwritten or printed leaves onto blank sheets (whether bought as a bound blank book or stitched together from separate quires is hard to determine). The resulting object is a kind of composite gardening tool, methodically assembled but attractively eccentric.
Further features of construction mark this volume out all the more. To allow for the expansion of the volume caused by the insertion of the text sheets, its creator has excised alternate pages of a blank book; and perhaps most curiously, rather than windowmount the printed text they have pasted sheets onto each side of the blank, which would have required two copies of each text.
¶ [HALL,John(d.1821)]. 18th-Century Gardening Hybrid Text in Five Parts. [Circa 1775]. Octavo (190 x 125 x 45 mm). 221 (actually222) numbered inmanuscript,[28, index].
Manuscript and printed sheets laid down to blank leaves and bound together in contemporary vellum-backed grey boards.
This practical (if not always logical) approach to arranging the material suggests that the resulting hybrid artefact was designed for use as a handbook. And while the overall appearance of the volume resembles a work intended for publication, the scribe appears to have borrowed design aspects to help them organise the material for private use rather than public consumption.
CONTENTS AND TEXT SOURCES
The book combines five distinct sections: “The Flower Garden; in Two Parts” (pp1-46); “The Kitchen Garden” (pp47-87) (mostly printed paste-ins); “Wilderness. In Two Parts” (pp88-131); “The Greenhouse” (pp132177); and “The Gardener’s Remembrancer” (pp180-221). An impressively thorough, 28-page index rounds off the volume.
The leaves of printed text have been taken from different sources. Some sections are readily identifiable, having been culled from James Garton’s The Practical Gardener, and Gentleman’s Directory (1769), which also helps date our volume. Other parts of the text bear similarities to Philip Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary (first published 1731; it reached its 8th edition in 1768), but the typography is different and we have been unable to identify an edition that matches ours. Overall, there may be as many as three or more printed texts included, though the lack of matches in archival searches obfuscates a precise number.
This sole printed section apparently fulfilled the requirements of our compiler, who has added catchwords in manuscript at the bottom of many pages to reinforce the impression of an integral, continuous text. The manuscript sections that dominate the contents, on the other hand, have been distilled from a number of printed or manuscript sources, none easily identifiable (although one early-20th-century writer had a go, as we shall see).
The 18th century was a period of dramatic change in English garden design, as the antiquity idealised landscapes of the early Georgian period gave way to the practice ‘Capability’ Brown drives. Our volume encapsulates many of these changes in taste. The fashion for arranging a ‘wilderness’, for example (by planting small ‘quarters’ of woodland divided by avenues of gravel or turf wilderness as we would understand it), was ubiquitous enough for Jane Austen to set a scene in Mansfield Park wilderness garden; and the 44 page “Wilderness” volume duly lays out the principles and practicalities involved, including lists of suitable varieties with details of their preferred conditions, of A Wilderness”, Plants”, “Methods of Planting”, “Draining of Wetlands” “The Advantages Arising from the Planting of an Acre of Land with Timber Trees & Underwoods” list of suitable trees.
Greenhouses, too, had evolved from the orangeries popularised by Queen Anne,1 and were still a prestige horticultural feature at the time of our volume’s creation. Its 45-page chapter on “Greenhouses” includes “Rules for Raising and Cultivating near Five Hundred Plants, which require the Shelter of A House”. If the notes in Hall’s volume are anything to go by, he was quite serious in his interest in this fashionable garden accoutrement, as he includes details for “Building of Green Houses, Glass Cases, Dry Stoves, and Bark Stoves” and observations on their maintenance.
ELLEN WILLMOTT AND ROBERT BROTHERSTON
Hall’s book itself attracted some interest in 1910, when an article appeared in The Gardeners’ Chronicle entitled ‘An Old Garden Manuscript’, 2 by Robert Pace Brotherston, head gardener at Tyninghame from 1874 to 1923. Brotherston writes: “I am indebted to Miss Willmott for the opportunity of perusing a volume on gardening, for the greater part in manuscript, which I think has never been published”. He goes on to describe several familiar features, including “a Georgian bookplate on which is written ‘John Hall’”.
The Miss Willmott mentioned in the article is surely the gifted horticulturalist and wealthy heiress Ellen Ann Willmott (1858-1934), who spent her fortune on creative activities “such as photography, carpentry, painting and gardening” and largely taught herself “by trawling her way through volumes of valuable books” 3. Brotherston’s description clearly matches our volume, from the bookplate to the five titled sections that make up the contents to the “red ink” our scribe uses to render the “species or varieties”. The book, therefore, must at least have passed through Willmott’s hands and played a role, however small, in her self-education; however, it does not appear to be in the 1935 auction catalogue of her library. There could be a number of reasons for this, but the fact remains that both Willmott and Brotherston considered Hall’s self-assembled compendium worthy of their sustained interest.
Brotherston notes that the material includes “bits from Evelyn, Bradley, Lawrence, Switzer, and Miller,” making the book “to a large extent an abbreviated compilation of the writings of others”. His references to Evelyn, Switzer and others may derive from educated guesswork on his part – we have not been able to trace any exact passages to these authors – but Brotherston is right to call this volume an example “of the manner one writer borrowed from another without making any acknowledgment”. Such borrowings and reshapings were a repeated process, as texts moved from manuscript to print and back again (a process familiar from the transmission of early modern recipes).
WHO WROTE IT – AND WHEN?
Clues to the volume’s provenance fall tantalisingly short of conclusive. A mid-18th-century armorial bookplate to the paste-down is inscribed “John Hall No. 523”. This bookplate is a match for 13354 in the Franks catalogue of bookplates,4 which, like ours, has the “plate with the name in ms”. Hall writes in a neat cursive hand, and this too is dateable to the middle of the 18th century. Further clarity comes from the James Garton text mentioned above, which makes a pre-1769 date impossible.
1. https://georgianera.wordpress.com/tag/ hothouses/
2. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/ item/83834#page/432/mode/1up
3. Willmott. https:// www.oxoniangardener.co.uk/ellen-annwillmott-8446/
4. Franks bequest : catalogue of British and American book plates bequested to the Trustees of the British Museum by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks. (1903).
5. https://www.findagrave.com/ memorial/204705348/john-hall
But any straightforward identification of John Hall from his armorial bookplate soon meets with complications. The arms (Barry of eleven Ermine and Gules three escutcheons Or) are those of Hall of Ipswich, Suffolk, but Burke describes the crest as a falcon with wings expanded, while our crest is a hind’s head within a palisade. Burke also assigns the same arms to Hall of Berkshire and Oxford, but does not describe a crest for that branch of the family. In the absence of negative evidence, therefore, we may tentatively identify him as John Hall of Harpsden, Oxfordshire.5 The presence of a crescent cadency mark on the shield at least allows us to confidently assert that he was a second son – and the inscription indicates that he had a library of well over 500 books.
CONCLUSION
John Hall was evidently much more than an armchair gardener with a well-stocked library. His volume is the work of a serious-minded horticulturalist who would have had a substantial property.
The compiling of artefacts such as this was, needless to say, not informed by any concern for attribution or explanation; they were intended as reference works for immediate, practical use. Form and content work to the same end: the text has been copied, distilled or culled from other works to create a ‘new’ artefact which compresses a range of contemporary gardening practices into a neat horticultural resource.
The lasting appeal of this accumulation of synthesised knowledge lies in the way it captures the ever-evolving interplay of knowledge and practice, and of print and manuscript circulation. The orthodoxies of 18th-century gardening were formed just as much by personalised, hybrid texts such as this, as by the handbooks from which they sometimes took cuttings.
£6,500 Ref: 8265
NINE
¶ This small but rich archive of manuscript letters, drawings, recipes, and accounts offers different aspects from which to view the domestic lives of an influential 18th-century family. Several members of the Barrington family are notable for their important public roles during the American War of Independence, but these papers offer a more intimate glimpse of their lives, one in which the reader may see them through their management of household affairs.
THE ESTATE
Beckett Hall came into the ownership of the Barrington family after John Shute, a dissenting theologian and Whig politician, inherited two considerable estates: one from John Wildman of Beckett Hall, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), and the other, Tofts in Little Baddow, Essex, following the death of a distant relative, Francis Barrington. In accordance with the latter’s will, Shute assumed the name and arms of Barrington of Essex; and after a newly created Peerage of Ireland, he also became 1st Viscount Barrington of Ardglass.
¶ [BARRINGTONFAMILY] An 18th-century archive of household papers including recipes, remedies, agricultural notes, letters and drawings.
[Beckett Hall, Shrivenham, Oxfordshire. Circa 1770-1795]. An archive of household and estate manuscripts. Approximately 100 items in total.
Francis’ eldest son, William (1717-1793), became the 2nd Viscount Barrington; as is well documented, he and his brothers John and Samuel impacted the course of British and American history to an extraordinary extent, as a politician, an army officer, and a naval officer respectively. William inherited Beckett Hall, and, though he spent much of his time at his house in Cavendish Square, London, many of the letters in this archive are addressed to him at Beckett Hall.
The loose papers here concentrate on the domestic aspects of Barrington’s life, specifically food (growing, cooking, and planning related improvements to the estate) and health (good and bad, but mostly bad).
A small slip of paper among the manuscripts reads: “Receipts found among the papers of Wm Visct Barrington 1793” (the year of his death). The majority of these, and of the remedies, are in different hands and appear to have been enclosures in correspondence; indeed, many of the remedies are nested in the paragraphs of letters.
RECIPES AND REMEDIES
There are around 35 loose-leaf recipes and remedies, varying in form and length from simple directions to a short essay. They are almost all incoming letters, often signed or attributed. Among the longer recipes is a “Receipt for making Grape wine”, which begins “The Process of making Wine in Burgundy is that of throwing the Grapes (rough as gathered) into a large Vat where they are suffered to remain & ferment…” and continues in much the same vein, emphasising method over quantities.
The recipe “To pott eells like Lampreys” instructs that, after seasoning “with half or qr of an ounce of Mace &
Directions for “Salting fish acc to Mr Lownds methode”, in contrast, are brief, as is the recipe “To Salt Beef, or Pork” (“From Sir Charles Knowles”). Almost as simple to prepare is “Mutton Barley Broth” (“half a Loyn of Mutton […] pearl Barley […] 3 good whole Turnips 2 Onions; and Salt sufficient to give a taste”), whereas “Anchovy Sauce” appears to require a little more attention (“this Sauce should be thicker then melted Butter”).
The Viscount’s sense of noblesse oblige is on display in “a cheap good soup for the Poor in dear Times” which specifies large amounts of basic fare (“3lb of lean Beef […] 1lb of Onions […] 2lb of pared Potatoes […] 2lb of Turnips […] 2lb of Rice”) and, after the cooking instructions, we are advised: “This will feed 12 People, allowing a Quart to each person, and will cost 0: 2: 6”, before being given directions for increasing the quantities “to feed a large number of People”. The adjusted recipe “fed 157 People this last Winter allowing a Quart to each person at ye expense of 0: 15: 6”; moreover, an “NB” assures us “Pease will answer the purpose of Rice and is much cheaper”.
A second sheet folded with this recipe, entitled “a cheap food in dear times for a Man His Wife and three Children” features the same ingredients as above, and also offers a suggestion for increasing the amounts, this time to feed “15 People”. Both have breakdowns of costs per ingredients, and one notes the sobering inclusion of “Fire” – a precious
Another manuscript contains a table of measurements for stewing bones, arranged in seven columns with headings such as “When it was stewed”, “What bones”, “time it stewed”, and “Quantity of Jelly” – a systematic account of large-scale bone-stewing that likely had some relevance to feeding people en masse.
The other recipes are somewhat austere; most are only a little more luxurious than those for “the Poor”, though their ingredients are noticeably wider-ranging and do include wine, fish, butter and anchovies. But another pair of documents – “Wine drank & left at Beckett in Summer 1771” and “Wine drunk at Beckett 1772” – makes it clear that the 2nd Viscount Barrington’s household still had aristocratic appetites.
The consequences of those appetites may explain the need for at least one remedy in Barrington’s papers: “Pills for bilious complaints” (sent by “Mr Hanley”), with ingredients such as “fresh made Castile Soap” (probably more likely to upset than settle the stomach), “the best Turkey Rheubarb”, and “1 Scruple of English saffron”.
Stomach and bowel complaints are well represented, with treatments such as a “Remedy for a Purging &c”, a “Remedy for weak Bowells” (identified as “Lady Gage’s Drops to be purchased at Brandy’s Apothecary in Arlington Street”), and “A Remedy for worms” (“Mr C. Macartneys rect”), which is written onto a ‘template’ – a leaf cut into a dome shape. The text prescribes a concoction of
paper”, and the whole assembly to be placed “on the person’s stomach with the point upwards and the bottom not to touch the navel by two fingers breadth; when it has lain on 24 hours let the person take gentle physick except rhubarb”.
The persistence of this vermiform imposition is clear from a packet inscribed on the outside “Papers relative to the Cure of all kinds Worms but particularly those Called ascorades”. The six letters inside are from “E. Towsey”, an apothecary in “Wantage” (then in Berkshire), mostly dated 1771, with enclosed prescriptions “to effectually extirpate those troublesome Animals” – the chief device being a “Mercurial bolus”. (The packet’s cover note continues: “Given by Ld Barrington to General Craig who is particularly desired to return them carefully”, which evidently the general did.) That Barrington had recourse to medical professionals is further suggested by several other documents here, including a very brief note headed “Mercurial plaister” and, in a similarly curt vein, “Wathens rect for lye water” (“For Lord Barrington March 29 1790”).
Many remedies appear to arrive via correspondence from Barrington’s fellow worthies: “The Duke of Northumberland” sends “Directions for preparing the Sulphur Whey, from which the Duke has received great benefit” (1785); “Sir Wm Duncan” commends a simple gargle solution “for a putrid sore throat” (1771); “Lord Marchmont” provides details for preparing “Eye water” (consisting of “Bole armoniac”, “white Copperax”, “Stomatic
Medicine from Dr Taylor of Reading” and a “Cure for the Ague from Mr Waters”. “Lord Rivers” meanwhile, sends a recipe for “Wild Sage Tea” treat gout (1779); and a remedy “for the Rumatism Late Lord Barrington” (“ground pine and sage” boiled in water) is presumably something his own father found efficacious (though the slightly woolly instruction to continue treatment “while it appears to do any good” does not exactly inspire confidence).
The twin menaces of gout and rheumatism – sometimes mistakenly conflated documents: besides the latter examples above, a letter from “C Pocock” (1779) presents a remedy “For the Rheumatism”, with the careful caveat that “how far it may be proper with the gout, I will not pretend to determine”; and “Mr Frames’s rect for the Gout” instructs that this nostrum is “To be prepared at Apothecarys Hall” – an example of the distinction between ‘home remedies’ and concoctions or ‘patent medicines’ made up and dispensed by apothecaries.
Other friends and colleagues contribute remedies and suggestions, some of them buried amongst other business: “Wm Yorke” in June 1775, deferentially enquires of the then “Secretary at War”, on behalf of a relative in the “69th Infantry”, as to “When that Regiment is likely to be returned from Gibraltar?”; Yorke then refers to Barrington’s recent enquiries concerning “the stone in my bladder” and recommends “ye Nostrum (known by the name of Adam^s Solvent)”, dispensed by “Mr Perry Surgeon in Argyle Street”, should “any unfortunate friend or acquaintance” of his lordship ever suffer “such a deplorable condition”.
The inclusion among these remedies of an “eye wash for a horse” reminds us that Barrington’s domestic concerns reached beyond the human (even if they all served human ends). The next grouping of documents complements the internal focus of the culinary and medicinal material by looking outwards, to Barrington’s Berkshire estate.
ESTATE MANAGEMENT
Beckett Hall is described in a 1722 document in Berkshire County Archive as “…a very large house situated on a dry soil containing 23 rooms […] with all convenient outhouses, as stables, a large and handsome barn, etc with the several courts, gardens and orchards, large dovecote, large fish pond of an acre, summerhouse being a cubed 24 feet built by Inigo Jones. The gardens containing 15 or 16 acres of ground most of it a kindly fruit, full sand. About 8 or 9 of the said acres being enclosed with a stone wall of 5775 feet or 350 poles, well planted with all kinds of fruit of the best sort. The fruit noted for its kindly taste. Grapes never fail in any year.”1
Appropriately, this miscellaneous grouping brings together plans, arboriculture and livestock notes, and ‘household tips’ for the busy landed aristocrat. Two documents present the “Manner of stuccoing” at “Cavesham House” (i.e. Caversham House, also in Berkshire, country seat of Lord Cadogan, whose range of advice clearly went beyond medicinal matters); and another, briefer note on how “to Clean the Winscut in Rooms”. Addressing a substance more exposed to the elements is a letter from “R Colton” dated “July ye 16th 1767” describing “the exact method I used in salting my Hay” (a second, shorter document entitled “To recover Hay damaged by Rains” also recommends salting but seems not to have been an enclosure with the letter).
References:
1. Berkshire County Archive Ref: (E/EEL/35/17).
2. https://www.shrivenhamheritagesociety.co.uk/ downloads/old-and-new-beckett-house.pdf
The architect Sanderson Miller “records that he visited Beckett in the 1750s in order to draw up plans for new rooms for Lord Barrington”; no evidence has yet been found that this led to any “alterations or additions” as a result2; but as regards outbuildings, our archive includes a small selection of architectural plans (mostly undated, so any connection with Miller’s visit is hard to prove). There are drawings of “A barn for hay” (accompanied by a sheet of notes initialled “W.A.”) and another entitled “Hay Barns” (with annotations including “will cost £60-0-0”); other plans visualise housing for pigs, with a front elevation and a ground plan that includes areas “for Feeding pork or breeding” and “for feeding Bacon”, as well as a “Boar Sty”. “Plans of Cottages” show the ground plan for two storeys, while another manuscript is entitled “Charge for building Two Cottages” (likely the same dwellings) dated “1799” – six years after Barrington’s death.
Another selection of documents relates to the management, measurement, or simply observation of trees: two variations of a method to “Prevent tree trunks being barked by horses”; a technique of “Imping [i.e. grafting] Pear or Apple Trees”; an “Rx for Orange trees” (apparently from a correspondent in “Chiswick”); a table charting the “Growth of a Poplar” in “Darlington” between 1762 and 1792; and three manuscripts expressing an interest in different specimens of yew trees. Finally, “Mr Robt Boyd’s method of blowing up the roots of Trees” is perhaps related to clearing land for the cottages or outbuildings sketched out in the plans.
The remainder of the manuscripts are a mixture of legal documents, land measurements, correspondence, and accounts. A vellum-bound accounts book includes approximately 40 pp of transactions from 1742 to 1763. Records include such things as “Allowances to Tenants & Repairs from Midsummer 1742” and “An Account of Money Recd Clear of all deductions from Michas 1750 to Michas 1751” which itemise things like “pd poors Tax” and “Receiving & postage of Letters”, and an annual entries for the estate manager, a Mr Stovell (“pd Stovell for looking after the Estate 1 yr 50-00-00”) and occasional payments to his educated son who also finds work on the estate (“pd Stovells Son for Writing”).
CONCLUSION
This archive offers an impressive range of glimpses into the domestic life of one of the most consequential political dynasties in 18th-century England. The plethora of social connections sketched in these documents – from apothecaries and businessmen to neighbours and fellow aristocrats – makes this an archive that, while anchored in one household, has threads to many other individuals and establishments. The varied material yields insights into how the Barrington family, who were instrumental in the development of the British national and internals affairs, managed their own lives as land and livestock owners, consumers, and sufferers from bodily complaints.
£5,000 † Ref: 8267
TEN
¶ Sugar was the preserve of the ‘social elite’ in 17th-century England. It is sprinkled throughout receipt books of the period, but it rarely features as the main ingredient. This most unusual “booke of Confictionary” covers the preparation of types of sugar and details their various uses.
The volume is also exceptional in another aspect: early modern receipt books often serve more as aides-mémoire to culinary knowledge than as ‘how to’ books, but our compiler here has chosen to give unusually clear instructions. Indeed, Elizabeth Strangways (later Boynton) has carefully planned the structure of her book at the outset, and the result is something closer to what we would now call a cookery book.
WHO WROTE IT
¶ [BOYNTON,Elizabeth(née STRANGWAYS)(c.1661-1730)] English 17th century culinary manuscript entitled ‘A booke of Confictionary set downe for Preserveinge dryinge or Candyinge of any sortes of plomes ore of frutes whatsoever and for makinge of all Sortes of dryed pastes or any other kind of Sugar woorkes be Lening to ye Arte of a Confectionary or Comfitt maker as ye Recetes in ye Booke followinge will derecte you’.
Elizabeth has conceived and written most of the manuscript, but is occasionally joined by a contemporary scribe. There are four inscriptions written one above the other to the rear endpaper: “Eliz. Strangways”; “Eliz. Boynton Book”; “Cath Cayley”; “Agnes Legard”; and to the side, “Judith Robinson”. A faded pencil note to the front pastedown reads “Agnes Phoebe Legard her book, given her by her great aunt Cath Cayley, given her by Eliz. Boynton, given her by Eliz. Strangeways”. The final clause is incorrect: Strangeways and Boynton are one and the same person. “Judith Robinson” is probably Elizabeth’s niece, Judith Strangways Robinson, who married an apothecary, William Horncastle of Malton. Judith’s sister Elizabeth Robinson married Digby Cayley, which would account for the Cayley connection mentioned above. We attribute this volume to Elizabeth Strangways (afterwards Boynton), and one other contemporary member of her household.
[England, Yorkshire, Pickering and Rawcliffe. Circa 1690]. Small quarto 187 x 150 x 10 mm).
Elizabeth Strangways (c1661-1730) was the daughter of Thomas Strangways of Pickering, by Jane, daughter of Luke Robinson of Thornton Riseborough. In 1699, Elizabeth married Boynton Appleyard (1673-1725) of Ulceby, Lincolnshire, son of Thomas Appleyard of Ulceby by Mary, daughter of Thomas Boynton of Rawcliffe, near Snaith. Following the death of his uncle Matthew Boynton of Rawcliffe in 1700, Boynton succeeded to his uncle’s estates and assumed the surname of Boynton, and so became known as Boynton Boynton.
Approximately 101 text pages (including a three-page index) on 77 leaves, some leaves excised with only stubs remaining (not included in page count).
Contemporary limp vellum, lacks rear cover.
Watermark: Fleur-de-lis (similar to Haewood
Matthew and Judith Boynton (née Robinson) (1650-1701) lived in a substantial new three-storey house to the east of the village of Rawcliffe, surrounded by a park and gardens. It was built on the site of Rawcliffe Hall, which
CALLOUS EQUATIONS
The Boyntons were a wealthy philanthropic family: they funded the construction and upkeep of a new chapel at Rawcliffe, built alms-houses nearby, and founded a local free school endowed with tenements and lands. The kind of affluence they were born into is expressed in utensils such as a “silluer spoone” (f.12r) and of course the main ingredient of this book: sugar, which in the 17th century was a relatively expensive commodity. While the slave trade was undoubtedly a factor in sugar production, it had not reached the industrial-scale cruelty of the 18th century which would bring the cost of sweetness to affordable levels for the consumer.
The cost to its enslaved producers was, of course, conspicuously omitted from the market’s callous equations; whether knowledge of sugar production’s reliance on the horrific trade in enslaved people had not yet filtered down to contemporary consumers remains moot.
COMPOSITION AND INSTRUCTIONS
Given that Elizabeth has inscribed the volume with both her birthname and her married name, we assume that she began the volume before 1699. She would have been around 17 in 1690, so this seems a likely initial date of composition. She may then perhaps have continued to add recipes, but it is worth noting that the volume has been conceived as a coherent work, so it is probable that almost all of the manuscript was written over a short period of time.
Elizabeth has laid out her plan for this volume on f.5r with a title to the upper half of the page (shown left):
“A booke of Confictionary is plainelie and perfittlie set dowine for Preserueinge dryinge or Candyinge of any sortes of plomes ore Candying of frutes whatsoeuer and for makinge of all Sortes of dryd pastes or any other kind of Sugar woorkes be Loning to ye Arte of a Confectionary or Comfitt maker as ye Recetes in ye Booke followinge will derecte you”. A three-page index entitled “ye Table of ye Recetes followinge” begins on the same page.
Preceding this are four leaves and three stubs; the first three leaves bear five recipes in Elizabeth’s hand and one in another, contemporary hand. These recipes, which are not listed in the index, appear to have been added after the main body of the text was written (the three stubs also clearly once contained recipes). The fourth leaf, though blank, has been bordered on the recto (as have all subsequent leaves up to f.35).
Over the six pages following the index, Elizabeth has set out clear instructions for preparing sugar in six different ways, each of which is receiptes Doth direct you”. The first of these “doth shew you to know how to Clarifie yr Sugar”, via a process involving “a pinte of faire water” into which is beaten “ye white of an ege” to create “a froath”, followed by adding “a pound of sugar” and setting it “on ye fier but put but let ^it boyle uery fast” (f.7v). This concern with properly establishing the techniques moves her to recommend a high level of assiduity and watchfulness: in the other five preparation methods, she explains in detail how to ascertain when the sugar is “in A thine sorrupp”, “in A full Sirrupp”, “at A Christie heighte”, “A Candeye heighte”, and “A Casting heighte wch is ye Last heighte of all”.
JUST ADD SUGAR
The remainder of the volume applies these different sugar preparations, as Elizabeth takes us through a larder full of confections, most of them essentially ways of preserving fruit. Among the numerous recipes for preserves there at least a dozen “To make past” of different kinds of fruit (“Orringes”, “Lemones”, “Quinches”, “Apricokes”, “Joyce of barbaryes”, “peares or wordens”). Similar fruits (“pippins”, “Cherryes”, and “Goosbrreys”) are used in “marmalate”, “quedeney”, “Candie”, and “Jelley”. Other preservation methods include drying, and several recipes apply these techniques to preserving flowers: “Candy Roses or marygouldes”, for instance, may be dried “in the heate of ye day” using “Gum Arabacke”, and “Sugar Candey”.
Of the relatively small number of cake recipes, only some are for cakes as we would know them: two recipes for “Clere Cakes” (featuring “pipings” and “Apricocks”) are actually just another way to preserve fruit. On more familiar ground for the modern reader are the likes of “Mackarrons”, “Allman Cakes”, “biskett Cakes”, and “Honny Combe Cakes wth Lemonpill” (f.53v), which calls for “paper cotings” that must be filled “as full as you can” (and observes that “if you fill ym in night time thay will run all up in bubbles”).
Such annotated remarks and additions occur occasionally elsewhere: “To preserve Damsons” is endorsed in the same hand (but later) “this is much ye beter way”; and the recipe “to make white marmalat of quinces” has a coda which offers options: “if you will you may sluce slice ye quinces and so boyle them; and boyle ye sugar cande hite”; alternatively, “Another uery Good way is to pare and core the quinces … throw them in to dobel refined sugar
finly bet and searesed”. A note the end of the instructions to “Preserue gouberries wn ripe in Jelley” specifies that “these gousbereys must be ye cristall gousberes or else thay will look ill” (f49r). A few recipes have been excised leaving only stubs, presumably because they did not prove well in the eating – probably also the outcome of the directions “to make Cleare Cakes of Aprecocks or other Plom or Peaches” (f.50r), which have been crossed out and replaced on the following leaf by “To make Clere Cakes of Aprecoks” (f.51r).
Longevity is of course crucial, being the whole point of preserving. In order “To keepe in a quackinge Gelly all the yeare” one must “Take a pinte of apple watter” mix in “a pound of sugar”, and the same quantity “of plomes”, boil them “leasurelie till they are very tender” and, as with many of the recipes, it can be kept “for your use”. Along similar lines, the receipt “to keep Damsons Grapes and other fruts flowers fresh and raw till Chris Crismas” notes that “if you prick A Rose in Clay in this pot you will find it fresh at Crismas” (f.55r)
TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
Elizabeth is often quite prescriptive about implements and how to deploy them, not to mention the time and the arm strength required in some cases. “To make Napeles bisket” instructs the cook to “Take Six eges both yollckes and whites an beate them in a wooden bowle hallfe an hower” (f.12r); and “Cosen Albrone” demands even greater fortitude in making “Long Glased biskets”, calling for “2 pound lofe suger finely sifted 20 eges halfe ye whits taken out; beat ym an Oure and A Holfe all one way” (15r).
Some recipes measure duration both by the clock and by other factors: in making “bisket cakes”, one is to beat eggs and sugar “together half an hour, then put to them a pound of fine flower, and a few anniseeds, and beat them together untill your oven be as hott as for Manchets” (f.13v); “To Dry Apricocks” directs that you “let them boyle uery leasorlie til thay are uery tender then set them to Coule and let hem stand 3 days” (f.24r); and “To Dry Cherryes or grapes” requires careful timekeeping and constant vigilance: “put them into your ouen after you haue drawne bread and lett them stand in it a quarter of an howre dust them ouer with sugar againe and put them onto the ouen againe ...a quarter of an howre ... in the same manner som fiue or six tymes ouer then stopp up the ouen Close up and llett them stand till they are through dry” (f.26r).
The attentive cook will spot when something seems awry, and in some instances our manuscript suggests remedial steps: “To make Marchpaine Cakes” instructs “beat them together in a stone morter till it come to a paste and if you see ye past to be oyly in ye beating, put a little rose watter into it, and beat it together, and that will draw away all ye oyliness from it, soe you may print it in your moulds” (14v).
ATTRIBUTIONS
There are relatively few attributions in Elizabeth’s book. This may be because, unlike many compilations, she has conceived hers as a systematic work and has organised the material to suit her own particular needs. Among the handful of attributed recipes are “to drie Aprecokes Mrs ffleetwoods way” (f.50r); “To Presarue Goodberrys green
On f.53r, we come across “ye Cleare Rock Candye ye Duchs of Buckingam way”, and on the following leaf, “To preserue Corrans or Barberryes ye Duches of B” and “to preserue damsons ye Dchs way”. All three probably refer to Mary Villiers, Duchess of Buckingham (1638-1704), a member of Queen Cathrine’s (1638-17095) household –as was Katherine Boynton, from the Barmston branch of the family. It’s plausible, therefore, that these recipes were passed through the family to Elizabeth.
CONCLUSION
This unusually well-planned and detailed work crystallises the growing popularity of sugar in 17th century England. It was written at the beginning of a major period of economic change that has continued and resonated ever since: the intertwining of the domestic with the global which brought a commodity like sugar to a rural kitchen.
£8,500 Ref: 8287
ELEVEN
1. [CZARTORYSKI, Prince Adam Kasimir (1731-1823)]. Autograph letter to William Petty, Lord Shelburne [Dated: 4 January 1791]. Single sheet, bifolium. (213 x 185mm). Four pages (text to lower half only), signed, “Czartoryski”.Letter in French from the Diet of Poland to Lord Lansdowne on 4 January 1791 requesting detailed information on the English system of government. Czartoryski received his education in England, but he has penned his request in French.
2. [LANSDOWNE, William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, Earl of Shelburne (1737-1805)]. Enclosure to Czartoryski’s letter in English. [No date. Circa 4 January 1791]. Single sheet, bifolium. (213 x 185mm). Two pages. Six questions in English are written in Lansdowne’s hand on the constitutional position in England of Members of Parliament who were also officers in the armed forces.
3. [BENTHAM, Jeremy (1748-1832)]. Autograph letter to William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne. [Hendon, Middlesex. Circa 1791]. Three sheets, bifolia. (213 x 185mm). Nine pages. Dated: “Hendon, Middlesex, Thursday 24 Feb. 1791”, and signed, “Jeremy Bentham”.
In this long letter to Lansdowne, Bentham responds to the six questions raised by Czartoryski. Contains details of his books, friends and colleagues such as Sir Samuel Romilly KC (1757-1818) and John Lind (1737–1781).
4. [BENTHAM, Jeremy (1748-1832)]. Autograph manuscript entitled, ‘Answers to the Questions relative to the Competition between Parliamentary and Military Duty, under the English Law’.
[Circa 1791]. Three sheets, bifolia. (213 x 185mm). 11 pages.
Original 11-page manuscript in Bentham’s hand in which he gives detailed answers aspects to Czartoryski’s questions.
5. [BENTHAM, Jeremy (1748-1832)]. Autograph manuscript entitled, ‘Questions avec responses sur le rituel de la Chambre des Communes en Angleterre’.
[Circa 1791]. Three sheets, bifolia. (213 x 185mm). 14 pages.
Original 14-page manuscript in Bentham’s hand, being a companion piece to [4] in which he gives answers in French to aspects to Czartoryski’s questions.
6. [BENTHAM, Jeremy (1748-1832)]. Autograph letter to William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne. [Hendon, Middlesex. Circa 1791]. Three sheets, bifolia. (213 x 185mm). Five pages. Dated: “Sunday Aug. 12th 1792”, unsigned.
In this letter to Lansdowne, Bentham writes regarding the Polish-Russia war of 1792, together with gossip and personal matters.
¶ BENTHAM,Jeremy(1748-1832)]. A
Group of Letters and Manuscripts on Constitutional Questions of English Parliamentary Law.
[Circa 1791]. Four letters and two manuscripts, altogether approximately 44 pages (see details opposite).
Watermark: IV (Jean Villedary). Provenance: the Lansdowne letters and manuscripts from the Marquesses of Lansdowne; Bowood House sale, Christie’s, 12 October 1994.
¶ In this important sequence of manuscripts, Jeremy Bentham addresses detailed questions of English law and its parliamentary system, for the benefit of an international ally. These original documents provide an excellent example of how the materiality of a manuscript can yield insights –for example, into the author’s working practices, concerns with style, and ways of organising information.
QUESTIONS
In January 1791, Prince Adam Kasimir Czartoryski (1731-1823), a member of the Diet of Poland, wrote to William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne (1737-1805) – known as the Earl of Shelburne between 1761 and 1784 –requesting his opinion on intricate matters of English parliamentary protocol. Czartoryski was an influential Polish, writer, linguist, traveller and statesman whose many important contributions to public life included his support for the Polish Constitution of 3 May 1791.
King Stanisław August Poniatowski (1732-1798) is reported to have said that the Polish Constitution was “founded principally on those of England and the United States of America, but avoiding the faults and errors of both, and adapted as much as possible to the local and particular circumstances of the country”. This series of five manuscripts shows Czartoryski soliciting advice from Lansdowne, who, in turn, asks Bentham. The latter’s detailed responses [4] were no doubt sifted to help Poland avoid any such “faults and errors” identified by Bentham. Indeed, he seems to anticipate the King’s later observation, when he cautions that “what I profess to understand, or to be able to find out, is what it is most for the advantage of any country that the Law relative to any head should be. If I touch any where upon what I conceive the Law actually to be, it is only in the way of illustration. I would not, were all the crowned heads in Europe to join in begging of me, sit down to write a law book, ^shewing what the law is any where, with any other view”. (p.7).
Jeremy Bentham’s acquaintance with Lansdowne began around 1781, after he and his brother Samuel, in their bid for political patronage, had begun making overtures to men of status in the late 1770s. Lansdowne was duly impressed by Bentham’s work, while the latter “had high hopes that Shelburne would launch his career as a legal reformer” 1. One outcome of their mutually beneficial relationship was Lansdowne’s use of Bentham’s extensive knowledge and talents in a number of ways, of which this is one example.
Czartoryski pens his request [1] in French (despite having been educated in England) and Lansdowne relays his six questions in English to Bentham [2]; all relate to the constitutional position in England of Members of Parliament who were also officers in the armed forces (“Q. 1” asks whether “An Officer actually either in the Sea or Land Service” is permitted “setting up for Member of Parliament, or voting for a Member, though besides ^he was possessed of all ye qualifications which ye Law requires to be returned Member, or to vote for a member”).
RESPONSES
Bentham sends his responses with a nine-page letter to Lansdowne [3]. In his opening lines, Bentham appears to refer to a flattering letter from Lansdowne, but also addresses the latter’s concern that he may have been accused of passing off others’ ideas as his own: “I never heard of your Lordship’s having ever been accused by any body of either the attempt or the disposition to assume credit for ideas originating from other people”. It may have been to reassure Bentham that he would give due credit – as well as to disseminate his work further in the spirit of quid pro quo – that he offered to enclose two of Bentham’s recent works; Bentham replies here that he is “much obliged by your Lordship’s offer of sending the Essay on Tactics” (An Essay on Political Tactics) “and the Nos. on the Judicial Establishment” (presumably Draught of a New Plan for the Organisation of a Judicial Establishment in France (1790)). According to the UCL ‘Bentham Project’, the Essay on Political Tactics was “printed, but not published, in 1791”; since this letter is dated 24 February 1791, we assume that Lansdowne had pre-publication copies of the text. Bentham also recommends that “the Prince should have the pamphlets of Mr Romilly’s, alluded to in my Preface” (p.6); this is their mutual friend, Sir Samuel Romilly KC (1757-1818).
The bulk of Bentham’s letter is effectively a commentary for Lansdowne on his “Answers” manuscript [4]. He is keen to stress the limits of his understanding when he says: “The answers I send to the two strings of questions are in several instances rather what I expect to find conformable to the truth, than what I know to be so”. Furthermore, as “Your Lordship certainly does not expect me to be much acquainted ^for instance with the practice of CourtMartials”, he again refers to Romilly’s understanding of complex questions when he asks Lansdowne “not to send the answers in my name, much less in your Lordship’s, without laying them before Mr Romilly” (p.5).
This spirit of intellectual exchange is evident in Bentham’s reveries about his close friend, the barrister and political writer John Lind (1737–1781), who had in the past, kept him informed about Polish politics (“I used to hear a good
deal of him [the King of Poland] from Mr Lind” (p3). Lind’s earliest work was Letters Concerning the Present State of Poland (1773), and among his best-known works was An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress (1776). He was known to have adopted many of Bentham’s political ideas, justifying Bentham’s remark here that Lind “was the first of the few disciples my mission has produced” (p3?); indeed, such was Lind’s faith in Bentham that “he could print in his own name blindfold whatever I wrote: and my plague used to be to get him so much as to look at it”(p.3).
Bentham defensively explains that he has been “forced to write as things come into my head, not having time to marshal them” (p.9) and apologises for “the illegibility if my hand” (p.9) (it is actually quite readable) and the hasty arrangements of his two manuscripts. He points out that for the first manuscript [4], he has not had “time to copy the questions opposite my answers” (p.9) but assumes that Lansdowne will employ an amanuensis to collate the
CORRECTIONS AND AMENDMENTS
His responses in [4] (11 pages) and [5] (6 pages), besides illustrating the remarkable breadth and depth of his understanding, have an aspect entirely absent from the printed versions of these documents published by UCL’s Bentham Project: in our manuscripts, he has made corrections, amendments, and additions (often in superscript). While this is often more a matter of phrasing style than legal substance, it offers something akin to reading Bentham’s thought process in real time. (It also conveys visually his efficiency under pressure, since his arrangement of answers ‘on the fly’ includes blank panels in [4] for Lansdowne’s underling to “copy the questions opposite
“Is he obliged to obtain leave of absence from his commanding officer, of ye War Office, before he sets out to act as Candidate, or as Elector”), part of Bentham’s reply in our manuscript reads: “Whatever obligation he is under of obtaining leave of absence for any other purpose, he is ^accordingly equally subject to with regard to this: but […] ^at least in the instance of the more important right […] of standing as Candidate, […] if any specific ground could be produced to prove that the leave in question was refused with that view, such refusal would be deemed a grievance proper for the cognisance of P proper subject for complaint before the House of Commons”.
Likewise, his response to “Question 4” “If he should happen to trespass against ye Military Laws, does he incur ye Penalties thereof without being allowed claiming ye Privilege of a Member of Parliament” has several manuscript amendments: “When the King has ordered a Court-Martial to sit for the trial of any officer who has been a Member of the House, and the charge has been such as ^hath required the personal appearance, of the person tried it has been usual for the King –at(?) to give notice thereof to the House: and it has not been usual for the House to insist upon the attendance of such Member, after such no-tice, till the trial was at an end -tice and before the conclusion of the trial. To insist upon such a thing would be to pass a sort of prejudgment on the military charge.”
Bentham’s responses in French [5] to the second set of questions also have their share of amendments, though remarkably few given that this is not his native language. In considering the third of these (“Lorsqu’on est convenu de déliberer sur une motion y a t’il un terme fixe après la resolution duquel il est indispensable d’aller aux voix […]” (When it is agreed to deliberate on a motion, is there a fixed term after the resolution of which it is essential to go to the vote […]?)), he thinks better of his first attempt at a French phrase: “dans l’autre cas l’on crie d comme de concert Question! Question! Ou à dire tantôt ^ ce qui veut dire Président proposez maintenant au sujet de la motion, la question oui ou non pour qu’on aille là dessus aux voix.” (in the other case we shout as if in unison Question! Question! – which means President, now propose on the subject of the motion, the question yes or no so that we can go to the vote on it). He makes a similar revision in his reply to the final question (“Combien des fois un
membre peut il parler au plus dans une seance?” (How many times can a member speak at most in a session?)): dismissing it in one sentence, he nevertheless tussles with the French phrasing: “elle est donnée dans elle est comprise dans celle donnée a la quatrième question” (It is included in that given in the fourth question.)
BY WAY OF EPILOGUE
References:
1. Emmanuelle de Champs. An Enlightenment Statesman in Whig Britain: Lord Shelburne in Context, 1737–1805. Cambridge University Press 2013. p241.
Included in this group is a letter [6] from Bentham to Lansdowne, 18 months after [3] and its enclosures [4] and [5], that serves as a kind of coda to this correspondence; for the Constitution of 1791, despite Czartoryski’s efforts, was short-lived, with intervention from Russia resulting in war in summer 1792. On “Sunday Aug. 12th 1792”, Bentham begins a five-page letter by exclaiming: “It is all over with the poor Poles”, and supplementing the version of events “known to every body” with an account that has “come to our offices” – one of personal humiliation for “the poor King” (Stanislas Augustus) at the hands of “the Empress” (Catherine the Great), who, among other things, kept him waiting “for weeks nay months together […] to be admitted into her adorable presence at a miserable Polish Village”.
Significant collections of Bentham and Lansdown papers are located at:
UCL (Bentham Papers), British Library, and University of Michigan, William L. Clements Library.
In 1793 the Constitution was nullified, and Poland was partitioned twice in three years, ending its status as a sovereign country until 1918. In his 1792 letter, meanwhile, Bentham dispenses with any attempts at gravity by turning to homegrown gossip (“a great Court secret the Q n […] is actually going to take a six weeks course of lectures in botany”), before shamelessly angling for the use of Lansdowne’s vacant “Bowood cottage”
CONCLUSION
Our group of letters and manuscripts serves to illustrate several things: Bentham’s formidable abilities and expertise; his ‘thinking on the page’ and process of drafting and revision; how political patronage operated at ground level (favours and flattery exchanged, reputations burnished, one’s own reputation carefully managed); and the unique qualities of ‘primary source’ manuscripts. The 1792 letter adds a reminder that, for all the workings of international statesmanship, other forces and agendas can leave constitutional democracy in tatters.
£9,500 † Ref: 8291
TWELVE
¶ This hybrid text, which is printed on vellum and finished in manuscript, poses something of an enigma. Its material elements indicate that it was copied from an earlier compilation in the 16th century; but, although the text was compiled using the established method of collating from earlier manuscript rolls, a method exemplified in the ordinaries known by the names of their later owners, Cooke and Cotgrave, it is not a copy of either of those. We suggest, therefore, that it was copied from an earlier source, which is thus far untraced.
MEDIAEVAL FOREBEARS
The precedents for heraldic ordinaries of arms were created in the 14th century; the two most famous examples are named after their 16th-century owners, Cooke and Cotgrave. These are codex compilations of coats drawn from the manuscript rolls of the earlier centuries. The coats are gathered under type of design such as chevrons, fesses, bends, and saltires; the shields divided by line such as gyronny, barry, fusily, paly, pily. Our scribe has used the same methods and layout of using early rolls to compile his work. Within these categories, he has chosen to illustrate an enormous number of differenced arms, which would have involved a huge amount of work and indicates a high level of expertise and an uncommon level of attention to minor differences. Another surprising feature of the book is that it does not include separate beasts (like lions), birds, or inanimate objects, although towards the end there are sections on water bougets, buckles, maunches, and axes. Given the absence of such elements, which are an important part of heraldry’s language, and the scribe’s scrupulousness, it seems plausible that our scribe intended to create a separate volume for beasts and birds.
¶ [JONES, Peter]. English 16th-Century Ordinary of Arms in Printed on Vellum and Finished in Manuscript. [England. Circa 1550]. Quarto (198 x 130 x 15 mm). Pagination [2, index], 6, blank], [2], 136 numbered pages, [17, index], [20, blank], [3, notes and two shields]. The first four, and final 20 leaves are 17th century paper; theordinaryis written on70vellumleaves.
Bound in 18th-century half calf, rubbed and worn, boards detached, lacking spine, damp staining to approximately 15 leaves, one leaf torn with loss to edges of four shields.
WHEN WAS IT WRITTEN?
The volume was compiled circa 1550 on vellum leaves with the shields preprinted. There are a total of 2,800 small shields (35 x 22 mm) printed on 70 vellum leaves. Over 2,300 shields have been completed and tricked in manuscript, and of these about 1,000 have been annotated with names. It is a curious feature of the volume that, rather than copy out and complete sections, the scribe has drawn and tricked a large number of shields, and apparently only then gone back through the work and entered names.
Although the hand appears to be 16th-century, the spellings of some names suggest that they were being copied from a much earlier source: Sheppy is rendered “St Ephewe”; and Notterville is written “Neuteruille”. As noted above, collating from earlier sources is commensurate with the methodology of earlier compilations such as Cooke and Cotgrave, but this manuscript is not copied exactly from those works. Many of the arms with captions can be traced to works like College of Arms manuscript L1 or L2, which were themselves later compilations of earlier arms, probably from the first half of the 16th century or from collections like Thomas Wriothesley’s various works of the early 16th century.
There is an unusual coat of “Goodricke” (p.15) which does not appear to have been recorded in either Papworth or the Dictionary of British Arms. It is blazoned as: On a fess Gules between two lions passant guardant Sable and two unidentified objects, two in chief and one in base, Gules, a fleur de lys Argent between two crescents Or. This is a variant of the Goodrich coat which is thus far untraced, presenting yet another puzzle.
At least one piece of evidence means that we can be certain it was written no earlier than 1547: this was the date that Wriothesley was created Earl of Southampton, whose coat of arms is illustrated on p.2. We suggest that the manuscript was written shortly after this date.
ADDITIONS
The paper endleaves are watermarked with a coat of arms matching Haewood 418, which he dates to 1602. A 17thcentury scribe has added a two-page table of charges at the beginning, and a 17-page alphabetical index of names at the end, together with a couple of perplexing additions. The first of these is to the verso of the first vellum leaf, where he has written a couple of notes (one with a section of decorative border). These have been scribbled out (probably by the same scribe), which makes a transcription somewhat challenging, but they appear to say “Aequest Reesten[es] 1660” and “Reste Destes 1660”. At the end of the volume, there are two shields with annotated notes beneath. The shields have been entirely inked out and, again, the inscriptions scribbled over leaving only the date “1660” (to both) and the blackened, ghostly images which can be tantalisingly glimpsed in the light.
LATER OWNERS
In the middle of the 17th century, the manuscript was sold by a “Wax=Candlemakers wife” to one Peter Jones. An inscription to f.1 of the ordinary reads “Peter Jones Pret[ium]. vs / bought at Namptw[i]ch of the Wax=Candlemakers wife in Aspell=streete. /”. (i.e. Hospital Street, known locally as Aspell or Hospell). Beneath this they have written “Prodest dest Debe esta ste hes”. We are uncertain about this transcription, but it could be a
The population of Nantwich toward the end of the century was between 2,200 and 2,500, been relatively few candlemakers in the town at that time. However, surviving records of chandlers are even scarcer; the nearest match we have found is to Thomas Oakes, a chandler of Nantwich, who in 1681, along with William Judgson of Drayton in Hales, Shropshire, is recorded in a bastardy bond in which they agree to pay maintenance for a girl born out of wedlock “begotten by Robert Judgson late of Hankelow in the parish of Audlem until the child is 12 years of age and to find it an apprenticeship”.2
As to the purchaser, we can be a little more confident, and suggest Peter Jones (d.1687), who has a connection which circles back to “Aspell=streete”, and the arms of his employer (the Done family) are illustrated on p.51 of this manuscript.
There is a monument to Peter Jones in Tarporley Church, located 22 miles from Nantwich. It is possible that he was the son of Owen Jones of Chester, ironmonger, by Jane, daughter to Peter Drinkwater, Alderman of Chester (d.1631), son of John Drinkwater, by Elizabeth, daughter to Raffe Wall. Tarporley is very close to Chester and Peter Jones would have moved there when he was employed by the Done family of Utkinton whose daughter married Sir John Crewe. The monument reads:
“Here lyeth the body of Peter Iones, Gentleman, born at Disserth in the County of Denbigh who liv’d at Utkinton under Sr Iohn Done his Lady, and Daughters for the space of Sixty one years, approving himself a Faithfull Servant An industrious Sollicitor, a carefull & Generous frind to that Family. He was a close reader, a curious observer of affable behaviour & a true son of ye Church of England to his dying day w happened Nober XVII MDCLXXXVII”. A note at the end states: “This Monument was Erected to his memory by Sr John Crewe”.3
Some members of the Crewe family, including Sir John’s grandfather, are recorded as living on Hospital Street, Nantwich, and were therefore probably neighbours with the “Wax=Candlemakers wife”.
CONCLUSION
The heraldic tradition, so concerned with establishing provenance and origins, itself is based upon documents with often uncertain origins. Several questions about our manuscript remain unanswered: who was the 16 century scribe? What source material were they using? Why did they lavish so much attention on small details? And how did a 16th-century ordinary end up in the house of a provincial chandler? Further research may illuminate some of these dark corners, but in the meantime, its attractions are many and its puzzles compelling.
£3,250 Ref: 8266
References:
1. Wyatt, Grace ‘Nantwich and Wyunbury, 1680-1819: A Demographic Study’. (1990).
2. Cheshire Records Office: P113/29/11. <http://catalogue.cheshirearchives.org.uk/calmview/Record.aspx? src=CalmView.Catalog&id=P+113%2f4%2f2%2f4%2f11&pos=7>
3. < https://www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/7772562888/>
We are indebted to Dr Robert Colley for generously sharing his scholarship.
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