Old English Scholarship in the Seventeenth Century: Medievalism and National Crisis 9781843846529, 9781800109339, 9781800109346

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Note on Quotations
Introduction: Medieval Studies in a Time of Crisis
Medievalism, the Self, and the World: Simonds D’Ewes and His Books
Abraham Wheelock’s Godly Historian: The 1643/1644 Bede
The Law’s Deep Roots: Roger Twysden’s Edition of William Lambarde’s Archaionomia and Leges Henrici
Monuments and Memory: William Somner’s Antiquities of Canterbury and Poems on the Regicide
“The Saxons Live Againe”: William Somner’s Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum
The Echoing Past: William Dugdale and Early Medieval Warwickshire
Epilogue: Texts in Conversation
Bibliography
Index
Other Volumes in the Series

Citation preview

Volume XXIII

Old English Scholarship in the Seventeenth Century

ISSN 2043-8230 Series Editors Karl Fugelso Chris Jones Medievalism aims to provide a forum for monographs and collections devoted to the burgeoning and highly dynamic multi-disciplinary field of medievalism studies: that is, work investigating the influence and appearance of “the medieval” in the society and culture of later ages. Titles within the series investigate the post-medieval construction and manifestations of the Middle Ages – attitudes towards, and uses and meanings of, “the medieval” – in all fields of culture, from politics and international relations, literature, history, architecture, and ceremonial ritual to film and the visual arts. It welcomes a wide range of topics, from historiographical subjects to revivalism, with the emphasis always firmly on what the idea of “the medieval” has variously meant and continues to mean; it is founded on the belief that scholars interested in the Middle Ages can and should communicate their research both beyond and within the academic community of medievalists, and on the continuing relevance and presence of “the medieval” in the contemporary world. New proposals are welcomed. They may be sent directly to the editors or the publishers at the addresses given below. Professor Karl Fugelso Art Department Towson University 3103 Center for the Arts 8000 York Road Towson, MD 21252-0001 USA [email protected]

Professor Chris Jones Department of English University of Utah Languages and Communication Building 255 S Central Campus Drive, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 USA [email protected]

Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9 Woodbridge Suffolk IP12 3DF UK

Previous volumes in this series are printed at the back of this book

Old English Scholarship in the Seventeenth Century Medievalism and National Crisis

Rebecca Brackmann

D. S. BREWER

© Rebecca Brackmann 2023 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Rebecca Brackmann to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2023 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 978 1 84384 652 9 (hardcover) ISBN 978 1 80010 933 9 (ePDF) ISBN 978 1 80010 934 6 (ePUB) D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate

Cover image: William Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1656. Page 184. Courtesy of the St. Louis Public Library.

For Craig the raven to my writing desk

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Note on Quotations Introduction: Medieval Studies in a Time of Crisis

viii xi xiii xiv 1

1

Medievalism, the Self, and the World: Simonds D’Ewes and His Books

11

2

Abraham Wheelock’s Godly Historian: The 1643/1644 Bede

38

3

The Law’s Deep Roots: Roger Twysden’s Edition of William Lambarde’s Archaionomia and Leges Henrici Primi

69

4

Monuments and Memory: William Somner’s Antiquities of Canterbury and Poems on the Regicide

102

5

“The Saxons Live Againe”: William Somner’s Dictionarium SaxonicoLatino-Anglicum

127

6

The Echoing Past: William Dugdale and Early Medieval Warwickshire

162

Epilogue: Texts in Conversation: John Milton’s Paradise Regained and the Old English Christ and Satan

189

Bibliography Index

205 227

Illustrations 1 2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9–10. 11. 12. 13.

Bede. Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. Edited by Abraham Wheelock, 1644. Courtesy of Berea College Special Collections and Archives, Berea, KY 58 Bede. Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. Edited by Abraham Wheelock, 1644. Courtesy of Berea College Special Collections and Archives, Berea, KY 60 Archaionomia. Edited and translated by William Lambarde with additions by Roger Twysden. Cambridge: Roger Daniel, 1644. STC #8452. Photograph by Rebecca Brackmann, from the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library 73 Archaionomia. Edited and translated by William Lambarde. London: John Day, 1568. STC #15142. Photograph by Rebecca Brackmann, from the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library 73 Archaionomia 1644. Photograph by Rebecca Brackmann, from the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library 75 William Somner. The Frontispice of the Kings Book Opened. London, 1649. © The British Library Board 119 William Somner. Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum. Oxford, 1659. Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 143 John Ogilby. The Fables of Aesop Paraphras’d in Vers and Adorn’d with Sculpture. London, 1651. Fable 47. Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign 153 Somner, Dictionarium. Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 155–6 William Dugdale. The Antiquities of Warwickshire. London, 1656. Courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, Lincoln Memorial University 167 Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire. Courtesy of the University of Tennessee Libraries, Knoxville, Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives 169 Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire. Courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, Lincoln Memorial University 179

Illustrations

14.

Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire. Courtesy of the St. Louis Public Library

ix

182

The author and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and individuals for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

Acknowledgments I am both humbled by and grateful for the many people who have helped with the process of writing this book. I would like to thank the Appalachian Colleges Association for a Faculty Fellowship that allowed me to travel to manuscript repositories in England. The staff of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the British Library, the Kent History and Library Centre, the Bodleian Library, the Canterbury Cathedral Library, the University of Illinois Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Berea College Special Collections and Archives, the University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, and the St. Louis Public Library all helped me find what I needed and provided congenial environments in which to do the work I love. Closer to home, Michelle Gantz and Larry Mott, successive archivists of Lincoln Memorial University’s Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, went out of their way to help with my research. Most of all, I am indebted to LMU’s interlibrary loan staff, past and present, without whose tireless labor this book could not have happened, and particularly to Michael McMurray, who always used cat pictures for the ILL strips once he found out how much they brightened my day. Charlie Wright and Achsah Guibbory were formative in my understanding of (respectively) Old English and the seventeenth century; this book could not have been written without their kindness and encouragement over the years. Tim Graham, Andrew Rabin, and Jesse Swan all offered me the opportunity to present some of this work while it was in progress and gave sound feedback and advice. I am particularly indebted to Tim for allowing me to see and use some of his translations of Abraham Wheelock’s Latin preface before their publication. I am also grateful to Ed Potten for his generosity in sharing his photographs of the Nostell Priory Archaionomia. The anonymous reader for Boydell & Brewer materially improved the work with their incisive suggestions. No less important has been the warm friendship and support of all my English program colleagues at LMU. Medievalist and early modernist friends from graduate school, from conferences, and from social media have all provided fellowship and community. Over the years, the Kentucky Philological Association has become one of my conference “homes,” and friends there provided perspective on my work from outside the medieval/early modern specializations. I can’t thank half of you half as well as I should like, and I wish I could acknowledge half of you half as well as you deserve. My brother, Dan, has always been one of my most valuable sounding boards and willing ears when I needed to think out loud. My dad, John, was a story-teller and lover of language and shaped many facets of my character in ways that I am only

xii

Acknowledgments

now realizing. My mom, Judy, was one of my greatest friends; she both encouraged my work and insisted on breaks (and cocktails) when I needed them. My son, Robert, arriving a few years into this project, has made every day better ever since. Most of all, my husband, Craig Steffen, has cheered me on and made sure that I was able to keep writing. He has always been my greatest supporter. During my mom’s last illness as the book neared completion, Craig was my rock. (I should also add here my gratitude for Caroline Palmer’s graciousness at a badly blown deadline during that time.) Craig, you are the heart of this book, and it is dedicated to you.

Abbreviations ASC: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle BL: British Library Bosworth–Toller: Bosworth, Joseph, and Thomas Northcote Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online. Edited by Christ Sean and Ondrej Tichy. Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, 2014. http://bosworthtoller.com CCA: Canterbury Cathedral Archives CUL: Cambridge University Library EEBO: Early English Books Online EETS: Early English Text Society LHP: Leges Henrici Primi ME: Middle English MP: Member of Parliament MS: Manuscript OE: Old English OED: Oxford English Dictionary PL: Paradise Lost PR: Paradise Regained Wif: Wifmannes Beweddung

Note on Quotations In Early Modern English quotations, I have normalized u/v and i/j with modern usage. Otherwise, I have retained original spelling; abbreviations have been silently expanded. In quotations in Old English, the abbreviation 7 has been expanded to ond or and depending on the text’s usual spelling, and the standard abbreviation for þæt has also been silently expanded.

Introduction: Medieval Studies in a Time of Crisis

T

he middle decades of the seventeenth century saw tumult arguably unparalleled in British history. Charles I (r. 1625–1649), even more autocratic than his father, James I, incensed English puritans in his promotion of William Laud to Bishop of London (1628) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1633).1 Many of Charles’s subjects disagreed with Charles and Laud about how church services should be conducted, as well as about acceptable behaviors on Sabbath outside of church. Charles lacked both tact and diplomacy, and the Laudian ceremonialists and the puritans opposed to them entrenched in their camps. Charles’s other advisors were every bit as unpopular with his Parliaments as his Archbishop of Canterbury. The Duke of Buckingham, whom many English subjects genuinely believed had poisoned James I, was Charles’s closest friend and advisor until his murder by a disgruntled former sailor in 1628.2 In his grief, Charles grew close to his queen, Henrietta Maria of France – a practicing Roman Catholic, whom many English Protestants suspected of trying to convert Charles and the upper nobility back to the Church of Rome.3 Charles’s other chief advisor, Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Stafford, was similarly hated.

1 Key studies of the period include Austin Woolrych, Britain in Revolution 1625–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); C.V. Wedgwood, The King’s Peace: 1637–1641 (New York: Macmillan, 1956); Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); Diane Purkiss, The English Civil War: Papists, Gentlewomen, Soldiers, and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain (New York: Basic Books, 2006); Peter Gaunt, The English Civil Wars 1642–1651 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2003); Michael Braddick, God’s Fury, England’s Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars (New York: Penguin, 2008); David Cressy, Charles I and the People of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), Kindle edition; Michael Young, Charles I (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997); and the essays in The English Civil War: Conflict and Contexts, 1640–49, ed. John Adamson (New York: Palgrave, 2009). I follow Woolrych and others in using the word “puritan” with a lower-case p to refer to those who wished to reform or purify the English church, while acknowledging that they were not a homogenous group. 2 Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell, The Murder of King James I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). 3 Caroline Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Susan Amussen, “Gender, Inversion, and the Causes of the English Civil War,” in Revolutionising Politics: Culture and Conflict in England, 1620–1660, ed. Paul Hallida, Eleanor Hubbard, and Scott Sowerby (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021), 74–94; and William Bulman, “The Practice of Politics: The English Civil War and the ‘Resolution’ of Henrietta Maria and Charles I,” Past and Present 206 (2010): 43–79.

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Charles dissolved Parliament in 1629 and for the next eleven years ruled without one – a period now called the “Personal Rule.” However, his desire for religious conformity to his and Laud’s ecclesiastical vision not only in England but in Scotland drew him into two disastrous wars with his northern kingdom at the end of the 1630s; between them, he called a Parliament to help fund his army but dissolved it almost immediately. Following the second failed attempt to war with the Scots, Charles called another Parliament – the “Long Parliament” – which ultimately took up arms against him in the Civil Wars of the 1640s. Loyalties were fractured – many people opposed Charles’s autocratic rule and ceremonial church but were not willing to war against him. Some insisted on their liberties in the face of Parliamentary taxation and legal proceedings, which became as oppressive as royal exactions and Star Chamber had been during the Personal Rule.4 After Charles’s capture, trial, and execution, Parliament’s leadership clashed with its army, several of whose members and leaders were Independents and did not want to embrace the Presbyterian ecclesiastical model that many remaining MPs supported.5 After an attempt at a republic, Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector, and the “Protectorate” continued until the end of the 1650s. Within two years of Cromwell’s death in 1658, however, the newly recalled Parliament invited Charles II back to take up the throne, and the Restoration was at hand. These events of the late 1630s through the 1650s are well known, and it may come as a surprise that these decades also saw major milestones in the field of early medieval English studies: the first endowed professorship of Old English (1638); an edition of the Old English translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) (1643); new, augmented editions of early medieval laws (1644); the first edition of a manuscript of Old English poetry – the “Caedmon” manuscript, now Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Junius 11 (1655); and the first dictionary of Old English (1659). This activity, undertaken during national upheaval, has not been extensively studied. A few scholars have remarked on Parliamentarians citing early medieval laws as evidence against royal absolutism or noted the Dictionarium Saxonico-Latinum-Anglicum’s publication. John Niles observes that seventeenth-century early medieval studies “were deeply implicated in the burning political issues of the day,” but the chronological sweep of his investigation only allows him to devote a chapter to the seventeenth century; Graham Parry’s Trophies of Time analyzes some of the period’s early medievalists but again his scope is wider,

Clive Holmes, “Centre and Locality in Civil-War England,” in Adamson, English Civil Wars, 153–74; Alan Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion 1640–60 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1966); David Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c.1640–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 5 Rachel Foxley, The Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013); George Yule, The Independents in the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958); Mark Kishlansky, The Rise of the New Model Army (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); and Ann Hughes, “The Scots, the Parliament and the People: The Rise of the New Model Army Revisited,” in Halliday, Hubbard, and Sowerby, Revolutionising Politics, 180–199. 4

Introduction: Medieval Studies in a Time of Crisis

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covering all “antiquarian” forms of writing from the period. No one has specifically investigated the cultural work that scholars of early medieval England engaged in as they labored during the crisis decades of the 1640s and 1650s. This book attempts to rectify that omission. I present a series of case studies to show how, not despite but because of the intense political upheaval surrounding them, these scholars conducted research that deeply engaged with both the past and present as a way to think through their own historical moment. Each chapter explores the cultural contexts of early medieval studies in the seventeenth century, the discourses that set past and present in dialogue with each other. Such studies of medievalism have proliferated over the last few decades, often focused on later periods of history – Victorian through contemporary.7 Much of the field examines popular medievalism in video games, films, television, and fiction. However, even professional medievalists and their works can be viewed through the lens of medievalism studies, as all research is carried out in a present that must influence it, however disinterested modern medievalists may want to be. This push to undermine the separation between professional and popular medievalism has generated productive inquiries into the nature of both, a valuable enterprise at a time when early English studies in particular attempts to confront the uses white supremacists make of it in their own medievalist claims about pre-Conquest England. Even the very terms “Anglo-Saxon” and “Anglo-Saxonist” have been evoked so often to support white superiority that we can no longer pretend that our use of these terms in the academy to denote a chronological period or culture, and the professors who study and teach in that area, is neutral. Professional medievalists now realize, for the most part, that we must pay attention to the broader cultural discourses about our area of study and cannot just write them off as “bad history,” pretending they don’t exert social pressures and make arguments at least as powerful as our scholarship. The exploration that this book undertakes can also contribute to debates about current early medieval studies, as it discusses the first professional scholars of Old English – Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1602–1650), who helped fund the Cambridge professorship of “Saxon”; Abraham Wheelock (1593–1653), who held the position at Cambridge until his death; and William Somner (1598–1669), who, although not at the university, still received the stipend established by D’Ewes for his work on Old English lexicography.8 These scholars and their works were all, as I shall show, deeply 6

6 John Niles, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England 1066–1901: Remembering, Forgetting, Deciphering, and Renewing the Past (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 110; Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 7 David Matthews, Medievalism: A Critical History (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2015); Louise D’Arcens, ed., Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); and Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz, eds., Medievalism: Key Critical Terms, (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014) are recent examples. 8 Alistair Hamilton, “Abraham Wheelocke (c. 1593–1653), Linguist and Librarian,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com; Kathryn Lowe, “‘The Oracle of His Countrey’? William Somner, Gavelkind, and Lexicography in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in The Recovery of Old English, ed. Timothy Graham (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), 281–300.

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engaged in their own cultural moment; they saw the past and present in dialogue and worked to amplify that conversation. Not that they agreed on what the past had to say: as I shall discuss, they held differing positions in the debates of the day. So too did Sir Roger Twysden (1597–1672) and Sir William Dugdale (1605–1686), the other two subjects of my book, both of whom had sufficient means to carry out their research without specifically being funded for it, and whose projects likewise supported their own cultural and social goals. Examining the medievalism at the origins of our discipline illuminates how the broader concerns of participants have been influential and how they remain so. Louise D’Arcens argues: Rather than debating the validity of presentist engagement with the Middle Ages, the study of medievalism sets out to analyze the fact of presentist medievalism in its many iterations, taking as its fundamental premise that presentism is vital to the postmedieval afterlife of the Middle Ages, and key to its continued potency and relevance within the modern.9

Medievalism, I argue, had no less “potency and relevance” in the tumultuous decades of the mid-seventeenth century. Understanding the origin of the field makes clear that early medieval research can be and has been carried out with a sense of public engagement and concern for how a wide audience might receive the works produced. Early medieval texts and manuscripts are not quaintly obsolete objects of interest only to those who can convince an English or history department to pay their salaries, nor were they in the seventeenth century. As Mike Rodman Jones notes, “The ‘pastness’ of the medieval often seems palpable in early modern writing, but that imagining of the past is strikingly productive, rather than moribund or old-fashioned.”10 In fact, once the linguistic barriers to understanding were cleared, some scholars tried to erase as much of the pastness as possible, as I will argue in my discussion of Twysden. Others made the chronological distance an advantage, as did Dugdale. However, one other notable feature of the origin of early medieval studies is what it does not concern itself with. I find no evidence that seventeenth-century scholars were motived by any kind of racial argument or beliefs in their research. As we try to combat systemic racism and injustice in our own day and in our field, we need to see that such biases were not “baked in” to the discipline from the beginning. Early modern medieval studies were not about whiteness, even when they were most visibly engaged in cultural work. One other factor that modern medievalists struggle to acknowledge is that of our emotional response to our studies. Louise Fradenburg argued decades ago that such aspects of our field as pleasure needed to be recognized and accepted.11 More recently, Carolyn Dinshaw has explored the role of “amateur” – understood

D’Arcens, “Presentism,” in Emery and Utz, Medievalism: Key Critical Terms, 184. Jones, “Early Modern Medievalism,” in D’Arcens, Cambridge Companion to Medievalism, 90. 11 Fradenburg, “‘So That We May Speak of Them’: Enjoying the Middle Ages,” New Literary History 28 (1997): 205–230. 9

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Introduction: Medieval Studies in a Time of Crisis

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etymologically as well as literally – medieval studies. Many of us love our field, however rarely we admit it in public (much less in writing). Pleasure, however, is not the only emotion that draws people to the study of pre-Conquest England. The subjects of this book’s chapters had wars raging around them as they worked. D’Ewes and Twysden were both imprisoned at some point in the 1640s. Wheelock saw his livelihood threatened; Somner and Dugdale lost their posts. Their medieval studies were conducted not just with pleasure, but with fear, with rage, with worries about an uncertain future, and with grief for unrecoverable losses. Disinterested medieval studies would have been unthinkable, even if they had been possible. For some of these men, their scholarship no doubt supplied something of a personal, emotional escape, but to see all their work through such a lens is to miss much of the point. They offered their work as a way to engage with the events around them, to try to mitigate the damage to the English polity, and to make heard their emotional responses to the crises through which they lived. They believed that the past showed the way forward, that it must be understood in dialogue with the present, and that many contemporary problems had their solutions buried in time, if only they could be uncovered. Of course, the men I study for this book disagreed utterly about what those solutions were. D’Ewes was a devout Calvinist and member of the Long Parliament (although he was not a regicide); Dugdale, as a herald in the Royal College of Arms, lived in Oxford with the king and the army during the wars. Wheelock, I argue, held a puritan position on the centrality of sermons to worship; Somner was a Laudian appointee to Canterbury Cathedral. Twysden stood for the rights of Englishmen against both king and Parliament; his constitutional royalism meant conflict with both sides. And yet, they all cooperated and collaborated on their works of medieval studies. D’Ewes not only funded Wheelock’s professorship, but also probably employed Somner in his house in the 1630s to work with his manuscripts; this access was crucial to Somner’s eventual success in publishing the Dictionarium Saxonico-­Latino Anglicum. D’Ewes also enjoyed warm friendships with Twysden and Dugdale, and they corresponded often. Wheelock and Twysden collaborated on the legal materials in the 1644 second edition of the Old English Bede and the ASC. Even Somner, who had arguably lost the most when he completed his Dictionarium, and who is perhaps the least tolerant of his colleagues with opposing political views, kept his criticisms relatively muted. In the end, perhaps the most important effect of early English studies was its power for unity, the recognition of the foremost participants that there was room for many voices and views, and the strength that such ties gave to those early medievalists. Such inclusiveness was not always easy: D’Ewes in particular could be a difficult man, yet his colleagues recognized his contributions and the good will behind them and (usually) looked past his failings. For them, inclusion and respect for good faith in scholarship showed the way forward. 12

Carolyn Dinshaw, How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012). 12

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 This book’s chapters are loosely chronological, and as it happens, loosely organized around political and religious positions, from puritan and Parliamentarian to Laudian and royalist. Each scholar’s medievalism had different emphases, and studied together, they present a range of ways the study of pre-Conquest England participated in seventeenth-century discourses. The first chapter will focus on the role of early medieval studies in the “self-fashioning” of D’Ewes. Unlike the other scholars I discuss, D’Ewes printed no works of medieval scholarship. However, he facilitated the publications of others, and his centrality to early medieval studies before his death in 1650 can hardly be overstated. One of the most significant journal keepers of English parliamentary history, D’Ewes wrote a series of diaries and even an autobiography that chronicled his spiritual development as well as his daily activities.13 Such puritan life-writing was increasingly common as godly English believers struggled not only with their own salvation but with the Laudian church’s emphasis on ceremony.14 D’Ewes came from relative wealth and collected a library of books and manuscripts that he freely shared with other scholars. As his books clearly formed part of his self-fashioning, the intersection of his private self and his public role as an MP, I explore how his library shaped his understanding of his own identity and that of his country’s past. I examine D’Ewes’s copy of William Lambarde’s 1568 Archaionomia, which would have presented him with an image of Old English laws dedicated to the formation of a godly nation. I also consider D’Ewes’s interactions with an early medieval manuscript in his possession, which he re-arranged and augmented to narrate a history of England that urged the English to repent of idolatry. Finally, I examine his manuscript Old English dictionary, which was left incomplete at his death. D’Ewes carried out his research, aided by scribes and friends, in the midst not only of political crisis but personal loss: he and his first wife experienced the death of seven children before her own death in 1641.15 His use of medieval studies as a facet of his identity, not just a mantle of expertise that he enjoyed in Parliament but as a personal, deeply felt aspect of his selfhood, provides an example of the emotional benefits of medievalism as he navigated the intersection between self and public. My second chapter discusses the publications of Abraham Wheelock, the first professional early medievalist, whom Henry Spelman (1562–1641) and then D’Ewes endowed with a Professorship of Saxon at Cambridge University. Wheelock, formerly a Shropshire scholarship student who had become Cambridge’s University Librarian and Professor of Arabic, had the requisite facility in learning languages and skill with manuscripts for the position. He also lacked D’Ewes’s means, so he 13 D’Ewes’s most recent biography is J. Sears McGee, An Industrious Mind: The Worlds of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015); the concept of “selffashioning” as an intersection of public and private identity is articulated by Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 14 Owen Watkins, The Puritan Experience: Studies in Spiritual Autobiography (New York: Schocken Books, 1972); D. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 15 McGee, Industrious Mind, 188–205.

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needed wealthy patrons. Wheelock does not fit neatly into categories in the Civil Wars, as indeed was the case with many English subjects. His publications included several praise poems for the Stuart monarchs, and Patrick Day argues that Wheelock’s translation of the ASC indicates a royal absolutist view.16 At the same time, I argue that his additions to the Old English Bede printed in the same volume as the ASC point to a Calvinist and puritan position on subjects such as the importance of sermons over sacraments. The resulting volume, one of the most significant achievements of seventeenth-century medieval studies, points in multiple directions when it came to related topics of politics and religion. Was Wheelock one of the many English who found himself supporting the king while loathing what he and Archbishop Laud had done to the church? Was he merely hedging his bets, praising the Stuarts and supporting their absolutist claims while at the same time also editing Bede to please the puritan D’Ewes? Whatever Wheelock’s motivations, and they may not all have been visible even to him, the resulting volume is polyvalent to say the least. Everyone could have found something in it to like, or dislike, in its depiction of a period in England’s history that many believed foundational to English identity. And perhaps that was the point: as Wheelock pleads in his introduction for peace among English Christians, he speaks of the “necessity of Saxonism” to achieve that goal. Agonizing over his circumstances, he looked to the past for solutions and tried to present Old English texts to show how they could draw together separate strands of English society as it threatened to fracture. Sir Roger Twysden, the subject of chapter three, also found himself at odds with both sides in the Civil Wars. Sometimes described as a “constitutional royalist,” Twysden believed that English liberties were expressed and preserved by English law, and that those liberties could be abrogated by neither king nor Parliament.17 Twysden objected to Charles I’s exaction of ship money and his rule without Parliament in the 1630s. However, when the Long Parliament took the reins of government from the king and abolished all bishops from the English church, Twysden participated in formulating a petition from Kent to the Parliament asking that traditional religious structures be restored. That petition, and a follow-up one that was drafted but not sent, got him on the wrong side of the Long Parliament, and he spent much of the 1640s under arrest while his lands were exploited by the head of the Parliamentary committee for Kent. Ultimately, events drew Twysden to the conclusion that a king, even a king such as Charles I, restrained somewhat by the ancient constitution and by Parliament, was preferable to a Parliament restrained by nothing. However, his conclusions had to do with protecting the liberty of the subject, not any devotion to monarchy as an institution or loyalty to Charles Stuart. While Wheelock seemed to have commonalities with both royalist absolutists and Calvinist critics of Charles’s church, Twysden did not think either Parliament or the Stuarts were sufficiently respectful of English rights. Twysden’s views emerge in his contributions to the second edition (1644) of Wheelock’s Bede and ASC – a re-issue, with additions, of William Lambarde’s 16 Patrick Day, “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the Seventeenth Century: Transmission, Translation, Reception” (PhD diss., Florida State University, 2017). 17 Smith, Constitutional Royalism.

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Archaionomia, and an edition of the Leges Henrici Primi (LHP), which allowed readers to see how Old English laws were understood in the early Norman period. Wheelock and Twysden collaborated on these texts, facilitated by D’Ewes, who was a good friend of the Twysdens and who tried his best to get Twysden released from imprisonment. Twysden’s additions, I argue, were carefully selected to show the immediacy and relevance of the pre-Conquest laws. He added texts in which pre-Conquest legislators addressed familiar domestic and local subjects ranging from ensuring the legitimacy of a marriage and the rights of the parties involved, to the problem of livestock getting into parish churches. With the familiarity and relevance of Old English legal topics established, Twysden then provided the Leges, which laid out the fundamental rights of the English. The deployment of both intimately local and theoretically foundational codes together gave the laws an immediacy for the book’s readers, despite the unfamiliar language in which most pre-Conquest legislation was penned. William Somner produced the seventeenth century’s premier achievement in Old English studies – the 1659 Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum, the first printed dictionary of Old English. Somner’s name is passingly familiar to scholars of pre-Conquest England even now, but the engagement of his dictionary with contemporary events has not been studied. Chapter four first examines some of Somner’s earlier publications: his Antiquities of Canterbury (1640) and his poems on the execution of Charles I (1649), the latter inspired by one of the most influential texts of the day – Eikon Basilike. Unlike Wheelock and Twysden, Somner felt no pull toward the opponents of Charles either in terms of religion or politics. Somner had been appointed Registrar of Canterbury Cathedral by Archbishop Laud, and he believed in the importance of episcopacy in the English church throughout the centuries. I draw on the work of Dinshaw to examine the trans-temporal desires Somner expresses as he locates ornamental worship space and episcopacy in the ground of England itself, longing for the past’s beauty and holiness.18 Somner’s memorial poems for Charles I draw explicitly on the iconographic program of the Eikon Basilike, which claimed to be a series of prayers and meditations written by the king himself during his imprisonment. Eikon Basilike was a masterwork of public relations for the Stuart cause, and not even John Milton’s rebuttal, Eikonoklastes, could stem its influence.19 Somner was one of many who wrote poems in response to the Eikon; he presents Charles as a martyr for his principles, sacrificing his earthly crown for a heavenly one as he laid down his life to preserve his conscience. Dinshaw, How Soon Is Now? Eikon Basilike with Selections from Eikonoklastes, ed. Jim Daems and Holly Faith Nelson (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview, 2006); Robert Wilcher, “Eikon Basilike: The Printing, Composition, Strategy, and Impact of ‘The King’s Book,’” in The Oxford Handbook of Literature and the English Revolution, ed. Laura Lunger Knoppers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 289–308; Sean Kelsey, “The King’s Book: Eikon Basilike and the English Revolution of 1649,” in The English Revolution c.1590–1720: Politics, Religion, and Communities, ed. Nicholas Tyacke (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 150–168; Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler, “The First ‘Royal’: Charles I as Celebrity,” PMLA 126 (2011): 912–934; and Sharon Achinstein, “Milton and King Charles,” in The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I, ed. Thomas Corns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 141–161. 18

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These writings from the 1640s lay the groundwork for my examination in chapter five of the Dictionarium. Somner’s discussion of his Old English research in the book’s prologue constitutes perhaps the most partisan scholarship of the period, as he minimizes the contributions of both D’Ewes and Wheelock in the 1640s. However, by the time he wrote, D’Ewes and Wheelock were dead, and Parliamentary rule had been followed by a Commonwealth and then Protectorate that neither man would probably have supported. The hardening of Somner’s views by 1659 doubtless had more to do with events after the deaths of the more Calvinist and Parliamentary medievalists than his actual relationship with them while they lived. In any case, the volume’s prefatory poems explicitly situate Somner’s work as royalist and Laudian, deriding the self-styled “saints” whose only concern with the past is how best to destroy it and praising Somner’s preservation of England’s history against such iconoclasm. One poem even parallels the earliest Germanic rulers in Britain, Hengist and Horsa, and the sons of Charles I, whom the writer likewise envisions crossing the sea to take ownership of the island. Within the dictionary itself, I focus first on entries from two manuscripts in particular, the medical texts of London, British Library MS Royal 12 D.xvii, and Bodleian Library, Junius 11’s Old English poetry narrating biblical histories. In his entries from the poem “Daniel” from Junius 11, Somner evokes the discourse of royalists as experiencing a “Babylonian Captivity” during the Interregnum. Looking at the medical texts in conjunction with medico-political theory and publications from the 1650s, I argue that Somner manipulates his lemmata to draw particular attention to abdominal pathologies, tacitly pointing to the common portrayal of the Interregnum government as a rapacious, ruling belly. Somner’s entries from the medical texts highlight the dangers of such pathologies and the necessity of drastic intervention for their cures. Finally, Somner’s discussions of terms relating to kings and worship overtly support monarchy and episcopal church government. Ultimately, Somner’s work of mid-century medievalism positions itself as explicitly royalist and Laudian, drawing on several discourses to embed his dictionary in contemporary debates. My final chapter examines William Dugdale’s ground-breaking Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), a mammoth county history that set new standards with its exhaustive details and numerous illustrations. Dugdale was friends with D’Ewes as well as with Somner and Twysden. He moved to Oxford when the royal court took up residence there. Dugdale was probably not warmly disposed toward the king personally and hated his time in Oxford, but his loyalty to the royalist cause remained steady.20 After the war, Dugdale returned to his home in Warwickshire and compiled the Antiquities, which includes extensive genealogies for gentry families and meticulously detailed records of property ownership and transfer. Almost all this information dates from after the Conquest, and Dugdale even states that he will not provide much evidence from “Saxon” records as they are mostly absent. However, this frees him to treat pre-Conquest history as an imaginative space somewhat at odds with the rest of the volume when he does discuss events (or putative events) from early English history. As an analogy, I draw on theories Jan Broadway, William Dugdale: A Life of the Warwickshire Historian and Herald (Gloucester: Xmera Press, 2011), 53–73. 20

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of contemporary medievalist film studies. It has been argued that films that take the Middle Ages as their setting are fundamentally different than those treating other historical periods. Such “medievalist” films often comment more explicitly on the present and its concerns, imagining their period as a dreamlike fantasy space in which a contemporary audience can seek revelation.21 Dugdale’s treatment of pre-Conquest history uses a similar tactic, especially in his discussion of Guy of Warwick (believed to have lived during the reign of Athelstan) and the ceremonies attendant on knighting. Here, unlike the rest of the volume with its roll-call of family names and documented sources, Dugdale draws on re-creations both textual and visual to allow his audience room for imagination and (arguably) fantasy in their relationship to their home county and country. The book’s epilogue moves beyond the Restoration, and beyond considering medievalism in terms only of specialized practitioners, and asks how the printed poems of the Junius manuscript might have interacted with texts on similar topics by writers whose interests did not lie in the pre-Conquest past. In particular, I explore the perennial question of whether John Milton could have read Old English or known the Junius poems.22 While I argue that he did not, I also show that this need not close off consideration of Old English poetry alongside his writings. I examine Milton’s Paradise Regained and the Old English Christ and Satan. Both texts participate in similar discourses, not only in their topic of the Temptation of Christ in the wilderness, but in their use of that moment in sacred history to consider contemporary issues of sovereignty, individual salvation, and the role of the literal versus the figural in a believer’s life. The study of medievalism need not be limited to source studies, I argue, and does not require us to close off all examination of texts that do not take the Middle Ages as their setting or topic. To truly understand the reach of cultural notions of pre-Conquest England, we need to look at them in fully discursive settings. When we do, we see that medievalism in times of crisis plays crucial roles in the lives of many individuals, regardless of professional status. From our field’s origin, early medieval English studies have responded to wider cultural concerns in a range of contexts.

Arthur Lindley, “The Ahistoricism of Medieval Film,” Screening the Past 3 (1998), online; Bettina Bildhauer, Filming the Middle Ages (London: Reaktion Books, 2011); and Robert Mills, Derek Jarman’s Medieval Modern (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2018). 22 J. Martin Evans, Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968). 21

1 Medievalism, the Self, and the World: Simonds D’Ewes and His Books

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imonds D’Ewes has less recognition as an early medievalist than Abraham Wheelock or William Somner, as none of his work saw publication.1 However, as a man of independent means, he was able to continue the endowment to Cambridge University that funded Wheelock’s professorship and Somner’s Dictionarium after the original sponsor, Henry Spelman, died. D’Ewes not only enabled the studies of other gifted scholars but read Old English himself and used that knowledge directly in the political debates of his day.2 A zealous Calvinist opposed to royal absolutism (although not to monarchy per se), he was an active member of the Long Parliament. He published proceedings of Elizabethan Parliaments that frequently supplied precedents for the Long Parliament’s actions. He also spoke regularly in the House, often drawing on his knowledge of medieval legal and religious texts and history. His engagement with early medieval texts went beyond dabbling and became a crucial part of his self-concept as a godly Englishman. As he began to work on his own Old English dictionary (which he did not live to complete), he drew scholars from both sides of the political conflict together to reclaim England’s past. D’Ewes’s activities in the 1630s and 1640s show how medievalism operated in his self-fashioning and his participation in contemporary debates. Studies of D’Ewes’s book-collecting and antiquarian activities include Andrew Watson, The Library of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (London: British Museum, 1966); M.S. Hetherington, “Sir Simonds D’Ewes and Method in Old English Lexicography,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 17 (1975): 75–92; R.J. Schoeck, “Early Anglo-Saxon Studies and Legal Scholarship in the Renaissance,” Studies in the Renaissance 5 (1958): 102–110; Richard Vann, “The Free Anglo-Saxons: A Historical Myth,” Journal of the History of Ideas 19 (1958): 259–272; and Freyja Cox Jensen, “Reading Florus in Early Modern England,” Renaissance Studies 23 (2009): 659–677. 2 For D’Ewes’s political activity, see J. Sears McGee’s biography An Industrious Mind: The Worlds of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015); and his “Sir Simonds D’Ewes and ‘the Poitovin Cholick’: Persecution, Toleration, and the Mind of a Puritan Member of the Long Parliament,” Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiannes d’histoire 38 (2003): 481–491; and “Sir Simonds D’Ewes: A ‘Respectable Conservative’ or a ‘Fiery Spirit?,’” in England’s Wars of Religion Revisited, ed. Charles Prior and Glenn Burgess (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), 147–167. Other studies of D’Ewes include Ronald Huebert, “The Gendering of Privacy,” The Seventeenth Century 16 (2001): 37–67; John Morrill, “Paying One’s D’Ewes,” Parliamentary History 14 (1995): 179–186; and S.P. Salt, “Sir Simonds D’Ewes and the Levying of Ship Money, 1635–1640,” The Historical Journal 37 (1994): 253–287. 1

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D’Ewes periodically used Old English in ownership inscriptions in his books. London, British Library Harley MS 483 is his private diary covering the period from January 1645/1646 to March 1646/1647. D’Ewes, in common with many of his fellow puritans, had already begun an autobiography that covered his life until the mid-1630s.3 His diaries were written with an eye to continuing that work, so they stand at a junction of public and private writing. His ownership inscriptions in Harley 483 share that status, addressing both an internal and an external audience (and as Jason Scott-Warren observes, early modern annotations in books often “do not make much sense unless we learn to think of [the book] as a quasi-public environment”).4 At the beginning of the manuscript, D’Ewes wrote his name, and then two inscriptions: “Moribus et vita nobilitatim homo” and “Mid hiht ic þolige. / Butan hiht ic ah[n]ige.”5 The Latin tag, roughly translating “By habits and life a man is made noble,” encapsulates D’Ewes’s goals for writing his diary: he wishes to record his life and his habits in order to document his own nobility and give example to others. D’Ewes’s planned autobiography, had he completed it, would have set forth the foundations for his godly life, a common concern among puritan life-writers. The eventual outside view of D’Ewes’s life is highlighted here by the impersonal statement; D’Ewes’s note could be seen as the thesis for his life’s story when viewed by others. The second inscription is Old English and translates “With hope I endure; without hope I fall.” D’Ewes, despite being a keen Latinist, writes the more intimate, first-person tag in the language of pre-Conquest England. He places the claim for the importance of hope as a prelude to the narrative of his deeds and words. The Old English tag expresses the need for an inner state (less visible to others than one’s “habits”) that nonetheless determines one’s fate. Since D’Ewes (as his autobiography makes clear) was a committed Calvinist, “hope” here probably means not the sort of cheerful optimism that the word signals to modern readers, but rather the conviction of one’s elect status, the inner assurance of grace that Calvinists believed God granted to those predestined for salvation. The Old English inscription is not just a catchy phrase but reflects D’Ewes’s most deeply held religious beliefs. The two paired inscriptions mimic the diary’s Calvinist view that a The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. James Orchard Halliwell, 2 vols. (London, 1845). For overviews of Calvinist life-writing, see Owen Watkins, The Puritan Experience: Studies in Spiritual Autobiography (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), and D. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Other studies of early modern life-writing include Elaine McKay, “The Diary Network in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England,” Eras Journal 2 (2001), online; Elizabeth Clark, “Diaries,” in A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, ed. Michael Hattaway (London: John Wiley, 2002), 609–614; Anna Poletti, “Putting Lives on the Record: The Book as Material and Symbol in Life Writing,” Biography 40 (2017): 460–484; Linda Tredennick, “Exteriority in Milton and Puritan Life Writing,” Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 51 (2011): 159–179; and Ronald Bedford, Lloyd Davis, and Philippa Kelly, Early Modern English Lives: Autobiography and Self-Representation (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007). 4 Scott-Warren, “Reading Graffiti in the Early Modern Book,” Huntington Library Quarterly 73 (2010): 375. 5 Watson, Library, 219. D’Ewes writes “ahrigan,” probably just an error but possibly conflating ahriran (to destroy) with ahnigan (to sink down). Lambarde’s inscription has “ahnige.” 3

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godly life could provide an excellent example to others, but only one’s internal state indicated whether or not one was saved. The Old English inscription that D’Ewes penned in his diary did not originate in any early medieval text, nor is it D’Ewes’s own construction based on his linguistic knowledge. The phrase was first written by the Elizabethan antiquary William Lambarde (1536–1601) on the title page of the Vocabularium Saxonicum, an Old English to Early Modern English dictionary written for Lambarde by his mentor in early medieval studies, Laurence Nowell (1530–c. 1570).6 D’Ewes, who had access to the Vocabularium, copied Lambarde’s phrase onto the first leaves of his private diary. Certainly, D’Ewes’s understanding of the past was mediated by the work of his sixteenth-century predecessors in early medieval studies, but his inclusion of Lambarde’s inscription in his own diary does more than simply borrow a memorable phrase. If I am right that D’Ewes understood the Old English phrase through the lens of his Calvinist convictions, it extended those convictions to Lambarde and to the period of English history before the Conquest. His intimate declaration of his internal, saved self was expressed in the words of an antiquary who wrote during what in hindsight seemed a golden age of peace and Protestantism. D’Ewes drew a line from the pre-Conquest past, through the Elizabethan period, to himself. His identity as an elect soul, a recipient of grace, intersected with his identity as a historian and fueled his interest in the past. As D’Ewes matured when the anti-­ Calvinists in the Church of England were becoming more and more prominent, his statement also takes a stand on contentious public issues in his own day.7 The past spoke directly to the present; the private soul argued about the public church. These interests pervade D’Ewes’s writing. Anyone who has perused his Parliamentary journals has encountered his concern with self-presentation and his role as an individual within his social and political environment. These journals (which are based on private diaries) are of supreme importance to historians of the Long Parliament but record at greatest length all that D’Ewes himself said about a topic. As Wallace Notestein observes: “If [readers] will sometimes skip over the pages where D’Ewes says: ‘Then I stood up and spake,’ they will, I believe, follow the debates easily.”8 Ironically, his habit of recording verbatim his own long speeches has cast some doubt on his veracity. Sometimes D’Ewes’s orations are confirmed by other journalists’ records, but often they are not, leading John Morrill to wonder, “was

6 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Selden supra 63. The standard account of Nowell’s life is Carl Berkhout, “Laurence Nowell 1530–c. 1570,” in Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline, vol. 2, Literature and Philology, ed. Helen Damico with Donald Fennema and Karmen Lenz (New York: Garland, 1998), 3–17. For Lambarde’s use of the Old English tag, see Carl Berkhout, “William Lambarde’s Old English Ex Libris,” Notes and Queries 229 (1984): 297–298; the translation I use is Berkhout’s. I discuss the work of both Nowell and Lambarde in The Elizabethan Invention of Anglo-Saxon England: Laurence Nowell, William Lambarde, and the Study of Old English (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2012). 7 Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c. 1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); see also chapter two. 8 The Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes from the Beginning of the Long Parliament to the Opening of the Trial of the Earl of Strafford, ed. Wallace Notestein (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923), xii.

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Simonds D’Ewes the Walter Mitty of the Long Parliament?”9 As Morrill goes on: “At the very least, D’Ewes skews his accounts so as to highlight speeches which made less impression on his auditors than on himself. But a gnawing doubt remains that he records what he thought but dared not say, or what he longed, with the wisdom of hindsight, that he had got round to saying.”10 On the other hand, Sears McGee, D’Ewes’s most recent biographer, argues that D’Ewes did in fact make these speeches.11 However, debate about the truth value of his journals obscures an important point – D’Ewes’s Parliamentary journals, like his autobiography, are an exploration of his own role, his self, in the broader world. This holds whether or not his speeches were made; D’Ewes was – or at least wanted to be – a key public voice, and also the narrator of his own life. Asking whether his journal was written to record public affairs or his private reactions is (in this regard) a false dilemma; these were interpenetrating categories in his mind. His antiquarian research formed part of this self-image – D’Ewes was proud of his learning – and also supported and extended his positions in debates. Whenever the Long Parliament needed to find a precedent for one of its actions as it maneuvered against Charles and his government, D’Ewes was there, whether the subject matter be determining the “ancient constitution” of England and the liberties of its citizens, or exploring the history of episcopacy.12 He wrote proudly to his wife in 1640: “I spake thrice this morning in the House, and at my second speech vouched a record, which not onlie gave great satisfaction to the House, but ended a waightie and perplexed dispute it was then controverting.”13 This was often his role; his value to the Long Parliament came from his antiquarianism and his skill in not only Latin and Law French but Greek, Hebrew, possibly Syriac, and most of all Old English. Even when his expertise led him to unpopular positions, he followed it, as he did in April of 1642: I withdrew out of the house and went home with one Sir John Northcote, a member of the house, to show him Lambarde’s Saxon Laws, being part of those laws which are merely in Latin and ascribed to Edward the Confessor, where there was somewhat of a spurious new copy touching the old English meeting on May Day, which he said he intended to cite in the house. And I told him the vanity of it and how unfit it was to be vouched there… .14

Northcote persisted and brought up the code in question, and D’Ewes was asked to say somewhat to the precedent cited by the gentleman who last spake touching the assembling together of the old English Saxon laws on the calends of May each Morrill, “Paying,” 183. Ibid., 184. 11 McGee, Industrious Mind, 309–312. 12 For the Long Parliament and its activities, see David Como, Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) as well as the works noted in the introduction. 13 Autobiography, vol. 2, 249. 14 D’Ewes, The Private Journals of the Long Parliament, 7 March–1 June 1642, vol. 2, ed. Anne Young and Vernon Snow (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 121. 9

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year. Something there is found to this purpose in a late spurious copy not of any Saxon laws but of William the First[’s] laws. But in the old and genuine copy of that William’s laws, there is no such thing… .15

I will discuss D’Ewes’s copy of Lambarde’s 1568 Archaionomia soon, but the main point here is that D’Ewes relied on his own judgment and did not simply agree with a statement he believed erroneous. He expresses some skepticism about the so-called Leges Edwardi, on which many of D’Ewes’s contemporaries drew in their arguments against the king, although it is not clear whether D’Ewes believed that the Leges themselves were inauthentic, or that Northcote’s source manuscript of them was faulty.16 The materials that D’Ewes and others used to access the past could not always be trusted. D’Ewes, personally expert in documentary research, did not let this fact escape him when others in the Long Parliament would perhaps have liked to believe the authenticity of texts they found sympathetic. D’Ewes, however keen he was to be influential in Parliament, was not an unquestioning propagandist when it came to the legal history of England. He believed that only historical accuracy could enable the past to speak to the present. The intersecting themes of self and public, past and present, recur in this chapter’s discussion of several of D’Ewes’s manuscripts – both ones that he produced and ones (medieval and post-medieval) that he owned. I first examine his copy of Lambarde’s Archaionomia. D’Ewes’s copy came to his hands thoroughly annotated by a previous owner, so his Archaionomia and its glosses should be considered together. This artifact may have introduced D’Ewes to Old English studies, and probably guided his understanding of it for the rest of his life. His later treatment of a medieval copy of the Laws of Cnut and Edgar – London, British Library Harley MS 55 – reflects many of the ideas he found expressed in his copy of Lambarde. These manuscripts show us why D’Ewes thought the study of the early medieval past could be crucial to the concerns of the seventeenth century. Next, I explore his construction of British history in Harley MS 624, which he created in part with fragments selected from a twelfth-century Passionale manuscript. Harley 624 displays his chief concerns for history’s role in the present, but it also shows him struggling with the ideological issues that his fascination with the past raised – especially in the portion of the manuscript dealing with pre-Conquest Archbishops of Canterbury. D’Ewes’s selection of items from the Passionale negotiates the role of hagiography in history in ways that both mimic and diverge from the decisions of his older contemporary, Sir Robert Cotton (1571–1631). This chapter’s final section explores a project for which D’Ewes has achieved some limited recognition among medievalists – the most comprehensive dictionary of Old English that had been compiled to date, which (combined with an edition of Ælfric’s Grammar) took up two large

15 Ibid. D’Ewes’s notes are contradictory about which code is being cited, Leges Edwardi or that of William. 16 For the deployment of “St. Edward’s Laws” in constitutional debates, see Janelle Greenberg, The Radical Face of the Ancient Constitution: St. Edward’s “Laws” in Early Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

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volumes, now London, British Library MS Harley 8 and 9.17 This project, probably carried out both during D’Ewes’s Parliamentary career and after it had been ended by Colonel Pride’s Purge in 1648, drew on his network of colleagues in medieval studies. In it, he brought together a variety of sources and approaches to Old English lexicography. In the context of his other artifacts, both those he created and those he acquired, this exercise need not be seen as purely a retreat into private life but as a continuation of the public self displayed in his autobiography and Parliamentary journals. In the case of the lexicographical project, the collaborative nature of the work also showed that scholars adhering to competing political and religious ideologies could work together to reclaim the past and perhaps give hope for similar unity in the future. D’Ewes’s Archaionomia: Inscriptions, Margins, and God’s Law D’Ewes took a justified pride in his library. Although (by his own reckoning) he had only a poor allowance while his father lived, he nevertheless began acquiring the core of what would become one of the greatest libraries in England, especially with regard to early medieval manuscripts. By the time D’Ewes died in 1650, his collection rivaled that of Cambridge University.18 While his religious convictions allowed him to face his own death with relative equanimity, the potential “death” of his collection clearly concerned him. Andrew Watson observes that his library is “the first item to be mentioned in his will,” where he begged his heirs to keep “pretiosissimam meam Bibliothecam” [my most precious library] intact after his death.19 Imagining the fragmentation of his collection alarmed and upset him. He also wanted it available to others, and instructed that it would be open, “upon adequate security, to all lovers of learning.”20 Many of his volumes, as I have mentioned, are marked with one of his ownership inscriptions – D’Ewes literally writing himself into his books, which were his pride.21 Hetherington has studied D’Ewes’s dictionary in “Sir Simonds D’Ewes,” as has Rolf Bremmer, “‘Mine Is Bigger Than Yours’: The Anglo-Saxon Collections of Johannes de Laet (1581–1649) and Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1602–50),” in Anglo-Saxon Books and Their Readers: Essays in Celebration of Helmut Gneuss’s “Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts,” ed. Thomas Hall and Donald Scragg (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2008), 136–174. 18 Watson, Library, 40. 19 Ibid., 54. 20 Ibid. Other early modern collectors such as Sir Robert Cotton expressed similar concerns. Jennifer Summit, Memory’s Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Thomas Hall, “Sir Robert Bruce Cotton,” in Pre-Nineteenth Century British Book Collectors and Bibliographers, ed. William Baker and Kenneth Womack (London: Brucoli Clark Laymon, 1999), 57–69; and C.E. Wright, “The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and the Formation of the Cottonian Library,” in The English Library before 1700, ed. Francis Wormald and C.E. Wright (London: Athlone Press, 1958), 176–212. D’Ewes’s friend Roger Twysden also worried about the fate of his library, as discussed in chapter three. 21 For the use of library catalogues (and book ownership more broadly) as a form of selfwriting, see Edith Snook, “Elizabeth Isham’s ‘Own Bookes’: Property, Propriety, and the Self as Library,” in Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation, ed. Leah Knight, Micheline White, and Elizabeth Sauer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), 77–93. 17

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While D’Ewes did not use Lambarde’s phrase about hope in any other book, other Old English ownership inscriptions appear. In two volumes (now London, British Library MS Harley 18 and 19) of transcripts from the Parliament Rolls of Richard III and Henry VIII, D’Ewes wrote “Eala gif ic rædde on geogoþe þonne cuðe ic nu sum god” [Alas, if I had read in youth then would I now know some good].22 The phrase aptly expresses D’Ewes’s eagerness for the written word. Even though he was already reading (and collecting) widely when he was at Cambridge and the Middle Temple, his autobiography frequently expresses the common bibliophile’s (and scholar’s) complaint that he still hadn’t managed to read enough. He used this inscription a second time, in Harley 624, which will be discussed in detail later. This tag is also not original to D’Ewes: it originated in the preface to the tenth-­ century Grammar and Glossary of Abbot Ælfric.23 Ælfric’s Grammar and Glossary, written in Old English to teach Ælfric’s students Latin, helped early modern scholars of Old English enormously.24 D’Ewes’s Old English dictionary contained a copy of the Grammar preceding the dictionary proper. Ælfric would have had an additional appeal to D’Ewes for the numerous homilies he wrote, which were usually attributed to him by name. Ælfric’s two series of Catholic Homilies and his Lives of Saints established his reputation, with both early modern and present-day medievalists, as a homilist of the first order. Preaching was especially important to D’Ewes and his fellow reformers: they believed it, not ritual, was central to divine worship. Archbishop Laud’s ceremonialism de-emphasized sermons, which was one of the greatest complaints Parliament made against him.25 Indeed, for all his legal training, the first time D’Ewes mentions himself using his knowledge of Old English in the Long Parliament he cites a homily, not a legal text; clearly he studied them carefully.26 D’Ewes’s ownership inscription, while expressing a sincerely felt sentiment on his part, also placed him in a continuum with the great pre-Conquest homilist and scholar. D’Ewes penned other ownership inscriptions in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. A Hebrew inscription quoting Proverbs 1:7 (“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge”) appears in London, British Library Harley 172, a fifteenth-century manuscript copy of Lydgate’s poems.27 It also appears in his copy of Archaionomia (London, British Library Add. 11750), where it appears in conjunction with a Greek inscription translating “God grant me humility and that I may be faithful.”28 Watson, Library, 106. Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar, ed. Julius Zupitza (Berlin, 1880), 125. 24 Brackmann, Elizabethan Invention, 29–54; Ronald Buckalew, “Nowell, Lambarde, and Leland: The Significance of Laurence Nowell’s Transcript of Ælfric’s Grammar and Glossary,” in Anglo-Saxon Scholarship: The First Three Centuries, ed. Carl Berkhout and M. McCormick Gatch (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1982), 19–50. 25 Bryan Spinks, Sacraments, Ceremonies, and the Stuart Divines: Sacramental Theology and Liturgy in England and Scotland 1603–1662 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002); Nicholas Tyacke, “Archbishop Laud,” in The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642, ed. Kenneth Fincham (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 51–70. 26 November 3, 1640: “I added that I agreed well with Mr. Pymme but desired to add one worde touching the booke for the profanation of the Lordes day that never anie publicke edict, etc. The Saxon homilie, thaene daeg etc.”: Journal, 83. 27 Watson, Library, 200. 28 Ibid., 284 (Watson’s translation). 22 23

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The same Greek phrase shows up in D’Ewes’s ownership inscription in London, British Library, Harley 5, a Registrum brevium from the beginning of Henry VI’s reign.29 Hebrew and Greek were of course the languages of the Bible. For someone of D’Ewes’s religious convictions, these texts were the foundation of his life as a godly Protestant. Latin was the language of learning and scholarship – and of Calvin, Beza, and other reformers. The use of sacred and scholarly languages as his claim to ownership of his books – not just ones dealing with theology but also those treating history, medicine, poetry, and law – suggests that these volumes, too, were an extension of his godly identity. D’Ewes’s use of Greek, Hebrew, and Old English implies that Old English also had a similar status to the languages of the Bible in the creation of his identity. Not that D’Ewes was likely to confuse Ælfric’s Grammar or King Alfred’s law codes with sacred texts, of course. However, his use of Old English tags alongside those in Greek and Hebrew indicates that in the nexus of his self-conception, Old English was integral to his identity as a godly scholar and book owner. The sentiments he expressed remark on the need for hope and the necessity of life-long study. Even though D’Ewes’s library contained relatively few books that dealt directly with the early medieval past and even fewer that contained Old English, his use of the language to write himself into his library underscores their importance. He came to the study of Old English relatively early. D’Ewes obtained his copy of Lambarde’s 1568 Archaionomia (now British Library, Add. MS 11750) in 1625, when he was twenty-three years old. Lambarde’s groundbreaking volume edited Old English law codes with facing page Latin translations; it also included some Latin ones (such as the so-called Leges Edwardi) actually from the early Norman period but believed to be genuine. A late-Elizabethan owner, probably the “Thomas Bowyer” whose name appears on the flyleaves and on the title page, had copied excerpts from the ASC and the Textus Roffensis onto several leaves attached to the beginning of the codex.30 The book was also annotated thoroughly, again probably by Bowyer, and his notes indicate his aims in the study of Old English law – aims that chime with what we know of D’Ewes’s own interests, and that may indeed have shaped them. Bowyer’s annotations guided the understanding of D’Ewes, who came to own one of the source manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon law (Harley 55), and who had access to two more (British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.1 and the Textus Roffensus). When D’Ewes read early medieval laws with these annotations, he found evidence for the hand of God in England’s past, and a model for how the English could embrace their destiny as the new chosen nation. The marginalia of his volume therefore deserve close comment. Bowyer’s linguistic annotations would have been valuable to a man starting his career as an early medievalist. Bowyer glossed some of the Archaionomia’s codes with Early Modern English interlineally, perhaps as an aid to learning or retaining Old English vocabulary. Bowyer’s marginal notes probably also piqued D’Ewes’s interest. Bowyer thoroughly annotated the law codes that Lambarde edited and Ibid., 142. Textus Roffensis, an important manuscript of legal texts, is now held by the Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre in Strood: MS DRc/R1. 29

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translated, adding extracts from the ASC discussing the accession or decease of the king issuing the codes. He jotted words in the margins indexing the content of some laws in an italic script. He also used a secretary hand for more discursive notes. On folio 20v, next to the text in Lambarde’s Epistle “Hoc quidem, ne vinum quod fex subsit reijciant, illos vero de fece ne hauriant” [For indeed, neither should they reject the wine because dregs are beneath, nor truly should they drain those from the dregs], Bowyer writes: The truthe is the substance and originall of these lawes are Let out of the lawe of God and the scripture, but yet somewhat corrupt by these mens corruptions whoo lyved after Anno domini 600 about which tyme the Pope and the Turk videlicet Mahomet beganne to play the parts of Antichrist at Rome for the west and Babylon for [the east].31

Bowyer argues that there was a direct relationship between the laws of pre-­Conquest kings and the law of God. If even back into antiquity the English laws had been based on the scripture, then the chosen status of contemporary England and its obligation to shun idolatry and wickedness was clear. Protestant England, many argued, was the “new Israel” – an elect nation, the chosen people of God. D’Ewes fervently believed in England’s chosen status, as did most of his fellow godly Protestants: Achsah Guibbory argues that the notion “was crucial to Puritan thought.”32 However, as Israel had supposedly lost the Covenant due to its apostasy, “if England continued to persist in idolatry and refused to turn fully to God … they might like the Jews lose that position of privilege.”33 Although the pre-Conquest laws had been corrupted by the papacy, the good laws could be separated from the “dregs,” as Lambarde had written. D’Ewes believed it was his obligation to do so, to find God’s law in England’s past in order to solidify England’s identity as the chosen nation and show contemporary Englishmen the way forward. His copy of Archaionomia placed him in a continuum of previous and contemporary seekers for godly laws of England’s past. Bowyer seems to have found the code of I Cnut particularly conducive to this goal.34 He thoroughly annotated this code, and his later notes (those in secretary) often become even more discursive and explicit when glossing Cnut’s codes than they are in other codes (although this is a matter of degree, not difference). His response stems from the nature of the text, as the codes in I Cnut, written (as we now know) by Archbishop Wulfstan of York (d. 1023), are themselves more discursive, Illegible words are supplied in square brackets. Achsah Guibbory, Christian Identity, Jews, and Israel in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 100–101. 33 Ibid., 105. 34 King Cnut of England was a Dane who, after a successful conquest, took the throne in 1016 and reigned until his death in 1035. M.K. Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century (New York: Longman, 1993). Important studies of the laws of Cnut include Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 345–355; and Mary Richards, “I–II Cnut: Wulfstan’s Summa?,” in English Law before Magna Carta: Felix Liebermann and “Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen,” ed. Stefan Jurasinski, Lisi Oliver, and Andrew Rabin (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 137–156. 31

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less focused on legal practicalities and more on homiletic exhortations for living a Christian life and avoiding sin.35 Patrick Wormald sums it up: “Wulfstan here [in I and II Cnut] brought together into the most solemn and binding possible form every concern that had risen to the top of his mind and nib of his pen over his previous dozen years of pondering the destinies of English society under God.”36 The “destinies of English society under God” were also very much on the minds of D’Ewes and his contemporaries. Although neither he nor Bowyer agreed with Wulfstan on every particular, their responses were shaped, perhaps unconsciously, by the similar goals toward which they and the medieval archbishop worked. Bowyer’s note written on folio 129r foregrounds I Cnut’s utility to Protestant English readers: Note the first part of Canutes Lawe are touching rel[igion &] the second part are touching temporall causes which showeth plane that in his tyme the prince governed in religion as well as in civill causes and that the pope dyd not therof usurpe in England.

The main point for Bowyer is, of course, arguing the primacy of the monarch as head of the English church, but there is also a note of approval for laws that were written to legislate religion and a godly life. Next to Lambarde’s Latin translation of I Cnut 1 on fol. 129r, “Primum omnium, vnum deum ad omnes seculorum aetates Auguste, sancteque venerantor omnes: vnam Christianae religionis regulam religiosissime tenento: Canutum regem omni fidelitate & obseruantia prosequuntor” [First of all I command that one god of all the ages of the world must be reverently worshipped; all shall obey the laws of the one Christian religion; faithfully follow King Cnut], Bowyer writes “One God and religion & one king.” Bowyer stresses the ties between worship of the divinity, the unity of the church, and loyalty and obedience to the king. True religion ensured a strong polity, and if God were only worshipped properly then all would be well in the realm – twenty-five years later, D’Ewes, like Bowyer, believed this with utter conviction. A few laws later, D’Ewes would have found several topics near to his heart: observation of the Sabbath and fasting. Next to I Cnut 15 on fol. 135r, “ond sunan dæga cypinge we forbeodaþ eac eornostlice. ond ælc folc gemot buton. hit for mycelre neodþearfe sy. ond huntaþ fara. ond ealra woruldlicra weorca on þam halgan dæge geswice man georne” [and we earnestly forbid Sunday marketing and folk moots, unless it be for great necessity, and a man should forgo going hunting and all worldly works on those holy days], Bowyer notes “Sonday mar[k]e[t] & fayre The homiletic nature of I and II Cnut and Wulfstan’s other legal texts are well studied. Patrick Wormald, “Archbishop Wulfstan and the Holiness of Society,” in Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings, ed. David Pelteret (New York: Garland, 2000), 191–224; Wormald, “Archbishop Wulfstan: Eleventh-Century State-Builder,” in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, ed. Matthew Townend (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004), 9–25; Stephen M. Yeager, From Lawmen to Plowmen: Anglo-Saxon Legal Tradition and the School of Langland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014); and Andrew Rabin’s introduction in Wulfstan, The Political Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan of York, ed. and trans. Andrew Rabin (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2015). 36 Wormald, Making, 365. 35

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forbi[dd]en.” The activities proper to Sabbath had been a sore point between the church establishment and puritan reformers since the reign of James I, and the disputes only intensified under Charles I. The puritans wanted to disallow sports, games, and commerce on Sundays and focus instead on hearing God’s word in sermons. Charles, in response, re-issued his father’s Book of Sports, which allowed – even encouraged – leisure activities on Sundays such as sports that “may make [the subjects’] bodies more able for Warre.”37 James had decreed that Our good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreation, such as dauncing, either men or women, Archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any such harmelesse Recreation, nor from having of May-Games, Whitson Ales, and Morris dances, and the setting up of Maypoles & other sports therewith used… .38

Charles, in a postscript to the re-issued book in 1633, even went so far as to instruct his Justices of Assize to punish anyone who tried to prohibit entertainments on Sunday. The Long Parliament retaliated in 1642, issuing an order that “the Booke concerning the enjoyning and tollerating of Sports upon the Lords day be forthwith Burned by the hand of the Common Hangman.”39 The activities appropriate to the Sabbath were hotly contested between Charles and his puritan subjects, and D’Ewes was firmly on the godly side. In 1641, he had spoken to condemn the Book of Sports although Parliament went to recess before his petition could be acted upon.40 His copy of Archaionomia replete with Bowyer’s notes argued that King Cnut would have agreed with him. The next law discussed another topic that became of great importance to D’Ewes: “man ælc bebodan festen healde” [let every man hold the instituted fasts]. According to his Autobiography, D’Ewes from the time he was in his late twenties devoted a day every month or so to fasting and prayer, eventually making this a household activity in which not only his young wife but his servants participated.41 He was not the only reformer to engage in this practice; in fact, the Long Parliament at times mandated national days of fasting, preaching, and prayer as a way to seek God’s guidance. Although not perhaps a great concern when he first read the Archaionomia at twenty-three, later D’Ewes was probably pleased to find that Cnut’s Old English legislation shared his concern that frequent fasting be made a part of the 37 James I, The Kings Maiesties Declaration to His Subiects concerning Lawfull Sports to Be Used (London, 1633), 8. For the debates over these edicts, see Alistair Dougall, The Devil’s Book: Charles I, The Book of Sports, and Puritanism in Tudor and Early Stuart England (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011); and David Cressy, Charles I and the People of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), Kindle edition, especially chapter 8, “The King’s Declaration and the People’s Sports.” 38 Kings Maiesties Declaration, 11. 39 November 13, 1642, in Journal of the House of Commons: Volume 2, 1640–1643 (London, 1802), 847–848. Available at British History Online, http://www.british-history. ac.uk/commons-jrnl. 40 Michael Braddick, God’s Fury, England’s Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars (New York: Penguin, 2008), 280. 41 D’Ewes, Autobiography, vol. 1, 353–354.

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religious life of the nation (even if not celebrated as part of the liturgical calendar as it was in early medieval England). D’Ewes’s first encounter with Old English law in Lambarde/Bowyer illuminates his eventual treatment of one of the source manuscripts for Old English law, BL Harley 55. D’Ewes acquired this volume from John Selden in 1648/1649. Harley 55 contains among other things a portion of Bald’s Leechbook (a medical text from early medieval England), the Laws of Edgar, and I–II Cnut. The volume is a composite, as the quire containing Cnut’s codes did not originate with the other material; Wormald speculates that Selden himself may have joined them.42 Certainly they do not appear to have been together in Nowell and Lambarde’s day, as Cnut’s codes in Archaionomia are based on Harley 55, but not those of Edgar.43 In the letter thanking Selden for the gift, however, D’Ewes mentions both the codes of Edgar and Cnut, so they were together at that point.44 He and Francis Junius collated Abraham Wheelock’s 1644 re-edition of Lambarde with Cnut’s codes from Harley 55.45 D’Ewes also transcribed them into British Library, MS Harley 596, a manuscript containing transcriptions from Textus Roffensis and Cotton Nero A.i – thereby bringing together many of the most important witnesses for Cnut’s code. He seems, judging from his transcriptions, far less interested in Edgar’s code. His behavior is at first counter-intuitive: Edgar was depicted as a good king, and Cnut, after all, was a Dane, not even English. 46 However, Cnut’s codes (written by Wulfstan) had been from the first presented to D’Ewes embedded in many of his own concerns – fasting, prayer, and the development of a godly nation that rejected idolatry. D’Ewes’s attentiveness to Cnut’s laws make sense in light of the annotated Archaionomia he had purchased in his youth. D’Ewes’s interest in I and II Cnut remained strong throughout his active period of early medieval scholarship. I Cnut, filtered through Bowyer’s annotations, was a model for all that D’Ewes thought the laws should be: focused on the role of the government in constructing a godly nation, the code exhorted the English to holy living and fear of God. It is not hard to imagine why this text caught his attention, when he believed that he lived at a time when England could at last embrace its status as God’s chosen Protestant nation and fulfill its destiny as the new Israel. This could not happen without those in charge of the nation taking great care for the souls of those within it, as they had attempted in the reign of Cnut. Wormald described I–II Cnut as Wulfstan’s “campaign to organize the sort of society he was sure that the kingdom of the English had to be, if they were to keep the terms of the Covenant …”47 Six hundred years later, Sir Simonds D’Ewes shared his certainties. Wormald, Making, 186. Some of Lambarde’s edition consisted of transcripts and editions made for him by Nowell, especially the laws of Cnut. See Womald, Making, 260–262; Brackmann, Elizabethan Invention, 197. 44 Watson, Library, 315. 45 Ibid. 46 For a broader view of the reception of King Cnut in early modern England, see Rebecca Brackmann, “King Cnut and His Laws in Early Modern English History and Drama,” in Languages of the Law in Early Medieval England: Essays in Honor of Lisi Oliver, ed. Andrew Rabin and Stefan Jurasinski (Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2019), 263–281. 47 Wormald, “Archbishop Wulfstan and the Holiness of Society,” 207. 42 43

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He was hardly alone. David Cressy observes that “it became a nostrum of sermons, speeches, and letters that England enjoyed special providential favors.”48 A book in D’Ewes’s library, Nathaniel Bacon’s An Historical Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England (1647), exemplifies this belief that the English were a chosen nation ab initio: It was … whiles as yet Providence seemed to close onely with the Jewish Nation, and to hover over it, as a choice picked place from all the earth, that with a gracious eye surveying the forsaken condition of other Nations it glanced upon this Island; both thoughts and words reflected on Isles, Isles of the Gentiles, Isles afar off, as if amongst them the Lord of all the earth had found out one place that should be to him as the Gemme of the ring of this Terrestriall Globe: and if the waies of future providence may be looked upon as a glosse of those Prophesies: we must confesse that this Island was conceived in the wombe thereof long before it was manifested to the world… . I may say, that no sooner was the Scepter departed from Judah, but with a swift pace both it and the Lawgiver came hither like an Arrow flying through other Countries, but sticking with a ne plus ultra in this Island … as if we were the onely white that then was in Gods aime.49

Describing God as the “Lawgiver” highlights the legal system’s role in England’s chosen status. Bacon admits that early law differs from the present structure but still inexorably led to it. Evidence for English destiny is tied to the operation (as he sees it) of divine will in sustaining early insular law after the Norman Conquest: Adde hereunto that its not to be conceited that the wisest of our ancestors saw the Idea of this government; nor was it anywhere in president but in him that determined the same from eternity; for as no Nation can shew more variety and incontstancy in the government of Princes then this, especially for three hundred yeeres next ensuing the Normans: so reason cannot move imagination that these wheeles, by divers, if not contrary motions, could ever conspire into this temperature of policy, were there not some primum mobile that hath ever kept one constant motion in all.50

D’Ewes similarly believed in England’s chosen status. Exploring ancient law, especially that before the Normans, was an act of piety and part of his formation and reiteration of his godly self. What’s more, the divine hand guiding English history also made it timeless (as God is beyond time) – what happened in the past was more than a useful illustration or example for the present. It directly related to it. English history revealed God’s will for the present, in D’Ewes’s mind as in Bowyer’s and Bacon’s.

Cressy, Charles I, 18. Nathaniel Bacon, An Historical Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England: The First Part from the First Times till the Reigne of Edward the Third (London, 1647), 3. 50 Ibid., “Prologue,” n.p. 48 49

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History, Hagiography, and Archbishops: Harley 624 In 1626, a year after his purchase of the Archaionomia, D’Ewes bought several manuscripts previously in the library of John Dee, including a volume of an early twelfth-century Passionale produced at Canterbury.51 His list of these manuscripts, now London, BL Egerton MS 3138, characterizes it: “Vitae Dunstani, Odonis et aliorum Archiepisc. Cantuariensium. Episcoporum Martyrum &c.” [Lives of Dunstan, Oda, and other Archbishops of Canterbury, bishops, martyrs, etc.].52 His description highlights his interest in episcopal history. D’Ewes’s subsequent treatment of this volume is enigmatic to say the least. He separated it into three sections – not by itself an unusual course of action for an early modern book collector. D’Ewes almost immediately traded to Robert Cotton several quires containing (among other things) Felix’s life of St. Guthlac, Osbern’s life of St. Alphege, Wilibald’s life of St. Boniface, Adelard’s life of St. Dunstan, and a verse life of St. Anselm. He combined the Vita St. Dunstan of Osbern and the Vita St. Anselm of Eadmer, which were not originally adjacent, with a short tract on the Eucharist into one volume (now London, British Library Harley 315). The remainder, a series of lives of various early Roman martyrs along with Saints Alphege and Oda of Canterbury, he eventually included as part of a new composite volume, Harley 624, alongside a compilation of historical texts. D’Ewes’s treatment of the Passionale fragment within it shows his uneasy negotiation of the religious differences between early medieval England and his own day. A large volume (roughly corresponding to early modern folio), Harley 624 retains D’Ewes’s own arms on the front and back cover (unlike many of his books, which were rebound in the nineteenth century).53 The book remains visually impressive throughout. D’Ewes wrote a striking title page, in alternating lines of red and black ink: “HISTORICA MONVMENTA DIVERSA EX PERVETVSTIS LIBRIS mss. ET Archiuis Regiis Transcripta: QVAE Ad Res Cambro-Britannicas Anglo-Saxonicas, Normanno-Anglicas Illustrandas, et ad Nobiliorum in Anglia Familiarum stemmata afferenda, et expolienda apprime conducunt. QVORUM Elenchum sequens exhibet Pagina” [Diverse historical monuments transcribed from very ancient books and manuscripts in the royal archives: which are concerned with illustrating the Welsh-British, Anglo-Saxon, [and] Anglo-Norman deeds, for both conveying and highly refining the genealogies of noble families in England. And of which the following pages display the pearls]. The date of the manuscript’s compilation is hard to determine. D’Ewes acquired the Passionale in 1626. Folio 217v of Harley 624 contains a note dated 1643, which gives an end date, although the note could have been added after the initial assembly. Whatever the exact date, he compiled the codex during the middle period of his studies, after Laud and the anti-Calvinist party became more powerful in the English church and before or contemporary with the backlash against them from the Long Parliament.

Andrew Watson, “An Identification of Some Manuscripts Owned by Dr. John Dee and Sir Simonds D’Ewes,” The Library 13 (1958): 194–195. 52 Ibid., 195. 53 Watson, Library, 48. 51

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The items in the manuscript cover England’s history in roughly chronological order from Romano-Celtic Britain to the mid-Norman period. The first and third items are both versions of the Historia Brittonum, written by an unknown author in 829–830. 54 The Historia Brittonum exists in several versions, one with an introduction attributed to the ninth-century Welsh writer Nennius. On this basis, authorship of the Historia as a whole has been ascribed to him, but many modern scholars now believe that Nennius was only responsible for the one recension in which he is named.55 Both versions in D’Ewes’s manuscript name Nennius as the author, reflecting the confusion over the writer of this important historical text. The Historia Brittonum often appears in medieval manuscripts (as it does in D’Ewes’s seventeenth-century one) in close proximity to the historical writing of Gildas, a sixth-century author to whom the Historia Brittonum is also at times erroneously attributed. D’Ewes’s copying of two versions of the Historia Brittonum highlights its importance in early modern historiography. For a man of D’Ewes’s beliefs, the Historia Brittonum would have had an extra ideological appeal in addition to its value for the history of Celtic and Germanic Britain. Its author drew heavily on a Vita of St. Germanus, and Germanus towers among the Historia’s narrations of fifth-century wars and politics. Germanus’s sojourn in Britain was motivated by his desire to preach against Pelagianism, which D’Ewes and his contemporaries saw as identical to the Arminianism promoted by Archbishop Laud. Germanus also chastens a monarch whose association with pagans threatens the polity. In the Historia, Germanus’s main antagonist is Vortigern, the British king who invited the Saxons to help defend against the Picts and Scots. Vortigern, according to the Historia, married the daughter of Hengist, one of the Saxons, and made vast concessions of land to them. Following this incident is one of the episodes drawn from Germanus’s Vita, in which Vortigern commits incest with his daughter and has a son by her. When Germanus came to reprove the king, Vortigern made his daughter claim that Germanus was the father, whereupon Germanus says that he will be the father if the child’s father agrees that he may be tonsured. The boy asks Vortigern permission for this, revealing the truth, and Vortigern is confounded. This episode underscores the depravity of the “tyrant” Vortigern, whose traffic with the pagan Saxons (and his Saxon wife) is juxtaposed with his traffic with his own daughter. Both, the narrative indicates, are unlawful, and it is only Germanus who can criticize and (one assumes) circumvent the king’s vice. The story of an anti-Pelagian (and therefore anti-Arminian) bishop who can stand up to a king would have had great appeal to D’Ewes. Charles I’s deep affection for his wife who, while not a pagan, was a practicing Roman Catholic, alarmed many Protestant English subjects. Charles did not have a reputation for sexual impropriety, so the parallel is not exact. Still, one can imagine that D’Ewes read of the exploits of Germanus with a bit of T.M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons 350–1064 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013), 437–466; Michael Lapidge, “Historia Brittonum,” in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Michael Lapidge et al. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 239–240. 55 James Keller takes a contrasting view. Keller, “Nennius,” in Arthurian Writers: A Biographical Encyclopedia, ed. Laura Cooner Lambdin and Robert Thomas Lambdin (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008), 16–22. 54

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wistfulness. The deeds of one of Pelagius’s chief opponents in Britain made the Historia relevant reading to puritan historians in the seventeenth century. The manuscript’s second item, copied from BL MS Cotton Julius A.i, is the so-called Pipewell Chronicle, an important though brief document detailing the removal of Edward II from the throne in 1327 and the beginning of Edward III’s reign.56 Since the Chronicle is followed in the Cotton manuscript by a register of Pipewell Abbey, it is usually attributed to that abbey although its origin is uncertain. M.V. Clarke was the first modern historian to take notice of it: in her discussion of the legal maneuvering that led to Edward II’s deposition, she notes that it is the “fullest and most reasonable account of the proceedings in Parliament on Tuesday, January 13, [1327].”57 This was the day when Parliament (in the words of the Chronicle itself) “agreed … that [Edward II] ought not to reign but that his eldest son, the duke of Guienne, should reign… . It was ordained and agreed that great persons – bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, knights, justices and others – should go to him and renounce their homage and that of all the land.”58 The Pipewell Chronicle highlights the role of Parliament in the deposition of Edward II, showing that his downfall was not simply a result of the superior military powers of Mortimer and the queen but had at least quasi-legal trappings. Such a detailed description of formal Parliamentary action against an English monarch would have been political dynamite in the reign of King Charles I. In fact, the Long Parliament, as it maneuvered against Charles, had placed in custody Charles’s youngest son, the Duke of Gloucester (and his sister Princess Elizabeth) and considered crowning him instead, so the historical parallel in the early 1640s would have been even more apparent.59 Given this, it is hardly surprising that D’Ewes included the Pipewell Chronicle in his volume, even though the events it describes come far later than those detailed in Harley 624’s other texts. It also breaks the mostly chronological order the rest of the volume observes – D’Ewes wanted this crucial item to come immediately after a text warning of the perils of an unrighteous king. The next several items were all copied (as D’Ewes notes) from the same manuscript, now Cambridge, Cambridge University Library Ff 1.27. Presumably Abraham Wheelock secured the loan of this volume for D’Ewes, for the latter clearly spent a good bit of time with it. CUL Ff 1.27 is a composite created by Archbishop Matthew Parker (1504–1575) from two books, one from the twelfth century and one from the fourteenth.60 D’Ewes drew on both the twelfth- and the fourteenth-century portions. He copied the true “Nennian” recension of the Historia Brittonum, Book I Roy Martin Haines, King Edward II: Edward of Caernarfon, His Life, His Reign, and Its Aftermath, 1284–1330 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003). 57 M.V. Clarke, Medieval Representation and Consent: A Study of Early Parliaments in England and Ireland, with Special Reference to the “Modus Tenendi Parliamentum” (1936, repr. New York: Russell & Russell, 1964), 183. 58 Clark’s translation. Ibid., 183–184. 59 Jason Peacey, “The Duke’s Parrot: The Earl of Leicester, the King’s Children, and the English Revolution,” Parliamentary History 39 (2020): 7–24. See also Austin Woolrych, Britain in Revolution 1625–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 402–408; Braddick, God’s Fury, 553–581. 60 For Parker’s collection, see R.I. Page, Matthew Parker and His Books (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1993). 56

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of the De Excidio of Gildas, historical notes on early regal and episcopal activities, and a note on English and Frankish kings. He concludes with the Vita Davidis, although he mis-attributes it; CUL Ff 1.27 contains a copy of the Vita composed by the eleventh-­century writer Rhygyfarch (Rhigyfarch) ap Sulien; D’Ewes’s contents list gives the better-known Gerald of Wales as the author.61 The selection of these texts extends several themes in D’Ewes’s volume. The Historia Brittonum, mentioned above, ascribes the end of Romano-Celtic Britain and the incursions of pagan Germanic forces to the sins of the Britons and their tendencies toward idolatry. The first book of Gildas’s De Excidio (all CUL Ff 1.27 contains of that text) strikes this note even more forcefully than the Historia Brittonum; Gildas (c. 500–570) argues that the Britons’ woes “were just punishments meted out by God for their assiduous and wide-ranging sinfulness.”62 Gildas understood himself as a type of prophet, on the model of those in the Hebrew Bible. The “biblical culture” evoked goes beyond familiarity with Hebrew Bible narratives: “Gildas asserts that it is right to take the Britons as ‘a latter-day Israel,’ a counterpart in the new covenant to the Jewish people under the old covenant, a people of whom ‘the Lord could make trial … to see whether it loves him or not.’”63 This notion, as we have seen in Nathaniel Bacon, was also common among seventeenth-century Englishmen, who often thought about their own circumstances through the lens of Hebrew Bible narratives. The motif ’s very frequency might lead us to overlook it or its resonance with D’Ewes, who believed that political turmoil, invasions, and conquests were a direct result of a people’s religious errors. He and many of his contemporaries neither had nor wished to have an understanding of political science separate from their religious convictions. Gildas shared this “belief in a divine judgment that expressed itself within history, not just at the end of time.”64 The last text D’Ewes copied from CUL Ff 1.27 was the Life of St. David, which deals with another early British bishop who preached against Pelagianism. Chapters 49–56 narrate the revival of Pelagianism, “introducing the vigour of its stubbornness, like the venom of a poisonous serpent, into the inmost joints of the country.”65 The Welsh bishops called a synod to preach against it, but the crowd was so vast that their voices could not be heard. Several times the bishops went to invite St. David 61 Richard Sharpe, “Which Text Is Rhygyfarch’s Life of St David,” in St David of Wales: Cult, Church, and Nation, ed. J. Wyn Evans and Jonathan M. Wooding (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), 90–105. Gerald did adapt Rhygyfarch’s life for his own purposes as Robert Bartlett describes: “Rewriting Saints’ Lives: The Case of Gerald of Wales,” Speculum 58 (1983): 598–613. D’Ewes’s mis-identification of the author of the text in the Cambridge manuscript may have come about because D’Ewes’s friend Archbishop Ussher’s 1639 Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates included extracts from the Life as later revised by Gerald. Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh 1640–1656, was interested in history and penned several works on chronology as well as on the ancient British church. Alan Ford, James Ussher: Theology, History, and Politics in Early-Modern Ireland and England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 62 Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 447. See also Stephen Joyce, The Legacy of Gildas: Constructions of Authority in the Medieval West (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2022). 63 Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 218. 64 Ibid., 204. 65 Rhygyfarch ap Sulien, Life of St. David, ed. and trans. A.W. Wade-Evans (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1923), 24.

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to come and preach also, but he declined on account of his “lowliness.”66 The bishops persisted, and David eventually arrived at the synod, preached to the multitude (which miraculously heard his voice), and drove out the heresy. D’Ewes’s selection of the Historia Brittonum and the Vita Davidis suggests that he believed bishops could have a positive role in the British church. D’Ewes was not himself Presbyterian; as McGee observes, “If ‘true’ doctrine and worship was available in a church governed by bishops (as he believed it had been under Elizabeth and James and at times in the distant past), he could be an episcopalian.”67 Doctrine was the important thing. Bishops could play a role, for good or for ill. D’Ewes, like most members of the Long Parliament, firmly believed that Archbishop Laud had done the latter, and it is entirely consistent with D’Ewes’s methods to ground that conviction in a long historical view of bishops and archbishops throughout the history of Britain. As McGee describes, D’Ewes did eventually assent to the Long Parliament’s abolition of episcopacy. This agreement came late in his career, however, and he never believed that Presbyterian government on the Scottish model was the only viable option for the English church.68 Certainly he showed few objections to episcopacy per se when Harley 624 was in progress. The historical texts that D’Ewes selected for the first part of his volume indicate his primary goals for the book: observing the history of preaching bishops (especially those who worked against Pelagianism), the relationships of bishops and monarchs, and those of monarchs and their Parliaments. His focus explains one otherwise curious omission from this volume – CUL Ff 1. 27 contains a copy of the Old English poem Durham, an encomium on the city that gives a history of the saints and famous figures who are interred there. Given D’Ewes’s pride in his ability to read Old English, and his interest in history, we might expect him to have wanted a copy of this rare text. In fact, D’Ewes did obtain a copy of Durham from CUL Ff 1.27, now British Library, MS Harley 533.69 His decision to omit it from Harley 624 indicates that his selection of texts for the latter was anything but haphazard. He had a plan in mind for his sumptuous volume, and the Old English poem, however intrinsically interesting to him, was not consistent with that plan. To this point in Harley 624, the selections interlace English confessional and political history. The initial texts provide a lens for viewing the next portion – the medieval fragment from D’Ewes’s Passionale, which the contents list titles: “Archiepiscoporum Episcoporum et Martyrum diuersorum Vitae: Exemplar in pergamena Vetustissimum in paucis locis imperfectum” [Lives of diverse archbishops, bishops, and martyrs. The model, in most ancient parchments, is imperfect in a few places]. D’Ewes’s use of the word “Exemplar” here is odd, since what he inserted into Harley 624 was not copied from the twelfth-century original; it was the medieval Ibid., 25. McGee, “Sir Simonds D’Ewes: A Respectable Conservative,” 160. 68 McGee, Industrious Mind, 411–412. 69 Donald K. Fry, “A Newly Discovered Version of the Old English Poem Durham,” in Old English and New: Studies in Language and Linguistics in Honor of Frederic G. Cassidy, ed. Joan Hall, Nick Doane, and Dick Ringler (New York: Garland, 1992), 84. Watson disagrees with Fry that Harley 533 is entirely in D’Ewes’s hand, although he states that D’Ewes’s hand appears in the book: Watson, Library, 214. 66 67

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manuscript itself. That the manuscript was “imperfect” he well knew since he had himself removed portions of it. Given the chronological organization of Harley 624’s texts, these medieval leaves cover the period between the Germanic migration and the Norman Conquest. Within that period, his title points to a primary interest in narratives of archbishops and bishops. These leaves continue to explore episcopacy’s role in the religious life of the nation. Merging his own book-making present with the artifact of the early medieval past, D’Ewes also demonstrates continuity in the writing and illustrating of history. And yet, jarring with the fragment’s inclusion in his new volume is the selection of vitae that he placed in Harley 624: only three of these twenty-five are English – Oda and Alphege, both Archbishops of Canterbury, and Boniface, the eighth-century missionary to continental Germanic tribes.70 In a volume focused on the history of people in England/Britain, this is a surprisingly small number. The puzzle grows when we consider what D’Ewes left out – which saints were included in the volume when he bought it. Two lives of St. Anselm of Canterbury, one of Guthlac of Croyland, and two of St. Dunstan were originally part of the codex but did not make it into Harley 624. This is even odder when we remember D’Ewes’s initial description of his Passionale in Egerton 3138: “Lives of Dunstan, Oda, and other Archbishops of Canterbury, Bishops, Martyrs, etc.” Dunstan, one of the two saints that D’Ewes mentions by name and one of the best-known saints from early medieval England, does not make it into his codex. Neither does Anselm, another early Archbishop of Canterbury, whose life by his contemporary Eadmer is itself a rich source of early Norman history. Nor was the placement of these leaves an afterthought. D’Ewes probably intended the insertion of the manuscript quires from the outset, as he arranged his paper leaves to match the parchment that he inserted. The size is remarkably consistent, and the volume has not been rebound since it left D’Ewes’s hands, so this was not the result of later trimming. In addition, Harley 624 opens with a decorated initial, like those of the Canterbury Passionale, the splendid decorated and inhabited initials of which have caused one scholar to refer to it as “one of the most impressive products of the Canterbury scriptorium.”71 D’Ewes also carefully matched the texts when transitioning between paper and parchment and between parchment quires where material was now missing. He cut out the conclusion of the life of St. Mary of Egypt, with which the volume had originally begun, so that his own text began cleanly rather than with the end of a previous vita. Folio 99, which comes between two of the medieval quires, is a (membrane) insertion by D’Ewes. Only a single column wide and less than a leaf tall, its function is to cover the top of the left column of fol. 100r. At the bottom, D’Ewes (or his scribe) has inked “PAS” in red and blue to lead into the “sio” in the original text on the column below. Where D’Ewes not only split up the manuscripts but separated individual quires, a smooth transition required a bit of work on his part. The saints included are: Eustace, Ambrose, Alexander, Evenius, Theodosius, Cyrus, Domitilla, Victor, Gordian, Pancras, Nereus and Achilleus, Servatius, Germanus, Conan, Oda, Marcellinus, Peter the Exorcist, Erasmus, Boniface, Alexis, Alphege, Medard, Primus, and Felicianus. 71 Robert Southern, St Anselm and His Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought, 1059–c. 1130 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 238. 70

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Why did D’Ewes carefully place portions of a medieval manuscript of saints’ lives in the midst of his elaborate volume of British history? And why would he remove items that might at first seem as though they would be excellent “fits” with the rest of his material, the lives of Dunstan and Anselm? A vital perspective for answering these questions comes from the practices of his older contemporary, Robert Cotton, to whom D’Ewes gave part of the Passionale in 1626, and who was also an inveterate splitter and combiner of medieval manuscripts.72 Cotton’s library had several saints’ lives, and early in Thomas Bodley’s collecting career Cotton sent him a copy of de Voragine’s Legenda sanctorum. As Jennifer Summit observes, “the library, [Cotton’s] gift suggests, begins with saints” – and indeed the Passionale was one of D’Ewes’s first purchases when he set out to build his manuscript collection.73 Summit argues, “in the hands of post-Reformation collectors like Cotton, saints’ lives became the first histories. But they do so only when they can be reclassified as artifacts of historical knowledge rather than religious belief.”74 Cotton achieved this reclassification by re-ordering the lives chronologically based on the time the saint lived (instead of their place in the liturgical year) and by placing them alongside more obviously “historical” texts such as chronicles. For instance, as Summit details, Cotton extracted the Becket story from the South English Legendary and placed it with other complaints against “royal exaction,” making Becket a purely political figure and not a religious one.75 D’Ewes’s placement of the quires from the Canterbury Passionale in Harley 624 both follows and alters this pattern. D’Ewes, like Cotton, juxtaposes hagiographic texts with historical ones, and he largely orders Harley 624 chronologically. His interest in the Passionale fragment, judging from its description in the table of contents, was probably mostly in Oda and Alphege, pre-Conquest Archbishops of Canterbury and thereby examples of early English primates. However, D’Ewes seems to doubt his ability to “safely” incorporate Archbishops Dunstan and Anselm (both of whom were much better known than Oda or Alphege) into his historical project, for he joined their vitae (the ones that he didn’t trade) in Harley 315. This brief volume placed the two lives before a five-leaf fragment of a “text concerning the Eucharist, refuting Wycliffe.”76 D’Ewes may not have combined it with his saints’ lives until the latter 1640s, as the catalogue in which he names it as a separate item was not written until after 1645.77 Perhaps D’Ewes later laid these two saints alongside the tract (with which he would certainly have disagreed) to show his opinion of them and their beliefs, giving us a hint of why he omitted them from Harley 624. Until then, they may have drifted as loose quires among his books while he assembled his sumptuous historical collection in Harley 624.

For Cotton’s career and collections, see the sources in note 20 above. Summit, Memory’s Library, 142. 74 Ibid., 165. 75 Ibid., 168–169. 76 British Library Main Catalogue, “Detailed Record for Harley 315,” www.bl.ac.uk; Watson, Library, 140. Watson speculates that it is originally an item that D’Ewes catalogued as “Declarationes Magistri Tyrington [sic] contra Wicclefferum”: Library, 278. 77 Watson, Library, 65. 72 73

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What made Dunstan and Anselm so unsuitable? Helen Parish has studied the sixteenth-century reception of St. Dunstan, observing that “the Reformation was … challenging … to traditional images of sanctity, as obedience to Rome became a vice rather than a virtue, and the redefinition of miracle and magic narrowed the accepted wonder-working capacity of the saint.”78 In particular, Dunstan’s reputation suffered: by the late sixteenth century, he “had become the archetypal proud prelate of Protestant polemic, the promoter of idolatry, worker of false miracles, and usurper of temporal authority.”79 One life of Dunstan that D’Ewes removed visually depicted in an initial the best-known “miraculous” episode from Dunstan’s life – Dunstan holding the devil by the nose with a pair of tongs. This was the only decorated initial in D’Ewes’s Passionale that showed a saint performing a miracle and would have given him one more reason to remove Dunstan’s Vita from these leaves before inserting them into his carefully constructed historical manuscript. Dunstan was simply too problematic all the way around. The omission of Anselm is harder to explain, as he was one of the great theologians of medieval Christianity and an influence on the writings of John Calvin. Stephen Edmondson points out, “Calvin uses Anselm’s vocabulary and at times employs his arguments. There is … some accuracy to those who would compare Calvin’s notion of the Atonement to Anselm’s – the language of satisfaction does register in his theology.”80 Edmondson goes on, however: “we must note that Calvin often ties this language to a second approach to the doctrine toward which Anselm was quite adverse.”81 In particular, Calvin’s concept that God punished Christ in the place of sinful humanity opposes Anselm, who insisted that to do so would make God unjust.82 Calvin’s ambivalence toward Anselm’s theology might not have recommended the latter to D’Ewes, and neither would the several times that Anselm, in conflict with King William Rufus and later Henry I, went to Rome for arbitration, as Eadmer’s Vita narrates in detail. Appealing to Rome for solutions to strife between the king and the archbishop, as Parish notes of Dunstan, was hardly behavior likely to recommend a saint to a seventeenth-century Protestant.83 In fact, it seems worth a quick digression to observe that one of D’Ewes’s Laudian contemporaries invoked Anselm to criticize the godly governance of the British church after the fall of Laud and Charles I. The royalist and poet Henry Vaughan’s 1652 Mount of Olives, published only a few years after D’Ewes’s death, includes a translation of portions of the Similitud (attributed to Anselm at the time), introduced by a brief discussion of Anselm’s issues with William Rufus and a prefatory

Helen Parish, “‘Impudent and Abhominable Fictions’: Rewriting Saints’ Lives in the English Reformation,” Sixteenth Century Journal 32 (2001): 46. 79 Ibid., 50. 80 Stephen Edmondson, Calvin’s Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 99. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid., 101. 83 Parish, “‘Impudent and Abhominable Fictions,’” 52–53. 78

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poem about the saint.84 Vaughan’s poem makes clear that Anselm’s historical circumstances, not just his theological reputation, led Vaughan to translate the work: Here holy Anselme lives in ev’ry page, And sits Arch-bishop still, to vex the age. Had he foreseen (and who knows but he did?) This fatal wrack, which deep in time lay hid, Had never (like Elias) driv’n him hence, A sad retirer for a slight offence. ‘Tis but just to believe, that little hand Which clouded him, but now benights our land, For were he now, like the returning year, Restor’d to view these desolations here, He would do penance for his old complaint, and (weeping) say, That Rufus was a Saint.85

Although not Vaughan’s best work, the poem makes clear that Anselm’s archepiscopal status remains a “vexation” to the anti-episcopalians currently governing the English church. What’s more, in Vaughan’s conception the “little hand” (of the government?) that Anselm saw as a threat to his church now benights the whole realm, to such an extent that William Rufus (hardly a monarch whom historians have regarded favorably) would seem saintly by comparison. Anselm had the potential, exploited here by Vaughan, to figure as a prophet weeping at the “desolations” of the puritan church.86 Perhaps D’Ewes sensed this potential and left Anselm out of his sumptuous volume of history in consequence. All-in-all, D’Ewes seems to have had less faith than Cotton did that placing saints’ lives in a historical context “sanitized” them for use as historical texts. Dunstan and Anselm were, in his mind, too embedded in so-called Roman Catholic “abuses” to include in Harley 624. Oda and Alphege were much less well known and, therefore, less of a problem to his program of constructing a godly English history, especially when laid next to saints such as Germanus and David who preached against Pelagianism. In particular, his interest in archbishops centers on those for whom preaching was key, especially preaching against heresy. St. Oda of Canterbury, one of the saints D’Ewes mentions by name in his initial description of the Passionale volume, For Vaughan’s career and writings, see F.E. Hutchinson, Henry Vaughan: A Life and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1947); Donald Dickson, “The Mount of Olives: Vaughan’s Book of Private Prayer,” in Of Paradise and Light: Essays on Henry Vaughan and John Milton in Honor of Alan Rudrum, ed. Donald Dickson and Holly Faith Nelson (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004), 202–217; Alan Rudrum, “Resistance, Collaboration, and Silence: Henry Vaughan and Breconshire Royalism,” in The English Civil Wars in the Literary Imagination, ed. Claude Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 102–118; Holly Faith Nelson, “‘Make All Things New! And without End!’ The Eschatological Vision of Henry Vaughan,” Scintilla 10 (2006): 222–235; and Nelson, “Historical Consciousness and the Politics of Translation in the Psalms of Henry Vaughan,” Studies in Philology 104 (2007): 501–525. 85 Henry Vaughan, The Mount of Olives (London, 1652), 138. 86 Rebecca Brackmann, “‘And Sits Arch-bishop Still’: St. Anselm in Henry Vaughan’s Mount of Olives,” Kentucky Philological Review 30 (2016): 47–54. 84

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was the son of Danish parents who had settled in England after participating in raids. Oda was part of the Benedictine reform movement, and his Vita depicts him preaching assiduously against error. St. Alphege was murdered by Vikings in the late tenth century; although he was not explicitly killed for his Christian beliefs, he was killed by pagans and was often therefore viewed as a martyr. Perhaps D’Ewes was attracted to his firm stance against being ransomed at great cost to the realm, for by the time the life was told in the late-medieval South English Legendary, Alphege was viewed as proto-nationalist. As Jill Frederick argues, the “self-conscious link between the saint’s religious and political martyrdom, martyred for the love of his country, suggest[ed] the need for a regeneration of a national spirit” – a need D’Ewes might well have felt.87 Harley 624 shows D’Ewes’s interests and anxieties as he navigated the hagiographic and episcopal past of Britain and its church. D’Ewes here negotiates interests – in visual elements of book production, in heresy, and in Romano-British history – that widen our understanding of approaches to hagiography in seventeenth-century historians and book collectors. His particular care over saints from pre-Conquest and early Norman England underlines how important this period was to him in his attempts to understand the present through the past. Lambarde’s Archaionomia had demonstrated what he would have seen as striking parallels between the godly law of pre-Conquest England and the godly laws he wanted in Stuart England. The early archbishops needed to mesh with that image, which made D’Ewes rearrange and exclude items from his Passionale when he included it in Harley 624. Harley 8 and 9: Community in the Face of Conflict Every early student of Old English longed for a dictionary, and nearly every one of them tried to compile his own. D’Ewes began his efforts in 1639/1640, the start of the most politically active period of his life. The work remained unfinished at his death ten years later. D’Ewes, however, had several advantages that could have inspired optimism that his would be the first Old English dictionary in print. First, as M.S. Hetherington has observed, he had access to his predecessors’ manuscripts and was wise enough to make use of them.88 His two-volume manuscript dictionary begins with a full transcription of Ælfric’s Grammar, then contains as the base text a copy of John Joscelyn’s dictionary (composed c. 1567–1575), which by then was in the Cottonian library. D’Ewes did not perform this mechanical task himself: as a man of means, he could hire professional scribes – a second advantage. His third advantage was that he understood the value of collaboration. Both Somner’s and Junius’s hands appear in Harley 8 and 9, adding notes from manuscripts that Joscelyn had not consulted for his dictionary. Indeed, had the volumes ever been seen through the press, the result would have been more a collaboration along the lines 87 Jill Frederick, “The South English Legendary: Anglo-Saxon Saints and National Identity,” in Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 62. 88 Hetherington, “Sir Simonds D’Ewes,” 85–86.

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of Holinshed’s Chronicle than the work of one man.89 This is not only key to D’Ewes’s near-success, I argue, but also key to understanding the significance of Old English studies to him by the end of his life. However collaborative the dictionary might have been, D’Ewes would have justifiably received most of the credit had it gone to print. After all, the work of overseeing, selecting, organizing, and introducing would have been his. The thought of the task seems to have daunted him, if his inscription at the beginning of Harley 8 is indicative: “nan man gecnawað his agene ellen ær þone neod wurðe þe he hit genotian sceal | Nemo novit proprias vires antequam cogatur iis uti.” The Old English roughly translates “No man knows his own strength before the need arises that he shall use it”; the Latin is similar: “No one knows his own strengths before he is forced to use them.” D’Ewes may well have felt that the project he meant to undertake would try his skills as a scholar to their peak. His anxiety did not keep him from regarding the compilation of an Old English dictionary with a proprietary air, however. D’Ewes was irritated to learn that both Henry Spelman and the Dutch scholar Johannes de Laet (1581–1649) were also in the process of compiling a dictionary of Old English.90 D’Ewes was not alone in his dislike of foreign scholars working on England’s history – Wheelock lamented in an April 1640 letter to Spelman: “if Mr I. de Laet would leave of this travaile to your worship, I know that a more complete Lexicon should be sett forth in London then can be in Leiden: his ambition will not endure any hand but his owne; neither will I willinglye be a scholer in the Saxon to any except your trewlie noble selfe… .”91 Wheelock goes on, however, “I marvaille Sr Simond D’ewes (as I heare from your worship, for which I thank you) should soe falcem mittere etc. I hope he will with a word from you be recalled: I am glad I know of this.”92 It is not clear what, precisely, D’Ewes was doing that Spelman and Wheelock felt was interfering. Was it D’Ewes’s irascible debate with de Laet or his own attempt at lexicography that Spelman resented? In either case, Wheelock (who after Spelman’s death would come to rely on D’Ewes for his salary) knew D’Ewes well enough to appreciate a warning to tread carefully. Perhaps this warning influenced Wheelock to abandon his own preliminary attempts at lexicography. D’Ewes certainly did not lay his dictionary aside, whatever Spelman’s objections may have been. He paid for the volumes to be bound in 1639/1640, so the project was underway by then; probably his scribes had completed the transcriptions of the Grammar and Joscelyn’s dictionary. From the start, D’Ewes planned to add to Joscelyn’s work: he had the copies made with wide margins and spaces between entries for additional material to be added. Junius and Somner made good use of this layout. Joscelyn had used some entries from his fellow antiquary Laurence 89 For the corporate authorship of “Holinshed,” see Felicity Heal and Henry Summerson, “The Genesis of the Two Editions,” in The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s “Chronicles,” ed. Paulina Kewes, Ian W. Archer, and Felicity Heal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3–20. 90 Bremmer, “Mine Is Bigger Than Yours.” 91 London, British Library Add. MS 34601, fol. 8. 92 “Falcem mittere” [to thrust a sickle] refers to a phrase in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Book 1 cap. 27 (ultimately derived from Deuteronomy 23:25), “Per alienam messem transiens falcem mittere non debet …” [It is not allowed to send a sickle across another’s harvest].

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Nowell’s Vocabularium Saxonicum; they extended the amount of material from it. In addition, Hetherington identifies seventeen texts that D’Ewes and his colleagues used that Joscelyn did not draw upon.93 Some of these were printed works from after Joscelyn’s time, such as the editions of William L’Isle (1569–1637) and Spelman. Others were manuscript compilations of D’Ewes’s forebears and contemporaries, such as Nowell and William Dugdale; a few were medieval manuscripts containing Old English. Hetherington believes that the collaborative spirit ultimately displayed by Harley 8 and 9 was not part of D’Ewes’s original vision. “While England’s Civil War and D’Ewes’ political activity deprived him of peace and a sense of security, their interruption of his dictionary project ultimately resulted in the improvements that are now its distinction.”94 D’Ewes’s decision to involve others probably arose in part from the demands on his time that being an active Parliamentarian required. D’Ewes simply had to give up on any vision of himself being the sole producer of the first printed dictionary of Old English. Yet even as that goal slipped from him, it was replaced by a sense of community and common cause, as other like-minded men joined him. In fact, as he and others labored to produce a work that combined efforts of Elizabethan students of Old English with their own assiduous recording of words, the unity may have become the project’s most important feature. The printing of a dictionary containing the oldest form of the language was not only of interest to antiquaries, as Dugdale notes in an encouraging letter to D’Ewes dated February 27, 1639: “I am glad to heare of your inclination to print the Saxon Dictionarye & especially the English therwith in as much as it hath soo much consonancye to the Saxon.”95 D’Ewes’s dictionary added Early Modern English definitions to many of Joscelyn’s entries, and all the entries that he and his friends made in addition to Joscelyn contain definitions in both Latin and English. For all D’Ewes’s fondness for using Latin in his letters when possible, he must have been aware as Dugdale was of the nationalist potential in Old English – as Nowell had been before him.96 For D’Ewes, as for Nowell, etymology revealed truth – not just about what a word meant historically, but its role and importance in the present. D’Ewes frequently referred to word etymology in his Parliamentary speeches. To give just one example from his Parliamentary journals, on January 13, 1640/1641, D’Ewes reports himself arguing: And I hoped that as our ancestors amongst the old English-Saxons did call Religion aefestnesse which is compounded of AE. lex and festnesse firmitudo, to shew that religion was the most firme bonde under heaven to unite mens hearts together, soe when wee came to the dispute of this busines wee shall bee united together with one sympathie and harmonie of hearts and soules.97

Hetherington, The Beginnings of Old English Lexicography (self-pub., Spicewood, TX, 1980), 109–110. 94 Ibid., 123. 95 BL, Harley MS 374. 96 Brackmann, Elizabethan Invention, 29–54. 97 D’Ewes, Journal, 250. 93

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His arguments were not just grandstanding – he made such points because to him, they were compelling. Indeed, most of the entries in Harley 8 and 9 in D’Ewes’s own hand are etymological or note continuities between Old English and Early Modern English. After “Dymminde caligans, obumbrans. Hom.” D’Ewes writes: “Darkening or shadowing. Atque inde hodiernum etiam vernaculum nostrum” [And even thence our present word]. While certainly scholars needed a good dictionary to help in their manuscript research, etymology was also paramount in bringing the past to bear on the present. D’Ewes’s use of both Nowell and Joscelyn also merits some comment. Nowell had worked for William Cecil, and his Old English studies had focused on more secular aspects of nationalism, while Joscelyn and his employer, Archbishop Matthew Parker, had produced polemical works supporting the Protestant cause. D’Ewes’s combination of both their labors therefore employed the two main impetuses for early medieval studies in the previous century. Joscelyn had already drawn on Nowell’s draft notes, but D’Ewes’s incorporation of additional entries from Nowell’s Vocabularium Saxonicum extends the information from Nowell. D’Ewes’s dictionary merged the two chief lexical resources from the Elizabethan period into a project with a shared goal – that of relating Old English to Modern English. His lexicon, had it been printed, would have been an effort that united the immediate present, the Elizabethan past (so longed-for during the early seventeenth century), and the distant world of pre-Conquest England. Its manner of composition made it an argument for common English identity in the shattering years of the 1640s. If this seems overstated, consider the men with whom D’Ewes worked. We might, given his puritan leanings and his activity in the Long Parliament, have expected him to eschew relations with those whose holiness was not up to his standards or who supported the king’s cause. This was not the case. Certainly, D’Ewes enjoyed his relationship with his fellow Calvinist Archbishop Ussher. Wheelock likewise stood with D’Ewes doctrinally. Somner, as will be detailed in chapters four and five, emphatically did not. He was a thorough-going Laudian, deposed from his position in Canterbury after the fall of the archbishop. Dugdale was a royalist who fought in the king’s army. Even though Roger Dodsworth, Dugdale’s collaborator on the Monasticon, seems to have personally disliked D’Ewes (not always an easy man to know), the rest of the antiquaries were happy to assist with his planned project.98 All these men worked harmoniously to produce volumes that, even though they remained in manuscript, demonstrated that Englishmen could set aside differences and seek in the past for commonalities that could still join them in the present. The study of the past showed the way forward to the tumultuous present – not just in its topics, but in its collaborative method. As the Civil Wars continued, little room remained in the Long Parliament for those who cherished such hopes of unity. D’Ewes was not only prevented from entering Parliament in Pride’s Purge in 1648 but was arrested and briefly imprisoned. Watson, Library, 8. The Monasticon Anglicanum (first volume 1655; second 1661; third 1673) was primarily a collection of medieval documents from various religious houses, illustrated by Wencelas Hollar. See Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 217–236. 98

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After his release, his public career over, he devoted more time to historical work. We might see this as “retreating” into antiquarianism after his expulsion, undertaking escapist research in rejection of the public sphere, but I believe to do so would be mistaken. The communal nature of Old English studies as well as its subject matter made this a public activity as much as a private one. It had always been so, even from his early days of collecting and inscribing his books. D’Ewes at one point noted that he “seriously imployed all the spare houres which I conceived I might Justly borrow from the Publike upon the new searches of old Records and in the midst of Publike troubles did inlarge my store of manuscripts and Coynes.”99 D’Ewes’s words could be interpreted to mean that his antiquarian efforts were done in opposition to his Parliamentary career. However, D’Ewes more juxtaposes than contrasts his Parliamentary activities with manuscript research; even though the former had to take priority, he regarded the latter as “seriously employing” himself. Part of his value to the Long Parliament had been his archival expertise and the support he could give to arguments of legal precedent. His research had been part of his self-conception as a participant in public life, and his continuation of it meant that he remained concerned in the affairs of the world around him. As Stephen Greenblatt observes in Renaissance Self-Fashioning, “among artists the will to be the culture’s voice – to create the abstract and brief chronicles of the time – is a commonplace, but the same will may extend beyond art.”100 D’Ewes certainly wanted to be the voice and chronicle of the Long Parliament, and of his own life, as his diaries and autobiography show. Yet he also wanted to be the voice of the past, to show his contemporaries that the historical “truth” of English unity and identity continued in its language and its legal system. Continuing his studies in the face of his ejection was not a retreat, but a counter-attack, a refusal to let the past be silent about the heartbreaking ruptures of his present. His reading of Lambarde/Bowyer had shaped his interests and convinced him that the early medieval past laid out fundamental principles that the English needed to understand to perceive their own role as God’s people. His historical compilation in Harley 624 continued that idea but also considered the role of episcopacy. If it was compiled while Laud was archbishop, then the portraits of heroic bishops condemned the English primate’s failings; if it was compiled after Laud’s fall, it made a claim for episcopacy’s continued role in the church. Finally, the Old English lexicon argued for the shared identity, both historical and contemporary, of England’s people. An ambitious project that tested D’Ewes’s strength (as his inscription in Harley 8 implies), it also harkened back to the quotation he penned in one of his journals – that without hope, without the conviction that failure was not possible, Englishmen could not join together. Old English studies could give them that hope.

99 100

Quoted in McGee, Industrious Mind, 417. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 7.

2 Abraham Wheelock’s Godly Historian: The 1643/1644 Bede

I

n 1638, Old English studies acquired its first professional practitioner in Abraham Wheelock, for whom Sir Henry Spelman and Sir Simonds D’Ewes endowed a lectureship at Cambridge University. Wheelock was already the Cambridge University Librarian and lecturer in Arabic, positions he had held since 1629 and 1632, respectively.1 Wheelock had been at the university since 1615, when he matriculated at Trinity College; after he graduated, he became a fellow of Clare, a position he left upon his marriage in 1632. He remained in harness at the library and in his dual lectureships until his death in 1653. Wheelock and one of his students wrote “Old English” poems in praise of Charles I in 1641, the first compositions in Old English in centuries, but his premier achievement in early medieval studies is his 1643 edition of the ninth-century Old English translation of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, printed side-by-side with the Latin original and augmented by explanatory notes and passages from other Old English texts, followed by the Anglo-­Saxon

Wheelock’s biography is set out in Alistair Hamilton, “Abraham Wheelocke (c. 1593– 1653), Linguist and Librarian,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com. Studies of Wheelock’s early medieval research and publications include Patrick Day, “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the Seventeenth Century: Transmission, Translation, Reception” (PhD diss., Florida State University, 2017); Peter Lucas, “Abraham Wheelock and the Presentation of Anglo-Saxon: From Manuscript to Print,” in Beatus Vir: Studies in Early English and Norse Manuscripts in Memory of Phillip Pulsiano, ed. A.N. Doane and Kirsten Wolf (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), 383–439; Lucas, “From Politics to Practicalities: Printing Anglo-Saxon in the Context of Seventeenth-Century Scholarship,” The Library 4 (2003): 28–48; Angelika Lutz, “The Study of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the Seventeenth Century and the Establishment of Old English Studies in the Universities,” in The Recovery of Old English: Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Timothy Graham (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), 1–82; Lucy Munro, Archaic Style in English Literature, 1590–1674 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Michael Murphy, “Abraham Wheeloc’s Edition of Bede’s History in Old English,” Studia Neophilologica 38 (1967): 46–59; Michael Murphy and Edward Barrett, “Abraham Wheelock, Arabist and Saxonist,” Biography 8 (1985): 163–185; J.C.T. Oates, Cambridge University Library: A History; From the Beginnings to the Copyright Act of Queen Anne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); and Francis Utley, “Two Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Poems,” Modern Language Quarterly 3 (1942): 243–261. 1

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Chronicle (ASC) with Wheelock’s own Latin translation. A second edition was printed in 1644 with some additions prepared by Sir Roger Twysden, primarily a new edition of William Lambarde’s 1568 Archaionomia and the first edition of the Leges Henrici Primi (LHP). A list of Old English and Latin legal terms rounded out Twysden’s contributions, which will be discussed in the next chapter. Allen Frantzen, in his discussion of Wheelock’s book, observes that it “cannot be understood outside the network of readers and writers gathered around it.”3 Frantzen mostly examines how the text participates in controversies between Catholics and Protestants. He notes that such activities as singing at church services were opposed by “extreme reformers (later Puritans),” but by the early 1640s, puritans were taking the reins of the English church after having the Archbishop of Canterbury imprisoned.4 This chapter will place the 1643/1644 Bede more specifically in the context of English religious and political upheaval in the 1640s, which was felt particularly at Cambridge University. Cambridge had been the scene of doctrinal and procedural wrangling between Calvinists and those who opposed them for decades, and Wheelock’s Bede participates in this discourse, not only arguing against Catholicism, but taking a decidedly Calvinist bent against the stance of Arminians such as Archbishop Laud and Robert Shelford. 2

Arminians and Calvinists at Cambridge The conflict between the supporters of Calvinist theology and their Arminian antagonists had been underway for decades before Wheelock arrived in Cambridge in 1615, as the end of the sixteenth century and the first years of the seventeenth saw a growing movement of “anti-Calvinism.”5 During the reigns of Elizabeth and James, sermons preached at Cambridge questioned doctrines of supra-lapsarian Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, ed. Abraham Wheelock (Cambridge, 1643/1644), hereinafter cited as Historia. 3 Allen Frantzen, Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 153. 4 Ibid., 158. For Laud’s fate, see William Palmer, “Invitation to a Beheading: Factions in Parliament, the Scots, and the Execution of Archbishop William Laud in 1645,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 52 (1983): 17–27; and the general histories cited in chapter one. 5 The following discussion does not explore all nuances of seventeenth-century debate in the English church, which was highly complex. My account draws on Bryan Spinks, Sacraments, Ceremonies, and the Stuart Divines: Sacramental Theology and Liturgy in England and Scotland 1603–1662 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002); Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c. 1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), especially chapter 2, “Cambridge University and Arminianism”; Tyacke, “The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered,” Past & Present 115 (1987): 201–216; Michael Questier, “Arminianism, Catholicism, and Puritanism in England during the 1630s,” The Historical Journal 49 (2006): 53–78; John Walter, “‘Affronts and Insolencies’: The Voices of Radwinter and Popular Opposition to Laudianism,” English Historical Review 122 (2007): 35–60; John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: Religion and Intellectual Change in Seventeenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006); and Graham Parry, Glory, Laud and Honour: The Arts of the Anglican Counter-Reformation (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), as well as the more general histories of the period cited in chapter one. 2

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predestination and the irresistibility of grace, asserting instead that individual faith and sacraments played some role in salvation. Such arguments drew in part from the teachings of the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius (Jakob Harmenszoon, 1559–1609). Elizabeth’s Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift (1530–1604), had responded to Arminian theology in 1595 with the Lambeth Articles, which confirmed the Church of England’s basically Calvinist stance. The issue rose again in the reign of James until, in 1618, the English church sent four representatives to the Synod of Dort, two from Cambridge University – John Davenant of Queens’ (1572– 1641) and Samuel Ward of Sidney Sussex (1572–1643). When the synod resulted in the condemnation of Arminian doctrines, King James approved. Nicholas Tyacke notes that “All Cambridge dissent from Calvinism appears temporarily to have been silenced by royal support for the Dort rulings.”6 Change was on the horizon, however. The Duke of Buckingham, Charles I’s favorite, was elected Chancellor of Cambridge in 1626, and his policies made clear his own Arminian leanings. Although he was only in office two years before his assassination, Buckingham wished to make Cambridge a bastion of Arminianism.7 Calvinists certainly greeted his appointment with dismay. When, less than a month after his election, a fish was found in the Cambridge market containing in its stomach a partially digested treatise of Henrician writings on the church, Calvinists viewed the event as a portent and a warning that their position was under threat.8 Their fears were realized when Buckingham’s protégé, William Laud, was appointed Bishop of London in 1628, and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. Laud’s promotions confirmed the anti-Calvinist position of the English church under Charles I.9 Laud “promoted Arminian doctrines of free will and salvation through works, and he sought to impose new forms of religious ritual which placed far less emphasis on the scriptures, preaching, and sermons, but highlighted instead the ceremonial and sacramental aspects of church services.”10 Laud wanted high altars decorated with cloths, ornate priestly vestments, and religious artwork in the college chapels; he also required priests to bow toward the altar at the name of Jesus during the service. Laud became Chancellor of Oxford University in 1630 and strove to bring both the universities in line with his vision for the Church of England. The stakes were high, for the universities were the training-ground for the clergy and shaped the future direction of the church as their graduates left for parishes throughout the realm. Through most of the 1630s, the Cambridge Arminians held the upper hand, and sermons supporting Calvinist positions were suppressed. Indeed, Charles had tried to shut down all debate on predestination, forbidding anyone to preach, read, or

Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 45. John Twigg, The University of Cambridge and the English Revolution 1625–1688 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1991). 8 Alexandra Walsham, “Vox Piscis: Or the Book-Fish; Providence and the Uses of the Reformation Past in Caroline Cambridge,” The English Historical Review 114 (1999): 574–606. 9 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 7; Parry, Glory, Laud and Honour, 1–24; Charles Carlton, Archbishop William Laud (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987); and Leonie James, “This Great Firebrand”: William Laud and Scotland (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017). 10 Twigg, University of Cambridge, 11. 6 7

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print discussions of the topic. Michael Young argues that the king “wanted his subjects not to be less religious but to share his particular form of religious expression. He wanted them to approach the altar with an attitude of awe and reverence, to find comfort in the repetition of dignified ceremonies, and not to engage in unseemly theorizing or debate.”12 Whatever Charles’s motive, this all looked disturbingly Roman Catholic to those who disagreed with Laud, and their opposition mounted in the late 1630s.13 Some historians have questioned Tyacke’s thesis of a deliberate attack on Calvinism on the side of Laud and his supporters. However, as Margo Todd reminds us: 11

It may matter less whether there was a theologically coherent Arminian party determined to undermine Calvinist orthodoxy in the 1630s than whether contemporaries perceived such a party. If they believed that Laudian ceremonialists were out to crush traditional religious practice, the extent to which Laudian impositions were actually innovative matters somewhat less.14

The perceptions of the members of Cambridge University – and of the English people generally – ultimately matter more than our retroactive judgment about whether Laud and his followers were “really” out to suppress Calvinism. The belief that two parties were forming and polarizing the nation spread far beyond the universities and cathedrals of England. Peter Lake has shown how these discourses of “puritan versus Arminian” could map themselves onto local factions and shape politics in the provinces.15 Lake examines how arguments surrounding a murder in Wheelock’s own Shropshire quickly became centered on the religious leanings of the killer and victims. His findings shed light on a university environment where debates and disagreements on secular topics similarly shifted almost immediately to discourses on religion. Laud found little resistance in some Cambridge colleges, particularly Peterhouse. Robert Shelford (1563–1638), a former member, printed Five Pious and Learned Discourses in 1635 – an English Arminian manifesto.16 Shelford argued, among other things, that grace could derive from participation in sacraments, that churches should be beautified, and that the Pope was not the antichrist. The book spells out the position of the Laudians in the 1630s, and their opponents lost no time condemning it. Archbishop Ussher of Ireland (1581–1656), for one, took a dim view of Shelford’s publication, calling it “rotten stuff.”17 I will return to Shelford’s Discourses later in this chapter when I discuss Wheelock’s additions to Bede.

David Cressy, Charles I and the People of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), Kindle edition, 214. 12 Young, Charles I (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997), 110. 13 Twigg, University of Cambridge, 34. 14 Margo Todd, “‘All One with Tom Thumb’: Arminianism, Popery, and the Story of the Reformation in Early Stuart Cambridge,” Church History 64 (1995): 564. 15 Peter Lake, “Puritanism, Arminianism, and a Shropshire Axe-Murder,” Midland History 15 (1990): 37–64. 16 Robert Shelford, Five Pious and Learned Discourses (London, 1635). 17 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 53–56. 11

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The Irenodia Cantabrigiensis Things had begun to go sour for Charles and Laud by 1641, the year of Wheelock’s first publication as professor of Saxon, and the context for this publication is worth recounting. Charles’s 1639 order that the Scottish Kirk use the Anglican Prayer Book was met with such stout resistance that twice Charles marched north with an army to attempt to force the Scots into submission.18 Both attempts failed, nearly without combat, as both times the Scottish army was demonstrably superior in organization, armaments, and size. After the first of these “Bishops’ Wars,” Charles went back to London and summoned a Parliament to help him fund another war against his northern kingdom. He soon discovered that Parliament was far more interested in settling the grievances from Charles’s previous eleven years of “Personal Rule.” Charles dissolved this “Short Parliament” and tried again anyway to subdue the Scots. The second Bishops’ War in 1640 had involved a planned invasion of Scotland from Ireland, but the army, under the command of the Earl of Strafford, was unable to cross the Irish Sea. Instead, the Scots occupied the north of England around Newcastle. Charles formed a Council of Peers who at last worked out a treaty with the occupying Scottish army. However, part of this agreement involved paying the Scottish army as well as the English one, and the Scots insisted that it be ratified by Parliament, which meant that Charles had to call another Parliament to both ratify the treaty and raise money. This “Long Parliament,” many members of which were ideologically allied with the Calvinist and Presbyterian Scots, quickly took nearly all practical control from Charles. Archbishop Laud was arrested, as was the Earl of Strafford. The latter was put to death in the summer of 1641, and Charles was forced to give his assent to the execution of one of his staunchest allies. Other members of his government fled abroad. Even when the Scottish army was finally paid off and dispersed, the alliance between the Presbyterians in Parliament and those north of the Tweed remained. Charles set out to undermine that alliance by trying to make friends in Scotland. He declared his intention to open the Scottish Parliament and traveled north in early August of 1641. He also announced his desire to take an army to the Continent to war with Spain on behalf of his nephew, the Elector Palatine. Charles’s failure to intervene for the Bohemian Protestant cause had been a matter for reproach during the Personal Rule, and Charles hoped that this change of policy would “gain for himself – from Ireland, England, or Scotland – an armed striking force to have in reserve against his enemies if they tried again to raise tumults in the City.”19 So Charles went to Edinburgh and set about ingratiating himself with the subjects whom he had twice threatened with war.

18 James, Great Firebrand; Young, Charles I; Austin Woolrych, Britain in Revolution 1625– 1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); C.V. Wedgwood, The King’s Peace: 1637–1641 (New York: Macmillan, 1956); Diane Purkiss, The English Civil War: Papists, Gentlewomen, Soldiers, and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain (New York: Basic Books, 2006); Caroline Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Cressy, Charles I. 19 Wedgwood, King’s Peace, 449.

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His chances of success were probably never good. They vanished utterly in the exposure of and fallout from what was ever after called “The Incident” – a failed plot to imprison and probably murder two Scottish leaders opposed to Charles, the Earl of Argyll and the Earl of Lanark, as well as Charles’s envoy and former friend, James Hamilton. When Charles’s Groom of the Bedchamber, William Murray, was exposed as the source of the plot, Charles’s outraged denials of culpability fell on deaf ears. What his role truly was no one knows, although most modern accounts agree with Austin Woolrych that it is “scarcely conceivable that he knew nothing of it.”21 The Incident was a misguided and spectacularly ill-timed attempt to control Scotland by force at the same time that Charles wanted to woo it to his side by making concessions and trying to be as agreeable as possible. It was also fodder for the Long Parliament’s anti-Charles faction, who made certain that it was reported to Parliament, still sitting in London while Charles was away. John Pym, a key member of this faction, feared that the Long Parliament, having executed Strafford, imprisoned Laud, abolished the Courts of High Commission and Star Chamber, and done away with irregular taxes such as the notorious “ship money,” would lose momentum for further reforms.22 The more moderate members were satisfied with their gains and ready to depart, especially those who were less committed to total reform of the English church.23 Pym attempted to bolster his position by proposing and probably helping to draft the Grand Remonstrance, a list of every grievance that Pym and his party felt they had from the time of the Personal Rule.24 Then, while Edinburgh and London rang with rumors of the king’s involvement in the Incident and Pym rallied support for his Remonstrance, Ireland erupted in violence, fueled by rumors that the English and Scottish Presbyterians would try to force their religion on the Irish. Charles’s opponents immediately suspected that the king had also had a hand in the uprising, the violence of which (especially against Protestant “New English” settlers) was graphically exaggerated in the pamphlets coming from London presses. The Irish uprising severely weakened Charles’s chances of dividing his opponents and finding a way to regain control of his army (and his kingdoms).25 No one would trust him at the head of an army to attack 20

Richard Cust, however, has a more positive view of Charles’s prospects: Charles I: A Political Life (2005; repr., New York: Pearson, 2007). 21 Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, 190. 22 For debate over Pym’s exact role and importance, see Stephen Roberts, “King Pym and His ‘Happy, Scrappy Jester,’” Parliamentary History 40 (2021): 81–92. 23 John Morrill discusses the interaction between political and religious motives in The Nature of the English Revolution (New York: Longman, 1993), especially part one. 24 David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution 1640–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3–24; Young, Charles I, 148–149. For the Grand Remonstrance, see Gary Rivett, “Peacemaking, Parliament, and the Politics of the Recent Past in the English Civil Wars,” Huntington Library Quarterly 76 (2013): 589–615; and David Cressy, “Remembrancers of the Revolution: Histories and Historiographies of the 1640s,” Huntington Library Quarterly 68 (2005): 257–268. 25 For instance, Young writes that “Charles had hoped he would return to English in a much stronger position. The rebellion that broke out in Ireland … dashed those hopes.” Young believes, however, that the royalist party’s strength in Parliament still meant that “the situation was not hopeless” until Charles tried to arrest Pym and four of his allies in January of 1642: Young, Charles I, 147; 149. 20

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Spanish Catholics when he was strongly suspected of colluding with Irish ones. Woolrych speculates that Pym, for one, truly believed that Charles had something to do with the uprising, and given “how long it has taken historians (with much more to go on) to arrive at a consensus that puts the king in the clear, Pym’s suspicion is understandable.”26 In any event, while Charles was still en route from Edinburgh, the Long Parliament passed the Grand Remonstrance in the earliest hours of November 23 – after a marathon session of debating, and by a narrow margin of votes.27 These events are worth rehearsing in detail, for Charles’s return from Scotland was the occasion for Wheelock’s first public foray into Old English, a poem for the Irenodia Cantabrigiensis. This volume of verses was produced by Cambridge University for Charles upon his return. Oxford also had a volume in the king’s honor, but the Cambridge one had the outstanding feature of verses not only in English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but in neo-“Old English” by Wheelock and one of his students, William Retchford. Wheelock’s was a translation of his other contribution, a poem in Hebrew that he probably wrote first.28 The Irenodia was spearheaded by Richard Holdsworth, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University and chaplain to Charles.29 The theme of the volume’s praise for Charles, as the title suggests, was his identity as a peace-making king. The possible irony of this – after all, if Charles had had his way, he would have come back with an army ostensibly for fighting the Spanish but in reality just as much a threat to his Parliamentary opposition, while Ireland was anything but peaceful – was either unnoticed, or the volume was trying to put the most positive slant possible on Charles’s disappointments in the north. As Patrick Day has pointed out, Wheelock had contributed to previous volumes of royal panegyric produced by the “Cambridge Muses.”30 Wheelock, who was not wealthy, had spent much of his career fostering patronage. He had voted for Buckingham’s election to Chancellor, and generally done what he could to promote himself with those who had the means to fund his research.31 Wheelock’s previous poems had all centered on the theme of peace and prosperity brought in by the Stuart dynasty, so his Irenodia contribution ran along familiar lines. The volume’s insistence on peace and unity among Charles’s kingdoms (whatever the reality might be) begins on the title page with a “bipartite” chronogram, a statement in which capitalized letters, when taken as Roman numerals and totaled, add up to the year in which the chronogram was written. In this case, the chronogram works in either Latin or its English translation:

Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, 199. Ibid., 199–202. 28 Utley, “Two Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Poems,” 243–261. The career of William Retchford has been traced by Peter Lucas in “William Retchford, Pupil of Abraham Wheelock in Anglo-Saxon: ‘He Understands the Saxon as Well as Myself,’” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 12 (2003): 335–361. 29 Utley, “Two Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Poems,” 244. 30 Day, “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.” 31 Ibid., 90. 26 27

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[q]Vae DeVs Ita ConIVnXIt anatheMa sIt qVIsqVIs separate.

32

VVhat goD hath thVs knIt together CVrseD be he VVho pVts asVnDer.

Chronograms were common in volumes from the universities celebrating royal patrons.33 This one, however, stands out both because the chronogram is made to work in both Latin and English and because it mimics a well-known phrase from Matthew 19:5, which was of course part of the wedding service in the Book of Common Prayer. The play on the wedding service implies that this book celebrates a “marriage,” either between Charles’s kingdoms of Scotland and England, or between these kingdoms and Charles himself. Charles has married his kingdoms (in either sense), and this is a sacred bond, evidenced out of the prayer book that consolidated the identity of the Anglican Church for many of Charles’s English subjects – and that was under threat from radical reformers in Parliament. Many worshippers who disliked Laudian policies were nonetheless alarmed by puritans’ attacks on the Prayer Book, so Holdsworth’s choice to play on this phrase was shrewd, and significant.34 Chronograms, like anagrams and other examples of “word play,” were more than clever word games; they were understood to carry meaning and to reveal truths about people, events, and years.35 The identification of Charles’s marriage of the kingdoms with the year was not a trifling bit of cleverness, but something that was “true” – as was the reminder that the monarch was the upholder of the Prayer Book that “sat at the heart of everyday existence” for many of his subjects.36 Both Old English poems in the Irenodia expand on the general theme of peace between England and Scotland. Wheelock and Retchford probably collaborated on their contributions, and as Francis Utley observes, “there is really little need to distinguish the two authors” in their comprehension of Old English. Nevertheless, “Retchford’s grammar and syntax are better than Wheloc’s” – probably because Wheelock had composed first in Hebrew and was trying to translate from that language into Old English (although sentence clarity in any language was never Wheelock’s strength).37 Wheelock’s Old English poem begins: Scotland buton feohte Ongel lond geswiþde. Jacobus gryp’d hire ho’s Ond æfter his Carlos.38 This tally requires “IV” in the fourth word to be counted as six (I + V) rather than four. James Hilton, Chronograms Continued and Concluded: More Than Five Thousand in Number (London, 1885), 24. 34 Judith Maltby, Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), especially 83–129. 35 For the importance of early modern word games, see Tony Augarde, The Oxford Guide to Word Games (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 103–108. 36 Isaac Stephens, “Confessional Identity in Early Stuart England: The ‘Prayer Book Puritanism’ of Elizabeth Isham,” Journal of British Studies 50 (2011): 25. 37 Utley, “Two Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Poems,” 257. 38 Ibid., 248. 32 33

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Utley translates these lines: Scotland without battle Conquered England. James gripped their heels [its heel?] And after [that came] his Charles.39

As Utley observes, “the first four lines of the poem refer to the dynastic union with Scotland.”40 However, the first sentence, taken in light of the events of the previous years, does not entirely come off as flattering to Charles, whatever Wheelock’s intention. After all, the Scottish army had, with almost no opposition, driven off the English twice and occupied the north of England until the Treaty of London in August of 1641. Charles and his army had offered very little resistance during either of the two Bishops’ Wars. The next statement “clarifies” this: James gripped the heel (either of England, or perhaps of the Tudors), as Jacob had gripped the heel of Esau at birth. As Utley observes, the allusion to Jacob and Esau is “unmistakable” (particularly in a poem translating from Hebrew). Christians usually interpreted the Jacob and Esau story typologically as an event that prefigured the supposed supersession of Judaism by Christianity, so James here does not merely succeed the Tudors, he supplants and perfects them.41 However, this elaboration of the first statement does not entirely eliminate its potential criticism of Charles. The palimpsest of meaning allows both recent history of Scottish conquering and the metaphoric conquest of the Stuart accession to coexist in the reader’s mind. Wheelock’s next explicit reference to Charles raises further ambiguities. “Is þine heafod comon / Eadig Ceorl’s Salome’s / Sunu, sunu sibbes.”42 Utley’s translation here is straightforward: “Thy chief has come, / Blessed Charles Solomon’s / Son, son of peace.”43 About “Ceorl,” Utley notes: “No doubt merely an attempt to find an OE equivalent for Carlos or Carolus,” although he observes “Wheeloc is … far from right on connotation.”44 It is hard to imagine, however, that Wheelock did not know this. After all, William Lambarde’s Archaionomia gives “ceorle” as the Old English equivalent of the Latin “paganus,” and notes “rustici et pagani vel hodie Carles et churles appellantur” [farmers and peasants even today are called carls and churls].45 The word “churl,” obviously descended from the Old English that Wheelock chose as an equivalent for Charles’s name, had already gained negative connotations by the early fourteenth century, and especially in the adjectival form could be used as

Ibid., 249, insertions original. All following translations are Utley’s unless noted. Ibid., 250. 41 This reading goes back to the Apostle Paul in Rom. 9. See Achsah Guibbory, Christian Identity, Jews, and Israel in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 171. 42 Utley, “Two Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Poems,” 248. I replace a raised period with a comma in this line, as the nearest modern equivalent. 43 Ibid., 249. 44 Ibid., 252. 45 William Lambarde, ed., Archaionomia (London, 1568), C4r. 39

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an insult in the seventeenth. Does the use of “Ceorl” for Charles’s name reveal a personal dislike for Charles even as Wheelock supports the Stuart dynasty, or is it merely an unfortunate choice by a man whose talents did not lie in poetic composition? Similarly, calling Charles the “son of Solomon” could be insulting, for as Lucy Munro points out, “Solomon’s son and successor was Rehoboam, best known for his susceptibility to flattering courtiers and for the rebellion of his people over taxation, which led the ten northern tribes of Israel to break away and form a separate kingdom.”47 In either case, a reader so disposed could find criticism of the king in Wheelock’s choice of wording. Retchford also uses “Ceorl” for “Charles”: “Ceorl Cyninga betst” [Charles best of kings]. However, Retchford notes the word “Ceorl” and glosses it “maritus. sponsus” [married man, bridegroom]. This definition is possible, but specialized, and as Utley comments, “Retchford was more cautious than his master in ensuring that the derogatory meaning not be inferred.”48 Retchford was right to be nervous: the sense in Lambarde is by far the more common, and the insulting sense of “churl” was widespread.49 Did Wheelock not care if his text was interpreted in a negative sense, since he knew he could point to Retchford’s gloss to get him out of any trouble? The possibility cannot be wholly confirmed, but it cannot be denied, either. What’s more, as Munro observes, “the primary association of ‘Ceorl’ with ‘husband’ is itself not unproblematic, given widespread anxiety about the influence of Queen Henrietta Maria in the 1630s and 1640s.”50 Retchford’s poem on the whole fits with the celebration of Charles as a peace-­ giving king, but like Wheelock’s maintains some possibly deliberate ambiguities. Retchford begins by lamenting Charles’s absence, hyperbolically claiming that he traveled as far as the Orkney Islands, and therefore left all Britain “Gelic sum lafe on þam strond” [Like some remnant on the shore]. The next several lines are tricky: “Đæt this iglond seo iu wæs an / Fram þis annysse ne gewan. / Đam cempan oferswyþde friþ.” Utley translates, “So that this Island which formerly was one / From this unity has not won. / To that warrior exceeding peace.”51 Utley, however, mis-transcribes the third word in the last line as “oferswyþðe”; with this corrected, the word must be a verb, not a descriptor, and the line translates, “Peace has overcome that warrior.” This reading also matches the original punctuation by allowing this line to be its own sentence. However, this leaves a puzzle in two previous lines, for “friþ” can no longer be the object of “gewan.” “Gewan” itself is tricky: Utley translates “ne gewan” as “has not won,” but it blatantly goes against the theme of the 46

For example, in Hamlet 5.1.240–243: “I tell thee, churlish priest, / A minist’ring angel shall my sister be / When thou liest howling.” 47 Munro, Archaic Style, 61. 48 Utley, “Two Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Poems,” 254. 49 Munro, Archaic Style, 59. 50 Ibid. For a discussion of contemporary concerns about Henrietta Maria, see Susan Amussen, “Gender, Inversion, and the Causes of the English Civil War,” in Revolutionising Politics: Culture and Conflict in England, 1620–1660, ed. Paul Hallida, Eleanor Hubbard, and Scott Sowerby (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021), 74–94, and William Bulman, “The Practice of Politics: The English Civil War and the ‘Resolution’ of Henrietta Maria and Charles I,” Past and Present 206 (2010): 43–79. 51 Utley, “Two Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Poems,” 254. 46

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entire book to point out that Charles had not achieved peace. Perhaps Retchford was trying for a form of gewana, and the sense is that “this Island, which already (‘iu’) was one / From this unity was not lacking”? However, if the “warrior” in line 9 is supposed to be Charles, the idea that he was “conquered” by peace is perhaps not entirely complimentary, either. After all, he hoped to gain an army for himself in his trip north, so whatever peace came out of his visit came against his intentions. Potential criticisms also surface in Retchford’s next three lines: “Ond cynges hond gesealde griþ; / Geswygaþ woruld Francna Eorl / Swa lang swa Bryton receþ Ceorl” [And “a king’s hand gave tranquility.” / The leader of the Franks stills the world / As long as Ceorl cares for Britain].52 Marginal notes to the first line point the reader to Spelman’s Concilia Ecclesiastica Orbis Britannici (1639) and Lambarde’s Archaionomia, where this Old English proverb appears in the Latin “Laws of King Edward” (Leges Edwardi), a text now recognized as spurious but widely accepted in early modern England. Utley comments that the quotation from the Leges Edwardi is “further evidence that the period just before the Norman Conquest was running through the minds of these two Cambridge Saxonists as a parallel to Charles’s journey.”53 More specifically than just the date, however, the choice of law code also matters here. Edward’s supposed laws were increasingly a rallying point for those who opposed the Stuarts’ form of royal absolutism, as Janelle Greenberg writes: “From the civil wars of the 1640s to the Glorious Revolution of 1689, St. Edward served as the patron saint of dissidents who vigorously promoted the quintessential radical causes of the century, including rebellion, deposition, even regicide.”54 Although regicide was far from anyone’s mind in 1641, the radical potential for the Leges Edwardi was already apparent when Retchford quoted from it. To pick just the best-known example, Sir Edward Coke, “the chief articulator of radical constitutionalist history” in James’s reign, had drawn heavily on the Leges Edwardi for his arguments.55 A note to the next line informs the reader that “Francna Eorl” is Charlemagne. This reference is still not entirely clear, as Utley observes. Eorl could be either the subject or the object, so the line could read “the world quiets the leader of the Franks” as well as the reverse. Is the idea here that Charles I is the new “Charles the Great” or, as Utley speculates, “does the world keep the French king under control so long as ‘Ceorl’ rules England?”56 In either case, the passage carries hints of the widespread complaints against Charles, including Parliament’s objections that he was too much influenced by his French wife. If he himself is indicated by the “Francna Eorl,” then calling him a leader of the French could be ironic. If the meaning is that he needed to be more concerned about quelling the French, then his tolerance of his French Catholic wife’s priests and his complacency about court Catholics is criticized. In either case, the outcome will last “Swa lang swa Bryton receþ Ceorl” [As long as Charles cares for Britain]. The poem raises the possibility that he might not always Ibid. Ibid., 255. 54 Janelle Greenberg, The Radical Face of the Ancient Constitution: St. Edward’s “Laws” in Early Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 2. 55 Ibid., 142. 56 Utley, “Two Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Poems,” 256. 52 53

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do so. The line could also be read “so long as Britain cares for Charles.” This again raises the specter that it might not, especially in the context of the Irish rebellion alluded to in the poem’s concluding lines: “Him Scotta Iglond sceal gesyng / On fægniaþ Breoton on hyr Cyng” [Him the Irish isle shall celebrate / And Britain rejoice in its king].57 A marginal note glosses “Scotta Iglond” as “Hibernia.” Although the reader is assured that the Irish “shall” sing Charles’s praises, they were scarcely doing so at that moment. The sense of futurity carries over to the final line as well. Britain “shall” rejoice in her king but was not noticeably rejoicing in him at present. As with Wheelock’s poem, Retchford’s verse praises Charles but also hints at his shortcomings. The textual difficulties in the two poems make conclusions hard to draw. Certainly neither one is effusive in praise of Charles; compared to some of the other verses in the volume, they come across as frankly anemic. Charles is not called a gift from heaven, as he is in Abraham Cowley’s English poem.58 He is not attributed with the ability to move stones and bend oak as he is in Richard Holdsworth’s verse opening the volume, nor is he compared to the sun, without which England cannot live, as he is in many of the verses in the volume produced by Oxford University.59 These sorts of stock tropes would not have been particularly difficult in Old English, but neither Wheelock nor Retchford employ them. Were they trying to reach past such simple images, or were they just too honest to write unmixed praise of a king whose personal failings were all too apparent, however much the authors may have supported the Stuart monarchy in general? Day argues that “Wheelock’s verses participate in a larger campaign to sugarcoat the very recent failures of Charles and to obfuscate the political realities of the visit to Scotland.”60 Perhaps such a public relations goal was just too difficult for their attempts at “spin” to succeed. When Wheelock and Retchford sat down to compose their “Old English” poems in praise of Charles, they did so in an environment that was increasingly fraught with conflict between those who supported the king and those who did not. There were still moderates, however – Pym’s Grand Remonstrance barely passed through the House of Commons. Several members thought that they had accomplished enough and did not want to intrude even more openly on the royal prerogatives. Likewise, in late 1641 some equivocation in verses praising Charles was still possible, and Wheelock and Retchford may have deliberately aimed for such a middle path. Over the next year, however, that path began to vanish. The king raised his standard at Nottingham in August of 1642, and the first Civil War began. The fortunes of several Cambridge colleges had already begun to reverse. After the fall of Laud in 1641, the reins were firmly in the hand of the puritan-leaning Long Parliament, and the formerly ascendant Laudian masters and schools found themselves on the defensive.61 In 1641, Parliament issued orders for the removal of altar rails, crucifixes, and images from chapels; colleges such as Peterhouse, which Ibid., 254. Irenodia, K1v. 59 Ibid., 2r. The Oxford volume, titled Eucharistica Oxoniensia, took this comparison as its main theme. 60 Day, “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” 83. 61 Twigg, University of Cambridge, 42–65. 57

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had greatly ornamented its place of worship, were ordered to rip out the new decorations. Parliament also established control over other Cambridge entities; for instance, the university printer, Roger Daniel, was forbidden in June of 1643 to print anything without its approval.62 Calvinist-leaning schools such as Sidney Sussex and Emmanuel rejoiced; Arminian-leaning schools (most of whose members were also royalists) began to sell off their plate to send money and arms to the king. In “the winter of 1643 … Parliament took the removal of Laudian ornaments [from Cambridge college chapels] properly in hand.”63 By that time, the university had practically shut down academic exercises.64 In January 1644, the Earl of Manchester was sent by Parliament to examine the masters and fellows of the colleges to determine who was sufficiently loyal to Parliament to be allowed to remain. As part of this, all college heads, masters, and fellows were required to swear to the Solemn League and Covenant, a manifesto of Presbyterian and Calvinist doctrine.65 Any who would not do so, or whose colleges Manchester and his deputies found reluctant to strip their chapels of ornament, were removed from their offices. Exact numbers are difficult to determine, but John Twigg remarks that the purges were “certainly severe.”66 Cambridge University, like most of the realm, was rent between factions and depleted as people left to join one of the armies or were expelled from office. It was in this environment that Wheelock, in 1643, published his edition of Bede. Bede, Stapleton, and the Catholic Past Michael Murphy and Edward Barrett comment, “There is little trace in Wheelock’s Anglo-Saxon work of the violent national argument in the midst of which he worked… . Religious bias or polemic was his slant… . This was both safe and approved, for nobody was likely to object to historical or philological research in the cause of converting Moslems or controverting Catholics.”67 Peter Lucas has a similar view: “Abraham Wheelock (1593–1653) was still arguing about church practice even while civil war was brewing.”68 However, “church practice” was one of the most bitterly contested issues between Charles and the Long Parliament and was providing grounds for dismissal of Laudian university members, and this view of Wheelock burrowing in his library and ignoring the upheavals around him will not stand up to a careful reading of his edition of Bede with its dozens of Old English homiletic extracts supplied in the notes to the text. While Day has persuasively argued that Wheelock was politically a royalist, and perhaps even an absolutist, his

62 Daniel, who would eventually print Wheelock’s edition of Bede and the ASC, continually defied this edict. See Day, “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” 110–119. 63 Twigg, University of Cambridge, 49. 64 Ibid., 82. 65 Woolrych discusses the drafting and impact of the Covenant: Britain in Revolution, 268–273. See also Rivett, “Peacemaking,” 608–613. 66 Twigg, University of Cambridge, 97. 67 Murphy and Barrett, “Abraham Wheelock,” 164; emphasis original. 68 Lucas, “From Politics to Practicalities,” 29.

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Bede engages in anti-Laudian discourse. As was the case with many of his contemporaries, Wheelock could support Charles’s prerogatives while simultaneously despising Laud and his Arminian policies. Possibly Wheelock would have been required to swear to the Solemn League and Covenant, although there is no record of its administration at the library. Wheelock, reliant on funding, may have been hedging his bets – his patron in the professorship was Simonds D’Ewes, whose puritan leanings I have discussed in chapter one. Wheelock’s edition of the Chronicle spins toward royalist absolutism, especially when his translation is compared with his source text and manuscripts, as Day has argued. However, the anti-Laudianism of his annotated Bede is more foregrounded in the text itself and more in line with the prevailing winds of 1643 Cambridge. D’Ewes would have approved of the religious slant of the Bede and its homiletic additions. Even “controverting Catholics,” something that Wheelock’s Bede certainly does, was not a politically neutral stance.70 For one thing, many of Parliament’s complaints about Charles had accused him of being soft on Catholicism, so even moments in Wheelock’s edition that specifically argue against Roman Catholicism (such as discussions of Purgatory) were nonetheless also relevant to contemporary English religio-political debate. Even more important is the recognition that many puritan arguments against Laudians described the others’ views as “Papist.” When examining a text from this period, it is always worth keeping in mind that arguments claiming to attack Catholicism often actually critique the practices and views of Laudians and of Arminianism generally, for “the equation between Arminianism and Catholicism was made with utter conviction” by those who opposed Laud.71 This was more than a convenient rhetorical trick, as there was a widespread and sincere belief that Charles “was a dupe in the hands of Catholic conspirators.”72 The introduction to the Grand Remonstrance attributes all the realm’s ills (which it goes on to list in great detail) to the influence on the king of “malignant parties, whose proceedings evidently appear to be mainly for the advantage and increase of Popery [and are] composed, set up, and acted by the subtile practice of the Jesuits and other engineers and factors for Rome… .”73 So while Wheelock’s edition of Bede certainly takes aim at “papists,” these include both actual Catholics and Laudian Protestants. It is also worth considering why Wheelock selected this text as his first major project as the first chair of “Saxon” studies. By the 1640s, Bede’s Latin Historia Ecclesiastica had been giving Protestant 69

69 Patrick Day, “Rectifying a Chronicle of Contradictions: The Political Context of Abraham Wheelock’s 1643 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 43 (2017): 81–107. 70 I am grateful to Timothy Graham for sharing with me a pre-publication draft of his “Abraham Wheelock, Agent of Anglicanism, and the Deployment of Old English Texts in the 1643 Edition of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People,” in Textual Identities in Early Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, ed. Jacqueline Fay, Rebecca Stephenson, and Renée R. Trilling (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2022), 170–204, which details Wheelock’s anti-Catholic additions to his copy of Bede. 71 Hibbard, Charles I, 7. 72 Ibid., 157. 73 “The Grand Remonstrance,” in The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625–1660, ed. S.R. Gardiner, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), 203.

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English historians heartburn for nearly one hundred years. It was the main source for early medieval English history, yet it also discussed the early English church’s participation in Roman Catholic rituals such as saying prayers for the dead and sacramental confession, and it reported miracles and other happenings that Protestants disdained. Lambarde’s influential work of chorography, the 1576 Perambulation of Kent, displays an attitude toward Bede still very much in evidence in the 1640s:74 I had almost forgotten a storie in Beda, where he maketh Mellitum mendacium (mention of Mellitus, I should have said) and reporteth that when as (upon a time) a great parte of this Citie [i.e. Canterbury] was touched with fire, and that the flame hasted towarde the house of this Mellitus (then Archbishop there) he commanded, that they should beare him against it even into the greatest furie thereof: And that whereas before it coulde not be quenched by any water (though never so plentiously poured upon it) forthwith at his presence the wind turned about, and at the vehemencie of his prayer, the fire not onely ceased to go any further, but also immediately went out and was extinguished. I wote well, this writer is called Venerabilis: but when I read this, and a number of such, which make the one halfe of his worke, I say with my self as sometime did the Poet, Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi: What ever thing thou shewest me so, I hate it as a lye.75

Lambarde has to rely on Bede, but he does so under erasure, as in this excerpt. He opens by referring to the anecdote about Mellitus as a “mendacium” [falsehood], which is underscored by his sarcastic correction of mendacium to mention. After relating the tale, he further distances himself by challenging Bede’s status as “Venerabilis,” claiming that such miracle stories make up “the one halfe of his worke” and citing Horace’s Ars Poetica in support of his reaction. Lambarde’s translation, however, adds the word “lie”; Horace’s line translates more literally “Whatever you show thus to me, unbelieving, I hate.” Lambarde captures the sense of Horace, but stresses the notion of mendacium – that is, the addressee in Lambarde (i.e. Bede) knowingly commits falsehood. The examples under discussion in Horace are not only miracles such as humans transforming into animals but also morally abhorrent acts such as Medea’s murder of her children and Atreus’s making a feast of human flesh, which Horace advises his audience to avoid staging.76 Choosing this line from the Ars PoetWilbur Dunkel, William Lambarde: Elizabethan Jurist 1536–1601 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1965); Retha Warnicke, William Lambarde: Elizabethan Antiquary (London: Phillimore, 1973); John Adrian, “Tudor Centralization and Gentry Visions of Local Order in Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent,” English Literary Renaissance 36 (2006): 307– 334; and Rebecca Brackmann, The Elizabethan Invention of Anglo-Saxon England: Laurence Nowell, William Lambarde, and the Study of Old English (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2012). 75 William Lambarde, The Perambulation of Kent (1576; London: Adams and Dart, 1970), 267. 76 Horace for Students of Literature: The “Ars Poetica” and Its Tradition, trans. O.B. Hardison Jr. and Leon Golden (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995), 12–13. 74

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ica, Lambarde conveys not only his disbelief in miracle stories transmitted by Bede, but his distaste for them as morally objectionable narratives. Lambarde had good reason to be anxious about using Bede. In 1565, Thomas Stapleton (1535–1598), an English Catholic living in exile in Louvain, had published a translation of Bede into English in order to demonstrate the conformity of the pre-Conquest English church with that of the Roman Catholic one. At the end of the preface, he tabulates “a number of diversities between the pretended religion of Protestants, and the primitive faith of the english Church.”77 He points out that kings who fought heresies prospered while those who countenanced them failed, with several examples from early medieval history. In the following epistle to the reader, Stapleton brings up the very aspect of Bede that enraged Lambarde: “As touching the manifold miracles mencioned in this history, note the person that reporteth them, and the time they were done in, to witt, in the primitive church of the english nation. At the planting of a faith miracles are wroght of God by the handes of his faithful for more evidence thereof.”78 Felicity Heal argues that Stapleton and his colleagues make the best of it with the miracles: “these Counter-Reformation Catholics would have preferred less emphasis on miracles as part of the conversion process – but even these elements could be justified as part of God’s providential gift to the early church.”79 Indeed, they could be made to contrast with the Protestant church – without any miraculous signs, what assurance did believers have that these institutions and their leaders were working God’s will? Alexandra Walsham goes further, and argues that for English Catholics, lacking enough clergy to support themselves except in a few noble households, miracle tales were part of a negotiated blending of Counter-Reformation ideas with the sort of popular, pre-Reformation practices that could sustain a people whose religion was under attack.80 So while some Catholics would have agreed with Lambarde’s general sentiment (although not with his mode of expression), others were quite willing to accept Bede’s tales of miracles wrought by saints and their relics. However, the issues with Bede went deeper than just the miracle tales. As Heal argues: While the Catholics largely tolerated Geoffrey of Monmouth, they made Bede the centerpiece of their historical claims about the English church. Of course, everyone turned to Bede as the credible voice on the events of early Saxon history. Matthew Parker collected Bede manuscripts, including the supposed Alfredian translation of the History. Both Protestants and Catholics were committed to the Lucius legend partly because it appeared in Bede. Foxe recognized him as a true fellow historian, and preferred his word to that of any of the other early writers. Catholic writers added an extra polemical dimension to this chorus of 77 Bede, The History of the Church of Englande Compiled by Venerable Bede, Englishman, trans. Thomas Stapleton (Antwerp, 1565), 3r. 78 Ibid., 4r. 79 Felicity Heal, “Appropriating History: Catholic and Protestant Polemics and the National Past,” Huntington Library Quarterly 68 (2005): 123. 80 Alexandra Walsham, “Miracles and the Counter-Reformation Mission to England,” The Historical Journal 46 (2003): 779–815.

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approval. Bede was a great historian and truth-teller – but above all he was a powerful defender of papal authority.81

Everyone wanted to be able to claim Bede for their own side, because the history of the church in England was the history of England itself, as far as most of these writers were concerned: “Ecclesiastical history was providential, universal, and (for Protestants) apocalyptic; it was also particular, and deeply intertwined with the political history of nations and peoples.”82 The battle for Bede had a long history by the time Wheelock began work on his edition, and from some points of view the stakes had gotten higher as Charles and Laud moved the Church of England toward positions and activities that puritans associated with Roman Catholicism: the efficacy of works, making auricular confession, covering stone altars with cloths, bowing at the name of Christ, and kneeling to receive communion. Suddenly, the early English church was not only of potential use to Catholics like Stapleton, but to Laudians who could point to Bede to support their own vision of the English church. Wheelock’s Bede accordingly positioned itself to argue against not only recusants and foreign Catholic theologians, but against those who might stand with Laud. What’s more, he could deploy not just the Latin text but the Old English translation, which at times he regards as a more “true” version. Wheelock’s 1643 Bede Wheelock’s edition of the Historia printed both the Latin text and the Old English version, which Wheelock believed had been translated by King Alfred the Great. The Old English text had never been previously printed; Wheelock edited it largely from an eleventh-century manuscript, now Cambridge University Library MS Kk.iii.18.83 Wheelock focuses both editorially and ideologically on the Old English version of Bede’s Historia, along with the several dozen Old English homilies extracted in his notes to several chapters. The Latin Historia that Stapleton had (in translation) wielded so effectively is, in Wheelock’s edition, interpreted through the words of the early English themselves, speaking in their own language about the events and issues being discussed. By refracting Bede’s Historia through the prism of the Old English translation and the homilies, Wheelock changes the light that it sheds on contentious issues in the English church of his own day. Wheelock’s prefatory materials focus on the Old English version. At the end of the epistle ad lectorem, Wheelock explains the modern equivalents for some of the more unusual-looking Old English letters such as thorn (þ) and wynn, and then gives a brief list of the “Regulae Sax.” [Rules of Old English]. Although this strippeddown grammar did not represent Wheelock’s full understanding, it was the first printed attempt to explain the morphology of Old English.84 He tries to clarify some Heal, “Appropriating History,” 121. Ibid., 115. 83 For thorough discussion of Wheelock’s manuscript sources, see Lucas, “Abraham Wheelock” and Graham, “Abraham Wheelock.” 84 Wheelock and Retchford had worked with Sir Henry Spelman on a more complete grammar that was never finalized or published. Peter Lucas, “The Earliest Modern AngloSaxon Grammar: Sir Henry Spelman, Abraham Wheelock and William Retchford,” 81

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features that he feels might be confusing, such as the prefix ge- (which he observes is “saepe otiosum” [often otiose]). He goes over some of the common inflectional endings on nouns and adjectives (although without mentioning the various noun classes), explains pronouns and demonstratives, and provides the third-person endings for indicative active verbs in singular and plural, past and present tense. He explains infinitives and how to form a passive, listing several forms of the verbs for “to be” (beon and wesan). He tells the reader not to worry if in some particulars words in the book depart from his rules, and concludes with the encouragement, “Reliqua docebit facilis observatio” [Observation will easily teach you the rest]. The grammatical explanations are sparse, but it is worth remembering that no previous reader of Old English printed texts in early modern England had had even this much help. Wheelock had some right to be, if not sanguine, then at least cautiously optimistic that committed readers could, with the help of the Latin text of the Historia, read the Old English version. Wheelock’s preface also indicates that he was working with an eye to internal debate in the Church of England and in the English polity. He observes that his notes and additions to the text of Bede center on issues “ubi doctrinae hodie disputatae occurrunt” [where today there are doctrinal disputes].85 He selected texts that, in his view, “quaeque & veritas, & pax Catholica flagitare videantur” [appear to entreat both truth, and universal peace].86 It does not seem too much of a stretch to suppose that Wheelock’s focus on peace referred as much to the English Civil War as much as to all of Christendom. Wheelock also adds that the entreaties of his patrons would not have moved him to undertake this work “si non permovisset antea Saxonismi necessitas; ejusque haud paucae & in Repub. & in divisa Ecclesia utilitates, atque jucunditates, fidei Catholicae” [if the urgent need of Saxon studies had not thoroughly already roused me, along with their no little usefulness and pleasantness for the Catholic faith in regard to politics and the divided church].87 Wheelock hopes that, with the help of his research: membra ejusdem corporis Christi nunc disceptando divisa, tunce quidem, Catholicam doctrinam Christianis omnibus ubique gentium semper concessam demonstrando, coalescerent: fratres Christiani de religione nunc in perniciem fidei & charitatis altercantes, tunc eadem matre Ecclesia praeeunte, veteri sc. Anglicana, usque ab incunabulis instituti, in mutuum studium redirent. Vetus enim Ecclesia Anglicana eandem Christi fidem; eandem maternae charitatis necessitudinem Britannis universis naturali & materno jugo, suis quidem filiis, invicem fratribus, premit, urget, imperat.88 [the members of the same body of Christ, now divided by argument, would then come together by demonstrating the Catholic doctrine always and everywhere Anglo-Saxon England 45 (2016): 379–417. 85 Historia, B1v. 86 Ibid. 87 Historia, B2r; Graham, “Abraham Wheelock,” 179–180. I am indebted to Tim Graham for permission to use, here and below, his translations of some difficult passages in Wheelock’s Bede from his “Abraham Wheelock.” Any translations not identified as his are my own. 88 Historia, B2r.

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granted to Christians. Brother Christians who now wrangle over religion to the ruin of faith and charity would then – brought up from the very cradle with mother church, namely the ancient Anglican Church, leading the way – return to mutual zeal. For the ancient Anglican Church presses, urges, and commands the same faith in Christ and the same need for motherly charity upon all Britons with a natural and maternal yoke – her sons indeed, and in turn brothers.]89

This passage wavers between envisioning a truly universal peace among all Christians and peace among the English achieved by the Anglican mother church. Wheelock’s eye here was on religious and political dissent within England, not only on international Catholicism. The passage also illustrates how crucial texts such as Bede’s Historia could be, as the “ancient Anglican Church” can be – must be – the unifying force in Wheelock’s present. That which is “natural and maternal” can provide a commonality and give a clear path out of the conflict in which England has found itself. Indeed, several of the issues that Wheelock’s notes raise were disputed points between the Laudian-Arminian and puritan camps, as well as between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Wheelock’s text emphasizes the lack of free will resulting from humankind’s innate sinfulness, and the related argument that therefore no works can be effective for salvation. His focus on these issues begins in his note to Book I Cap. 17, in which he prints portions of two Old English homilies, commenting, “Quid vetus Saxonico-Anglicana Ecclesia de peccato Originali, de Gratia & libero Arbitrio, in Catholicis sermonibus, &c. ad populum, statuerit; veneranda haec quae sequuntur, majorum nostrorum monumenta indicabunt, quae Latiné dedimus” [What the ancient Saxon-Anglican church thought about original sin, about grace and free will, these venerable monuments of our ancestors that follow indicate, which we give [also] in Latin].90 The chapter in the Latin Historia describes the combatting of the Pelagian heresy in Britain by bishops from France. This was an ideologically crucial chapter. Pelagius had opposed St. Augustine of Hippo on the issue of free will; Arminians were often compared to Pelagius by their opponents. In the words of Hugh Trevor-Roper, “Augustine and Pelagius lived again in the early seventeenth century.”91 However, the Old English version of Bede omitted this chapter. Wheelock makes good this deficit by adding Old English homilies that show the pre-Conquest church to be free of Pelagianism. In the second of these texts, excerpted from Ælfric’s homily on the Epiphany, Ælfric argues against “foolish men” who believe that they are ruled by fate: “he forestihte þa gecorenan to ðam ecan life. forþan þe he wiste hi swilce towearde þurh his gife. ond agene gehyrsumnysse” [he [i.e. God] fore-ordained the chosen to that eternal life because he knew they would be such through his grace and their own obedience].92 Wheelock renders this as “*Electos praedestinavit ad aternam vitam, propterea quod *NOVIT ILLE QUALES PER GRATIUM IPSIUS, & obedientiam propriam futuri essent” [He predestines Graham, “Abraham Wheelock,” 180. Wheelock, Historia, 61. 91 H.R. Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud 1573–1645 (London: MacMillan, 1940), 23. See also the discussion in chapter one. 92 Wheelock, Historia, 66. 89

90

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the elect to eternal life because HE KNEW THEY WOULD BE SUCH THROUGH HIS GRACE and their obedience].93 Wheelock further comments on his Latin translation of this passage and manipulates its typography to underscore key points; as Franzen observes, his volume “is a visual artifact for a visually oriented age.”94 The asterisk directs the reader to a marginal comment: “*non ait, Deum eligere ex praescientia obedientiae propriae, sed jam ELECTOS, ad vitam praedestinavit, propterea quod novit &c.” [it does not say, God chose through foreknowledge of their individual obedience, but he predestined the ELECT to life, because he knew etc.].95 Similarly, where the Old English reads “For þan þe nan man ne biþ gehealden butan þurh gife hælendes Cristes,” Wheelock draws attention to the passage in his translation: “Propterea quod nemo hominum salutem, nisi PER GRATIAM JESU CHRISTI consequitur” [Because no person achieves salvation except THROUGH THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST].96 In case anyone wishes to use his book in future arguments of this sort, Wheelock’s index, under “gratia & Liberum arbitrium,” contains headings such as “Gratiam Christus electis dispertitur” [Christ distributes grace to the elect] and “gratia fidem & conversionem nostram praevenit” [grace precedes our faith and conversion].97 Wheelock’s index continually underscores his argumentative points; far from a neutral listing, it indicates what the author believes about the topics and guides his readers’ interpretations as well. Another crucial chapter was Book III Cap. 2, which described St. Oswald’s erection of a cross at Heavenfield in 634 prior to defeating his Welsh opponents. According to Bede, Oswald had all his men kneel to the cross and pray for victory. Such “adoration” of the Cross was despised by puritans, and the very act of kneeling had become a point of contention in the English church during the 1630s. Archbishop Laud had ordered that priests bow or genuflect toward the altar during divine service and at the name of Jesus, and that congregants kneel to receive the eucharist.98 Puritans, on the other hand, protested these practices; as Cressy notes, “their aversion to ‘cringings and bowings’ over-rode scriptural literalism” as they argued that biblical injunctions to kneel at the name of Jesus were meant spiritually, not physically.99 In Book III Cap. 2, where the text describes St. Oswald’s raising a cross and kneeling to pray, Wheelock has a note following the chapter: “Flectamus omnes genua; & DEUM OMNIPOTENTEM – in communi deprecemur. En! hic neque ipse Ven. Beda, neque interpres R. Aluredus vel minimam de adoranda cruce mentionem fecit” [Let us all bend our knees and beseech all together the ALMIGHTY GOD. See! Here neither the Venerable Bede himself, nor King Alfred the translator makes the least mention of adoring the cross].100 Wheelock had already indicated his emphasis in the text of the chapter, where “deum omnipotentem” appears in all capital letters as it does in the note. Wheelock admits later in his note that an Old English homily 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

Ibid. Desire, 160. Historia, 66. Historia, 67. Ibid., [572]. Twigg, University of Cambridge, 30–35. Cressy, Charles I, 226. Wheelock, Historia, 165.

Figure 1: Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum 1644. Page 66.

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on the life of Oswald might suggest that the king did pray to the cross, but he counters it with a portion of another homily: sed alter Homilista hunc secutus, populum … erudit, ne ipsam crucem colerent. Đære halgan rode tacn is ure bletsung. ond to ðære rode we us gebiddaþ. na swa ðeah to ðam treowe. ac to ðam Ælmihtigan Drihtne þe on ðære halgan rode for us hangode; hoc est, Huius sancta crucis signum, nostra est benedictio; ad crucem nosmet incurvemus, minime tamen ad LIGNUM, sed ad ominpotentem DOMINUM, qui in cruce sancta pro nobis suspensus fuit.101 [but another homily following this instructs the people, lest they worship the cross. The Holy Cross is a sign of our blessing, and we pray to that cross. Not, however, to the tree, but to the Almighty Lord who hung on the holy cross for us. That is, the holy sign of the cross is our blessing; let us bend ourselves to the cross, not at all, however, to the WOOD but to the omnipotent LORD who was suspended on the holy cross for us.]

In case any readers miss the point, in the index Wheelock has the heading “Crux non adoranda” [the cross should not be adored] and refers to this page. Wheelock goes on in his note to provide several more examples to prove that “Homines Christiani ad sanctam crucem debent reveram in nomine Jesu incurvare” [Christian men should bow to the holy cross actually in the name of Jesus], and as he does so, he recalls previous events narrated by Bede.102 Wheelock admits that the cross was used in the conversion of the English, as Bede shows in Book I Cap. 25, when Augustine preaches before Æthelbert of Kent. Stapleton had stressed both this episode and that of St. Oswald; both are illustrated with full-page plates in his translation, and the Augustine example carries a marginal note “Our faith begann with Crosse and precession.”103 Even though in Stapleton it might appear that both Augustine of Canterbury and St. Oswald carried out prayers in a Laudian-approved fashion, by bowing or kneeling to the cross, Wheelock argues that this is not the case. He refers to Book II Cap. 12, where Paulinus spoke to King Edwin “ut ad mysterium vivificae crucis se inclinaret” [so that he would bend himself to the mystery of the life-giving cross]. Wheelock quotes the Old English translation to qualify this: “Rex Aluredus optime explicat, þæt he onfon wolde his ece hælo. Ond þam geryne þære liffæstan rode Cristes; hoc est, Ut accipere vellet (Rex Edwinus) suam aeternam salutem & vivicae crucis Christi mysterium. Ubi Rex gloriosus vocem inclinari consulto sic explicat” [King Alfred explains best: “that he wished his eternal health, and by the mystery of the life-giving cross of Christ”; that is, he wishes (King Edwin) to receive his eternal salvation and the mystery of the life-giving cross of Christ. Here the glorious king thus deliberately explains the word “to be bowed”].104 This passage shows both the reasons why many members of the English church were concerned that Laudian reforms were bringing the church back to Catholicism, 101 102 103 104

Ibid. Ibid. Stapleton, History, 31v. Wheelock, Historia, 165.

Figure 2: Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum 1644. Page 165.

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and why Wheelock was almost certainly arguing against Laudians as well as Roman Catholics. Stapleton’s translation had emphasized the role of the cross itself in the conversion process. Wheelock doesn’t argue with this: his focus in these passages is on whether Bede’s discussion supports the specific act of bowing toward the cross. In Wheelock’s quotation of “Alfred’s” Old English version, the most important point for him is that the concept of inclinari – to be bowed – is understood as a mental process of submitting to Christian teachings for the sake of one’s soul. Literal bowing does not appear in the Old English, he insists, which Wheelock understands as (in this case) actually more authoritative than Bede’s original version. Bede, refracted through Alfred, was not arguing in favor of bowing to the cross as an object. Another topic of contention within the Church of England was auricular confession. A ceremony for private confession to a priest appeared in the Book of Common Prayer as an option for believers, and Charles supported the practice, but it had its opponents as confession was a sacrament in the Roman Catholic Church, and puritans generally distrusted it.105 The ceremonial aspect of confession and the power that it granted to clergy attracted Laud and those of his views, while raising suspicions of “popery” in his opponents. Shelford’s manifesto of Laudian Arminianism, Five Pious and Learned Discourses, mentions confession as a “natural” outcome of inward spirituality, which Shelford contrasts with the puritan emphasis on preaching:106 When men had more of this inward teaching, and lesse of the outward, then was there farre better living; for then they lived alwayes in fear of offending: and as soon as they had done any thing amisse, their conscience by and by gave them a nip and a memento for it. Then they confessed their sinnes to God and their Minister, for spirituall comfort and counsell; then they endeavoured to make the best temporall satisfaction they could, by almes, prayers, and fasting, and other good works of humiliation: but now outward teaching, being not rightly understood, hath beaten away this.107

Setting the inward prick of conscience against preaching and showing confession as part of one’s inner spiritual life in direct opposition to “outward” teaching opposes confession to puritan faith practices. Wheelock chooses to address this topic at a point in the Historia Ecclesiastica that would not, at first, seem obvious: Book III Cap. 19’s description of the visions of Fursey, an Irish monk who had two separate visions of the torments of hell. 105 Paul Stegner, Confession and Memory in Early Modern English Literature: Penitential Remains (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Judith Maltby, “The Prayer Book and the Parish Church: From the Elizabethan Settlement to the Restoration,” in The Oxford Guide to “The Book of Common Prayer”: A Worldwide Survey, ed. Charles Hefling and Cynthia Shattuck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), Kindle edition; Maltby, Prayer Book and People; Cressy, Charles I, 215. 106 Shelford’s views are discussed in some detail in Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, and Ian Atherton, “Cathedrals, Laudianism, and the British Churches,” The Historical Journal 53 (2010): 895–918. Shelford’s work is often cited in discussions of the poet Richard Crashaw, whose “Rise then, Immortal Maid” is one of the volume’s prefatory poems. 107 Shelford, Five Pious and Learned Discourses, 70–71.

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Stapleton’s translation emphasizes the visions’ depiction of the afterlife but does not mention any relationship to confession; nor does his index list this passage under that topic. Wheelock, however, uses the vision of Fursey as an opportunity to quote from Old English homilies about confession in his notes: Hinc confessionem auricularem, metu inferni promovere vetus mos est. Sic enim rem aperte profert idem homilista in hanc Fursaei visionem viz. Serm. Cath. 387 lin 21 viz “Boda nu eallum mannum dædbote to donne ond andetnyssa to sacerdum. oð ða endenextan tide heora lifes”; hoc est, Praedicate ergo hominibus singulis ut poenitentiam agerent; & confessionem sacerdotibus ad extremum usque vitae halitum.108 [It is the old custom to promote auricular confession by fear of hell. For thus the same homilist openly mentions the thing in the vision of Fursey, namely Catholic Sermon 387 line 21: “Preach now to all men to do penance and confession to priests, until the final time of their lives.” That is, Preache therefore to individual men to do penance, and to priests confession until the final breath of life.]

Wheelock abruptly leaps from Fursey’s vision (which doesn’t mention confession) to the use of scare-tactics regarding this ritual in a homily on Fursey. From there, he quibbles about which class ought to perform confession, claiming that the structure of Ælfric’s sentence indicates that laypeople need only be penitent, reserving the necessity of confession for those of clerical status. His choices might seem odd based solely on Bede but make sense in the broader context of Laudian/puritan debates. Wheelock goes on: Cogat potius ad veram confessionem internum spiritus dominium, consientiae aegritudo, Christi desiderium, pondus grave peccatorum, misericordiae, propter sola merita Christi, per fidem vivam, & poenitentiam, indefessa expectatio.109 [May [the reader] understand, rather, true confession to be the internal rule of the spirit, the sickness of conscience, the pleasure of Christ, the heavy weight of sins, the unwearying expectations of mercy, on account of the sole merit of Christ, through living faith and penitence.]

Wheelock tries to reverse Shelford’s argument that confession is irretrievably linked to inward spirituality by arguing that “true” confession is spirituality, with or without the outward act of verbally confessing to a priest. By re-defining confession in this way, Wheelock can make use of Old English texts such as Ælfric’s that encourage confession, without having to concede that it was in any way conducted in the manner that Roman Catholics and Laudians wished it to be. This context should be kept in mind in Wheelock’s second extended discussion of confession in his notes after Book IV cap. 25. Bede recounts how a monk named Adamnan, having committed a terrible sin in his youth, confessed it to a priest. 108

II.22.

109

Wheelock, Historia, 215. The Old English homily quoted is Ælfric’s Catholic Homily Ibid.

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The priest, about to leave for Ireland, imposed a strict fast on Adamnan until he returned to explain more about how long the fasting should be carried out and what else Adamnan should do. However, the priest died abroad, and Adamnan continued fasting several days a week for the rest of his life. Wheelock concedes that confession can be beneficial, but argues that Adamnan had the freedom to choose his confessor and that it was not mandatory: Accedere hoc modo, sponte, scilicet atque consilium petere salutare, hortatur populum Dei; non cogit Ecclesia nostra. Ad sacerdotem ait, sed non suum. Rex interpres Sax. ait, ad sacerdotem quendam. En libertatem, quam vetus Ecclesia utebatur, nimirum ut Medicorum peritissimus quisque exquiratur e verum… .110 [To come in this manner, of his own will, namely to seek healthful counsel, our church urges the people of God; not forces. To a priest, it says, not to his own. The king translating in Saxon says: “to a certain priest.” See! The ancient church used such liberty, without doubt as the most skillful of doctors is sought out, in truth… .]

Confession, Wheelock argues, is spiritual guidance; auricular confession for the sake of “healing” one’s soul can be beneficial if the right advisor is selected; however, it is not mandatory. The intercessionary role of the saints also became a point of contention within the English church as well as between Catholics and Protestants. English polemicists since the days of John Bale (1495–1563) had scoffed at the tales of miracles performed by saints and cast doubt on the validity of canonization. However, Laudians believed that saints still had a place in the organized church and in the life of the believer. Shelford argues that: The 7[th] office of holinesse is, To keep all the holy feasts of the Church: and they which neglect this, cut off a great part of Gods worship, and lose all the holy lives and examples of the saints, and divers mysteries of our salvation besides. The lives of the saints are our looking glasses; and the reason why we come so short of them in good life, is because we do not see our sinnes in their lives, and partake not of their holinesse. For he which honoureth God with the saint, is partaker of the saints holinesse.111

Shelford goes on to make it clear that observation of saints’ days is not simply a matter of learning from their examples: So likewise they which come to Gods house upon the day of Christs nativity, (coming in faith and love, as they ought) are partakers of Christs birth: they which come upon the day of his circumcision, are with him circumcised from the dominion of the flesh: they which come upon the day of purification, are presented with him to his Father: they which come upon Goodfriday, are partakers of his precious death… . So again they which come upon S. Stephens day, are in 110 111

Ibid., 340. Shelford, Five Pious and Learned Discourses, 25–26.

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affection partakers of his martyrdome, and prepared for holy suffering: they which come upon S. Johns day, partake of S. Johns love and charity: they which come upon Innocents day partake with them in their deaths for Christs cause… .112

Ritual commemoration of events in sacred history takes the participants out of time, so that they are both in their present but at the same moment, enacting the original event. Shelford extends to celebration of saints’ days the same a-temporality characterizing commemoration of events in the life of Christ. Since, in Shelford’s view, the believers become “partakers” of historical events by ritually observing them, the saints have a powerful status; in turn, that status explains their intercessionary role. As Shelford reiterates, the saints “joyne with us” in worship: “Thus, because in Wis. 3:11 it is said, The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God: but Gods hand is ever in action: therefore the souls departed must be so too.”113 Their action is to pray for earthly believers: Their care in action … can be nothing but prayer for us; because they themselves are past danger: therefore all their desires are for us… . Now if the Saints in heaven, after their manner, aid us with their prayers; shall we be so base-minded, as not to pray with them?114

Shelford stops short of saying that believers should pray to saints, but he clearly assigns them an active role in the believer’s life and a status nearly equal to that of the divinity. Wheelock, on the other hand, stresses that the only role of the saints is to provide examples to living believers. The saints should be remembered, but they do not involve the believer in spiritual re-enactments of their lives, and they do not pray for the living. Wheelock musters several Old English homilies in support of a note to Book IV Cap. 9; he gives a portion of Ælfric’s Catholic homily I.11, which emphasizes that “man sceal hine gebiddan to his Drihtne ond him anum þeowian” [man shall pray to his Lord and serve him alone].115 Wheelock follows this by arguing that when Old English homilies exhort the audience to seek support from “holy men,” they mean living ones who can preach and teach the faithful. He quotes fragments of Ælfric’s Homily 8 and Catholic Homily I.19 and concludes: “Verum in antiquis Homiliis Saxonum nunquam occurrit mihi aliqua ad Sanctes defunctos confecta, sive conficta potius oratio; imo frequens est in illis facta mentio de norma precandi a Christo tradita” [Truly, any prayer made or fabricated to departed saints, never occurs in ancient Saxon homilies by me. On the contrary, frequent mention is made in them about the pattern of preaching handed down by Christ].116 The early English church, according to Wheelock, would rather hear sermons by living believers than pray to dead ones. As even these few examples show, one of Wheelock’s strategies was to continually reiterate the importance of preaching. This was the main role of “holy men” in the 112 113 114 115 116

Ibid., 26. Ibid., 44. Ibid., 44–45. Historia, 283. Ibid., 284.

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pre-Conquest church, the keystone of the entire structure. Wheelock’s notes place more emphasis on the role of preaching than anything else, with the possible exception of the importance of grace in salvation. If he were only writing to refute Roman Catholicism, this would be hard to explain. Stapleton nowhere in his notes or index mentions the role of preaching in the early church. He describes the sermons of the early apostles to the English without comment. By the time Wheelock wrote, however, the desire to hear multiple sermons became one of the hallmarks of godly reformers. As Cressy observes: “Some parish puritans identified themselves by their appetite for the word of God, seeking out sermons in other parishes and risking participation in gatherings that the authorities branded ‘conventicles.’”117 Perhaps more clearly than any other point of contention in Wheelock’s notes, the emphasis on preaching demonstrates that Wheelock was writing as much to his Laudian opponents within the English church as to Roman Catholics, as the act of preaching and hearing multiple sermons had become a flashpoint within the English church of the seventeenth century. “A Sermon Preferring Holy Charitie before Faith, Hope, and Knowledge,” the second of Shelford’s Five Pious and Learned Discourses, demonstrates the Laudian distrust and dislike of puritans who emphasized preaching over sacraments, and who made a habit of hearing several sermons a week. We have already seen how Shelford contrasts the believer who listens to the voice of conscience to determine when he has sinned with the one who listens to sermons. The main point of this tract is to point out the supposed pride and folly of those who value sermons over sacraments, knowledge over charity. Shelford attributes the fall of the rebel angels to their over-privileging of their own knowledge: “But they, seeing themselves made in such perfection of knowledge, were so lifted up in pride, that they refused a directour, and would serve [God] after their own understanding; for which their pride, they were thrown down from heaven to hell.”118 The rebel angels, in Shelford’s version, were actually willing to serve God, but wanted to do so according to their own understanding, of which they had too great an opinion. Shelford parallels the fallen angels’ pride in their knowledge with that of the puritans who “will not sociate with the rest of their neighbours in the house of God, because they have not every day a sermon to teach them more knowledge.”119 The godly reformers of the English church are again paralleled with this Satanic pride a little later in the tract: “The like pride hath now a-dayes puft up our Puritanes, that being but very ignorant people, yet they will not be content to be accounted men of any mean knowledge, or be satisfied with any setled estate; but they will run from church to church, from preacher to preacher …”120 Shelford, like Laud, believed that ritual and sacrament were of greater value for salvation than sermons were, and gave as an example infants who could be saved if they died after baptism, even though they had no knowledge. In fact, “Gods holy Sacraments are our preachers, while by visible and sensible signes they teach us what we are to beleeve.”121 So, while anti-Laudians “say [Sacraments] 117 118 119 120 121

Cressy, Charles I, 231. Shelford, Five Pious and Learned Discourses, 58. Ibid. Ibid., 59. Ibid., 65.

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signifie onely, and that faith cometh by hearing onely: yet when they have heard what they can, and beleeve what they will, they shall never be saved without the grace of the Sacraments… .”122 Since, according to Shelford, charity and grace are one and the same, and come from right-minded participation in ritual, “Then get charitie, and thou needest not run from parish to parish to get understanding, because it dwells in charitie.”123 Shelford’s sustained attack on those who valued sermons and preaching above ritual and sacrament explains the extraordinary emphasis that Wheelock places on the role of preaching in the pre-Conquest church, an emphasis underscored by his incorporation of material from dozens of Old English homilies. The inclusion of such texts argued that the early medieval church – the original and true English church – highly valued preaching. A few examples give the flavor of the whole. In Book I Cap. 20, Bede describes how the Britons, facing an army of combined Saxons and Picts, put themselves under the direction of Bishops Germanus and Lupus. As it was the Lenten season, the bishops established daily preaching, and Wheelock notes the phrase “Quotidianis praedicationibus” [daily preaching]: “Sic monumenta illa magni pretii … praedicationem quadragisimalem memorant” [Thus such monuments commemorate with great value Lenten preaching].124 Wheelock stresses that their preparation of the British army involved the daily hearing of sermons, a story that directly challenges Shelford’s claim that those who wish to hear sermons daily are victims of pride. Similarly, where the Catholic Stapleton emphasizes that St. Augustine’s first interaction with Æthelbert of Kent involved a procession and a cross, Wheelock stresses the fact that St. Augustine preached, bolstering his argument with a passage from Ælfric’s Catholic Homily II.9: Augustinus his leode Godes word bobade hu se mildheorta haelend mid his agenre ðrowunge ðysne scyldigan middan eard alysde. ond geleaffulum mannum heofonan rices infær geopenode; Đa andwyrde se cyning Æðelbriht Augustine ond cwæþ. þæt he fagere word ond behat him cydde; &c. Augustinus (Etheberti) genti VERBUM DEI praedicabat; viz. ut misericors Jesus SUA IPSIUS PASSIONE hunc mundum peccatricem liberavit, singulis autem credentibus REGNI COELORUM INGRESSUM APERUERIT. Tunc respondet Rex Ethelbertus Augustino, pulchra sunt quidem verba, & promissa quae affertis; &c. ut his apud Bedam.125 [“Augustine preached God’s word to his people, how the merciful savior with his own suffering redeemed this sinful middle-earth and opened the entrance of the heavenly kingdom to men of faith. The king Æthelbert answered then and said that he [said] fair word and confirmed the promise to him.” Augustine preached THE WORD OF GOD to Ethelbert’s people; namely, that the suffering Christ THROUGH HIS OWN SUFFERING freed this sinful world, indeed he OPENED THE DOOR OF THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM to every believer. Then King Ethelbert responded to Augustine, your words are fair, and I affirm that promise, etc. so this from Bede.] 122 123 124 125

Ibid., 66. Ibid., 114. Wheelock, Historia, 71. Ibid., 77.

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Wheelock emphasizes that Augustine was preaching the Word. From the very first, he implies, effective sermons are key to salvation, and Æthelbert’s response – “your words are fair” – underscores why Wheelock holds sermons to be of greater value than ritual processions or physical artifacts. Likewise, when Wheelock describes how the people near Bishop Colman’s abbey came every week to hear him preach (Book III Cap. 26), he makes a point not only about the importance of keeping the Sabbath, but also what the main point of Sabbath observations ought to be: En! Dies, & opus Diei; Diei scil. Dominicae hic a Majoribus nobis commendantur, Divino cultui dicanda: Ad Ecclesiam, inquiunt, audiende sermonis Dei gratiam certatim confluebat populus: Diem enim Dominicum Dei ipsius institutione sacrum, tenuit vetus Ecclesia nostra; atque in hoc, Legem Mosaicam secuta, pro Sabbatismo, Dieque, e septem, uno; atque Evangelicam, pro Die Dominico; quo resurrexit Christus, pie celebrando. In aeternum ergo haec Dierum REGINA, divino cultui, idque virtute Praecepti quarti, in deliciis habeatur. Ecclesiae nostrae veteri qui favent, illius Doctrinam studiose percipiant… .126 [See! “The day, and the work of the day”; of the day one may know Sundays were designated by our ancestors, dedicated to divine worship: “to church” it says, the people “came together earnestly to hear the grace of the words of God.” For our ancient church held the day of the Lord God himself sacred for instruction; and also in this, following the Mosaic law, for keeping the Sabbath, and on that day, out of seven, one. And also the Evangelic [law], for the day of the lord, on which Christ rose from the dead, for celebrating piously. Therefore in eternity this QUEEN of days, was held in delight for divine worship and it by virtue of the fourth precept. Our forefathers supported our church, they received eagerly the teaching of those.]

Wheelock’s stress on the importance of keeping the Sabbath most probably stems from opposition to the Stuarts’ policy of allowing sports and games on Sundays, but he also emphasizes what the Sabbath ought to be kept for – instruction in the word of God, and teaching.127 Wheelock does not even mention sacraments as part of this observance, in direct contrast to Shelford, who argued that sacraments were the most important part of attending church on Sundays. Elsewhere, Wheelock does not try to deny that the early medieval English church celebrated saints such as Cuthbert, but argues instead that it was Cuthbert’s preaching that made him worthy of commemoration: “Quomodo, enim, populo suo caelorum ingressam aperuit S. Cuthbertus? Praedicando Evangelium” [For in what manner did St. Cuthbert open the door of the heavens to these people? By preaching the Gospel].128 Where some saw miracles, Wheelock saw sermons – and, of course, by threading dozens of Old English homilies into his book, he extends his argument by the sheer mass of evidence for the importance of preaching in pre-Conquest England. Wheelock’s continual emphasis on the importance of hearing sermons 126 127 128

Ibid., 243. For more detailed discussion of the contention over Sabbath activities, see chapter one. Wheelock, Historia, 363.

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places his book firmly in the debates between Laudians and their opponents within the English church, as well as the polemic among Protestants and Catholics within and without England.  Wheelock gives us a portrait of how ideologies often did not neatly line up in seventeenth-­century writers. While his Bede makes clear Wheelock’s opposition to Laudian church reforms, his edition of the Chronicle is royalist, whatever his opinion of Charles I personally.129 Wheelock’s Calvinist convictions guided his additions to the Old English Bede, but his political views did not necessarily reflect those of his latter patron, Simonds D’Ewes. We can imagine how Wheelock felt, convinced that the Laudian church would result in “backsliding” into Catholicism and (one imagines) relieved at the Calvinist direction that the church took under the Long Parliament in the early 1640s, yet probably horrified by that same Parliament’s wresting political control from the crown and the ensuing Civil War. Wheelock navigated these competing loyalties shrewdly: the puritan bent of the Old English Bede shines through while the royalist slant of the ASC emerges only after comparison with his source texts and recognition of his downplaying of the witan’s role in early English political structures, as Day notes.130 Wheelock could not display his opposition to the Parliamentary maneuvers against monarchy as openly as he could his approval of its religious reforms. Anti-Laudian and pro-Stuart, needing the patronage of D’Ewes while also initially courting figures such as Buckingham and drawing on the talents of the royalist printer Roger Daniel, Wheelock was a complex man navigating complex times. Wheelock’s edition of Bede was important enough that it was reprinted only a year after its first appearance in 1643. The 1644 edition contains much additional material, however, which might at first seem an odd match for Bede’s history of the church – law codes and legal documents, first printed by Lambarde in 1568 under the title Archaionomia. These additions were mostly compiled by Sir Roger Twysden, another man whose loyalties conflicted. Twysden was in some ways the opposite of Wheelock: he supported constitutional monarchy and was appalled at Charles’s abuse of his prerogatives, but while he did not entirely approve of Laudian reforms, he opposed many of the Long Parliament’s changes to the church. The new materials added by Wheelock and Twysden extend and complicate the role of Old English texts and the perception of pre-Conquest “England” in the years of the English Civil Wars, and I turn to them in the next chapter.

Day, “Rectifying.” Ibid., 98. The witan – an advisory body to the king in early medieval England – was interpreted by seventeenth-century scholars as a precursor to the House of Commons, the House of Lords, or the Privy Council, depending on the writer’s own political leanings. Royalists such as Wheelock tried to interpret it as more advisory; Parliamentarians tried to claim that it could restrict the king’s actions. See Day, “Rectifying,” 84; J.G.A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Reissue with Retrospect, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); and Greenberg, Radical Face. 129

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ir Roger Twysden cared deeply about his trees. In a manuscript notebook of advice to his sons, now London, British Library Additional MS 34164, he writes, “My sonns have a great care of your woods for as there is not a more honorable thing then wood and Tymber in an Estate and especyally about your howse or seat, so is it of great profit if well preserved.”1 He goes on in this vein for most of the page, explaining how many trees to take and save each year to promote growth and maintain the forest. In case his sons are unimpressed with the importance of this resource, he goes on to elucidate which wood is best for various uses. His concern for his woodlands runs through his journals and correspondence, and the circumstances of his life certainly gave him cause. As a constitutional royalist, Twysden was opposed to Charles I’s extra-legal taxes and distressed by the Personal Rule.2 However, when the Long Parliament took a similarly high-handed approach to taxation and to law enforcement, he opposed it as well. Parties mattered less to him than constitutional principles. Twysden was incarcerated in London and then Lambeth by order of Parliament for much of the 1640s. During this time, his estate at Roydon Hall in Kent was sequestered and managed by the Kent County Committee, whose chair was a bitter enemy of Twysden’s family.3 Under Fol. 88v. David Smith’s study of “Constitutional Royalists” focuses on those who were actually close to Charles I and served him as advisors, but Twysden’s attitudes aligned with their most basic premises, namely “that royal powers and constitutional government were inherently compatible; that Charles I could be trusted to rule legally and to abide by the safeguards against non-parliamentary government erected in 1640–41; that limitations on his power to choose advisers and military commanders were antithetical to monarchy; and that the existing structures of the Church of England were an intrinsic part of the constitution… .”: Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 7. 3 The standard biography of Twysden is Frank W. Jessup, Sir Roger Twysden 1597–1672 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965). Twysden’s persecution by the County Committee is also discussed in Alan Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion 1640–60 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1966). For the process of sequestration and distraint, see John Shedd, “Legalism over Revolution: The Parliamentary Committee for Indemnity and Property Confiscation Disputes, 1647–1655,” The Historical Journal 43 (2000): 1093–1107; 1

2

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this management, Roydon Hall’s forests were badly over-timbered, and Twysden could do nothing to stop it. Twysden’s letters during this time reveal his deep anguish over the felling of his woods, a feature that Twysden’s biographer Frank Jessup feels needs some explanation: [Timber] was more than a utilitarian product, it was also, in modern terminology, a status symbol. It was even more than that, it was a symbol of continuity, of a man’s link with the past and with the future; with his ancestors from whom he had inherited his woods, with his descendants to whom he must leave them, improved, if possible, as a monument to his own care and wisdom.4

Jessup’s insightful analysis of what Twysden’s trees meant to him could also apply to Twysden’s view of English legal history, which motivated his historical research and publications. English laws also linked past and future, and “tending” them was an obligation Twysden clearly felt. Some political factions claimed that the English law of the seventeenth century existed in absolute continuity with that of the early Middle Ages, and others argued that early medieval laws were utterly different than those of the Stuarts.5 Twysden, however, took a more nuanced approach, one that could negotiate historical difference and timeless rights, and the analogy to a forest provides a good model. For him, England’s early laws set out foundational principles that still obtained in the present and even beyond it to the future of his sons and their children. As the general “forest” pattern indicates, however, the individual stocks and branches could alter, as could the precise boundaries over time. Old trees and new trees together make the forest, and ancient principles and practices guided the laws, providing a rich resource without which all would be impoverished. Scholarship in law, like tending one’s woodlands, was a duty; the link between one’s ancestors and one’s descendants depended on the “care and wisdom” of the present. Twysden’s interest in the laws, and especially in preserving the physical materials of the past, stems from his conviction that he was not only participating in contemporary political life but fulfilling a trust to be the guardian of the past for the future. Legal precedents and rights mattered enough to Twysden that he risked his property and his life in their defense, against both Charles I and the Long Parliament. He opposed the king’s levy of ship money,6 but he also objected to Parliament’s abolition of bishops in the Church of England, which Twysden felt was counter to custom and and John Collins, “The Long Parliament and the Law of Necessity in Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present 247 (2020): 3–35. For the Long Parliament, see Ann Hughes, “The King, the Parliament, and the Localities during the English Civil War,” Journal of British Studies 24 (1985): 236–263; and the sources in chapter one. 4 Jessup, Sir Roger Twysden, 71. 5 These debates have been well studied, for example in Janelle Greenberg, The Radical Face of the Ancient Constitution: St. Edward’s “Laws” in Early Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and J.G.A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Reissue with Retrospect, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 6 Kenneth Fincham edits some of Twysden’s entries from his commonplace book containing his reaction to the verdict: “The Judges’ Decision on Ship Money in February 1637: The Reaction of Kent,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 57 (1984): 230–237.

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beyond the Parliament’s authority. In fact, Twysden quickly found that the Long Parliament could be as much or more of a threat to English customary liberties than Charles had been. He signed (and may have helped draft) the “Kentish Petition” objecting to changes in English worship and the abolition of episcopacy, which led the Long Parliament to summon Twysden and other key figures to London to apologize in March of 1642.7 He was involved, at the next Assize, in discussions about a possible second petition; although this was never brought forward, it was printed. Twysden’s actions gave Sir Anthony Weldon (1583–1648), head of the Parliamentary County Committee for Kent and a personal enemy of the Twysden family, enough leverage to convince Parliament to summon Twysden again. This time, he was imprisoned without any formal charge; although briefly released to his London residence, he was subsequently re-incarcerated until 1647. It was during this period that he made his most direct contribution to the study of early medieval England, as he and Wheelock oversaw the re-publication of Lambarde’s 1568 Archaionomia, an edition of several Old English law codes with facing page Latin translations followed by later Latin works purporting to be the laws of Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror.8 Copies of Lambarde’s volume were becoming rare eighty years later, but the texts remained foundational to constitutional arguments.9 Twysden augmented Archaionomia’s collection of early medieval law with additional Old English codes and texts; this chapter examines the texts he gathered and added and what they reveal about his aims for the volume and the work he believed medieval laws could still do in his own day.10 The new items he included potentially made the laws of the pre-Conquest English startlingly relevant in his society’s contemporary concerns over marriage and the proper relationship among bishop, priest, and congregation. The continuation of Old English law into the Anglo-Norman polity, shown in the further additions of the (spurious) Laws of William I and the Leges Henrici Primi (LHP), mapped out the ways in which pre-Conquest laws and practices still bore fruit after 1066.

7 Jessup prints the petition and discusses Twysden’s probable role in its composition: Sir Roger Twysden, 46–52. 8 For Lambarde’s study of early medieval laws, see Rebecca Brackmann, The Elizabethan Invention of Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2012); Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, “William Lambarde and Thomas Milles in Search of the Golden Past,” in Words in Dictionaries and History: Essays in Honour of R.W. McConchie, ed. Olga Timofeeva and Tanja Säily (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011), 233–248; Jason Scott-Warren, “Was Elizabeth I Richard II? The Authenticity of Lambarde’s ‘Conversation,’” Review of English Studies 64 (2013): 208–230; and Derek Dunne, “Re-assessing Trial by Jury in Early Modern Law and Literature,” Literature Compass 12, no. 10 (2015): 517–526. 9 Greenberg, Radical Face. 10 How much of the volume was Wheelock’s and how much Twysden’s is still in need of research. Certainly, Twysden edited the LHP, but he and Wheelock probably collaborated on the re-issue of Lambarde. In his preface, Wheelock credits Twysden with the additions to Lambarde, including those within Archaionomia proper as well as the LHP. Twysden’s notes in his copy of the 1568 Archaionomia now at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which were written after 1654, could indicate that he was toying with a second edition, even after Wheelock’s death in 1653; this suggests that he felt ownership of the legal material even if part of the work had been collaborative. For the ensuing discussion, I will assign Twysden primary responsibility for the 1644 edition of the laws and refer to the additions as his.

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That Twysden completed his scholarly activities while imprisoned in Lambeth House might seem surprising, but as Molly Murray points out, incarceration in early modern London was not necessarily an isolating experience: “In early modern London … prisons were not hermetically sealed sites of discipline; they were instead physically and socially enmeshed with the surrounding city… . Rather than enforce strict silence or isolation, these prisons permitted, or at least enabled, a great many of their inmates to communicate with each other and the world outside, sometimes in person and more often through writing.”11 Murray cites Twysden as an example of this sort of intellectual and textual exchange, as he not only edited Archaionomia but also made a full copy of D’Ewes’s manuscripts containing Parliamentary journals of the reign of Elizabeth. Murray focuses on literary works produced in early modern prisons, which she argues “ought to be considered alongside the court and the university as a place of significant textual, and literary, production.”12 “Prison poetry” became an established genre because poetic compositions offered to prisoners “on the one hand, the social consolation of communication and exchange with others, and on the other, the private consolation offered by the regularity and order of poetic language.”13 If one replaces “poetic language” with “law codes” (surely no less exemplary of “regularity and order”), one can see what this project may have offered Twysden personally and emotionally in addition to allowing him to keep up his antiquarian interests while detained. D’Ewes, whose own early medieval studies were analyzed in chapter one and who was Wheelock’s patron, probably guided Twysden’s interests toward re-­issuing Archaionomia and may have introduced him to Wheelock. D’Ewes may also have provided Twysden with the base text. The Folger Shakespeare Library holds Twysden’s copy of Lambarde’s original; his ownership inscription in it is dated 1654, suggesting that Twysden didn’t acquire a copy until after his own edition’s publication. If indeed he had to borrow a copy to produce the 1644 edition, it seems probable that D’Ewes was his source.14 D’Ewes’s involvement is also suggested by the book’s formatting and printing history. The edition of Archaionomia was first printed on its own, then, a few months later, it was combined with a reprint of Wheelock’s 1643 edition of the Old English Bede and the ASC. Both books were printed by the Cambridge University printer, Roger Daniel. Archaionomia was probably intended as a companion-piece to Wheelock’s Bede from its inception, with D’Ewes helping coordinate the publications. Twysden’s Archaionomia was printed in folio with the Old English and Latin in columns on each page; this departed from Lambarde’s volume, which was quarto and had facing-page translations. The larger size of Twysden’s edition compared to its original, and its double-column format certainly augmented the gravity of the text it contained. Folios were more expensive, and generally higher-status, than quarto books. Early medieval laws took a much more visually impressive, ideologically weighty format in the 1644 edition in comparison to that of 1568. They were also on the same size sheets of paper as Wheelock’s Bede and Chronicle, which was 11 Molly Murray, “Measured Sentences: Forming Literature in the Early Modern Prison,” Huntington Library Quarterly 72 (2009): 149. 12 Ibid., 150. 13 Ibid., 161. 14 D’Ewes’s copy, now London, British Library Add. 11750, is discussed in chapter one.

Figure 3: Archaionomia 1644. Pages 102–103.

Figure 4: Archaionomia 1568. Fols. 116v–117r.

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also printed in double columns of Old English and Latin. The re-arrangement of Lambarde’s page layout not only changed the look of the laws but made it visually congruent with the other major work of Old English scholarship then in press. Consistency in editorial practice also suggests that Twysden’s volume was always meant to accompany Wheelock’s. Wheelock provided variant readings from several manuscripts of the Old English Bede and ASC in the margins of his book, with an indication of which manuscript provided each. Twysden did the same in his LHP, although not in the other new texts in his volume (which, as I will discuss, were included from Henry Spelman’s Concilia and not from manuscripts). Such an editorial apparatus is now an expected part of a scholarly edition of a medieval text with several witnesses and may be nearly “invisible” to modern perusers of these texts. However, such notes were not common in early modern England. When Lambarde and his mentor Laurence Nowell (1530–1570?) transcribed Old English laws from various manuscripts in their working notebooks, they often noted variants. However, the final versions that Nowell compiled and Lambarde ultimately printed constitute what Odd Einar Haugen refers to as a “resultative edition.”15 These are editions where the growth of the text is not displayed in any way; it is assumed that the readers will not be interested in the textual variation and that they should be allowed to focus on the text itself.16 Haugen uses as an example editing of biblical texts: “for several hundred years the thought of textual instability in the Bible was anathema, something for which early editors were prosecuted.”17 However, most editions now produced for the purposes of scholarly study of older texts are “apparatus-­style” editions, which “[document] the textual variation and may also contain paleographical or codicological observations, emendations of the text, parallel readings, and so on.”18 Such editions were not standard in the seventeenth century, so the editions of Bede and the LHP stand out. Although Wheelock and Twysden obviously worked long before Lachmannian stemma helped systematize textual editing, their final products both give, within the resources available to them, a strikingly “modern” edition. Not only did their efforts move the field forward methodologically, but they also created a consistent volume embedded in material culture and remains from the past. Twysden’s editorial decisions in the 1644 Archaionomia bear some scrutiny, for many of them differ from his practices in other projects such as his 1652 Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores X, which has no apparatus to show manuscript variants. He apparently felt that the laws required different standards than early chronicles. In his Archaionomia edition, Twysden treats Lambarde’s printed volume as if it were its own manuscript witness, reprinting marginal comments. He also carefully includes Lambarde’s page numbers in the inner margins of his edition – presumably so readers could cross reference the two texts, or perhaps could find sections of it cited by others from Lambarde’s original volume. He remained committed to these Odd Einar Haugen, “The Making of an Edition: Three Crucial Dimensions,” in Digital Critical Editions, ed. Daniel Apollon, Claire Bélisle, and Philippe Régnier (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 228. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 229. 15

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Figure 5: Archaionomia 1644. Page 103. The 100 in the left margin refers to Lambarde’s original folio numbers.

decisions for editing early medieval laws, for Twysden’s planned second edition of the Archaionomia would probably have included manuscript variants even on the portions of the laws that had appeared in Lambarde. By 1654, when he obtained and began annotating his own copy of the 1568 Archaionomia, both D’Ewes and Wheelock were dead, so if these practices had been mandated solely by his collaborator, this no longer obtained. His notes in the volume show the same interest in variants, however, that had appeared in the first edition of the 1644 laws. With that in mind, I will discuss Twysden’s editorial practices as his own decisions as much as those of Wheelock. Old English Additions to Lambarde: Wifmannes Beweddung, Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar, and Ælfric’s Letter to Wulfsige Twysden inserted texts into the main part of the Archaionomia as well as appending two new Anglo-Norman codes. His decision to add Wifmannes Beweddung (Wif), Archbishop Wulfstan’s so-called Canons of Edgar, and the pastoral letter from

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Ælfric to Bishop Wulfsige has gone without comment. Twysden found all three texts and translations in Spelman’s 1639 Concilia, one of the major achievements of English historical scholarship from the 1630s.19 Spelman’s volume, fully titled Concilia, Decreta, Leges, Constitutiones, in Re Ecclesiarum Orbis Britannici, gathered together a mass of primary texts of various types – letters, conciliar decrees, royal and anonymous legislation, and anything else that might shed light on the pre-­ Conquest English church. Spelman included several items in Old English, all with a Latin translation. Some of the royal codes he reprinted had already been edited by Lambarde, although as Spelman’s chief concern was legislation dealing with ecclesiastical affairs, the more secular portions of royal codes were summarized. However, several works appear in Spelman’s Concilia that Lambarde had not printed, and that Twysden might have been expected to include in his edition but chose not to. Prime among these are the early Kentish laws of Æthelbert, Wihtred, and Hloþere. These texts would have fit perfectly with the Archaionomia’s collection of royal codes. Lambarde himself did not encounter the Textus Roffensis, in which these codes are preserved, until after Archaionomia’s completion, but Twysden not only knew Textus, he had Spelman’s edition and translations at hand.20 The laws are particular to Kent, but so are the laws of Ine particular to Wessex; geographical specificity cannot explain their exclusion. Spelman himself includes only the first three clauses of Æthelbert’s codes (noting that there is more, but that it does not fall within his volume’s ecclesiastic purview), so perhaps that could be why Twysden rejected it. However, Spelman does edit the full code of Wihtred, titled “Concilium Berghamstedae Anno Quinto Withraedi Regis Cantii” [Council at Berghamstede in the fifth year of King Wihtred of Kent] – not, perhaps, immediately indicating that it was a “royal code,” but still the first line makes clear enough that this is regnal legislation: “Ðis synd wihtrædes domas Cantwara cyninges” [These are the laws of King Wihtred of the Kentishmen].21 As Lisi Oliver, their most recent editor, observes, “The laws of Wihtred … reveal the way in which the new religion of Christianity adapted and altered the law to reflect changing social mores.”22 It includes penalties for Sabbath-breaking, which would certainly have interested D’Ewes.23 Yet Twysden did not select it when he augmented the Archaionomia. Nor did he include another item Spelman edited from Textus: Hadbot (Clerical Oaths, Priests’ Compensation), which modern scholars now realize is a text by the eleventh-century archbishop and jurist, Wulfstan of York.24 Hadbot is part of what 19 See Graham Parry’s chapter “Sir Henry Spelman and William Somner” in his Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 157–189. 20 The Textus Roffensis, Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre MS DRc/R1, contains several early law codes and charters and played a crucial role in preserving early medieval law. See the essays in Textus Roffensis: Law, Language, and Libraries in Early Medieval England, ed. Bruce O’Brien and Barbara Bombi (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). 21 Concilia, 194. 22 Lisi Oliver, The Beginnings of English Law (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), xi. 23 Wihtred §8. Oliver, Beginnings, 156–157. 24 The Political Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan of York, ed. and trans. Andrew Rabin (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2015), 72–75.

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its most recent editor labels the “Compilation on Status” and discusses clerical equivalents for lay oath-taking and compensation requirements.25 Its integration of ecclesiastic and lay ranks offers interesting insight into how Wulfstan saw society, but again, Twysden did not select it. Twysden’s omission of legal texts such as these, to say nothing of other Old English texts found in Spelman, such as the OE translation of the Capitula of Theodulf and records of various ecclesiastical councils, should focus attention even more on those three items that he did choose to accompany Lambarde’s laws. Each of these must have fit Twysden’s goals for the book, and each rewards thorough consideration of what it might have offered to seventeenth-century readers. This is by nature speculative; we are trying to read Twysden’s mind. However, the parallel concerns of early medieval and early modern society that appear in these texts make the effort worthwhile for understanding Twysden’s work of legal historical scholarship. Wifmannes Beweddung Although the lengthy Canons of Edgar and the authoritative epistle of Ælfric have solid prima facie cases for their inclusion, the brief tract on marriage known as Wifmannes Beweddung is at first puzzling. It spells out the proper form of betrothal, including stipulations for settling portions of the would-be husband’s property on his wife should he predecease her, and provides instructions for the couple should the woman relocate into another lord’s territory after marriage. The code has drawn attention from modern scholars of early medieval England for its tantalizing hints about women’s potential agency in their own marital choices, starting with its opening clause: “Gif man mæden oððe wif weddian wille, ond hit swa hire ond freondan gelicige …” [if a man wishes to betroth a maiden or a widow, and it so pleases her and her kinsmen …].26 This statement explicitly requires the woman’s consent for a betrothal to occur. Furthermore, the remainder of the first sentence mandates a formal oath that extends some protection to the woman after marriage: Ðon is riht ðæt se brydgum æfter Godes rihte ond æfter worold gerysnum ærest behate ond on wedde sylle ðam man ðe hire forsprecan syn[d], þæt he on ða wisan hire geornige ðe[t] he hy æfter Godes rihte healdan willa swa wær his wif sceal; ond aborgian his frind [ðæt].27 [Then it is right that the bridegroom according to God’s law and proper secular custom should first promise and pledge to those who are her advocates, that he desires her in such a way that he will maintain her according to God’s law as a man should maintain his wife; and his friends are to stand surety for it.] Ibid. Archaionomia (1644), 60; Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, ed. and trans. Dorothy Whitelock, M. Brett, and C.N.L. Brooke, vol. 1, part 1 871–1066 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), 428. All Archaionomia citations in the remainder of this chapter are to the 1644 edition unless otherwise indicated. All translations are from Whitelock, Brett, and Brooke (hereinafter cited as Councils). I give page numbers rather than code numbers as those in Archaionomia are different from modern editions and translations. 27 I have edited the text in square brackets where Whitelock’s text differs from Twysden’s. Archaionomia, 60–61; Councils, 428–429. 25

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This seems to be an attempt at protection for the wife against abandonment by her husband, and it is sealed by a formal pledge, supported by his friends who are also thereby liable should he break it. Anne Klinck argues that this text, although indicative that later Anglo-Saxon women had more independence than earlier ones, still hardly represents complete freedom of choice for the woman. Klinck observes that Wif “is … not a statement of universally binding law, but an account of a procedure which the author considers desirable.”28 Andrew Rabin reads the maneuverings of Wif as less an attempt to codify women’s autonomy for their own sake, but rather to exert the law’s control over the domestic sphere generally: “protecting a bride’s right of consent here serves as the first step toward asserting legal jurisdiction over her movements, her behavior, and the rights of her family… . Implicitly, regulating bridal consent allows the legal powers behind Wifmannes Beweddung to extend public jurisdiction into a private sphere hitherto controlled by families and kingroups.”29 Rabin’s observation sheds light on Twysden’s interest – determining the role of legal authorities in marital decisions. In the late Elizabethan and Stuart years, an ongoing question was how much control anyone outside the couple involved could or should have. From the later Middle Ages on, a couple was considered legally married if they declared, using verbs of the present tense, that they were so, especially if consummation followed.30 The potential for ambiguity that could result Anne Klinck, “Anglo-Saxon Women and the Law,” Journal of Medieval History 8 (1982): 113. There is little evidence, aside from Wif itself, about how non-elite early medieval women viewed or experienced marriage. Royal women often forged dynastic alliances through marriage, as seen in both the literary example of Beowulf’s Wealhtheow and the historical one of Emma, wife of both Athelred the Unready and his successor, King Cnut. The spiritual state of chaste marriage as opposed to that of virginity in the religious writings of the time has also received some attention, although the extent to which non-elite women would have received such messages is unknown. See the essays in New Readings on Women and Early Medieval English Literature and Culture: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Honour of Helen Damico, ed. Helene Scheck and Christine Kozikowski (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2019), especially Gale Owen-Crocker, “Anglo-Saxon Women, Woman, and Womanhood,” 23–41; Janet Schrunk Ericksen, “A Textbook Stance on Marriage: The Versus ad coniugem in Anglo-Saxon England,” 97–112; Joyce Hill, “Saintly Mothers and Mothers of Saints,” 131–140; Colleen Dunn, “Playing with Memories: Emma of Normandy, Cnut, and the Spectacle of Ælfheah’s Corpus,” 141–158; and Helen Conrad O’Briain, “Listen to the Woman: Reading Wealhtheow as Stateswoman,” 191–207. See also Alison Gulley, “‘Seo fæmne þa lærde swa lange þone chiht oðþæt he ge-lyfde on þone lifigendan god’: The Christian Wife as Converter and Ælfric’s Anglo-Saxon Audience,” Parergon 19 (2002): 39–51; Pauline Stafford, “The King’s Wife in Wessex, 800–1066,” in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 56–78; and Mary Richards and B. Jane Stanfield, “Concepts of Anglo-Saxon Women in the Laws,” in Damico and Olsen, New Readings on Women, 89–99. 29 Andrew Rabin, “Anglo-Saxon Women before the Law: A Student Edition of Five Old English Lawsuits,” Old English Newsletter 41 (2008): 38. 30 Martin Ingram, Church Courts, Sex, and Marriage in England 1570–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (1997, repr., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); R.B. Outhwaite, Clandestine Marriage in England, 1500–1850 (London: Hambledon Press, 1995); and Conor McCarthy, Marriage in Medieval England: Law, Literature, and Practice (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004). For artistic depictions of marriage, see 28

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thereby, and for accompanying social upheaval, is familiar to students of late medieval history and early modern drama. Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure explores this anxiety, as does his Richard III. Richard’s claim that his older brother had been previously married by private contract, thereby rendering his later marriage to Elizabeth Woodville invalid and their children illegitimate, was not as absurd as most modern audiences find it. Such claims frequently arose in the church courts, and what gives fodder for playwrights makes lawyers decidedly uncomfortable. As Cressy observes: “Unchurched marriages based on simple consent may have met the minimum requirements of the law, but they were severely deficient in social and cultural terms.”31 Wif’s insistence on the assent not only of the bride herself but also her “friends” would have been reassuring, as would the demand that the groom’s friends be surety for his pledge (and thereby aware of it). As the early medieval text depicted, marriage by entirely private verbal contract was not an option. Other people had to be involved. What’s more, their involvement was calculated to prevent the husband from abandoning his wife and failing to support her (and, by extension, their children). A major concern of the early modern church courts’ hearings over marriages was to prevent abandoned women and children from having to rely on their parish for survival. The protection for the woman in Wif 1 would have been equally a protection for the entire community by the seventeenth century. Another aspect of Wif that has gained some attention is its mandate that the husband settle a certain amount of property on his wife in the event of his death, suggesting amounts of one half if they are childless, and the entire estate if they have a child (this would be forfeited, however, should she remarry). The potential economic power and accompanying agency that this could give widows has been remarked on, but I suspect for Twysden, the clause would have appealed by requiring that husbands leave their widows and families enough on which to survive, taking that responsibility also from the parish. Another notable feature of Wif from an early modern perspective is the insistence not only on knowledge (and, implicitly, consent) of friends and kin, but the tract’s requirement in clause eight of a clerical officiant: “Æt þam giftan sceal Mæsse preost beon mid rihte, se sceal mid Godes bletsunge heora gesomnunge gederian on ealre gesundfulness” [At the marriage, there should by rights be a mass-priest, who shall unite them together with God’s blessing in all prosperity].32 Wormald found this the most striking element of the code with regard to the history of marriage.33 Clerical solemnization as a key arbiter of legitimate marriage was an increasing theme in early modern discussions of marriage, and in the rulings of church courts in spousal Judith Hudson, “Renaissance Love(s): Marriage, Bigamy, and Literary Representation in Seventeenth-Century England,” Textual Practice 33 (2019): 1389–1408; Catherine Belsey, “The Serpent in the Garden: Shakespeare, Marriage, and Material Culture,” The Seventeenth Century 11 (1996): 1–20; and Mark Fortier, “Married with Children: The Winter’s Tale and Social History; Or, Infacticide in Earlier Seventeenth-Century England,” Modern Language Quarterly 57 (1996): 579–603. 31 Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death, 316. 32 Archaionomia, 61; Councils, 431. 33 Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 386.

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suits. Beginning in the later sixteenth century, solemnized marriages were usually validated in court against claims of prior marriage of one of the parties by private contract, and “by the seventeenth century, widespread recognition of solemnisation in church as the essential guarantee of a socially and legally acceptable marriage narrowed the opportunities for confusion and uncertainty and made it reasonable for the courts to pronounce in favour of unsolemnised unions only in exceptional circumstances.”34 Wif’s demand for clerical solemnization would have been reassuring, from an early modern perspective. Certainly, most people envisioned weddings as a church function, and “the general view held that marriage belonged to God and should be celebrated with solemnity in his church.”35 However, the mid-1640s, when Twysden produced his re-edition of Archaionomia, was a period when the “general view” of nearly everything could suddenly be up for debate. Although the Long Parliament’s Directory of Public Worship, issued in 1645, “declared that ‘such as marry are to marry in the lord’ with the ‘blessing of God upon them,’” it did not require that the officiant be ordained.36 Within ten years, even that vestige was briefly stripped away, as the government tried to mandate entirely secular weddings in 1653. Cressy notes that this “went against deep-rooted custom,” and the order was soon reversed, but nonetheless, it demonstrates the state of flux in established practices.37 Clerical participation alone could not smooth out all legal and social difficulties surrounding marriage. Another persistent issue in early modern church courts was that of clandestine marriages. Although often confused with marriage by private contract, clandestine marriages, as defined by the church courts in the early seventeenth century, were in fact solemnized by a priest.38 However, they were conducted away from the home locale of the parties married. Clandestine marriages were valid, but they raised legal and social headaches similar to those of the (also legal) marriages by private contract. If a couple announced that they had been married in the next town over, or even that they had been wed in their previous town but then moved away, how could it be proven should they be accused of fornication in a church court? Were their children legitimate if no one who knew them had actual proof of their marriage? Parish registers recorded weddings that took place in a church building – sometimes – but what of nuptials solemnized in private houses? How could they be proven, if indeed they could at all? Such vexed issues led church courts to issue penances for couples who married clandestinely, but they could hardly deem the marriage itself ipso facto invalid. Parties who married clandestinely or who relocated did not have the protection that others did who married at their home parish. Although the details differ, Wif displays a similar concern over mobility and the vulnerability that could accompany it: Gif hy [man] ðon ut of lande læden wille on oðres þegnes land, ðon bið hire wæd [recte ræd] ðæt frynd ða for word [habban] ðæt hire man nan woh to ne do, ond gif heo gylt gewyrce, ðæt hi moton beon bote nyhst, gif heo næfð of hwam heo bete.

34 35 36 37 38

Ingram, Church Courts, 209. Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death, 295. Ibid., 296. Ibid. Outhwaite, Clandestine Marriage, 22–23.

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[If, however, one wishes to take her away from that district into that of another thegn, it is then to her interest that her friends have the assurance that no wrong will be done to her, and that if she commits an offense, they may be allowed to stand next in paying compensation, if she possesses nothing with which she can pay.] 39

The concern here is not that the couple’s marriage will not be recognized in another lord’s lands, but rather that the wife be protected from potentially hostile neighbors – or, depending on how one translates man, from her husband himself – and that she retain legal rights in the case of wrongdoing on her part. The text does not state that the thegn of her new district must be alerted of her presence as a new resident, but the stipulation that her kin be allowed to pay compensations would practically require it so that he could notify them. Official “transfer” of legal authority from the woman’s home district to her new residence is needed to ensure her rights; such an official method of maintaining one’s wedded status regardless of where the ceremony occurred was lacking in early modern England. Wif addresses concerns similar to those of Twysden and his contemporaries about marriage as a social, religious, and procreative union. It explored the proper balance between private agreement and public acknowledgment, it encouraged a system whereby both parties had economic assurances, it required clerical oversight, and it tried to imagine and overcome potential difficulties arising from relocation of the parties involved – all issues that the church courts still wrestled with in the early modern period. It is no surprise, then, that Twysden made room in his edition of Archaionomia for this little tract: its relevance – currency, even – would have been immediately apparent to his readers. Canons of Edgar Twysden inserted the “Canones Editi Sub Edgaro Rege” into Archaionomia after the laws of King Edgar. This text, as we know now but Spelman and Twysden did not, was not written by Edgar or during his reign (959–975) but came from the pen of Archbishop Wulfstan of York, who wrote and revised it during the first two decades of the eleventh century. The misleading title may have been original to Wulfstan’s early drafts of the piece; as Rabin observes, “Wulfstan emphasizes the importance of Edgar’s reign as a legal and moral precedent elsewhere in his writings, and his practice in his earlier works of evoking an idealized – and sometimes fictional – legal past may be on display here also.”40 Whether or not Wulfstan himself at first circulated his Canons with their now-customary title, no one in the seventeenth century suspected that they were not, in fact, Edgar’s. The Canons of Edgar form an important piece of Wulfstan’s oeuvre; they focus on the obligations of individual parish priests and their congregations. While Wulfstan’s work on I Cnut, discussed in chapter one, laid out his vision for a holy society under the rule of bishops and royal authorities, Canons gives another view of that society, one focused on day-to-day encounters between clergy and their flock. Rabin notes that “Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar offers a synthesis of Church doctrine 39 40

Archaionomia, 60–61; Councils, 430–431. Wulfstan, Political Writings, 85.

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on pastoral care and clerical behaviour for use by diocesan priests… . It provides perhaps Wulfstan’s most detailed account of the Church’s role in English society.”41 Fracture lines had widened in the Stuart church over the exact role of a parish priest, his autonomy and authority over his congregation, and the emphasis during worship on ritual and liturgical prayer versus preaching and spontaneous prayer. As we have seen in chapter two, Wheelock layered his edition of Bede with homilies addressing such issues. While Wheelock’s editorial choices and commentary reveal his Calvinist views, Twysden’s inclusion of the Canons of Edgar perhaps indicates a more moderate stance on parish government and worship. Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar could have appealed to both parties in Twysden’s own day. As Roger Fowler describes, “the greater part of the Canons consists of detailed directions on the duties of the clergy. These directions divide into two categories: details of church practices which must be carried out by the priest, and lay activities which the priest must regulate by preaching.”42 The “church practices” include ritual, and some codes directly address points of contention in the 1640s: 30. And we læraþ þæt preost on ænigum huse ne Mæssige buton on gehalgodre cirican buton hit sy for hwilces mannes ofer seocnesse; 31. And we læraþ þæt preost huru æfre ne mæssige buton on ufan gehalgodon weafode; 32. And we læraþ þæt preost afre ne Mæssige buton bec. ac beo se canon. him ætforan eagum beseoto. gif he wille. ðilæs ðe himmisse; 33. And we læraþ þæt ælc preost hæbbe corporalem ðonne he Mæssige and subumlem under his alban. and eal Messe reaf wurðlice beworfen. [30. And we instruct that a priest not celebrate mass in any building except a consecrated church, except in the case of someone’s extreme sickness. 31. And we instruct that a priest at all events never celebrate mass except on a consecrated altar. 32. And we instruct that a priest never celebrate mass without the book; but the canon is to be before his eyes. He may consult it if he wishes, so as not to make a mistake. 33. And we instruct that a priest have a corporal when he celebrates mass and an amice under his alb, and all the mass-vestments in a worthy state.] 43

Wulfstan’s concern for an orderly sacrament relates to two pressing issues in the seventeenth century, especially in the wakes of the episcopal visitations enacted Ibid. Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar, ed. Roger Fowler, EETS 266 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), li. 43 Archaionomia, 68–69. Translations are those of Andrew Rabin in Wulfstan, Political Writings (hereinafter cited as Political Writings), with alterations as needed depending on the text in Archaionomia: Political Writings, 92. 41

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by Archbishop Laud. Laudian bishops were required to inspect parishes in their diocese and demand conformity to archiepiscopal mandates. Among other points of emphasis, they were to inquire whether the churches were decently furnished, whether the Lord’s Supper was celebrated on a fabric-covered altar on a raised platform at the front, and whether the celebrant wore vestments. These injunctions challenged the practices of several congregations of more puritan leanings, who had begun to have their ministers, dressed in ordinary clothes, conduct the ritual on a plain wooden table set in the midst of the congregation. Episcopal visitants also warned congregations and churchwardens against allowing animals in the church, another issue addressed by Wulfstan in statute 26: “And we læreð þæt … ne binnan ciric tune ænig hund ne cume. ne swyn ðe maðæs þe man wealdan mæge” [And we instruct that … no dog come within church precincts, much less a pig if one can control it].44 Compare this to two complaints from Laud’s 1634 visitation of Leicestershire: Kirby: consecrated ground in Kirby is profaned and polluted by the swine of Thomas Summerfield, and other nasty beasts, which do also break down and spoil the young trees lately set to grow forth [to] ornament and fence off the church… . Garthorpe: Michael Robinson, late churchwarden, for neglecting his office and suffering dogs to come into the church, which have defiled the church and disturbed the minister.45

Cressy notes that seventeenth-century “parishioners commonly brought their dogs into church, causing pollution and disruption.”46 Wulfstan, not normally a genial sort when it came to issues of church maintenance and compliance, seems more in touch with agrarian realities than does Laud, as the early medieval text admits that pigs are sometimes difficult to corral. Still, livestock and companion animals in the church were identified as a problem both in the eleventh-century code and the seventeenth century, and both periods show official concern for the issue (although neither one provides a perfect answer). Problems such as animals in church and debates over altars and vestments, although “things indifferent” to one’s individual salvation, became flashpoints of contention as they represented a more profound struggle between centralized episcopal authority and Presbyterian government of churches as the priest and congregation saw fit. However, if the Canons of Edgar seemed to support the more Laudian approach to ceremony, they also emphasized the importance of preaching, avoiding idolatry, and Sabbath-keeping, issues that Wheelock had so strongly underscored in his edition of Bede. For Wulfstan, preaching was the first line of defense against idolatry:

Archaionomia, 68; Political Writings, 93. “Archbishop Laud’s Visitation of Leicestershire, 1634,” in Religion and Society in Early Modern England: A Sourcebook, ed. David Cressy and Lori Anne Ferrell (New York: Routledge, 1996), 156. 46 Cressy, Charles I and the People of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), Kindle edition, 247. 44 45

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16. And we lærað þæt preosta gehwilc Cristendom geornlice arære and ælcne hæþendom mid ealle adwæsce. and forbeode wilweorþunga and licwiglunga. and hwata. and galdra. and man weorþunga. and ða gemeare ðe man ðrif on mislicum gewiglungum. and on frið splottum. and on ellenum. and eac on oþrum mislicum treowum. and on stanum and on manegum mistlicum gedwimerum. Ðem on ðreogað fela ðæs ðe hi nane sceoldan. [16. And we instruct that every priest ardently preach the Christian faith and fully wipe out heathen practice, and forbid the worship of wells and the raising of the dead, and divination and sorcery, and the worshipping of evil, and the deception performed in various magical practices, and in heathen refuges, and in elder-trees, and in many diverse superstitions in which men do much that they should not.]47

The exact details of the practices Wulfstan outlined – worship of wells and trees, etc. – might not have had immediate relevance in Twysden’s time, although cultural anxieties over witchcraft and magic spurred several witch hunts both under James I and during the Civil Wars and Interregnum.48 Setting that aside, this passage’s main concern over idolatry, held over from previous religious practice despite years of reform, would have struck a chord with most of the puritan critics of the English church. These godly reformers felt that holdovers of “superstition” and “idolatry” from England’s Roman Catholic past still drove English ecclesiastic practices such as “churching” or the veneration of saints. Especially under Charles I, the church was felt to be moving toward Catholicism – indeed, many reformers believed that Roman Catholic agents were directing Charles’s religious policies and their ceremonial emphasis.49 D’Ewes, among others, genuinely worried that the church was tending toward idolatry and away from God and feared that this supposed apostasy would draw God’s wrath. Wulfstan, who was worried about pagans, was equally attuned to the possibility of divine ire falling upon his nation for its apostasy and reiterated the importance of preaching in statute 52: “And we læraþ þæt preostas ælce sunnan dæges folcebodigan and á a wel bisman” [And we instruct that priests preach to the people each Sunday and always set a good example].50 Furthermore, Wulfstan and the seventeenth-century puritans would have agreed about the necessity of keeping the Sabbath: 18. And we læraþ þæt man geswice freolsdagum hæþenra leoþa. and deofles gamena; 19. And we læraþ þæt man geswice sunnan dæges cypinge. and folc gemota. [18 And we instruct that on holy days one refrain from heathenish songs and devil’s games. Archaionomia, 67; Political Writings, 89–90. Diane Purkiss, The English Civil War: Papists, Gentlewomen, Soldiers, and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain (New York: Basic Books, 2006), especially chapter 20. 49 Caroline Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983). 50 Archaionomia, 71; Political Writings, 96. 47

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19. And we instruct that one refrain from trade and folk-moots on Sunday.]

51

James I had issued a Book of Sports explicitly making sports and games on Sunday lawful, and Charles had confirmed it.52 Whether or not Wulfstan would have believed archery practice and dancing to be specifically “devilish,” puritan critics of Stuart religious practices certainly did. D’Ewes would have heartily agreed with this portion of the Canons of Edgar. Ultimately, the Canons of Edgar would have provided Twysden with a measured, balanced approach to ceremony, ritual, and Sabbath-keeping. Wulfstan’s text was one that a moderate, or someone seeking common ground between the two camps, could embrace. Pastoral Letter to Wulfsige The final text that Twysden inserted into the Archaionomia was Ælfric’s first “Pastoral Letter,” the Letter to Wulfsige. This text is not for the most part actually directed to Bishop Wulfsige of Sherborne himself, as the modern understanding of “letter” would indicate, but is rather an “open letter,” written at Wulfsige’s request and in his name, directing all the clergy in his diocese in the proper performance of their duties. It shares many of the same concerns as Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar, and indeed Wulfstan used Ælfric’s letter as a source for his own compilation.53 Some of the details of Ælfric’s instructions would not have been acceptable to Twysden’s Protestant audience, particularly the stern admonitions against clerical marriage: “Hi gewedon ða ealle mid anrædu geþance. þæt naþer ne Bisceop, ne mæsse preost. ne Diacon. ne nan riht Canonic if [recte is] næbbe on his huse nænne wif man… .” [they [the Nicene Council] all then pronounced unanimously that neither bishop, nor mass-priest, nor deacon, nor any regular canon, is to have in his house any woman].54 However, like the Canons of Edgar that drew on it, Ælfric’s Pastoral Letter emphasizes the importance of preaching – while also noting that priests conducting God’s holy service needed to be dressed in special vestments. While Wulfstan addresses unseemly Sabbath activities outside of church, Ælfric describes congregational misbehaviors while attending service: Cristene men sceolon secan cyrcan gelome. and man ne mot spellian ne spræca drifan binnan Godes cyrcan. forðan ðe heo is gedbed hus Gode gehalgod to ðam Archaionomia, 67; Political Writings, 90. Alistair Dougall, The Devil’s Book: Charles I, The Book of Sports, and Puritanism in Tudor and Early Stuart England (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011). 53 Christopher Jones, “Ælfric’s Pastoral Letters and the Episcopal Capitula of Radulf of Bourges,” Notes and Queries n.s. 42 (1995): 149–155; Joyce Hill, “Authorial Adaptation: Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the Pastoral Letters,” in Text and Language in Medieval English Prose, ed. Jacek Fisiak, Akio Oizumi, and John Scahill (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2005), 63–75; Hill, “Monastic Reform and the Secular Church: Ælfric’s Pastoral Letters in Context,” in England in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Carola Hicks (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1992), 103–117; and Malcolm Godden, “The Relations of Wulfstan and Ælfric: A Reassessment,” in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, ed. Matthew Townend (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 353–374. 54 Translations are Whitelock et al. in Councils and Synods, modified where needed. Archaionomia, 128; Councils, 198. 51

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gastlicum spræcum; Ne man ne sceal drincan oþþe dollice etan binnan Godes huse ðe is gehalgod to ðam þæt Godes lichaman mid geleafan ðær dicge. [Christian men must go to church frequently, and one may not talk nor hold conversations inside God’s church, because it is a house of prayer consecrated to God for the spiritual discourses. Nor may one drink nor eat foolishly inside God’s house, which is consecrated to the end that one may partake of God’s body with faith.]55

Although the more extreme puritans might object to the emphasis on vestments and the church as a sacred space on its own, the stress on preaching would have appealed broadly. The admonitions about proper behavior in church would also have gone over well with most of Twysden’s contemporaries, as ecclesiastical courts record numerous complaints of parishioners snoring, talking, laughing, and fighting during services.56 The text certainly contained elements that would have seemed immediately relevant in the 1640s. Ultimately, the three texts Twysden took from the Concilia and inserted in Lambarde are less important for any one code or passage, and more for the way they demonstrate early English lawgivers and writers navigating issues still crucial for Stuart England. Marriage and its social and legal requirements, the interactions between clergy and flock necessary for forming a healthy society, the balance between church ritual and homiletic instruction – all these still mattered in the seventeenth century. Twysden’s volume shows that the pre-Conquest period was not monolithic but multi-faceted, with best-case scenarios presented alongside realistic recognition of human sinfulness and fallibility. Neither Laudian nor puritan extremists could point to pre-Conquest England as unilaterally supporting their view, and perhaps that was what Twysden most wanted to show: that measured balance and dynamic compromise were possible and always had been. Continuity does not require that the past and present be a mirror image: it would be enough if the same principles of balance and measure applied or were at least sought in the early medieval and the early modern state and church. In the choice of additions, we can see Twysden trying to navigate his own competing loyalties by looking to the past for models. Twysden’s Leges Henrici Primi Twysden’s major contribution to Archaionomia’s new edition, at least in the eyes of modern scholars, was the LHP. It is in some regards an odd choice. Lambarde’s volume ended with the Conquest, but Twysden went out of his way to include texts from William’s son. The LHP, despite its modern editorial title, is not a royal code in the way that the Laws of Alfred or Cnut are. It draws heavily on Old English codes translated into Latin and is widely agreed to have been written by the same twelfth-century writer who translated Old English law codes in another Latin text now usually called Quadripartitus. The name of the latter indicates that it was 55 56

Archaionomia, 135; Councils, 217. Cressy, Charles I, 242–249.

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originally meant to have four parts, but only two exist. Wormald and others have suggested that the “missing” two parts are in fact the LHP, which Wormald believes was written “to stress the over-reaching arm of royal justice.”57 The Quadripartitus provided twelfth-century legal thinkers the opportunity to read the laws of their pre-Conquest predecessors in government. The LHP, as Nicholas Karn observes, draws on the Old English laws but structures itself to focus more on “ideas about procedure and conduct in court, and how courts should proceed in cases concerning public order”; as such, it draws also from biblical and Continental legal traditions as well as English ones.58 Twysden’s editio princeps of the LHP is the only portion of his work that has drawn attention from previous scholars. Jessup regarded it as the main feature of the 1644 volume: Twysden’s first publication was an edition of the Laws of Henry I, transcribed from the Red Book of the Exchequer and never before printed, which appeared at Cambridge in 1644… . To it was also appended a new edition of Lambarde’s Laws of the Saxon Kings (the Archaeonomia of 1568), Selden’s version of the Laws of William I which Twysden was able to amplify from the Red Book, and a short Latin preface which Twysden himself wrote. The volume also contained a Saxon Glossary, not Twysden’s work, which Somner observed to be faulty in many places. This work was the fruits of his enforced idleness in London during the first two years of the Civil War.59

In fact, the re-issuing and augmenting of Lambarde comprises the great majority of the volume, so it is a bit misleading to claim that it was “appended” to the LHP. Even the Leges themselves draw no more attention from Jessup than the above paragraph. L.J. Downer, the most recent editor of the LHP, observes Twysden’s edition was “poor and untrustworthy, but to be paid due respect as the first in the field.”60 He also notes, citing the early twentieth-century editor of early medieval English law Felix Liebermann, that two manuscripts from which Twysden listed variants are both now lost, so Twysden’s apparatus provides the only witness to Liebermann’s Al and TW.61 No one, as far as I have seen, has asked why Twysden (presumably encouraged by D’Ewes and/or Wheelock) selected the LHP to accompany his edition of Lambarde. What value could the LHP have had to the study of pre-Conquest law, which was ostensibly the point of the volume? Quite a lot, as it turns out, in the context in which legal studies were conducted in the early seventeenth century. A crucial – perhaps Wormald, Making, 413. See also Wormald, “Quadripartitus,” in Law and Government in England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt, ed. G. Garnett and J. Hudson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 111–147. 58 Nicholas Karn, “Quadripartitus, Leges Henrici Primi, and the Scholarship of English Law in the Early Twelfth Century,” Anglo-Norman Studies 37 (2015): 149. 59 Jessup, Sir Roger Twysden, 186. 60 Leges Henrici Primi, ed. and trans. L.J. Downer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 73. Hereinafter cited as LHP. 61 Ibid., 49. Liebermann’s three-volume Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1903–1916) remains the standard edition of many early medieval laws. 57

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the crucial – question stood of whether William I ruled by “absolute conquest” and therefore invalidated previous laws and customs, or by right of Edward the Confessor’s selection and the subsequent consent of the English, in which case legal continuity remained despite the violence involved in his gaining the crown. Those who argued for a limited or “constitutional” monarchy generally preferred the latter view; absolutists the first.62 Karn observes the centrality of the LHP and its companion piece Quadripartitus in these debates, as both texts “bear on the biggest question of all in Anglo-Norman history: how twelfth-century society and state related to the Anglo-Saxon past, and what the epic events of 1066 and thereafter really signified. That both sources depend so extensively on pre-Conquest written materials supports the belief that these were still sources of authority well into the twelfth century.”63 Twysden would almost certainly have recognized the texts’ centrality in providing evidence for the constitutional royalism he himself supported. Warren Hollister argues that the LHP and Quadripartitus “rest on deep foundations yet build on them with a self-awareness and coherence that is altogether new.”64 For Hollister, these texts supply evidence that “although Henry I’s regime was in some sense a New Monarchy, in other, fundamental respects it was firmly rooted in traditional Anglo-Saxon political institutions.”65 These issues are still of concern to historians and scholars, and Twysden’s interest in bridging the periods before and after the Battle of Hastings is not necessarily special pleading or wishful imagination on the part of a constitutional royalist. Indeed, in light of current attempts to examine Late Germanic English and Early Anglo-Norman political and cultural institutions together, Twysden looks quite modern.66 Also forward-looking was Twysden’s treatment of the artifacts from early medieval England that preserved the texts he studied. His concern with the material nature of the laws manifests itself in several ways. It drove most of his notes in his personal copy of the 1644 Archaionomia (now held by Nostell Priory), which suggest that he hoped to produce a second, augmented edition with even more variants.67 By providing variants, Twysden could be seen as destabilizing the text, making visible the contingencies of its apparent meaning and introducing interpretive variety in a legal tradition that many would have wanted to be as monolithic as that of biblical textual transmission. On the other hand, the multiplicity of copies on display in Twysden’s margins argues for the LHP’s relevance and importance to its earliest Pocock, Ancient Constitution. Karn, “Quadripartitus,” 150; see also his essay “Textus Roffensis and Its Uses” in O’Brien and Bombi, Textus Roffensis, 49–67. 64 C. Warren Hollister, Henry I, ed. Amanda Clark Frost (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 369. 65 Ibid., 351. 66 One example is Judith Green, Forging the Kingdom: Power in English Society 973–1189 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 67 The book is described by Edward Potten, “From Printed Book to Manuscript: The Nostell Priory Archaionomia,” in Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 11: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Seminar Held at the University of Copenhagen 24th–25th April 2009, ed. Matthew James Driscoll and Ragnheiður Mósesdóttir (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2009), 149–162. I am deeply indebted to Ed for sharing with me some of his images of the volume. 62 63

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readers and copiers. As Karn observes, the text’s marginalia (especially that which he believes became rubrics in later copies) show that “the LHP was part of a living legal tradition, and … it was found to be of value to persons working in the twelfth century.”68 Twysden found it just as crucial in the seventeenth. At some moments, the LHP draws nearly verbatim on previous codes. Code 34.7 states “Qui aliquem erga justitiam accusabit et praesertim in quibus convictus vitae jacturam vel honoris detrimentum pateretur et mendacium denique pernoscatur, linguam perdat vel weira sua redimat” [If anyone accuses another before a justice (and especially of matters for which a person, when convicted, would suffer capital punishment or injury to his honor) and the accusation is then revealed as a falsehood, he shall forfeit his tongue or redeem himself by payment of his wergild].69 Downer notes that this code comes from II Cnut 16 and also III Edgar 4.70 The statement deals with a constant issue in law – dishonesty in court stemming from personal malice – and sets forth the corporal or monetary punishment for violators. In addition to enunciations of earlier legal principles were statements that hinted at concepts of legal rights, largely absent from the actual codes of Old English monarchs, such as 51.3 and 51.4: 51.3 Et nulli sine judicio vel licentia namire liceat alium in suo vel alterius. 51.4 Si Vicecomes injuste aliquem namiet, convictus noxa causam suam perdat et suppliciter71 emendet et Regi sicut factum sit. [51.3 No one may distrain another, without judgment or judicial leave, in respect of property on his own land or on that of another. 51.4 If a sheriff unjustly distrains anyone he shall, on being convicted of the offense, lose his suit and humbly pay compensation, and he shall also pay a penalty to the king in accordance with the nature of the offense.]72

The irony of these codes must have been heavy for Twysden as he assembled his text, for such was the exact position in which he found himself – under arrest, his estates distrained to pay fines assessed without even a formal charge, much less a judgment, against him. Twysden had been accused by a personal enemy of his, who then took profits from his estate and wasted the land’s resources. The illegality and sheer wrongness of the actions of the Long Parliament and its County Committee headed by Wheldon was on display for all to see in Twysden’s LHP. Even in the most ancient laws such things were condemned.

Nicholas Karn, “Rethinking the Leges Henrici Primi,” in English Law before Magna Carta: Felix Liebermann and “Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen,” ed. Stefan Jurasinski, Lisi Oliver, and Andrew Rabin (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 218. 69 All quotations are from Twysden’s edition; translations are Downer’s, altered slightly where Twysden’s edition requires. Archaionomia, 188; LHP, 141. 70 LHP, 347. 71 Downer has “dupliciter” and translates “pay double compensation.” 72 Archaionomia, 193; LHP, 167. 68

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Twysden’s projected second edition would have underscored the physicality of the law codes even more strongly with its emphasis on the volume containing his main copy-text of the LHP: the Red Book of the Exchequer.73 In the Nostell Priory copy, Twysden drafted a note that he intended to insert in his preface to the Anglo-Norman texts relating to the Red Book’s own past: Porro ad fidem Libri illius antiqui \qui vulgo liber rubeus dicitur/ vnde nos memoratas superius Leges desumpsimus, sufficiat notare inter publica Regni archiua eum nunc per longum temporis interuallum seruari, ita vt de ejus auctoritate dubitare haud liceat: Et quamuis omnia in eo contenta non vnius aeui existimem, has tamen leges, tam willielmi primi, quam filij ejus Henrici, ... ex antiquioribus in eo relatis Monumentis esse non ambigo. In Inquisitione de quo warranto 28 die Julii 34. Ed. 1. hujus Libri Rubei mentio occurrit, sic enim ibi Legimus “In principio Guerrae … nuper subortae quidam hostes Regis de partibus trans marinis apud Douorriam applicuerunt et prioratum Dovorrum” (scil[i]cet Sancti Martini) “hostiliter invaserunt depraedarunt et spoliarunt et cartam praedictam … similiter cum aliis bonis ipsorum prioris et Conuentus caeperunt et asportauerunt “vnde de mandato Regio scrutatis Libris et Memorandis” Scaccarii “compertum est in libro Rubeo quaedam certificatio portus Douorrum in qua \continetur. Fol. 103b. 259a/ contineatur inter caetera quod de Theloneo transfretantium et applicantium Douorrum prior sancti Martini recepit dimidium … de dicto Theloneo de fero die sabbati idem Prior recepit tertiam partem et Rex duas …” facile hinc innotescit Librum istam rubeum ante haec tempora inter acta publica fuisse abseruatum. Vide D. Ed. Coci Instit 4 cap. 53. P 60.74 [Formerly, to the credit of this ancient book that is generally called the Red Book whence we have chosen the aforementioned laws, it is sufficient to note that it has been preserved in the royal public archive now for a long interval of time, such that it is scarcely permitted to question its authority. And although I think all things contained within it are not from one period of time, nevertheless I am not in doubt that these laws, so of William I as of his son Henry … to be recorded in it from the ancients. There is a mention of this Red Book made in an inquiry “de quo warranto” on July 28th in the 34th year of Edward I, for thus we read there: “In the beginning of the wars … certain enemies of the king from regions over the sea recently landed at Dover and hostilely invaded, plundered, and despoiled the Priory of Dover” (namely St. Martin’s), “and carried away the above-mentioned charter … together with other goods and covenants of those monks” whence, by order of the king, “the books and records” of the Exchequer “being searched, a certain document of the Port of Dover was found in the Red Book” contained in 73 For the Red Book of the Exchequer (Liber Rubeus Scaccarii, Kew, National Archives, MS E 164/2) see LHP, 46–48, and Margaret Proctor, “The Red Book of the Exchequer: A Curious Affair Revisited,” Historical Research 87 (2014): 510–532. 74 My transcription shows Twysden’s insertions above the line by placing \ / around them and uses quotation marks to show quotations that Twysden denoted by a red underline. Within the quoted material, the parenthetical comments are not underlined and are understood to be his own commentary.

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folios 103b and 259a “in which it was maintained among other things that the Priory of St. Martin was guaranteed of half the Customs of sea and land. The same Priory received a third part of the Customs on animals on a Sabbath day and the king two [parts] …” Easily from this it is made known that that Red Book was kept aside among public decrees before this time. See Edward Cook’s Institutes 4 chapter 6 page 60.]

This narrative does more than just establish the Red Book’s antiquity and status as a repository, although it does that. It also points out that the manuscript contains texts that others might want to take away. The Red Book preserves and validates rights (whether of the Priory of St. Martin’s or of all Englishmen). This manuscript represents the physicality of the laws and rights, which although threatened with removal, yet remain. By printing from this text, Twysden gives his own edition a similar status, that of replacing texts that have been lost and preserving rights that have been threatened. Through print, Twysden extends the authority of the Red Book and the LHP and protects it, perhaps, from “marauders” closer to home than the overseas despoilers of St. Martin’s. His insertion and subsequent deletion of a statement offering extra evidence of St. Martin’s Priory’s rights to a portion of the Customs fees from other manuscripts shows Twysden’s decision to focus on the Red Book as the symbol of preservation of English texts and rights, and the symbolic transfer of that status to his edition based on Red Book’s text of the LHP. Twysden’s focus on the materiality of books neither began nor ended with his work in the 1640s; it was a life-long concern. Jessup observes: In his own use of manuscripts Twysden noted carefully the probable date of the handwriting and where it was contemporary with the events recorded he was prepared to give greater credence to the document. The methods he used are now the accepted methods of diplomatic, but in the seventeenth century they represented a new approach to the study of historical documents. Not many of his contemporaries read old manuscripts with the critical attention that he devoted to them… .75

A concern for the codex as itself an artifact and not simply a passive conveyer of text also directed his concern for his library’s fate after his death. In 1637, he states in one of his notebooks that “I would not have them come after me sell any of my books, nay though they find I have two of one and the same sort, assure himself there was somewhat why I kept them… .”76 Sometimes that reason could have been simply to insure himself against loss or damage to a single copy, but his attitude was still unusual in its day – compare the now infamous decision made by a Bodleian librarian in the 1660s to discard its 1623 copy of Shakespeare’s plays (the First Folio) in favor of the newly printed third edition. The physical existence of important legal manuscripts such as the Old English laws and the LHP underscored the rights they detailed. Twysden’s abiding concern with the concrete materiality of his sources might have struck his colleagues as 75 76

Jessup, Sir Roger Twysden, 201–202. Quoted in Jessup, Sir Roger Twysden, 178.

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strange and beside the point, once the texts had been transmitted to print. Because modern bibliographic sciences are much more aligned with Twysden’s approach, we can underestimate or entirely miss his concerns with the manuscript context and survival. The flip side of this preoccupation was the fact that he used print to extend the reach and survival of these texts into the future.77 The printing of textual variants could preserve and endow the future with the fruit of multiple manuscripts – as indeed it did, since the two manuscripts from which Twysden listed variants of the LHP in the 1644 edition no longer survive. Especially in the face of historical and threatened present loss, the materiality of the laws and rights mattered just as much to Twysden as it did to those who produced artifacts such as swords and horns in court to witness land rights in subsequent centuries.78 Glossary and Index Twysden’s volume also included a glossary of Old English legal terms and an augmented index. The glossary is titled “Verba Anglica obscura & Glossata excerpta de Legibus regum Angliae, Videlicet Cnuti, Aluredi, Inae, Ethelstani, Eluredi, & Godrini, Edwardi, Edmundi, Ethelredi” [Obscure words taken and defined from the laws of the kings of England, namely Cnut, Alfred, Ine, Athelstan, Alfred & Godwin, Edward, Edmund, [and] Ethelred].79 Twysden wrote a short introduction to this addition and made minor revisions to it (designated below with \ /) in his handwritten notes to the Nostell Priory text: Moliente Typographo novam huius operis editionem, rogabar, ut si quid haberem, adderem: Sed non occurrebat pro tempore, & quibus jam permor \Incarcaratus eram in aedibus Lamethanis/ angustiis, quicquam praeter verba quaedam harum legum obscura, in antique codice olim Monasterii Sancti Augustini Cantuar. manu circa tempora Edwardi tertii exarato Glossata, et uti videbis aliqua ex parte interpretatione adhuc carentia; cui quidem defectui mederi pro viribus studuissem, nisi doctorum consortio jam destitutus, & librorum penuria laborans ei operi imparem me vidissem. Admonendus tamen es quod deprehendi Characterem, w, modo denotare th, modo vero w; ex inscitia fortasse scriptoris non animadvertentis differentiam inter Saxonicum, w, and þ: expressi igitur quod verisimilius duxi, et codicis figuram in margine connotavi.80 [With the printer of this work laboring at the new edition, I was asked if I had anything that I wished to add to it. But nothing came to mind in that time of Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), discusses the perception that print “preserved” ancient texts. 78 Dustin Frazier Wood, Anglo-Saxonism and the Idea of Englishness in EighteenthCentury Britain (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2020), especially chapter 2; Frazier Wood, “Charter Horns and the Early Modern Antiquarian Imagination,” Studies in Medievalism 26 (2017): 67–86. 79 Archaionomia, 225. 80 Archaionomia, 224. Bold font indicates insular minuscule letter forms in the original. The Glossary appears on pages 225–226 of Twysden’s Archaionomia edition. 77

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difficulties, in which I was securely imprisoned in Lambeth House, but these obscure words of these laws in an ancient book formerly of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, noted down and defined by a hand roughly of the time of Edward III, and you will see that to some extent the definitions are lacking in part; which defect I have labored with my resources to remedy, except that due to the destitution of the company of the learned then, and working in need of books, I appeared to myself unequal to the task. You must be cautioned nevertheless that I detected a letter, w to be written in the manner of th, truly w; probably from the writer’s inattention to the difference between Saxon w and þ: therefore, that which I believe to be more accurate I have expressed and record the reading in the margin of the book.]

Twysden does not give further information about the text, nor is it clear whether the glossary itself was found in the same “ancient book” as the laws from which it was extracted, or whether this information came from notes on the leaf or leaves from which Twysden copied it. Nowell had written a nearly identical word list on the flyleaf of his copy of Richard Howlett’s 1552 Abcedarium Anglico-Latinum in the 1560s.81 Nowell’s list, however, was not Twysden’s immediate source, for reasons I will detail, and the two together shed light on a corner of legal studies in medieval England. The glossary itself is extracted from the Quadripartitus, the companion-text to the LHP. In its translations of Old English laws, Quadripartitus gives Old English technical terms at several places, with a quick Latin translation or explanation of the term. The author of the glossary extracted these words with their definitions, as well as some Old English words that were not explicitly defined. If Twysden’s dating of the hand to the fourteenth century is accurate, and if his immediate source was the original and not a later copy, then this was done some two hundred years after the Quadripartitus itself was composed – evidence of the abiding interest in Old English legal materials in the later Middle Ages. This would also explain some of the difficulty the glossary’s composer had with the manuscript hand of his source, the copy of Quadripartitus in London, British Library Cotton Titus A.xxvii (Quadripartitus MS T), a manuscript of the late twelfth/early thirteenth century. The Titus manuscript is in fact from St. Augustine’s, so Twysden’s note provides additional evidence to that of orthography in identifying MS T as the glossary’s origin.82 If Twysden is correct about the date of the hand, then the original could perhaps be by Andrew Horn, an early fourteenth-century annotator of MS T, who frequently jotted Old English words in the margin of the text where they appeared. Horn certainly could have made a provisional glossary based on his marginalia. 81 I discussed the text and transcribed it in “Language, Land, and Law: Laurence Nowell’s Anglo-Saxon Studies in Sixteenth-Century England” (PhD diss., University of Illinois, 2005); the transcription and parts of that argument also appear in my “Laurence Nowell’s Old English Legal Glossary and His Study of Quadripartitus,” in Jurasinski, Oliver, and Rabin, English Law before Magna Carta, 251–267. At the time I wrote these discussions, I had not yet found the same glossary edited by Twysden, and erroneously believed it to be Nowell’s own composition. 82 For the evidence that the glossary was drawn from MS T, see Brackmann, “Laurence Nowell’s Old English Legal Glossary,” 259–265.

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Twysden’s and Nowell’s versions of this glossary are not entirely identical. Nowell’s list contains 150 items; Twysden’s 212. Nowell had limited space on his flyleaf, and in fact had to write the final few entries on the book’s title page, so he probably selected items from the list rather than copy all of it. Twysden may have done the same: some words such as “ealegafol” do not appear in his glossary but are in Nowell’s. Spelling of several headwords varies greatly, although this may be in part due to Nowell’s penchant for “reconstructing” Old English words when necessary.83 Nowell would have been no less aware of the orthographic failings of the glossary’s compiler (and the Quadripartitus itself) than Twysden, so where Twysden reads “Gavel heard” and Nowell “Gafelheorde,” we cannot conclude based on that alone that Nowell must have copied a different version of the glossary. Even when Nowell has entries that appear to be missing in Twysden, such as “Drinclafe. Retributio potus,” these are often a result of misreading on Twysden’s part or another of Nowell’s corrections, for Twysden has the obviously erroneous “Oryncelan. Retributio potus,” which is probably supposed to be the same word. Twysden’s list is more nearly alphabetical than Nowell’s, but that he could perhaps have done silently. Twysden, as he tells us in his introduction, made some additions to definitions, also complicating a comparison. However, there is some reason to believe that Twysden may in fact have had a different exemplar of the glossary than Nowell, which therefore must have existed in at least two medieval copies. Another copy of the glossary survives from the sixteenth century in London, British Library Lansdowne MS 171, a collection made for Sir Julius Caesar (1558–1636).84 Comparison among this text and those of Nowell and Twysden indicates that multiple versions of the original – Horn’s? – extraction from Cotton Titus A.xxvii existed. Some of the words that Nowell’s glossary has that Twysden’s does not, such as “Eder” and “Unfridman,” are in Lansdowne, so Nowell did not create these, at least, as his own word-formation. Some of the definitions also show Lansdowne closer to Nowell than Twysden. Where Nowell writes “Mægbot. Emenda pro morte cognati vel ami[ci]” [Mægbot. Compensation for the death of a kinsman or friend], Twysden defines the word “emenda pro morte hominis” [compensation for the death of a man] and the Lansdowne MS “emenda pro morte cognati” [compensation for the death of a kinsman]. On the other hand, Lansdowne and Twysden share readings that differ from Nowell. Nowell’s “Sepeteritid. Oviam corpora” [body of a sheep] has an obviously corrupt Old English headword; Twysden and Lansdowne have slightly better versions: “Scepe Terras” (Twysden) and “Scepe cerras” (Lansdowne). Multiple versions of this list would seem to have been in circulation, all struggling with similar issues regarding the orthography of Cotton Titus A.xxvii (or the initial extraction of words from it) but coming to slightly different conclusions. So much interest in a glossary containing so obviously corrupted entries; if nothing else, Twysden’s insertion of the Verba Anglica Obscura shows how desperately 83 For this practice in Nowell’s other lexicographical ventures, see Brackmann, Elizabethan Invention, 37–38. 84 I am indebted to Ian Lancashire for alerting me to the existence of this copy, which he has transcribed for University of Toronto’s Lexicons of Early Modern English site. A later copy, London, British Library MS Sloane 1301, has not yet been transcribed.

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scholars wanted to read ancient laws. Twysden, even though he was diffident in a later letter to Sir William Dugdale about his ability to read Old English, knew very well the glossary’s deep flaws, and yet, careful and meticulous man though he was, he printed it.85 It gave readers at least something to start with as they tried to learn Old English legal terms. It also provided even more evidence for post-Conquest interest in Old English laws, even to the reign of Edward III – and it is Twysden alone who gives any indication of the glossary’s provenance, either from his own deduction or from a note on the version from which he copied. Twysden makes as explicit as possible the long tradition in which he participated. After the glossary, Twysden places an “index” to the Norman codes he has edited – in fact, just a list of rubrics from the texts. This is followed by the index to the volume. Twysden’s index is based on Lambarde, but he carefully reworked the apparatus of his predecessor. Some of Lambarde’s headings are included, but not all; meanwhile, Twysden adds several items that do not appear in Lambarde’s index. On the whole, Twysden’s index headings are more discursive than Lambarde’s. They also have sub-headings under an original (as most modern indices do) instead of listing variations of a topic each as a separate item – although this decision may have been made by the printer, Roger Daniel. So, for instance, where Lambarde’s index lists “Æstimatio singulorum,” “Æstimatio Walli,” “Æstimatio ovis fæta,” “Æstimatio pagani,” and “Æstimatio primo praestanda” each as its own entry, Twysden’s version uses a general heading with subheadings (and some additional categories): Æstimatio singularum capitum 55.56. & 161.8. Pagani 6.31. Walli 4.2. Ovis fæte 11.56. Æstimatio primo praestanda 13.71 Æstimatio animalium quae perierint 96.7.

Rather than all items weighing equally, Twysden and Daniel structure his index to interpret the texts he edits and bring related ideas together. They highlight aspects of the text as more important, more noteworthy, than others. Twysden’s entries indicate topics that he expected his audience to be researching, as well as suggesting avenues for that research. For instance, where Lambarde contains a single word “Decalogus” in the D section, Twysden has in A “Aluredus á Decaloge suas leges pié auspicatur” [Alfred piously makes a ceremonial beginning of his laws from the Decalogue]. This is in addition to the entry under D, “Decalogus Saxonicé (excepto secondo praecepto) recitatus” [the Saxon Decalogue reiterated (without the second commandment)]. Twysden’s entries underscore the ways in which Old English law claimed to draw on Hebrew laws, highlighting the ideological correlation between the Germanic inhabitants of Britain and the ancient Israelites. Twysden dutifully points out that the Alfredian Decalogue lacks the second commandment, but his index makes clear that this prohibition was not itself lacking in pre-Norman legislation. Where Lambarde has a simple entry for “Idolatria,” Twysden clarifies the nature of the discussion “Idolatria prohibetur” [idolatry is prohibited] and adds an entry designating “Imagines prohibentur” [Likenesses are prohibited].

85

Jessup excerpts the letter in Sir Roger Twysden, 205.

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Of course, many of Twysden’s decisions in indexing are part of a general transformation in paratextual practice from Lambarde’s time to his own. As Ann Blair observes: In the course of the sixteenth century printed indexes became increasingly numerous, voluminous and systematic, offering a less idiosyncratic and more multi-purpose guide to a work than commonplace notes. The utility and power of indexes was acknowledged not only by readers who requested them and printers who supplied them, but also by censors who targeted them and authors who in indexing their own works used them as devices for highlighting features that might otherwise have remained hidden from view.86

These changes stemmed in part from shifts in early modern readers’ expectations; as Andrew Pettegree observes: “The index, at first an occasional and somewhat haphazard feature of the printed book, became increasingly systematic, and a standard feature of scholarly texts.”87 This should not, however, blind us to the fact that the index also has interpretive power. Certainly, this was true for Wheelock’s Bede, the index of which, discussed previously, extends the ideological thrust of his edition and its focus on puritan concerns. Twysden’s index, with its descriptive entries, also guides readers’ interpretations of the information to which the index points them. For instance, in his entry “Unitati Christianae religionis solicite prospexit R. Canutus” [King Cnut carefully provided for the unity of the Christian religion], Twysden not only points to a particular moment in Cnut’s codes, but suggests how the reader should interpret Cnut, and his reign, more broadly. The shift in indexing conventions that guided Twysden’s work should not disguise the impact the newer, more “modern” index would have had on readers. Presenting ancient texts with contemporary paratextual practices could itself argue for their intellectual currency. To encounter the laws in Twysden’s edition was to find an impressive folio volume, with double columns on each leaf instead of the facing page translations of Lambarde’s quarto. Readers would also have, at least in the latter part of the volume, an array of manuscript variants presented to them, as well as a thorough and expanded index. The volume’s layout and paratexts displayed the weighty yet important contents in a form that Twysden’s contemporaries would have recognized as scholarly. The Laws in Twysden’s Later Works Twysden’s work on laws has obvious ties with his extensive manuscript treatise on English constitutional history, Certaine Considerations upon the Government of England. The only one of his works to be printed in (relatively) modern times, it was

86 Ann Blair, “Annotating and Indexing Natural Philosophy,” in Books and the Sciences in History, ed. Nick Jardine and Marina Frasca-Spada (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 69–89. 87 Andrew Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 294.

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edited by John Mitchell Kemble in 1848. Kemble’s version mostly agrees with a draft manuscript copy in Twysden’s own hand, now Maidstone, Kent History and Library Centre MS CKS-U49/Z15. In a note to the title in the manuscript (not represented in Kemble), Twysden writes “begun 1639 and ended at my being prisoner in Lambeth but revised often since.” The much-corrected and altered manuscript itself witnesses to the extensive revision and rethinking this tract, obviously dear to Twysden’s heart, continued to undergo throughout his life; he could not leave it alone, even when he (apparently) had believed it finished after he was freed from Lambeth. The book draws on his deep understanding of the past and states his own historically grounded views of political philosophy. Twysden’s concern for limited monarchy and for preserving protections for the English all find expression here, and the Certaine Considerations sheds light on the augmented Archaionomia as well as how Twysden continued to understand those laws throughout the rest of his life. Laws provided special evidence for the historical investigator, and not the same evidence that they might for a trained lawyer such as Lambarde. Twysden explains: “The truth is, the law delivered by an historian is much differing from that comes from a lawyer, as declaring not only the fact, but the policy, reason, and matter of state in it, where the other resolves onely how it stood with the law, and upon what poynt in that it was adjudged… .”89 Twysden ascribes wider concerns to the historian. In a manuscript of planned additions to his 1648 treatise The Commoner’s Liberty, his answer to William Prynne’s A Plea for the Lords, he notes the difficulty of determining the political and legal realities of post-Conquest England: 88

Wee are now come to one of the great mutations this kingdom did ever undergoe for though there is no doubt both the Saxons and Romans made as great yet certaynly of this as the later wee have more knowledge yet how things past in those tymes wee must as well guess by that was done, as by what writers left beehynd them, who for the most part beeing Munks few of them that were Saxons did wish the Normans well.90

On the other hand, Norman historians fall under the “suspition of Flattery.”91 A corrective to contemporary reporting biases, in other words, is to focus on “that was done” – on actual deeds, oaths, and legislation. The Commoner’s Liberty, which Jessup calls “a chip off the … Certain Considerations,” sets out the importance of the law codes for both texts.92 Twysden’s edition of early English laws supplies these more trustworthy historical indicators. Twysden drew on his own editorial efforts in the Certaine Considerations. Early in the tract, he observes “That this kingdome is called a monarchy is playne to any hath read our ould historians and lawes.”93 His marginal citations, however, only 88 Twysden, Certaine Considerations upon the Government of England, ed. John Mitchell Kemble (London, 1848). 89 Ibid., 23. 90 Maidstone, Kent History and Library Centre MS CKS-U47 Z2-3, p. 61. 91 Ibid., 62. 92 Jessup, Sir Roger Twysden, 188. 93 Certaine Considerations, 15.

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mention laws and legal texts: “Ethelwerdus, lib.iv, cap 4, fol. 482; Leg Ed. Conf. p. 148; Leg. Wl. I. cap 59 p 171; Dialog. De Scach MSS in libro Rubeo, lib I. cap 3.” Page numbers, where given, are to the 1644 Archaionomia. Certainly, the use of the word “monarchy” would hardly have been contentious, and Twysden might well have felt little need to elaborate the point. Still, as he continues in his discussion of the form of early monarchy, he knows he will have critics on both extremes: I am confident I shall displease such as hold it altogether by descent or inheritance brought in by conquest, and not satisfie the others, who hold it a right in the people so inherent to elect their kings, that the English nor any other monarch whatsoever can have any other title to the crowne originally but from the free consent of the people.94

His middle position comes in part from his belief that the foundational period was pre-Conquest England. Kingship was largely familial, but selection (or at the very least consent) by the people was also required. Cnut, savvy ruler that he was, understood this even though he acquired the English crown largely by force: “And, indeede, I doe not know whether ever any stranger did indeavor more to win the natives unto him then this prince, or did more to shewe he did not come in by the tytle of conquest, then [Cnut] did, who was the first of the Danish race.”95 Cnut’s strategy for ruling was to deny that his rule was by force rather than law. It was more than just talk, since he maintained local authorities rather than centralize penalties and procedures: “whereas the kingdome before the Conquest [of the Danes] was governed by three severall lawes, West Sexenelage, Merchenlage, and Denelage … he sets downe what was the right of the crowne, according to each of them, without inserting any newe addition whatever.”96 Cnut’s actions give Twysden an interpretive framework for those of William of Normandy. Edward the Confessor had sworn to uphold the laws of Edgar, which “were in the king’s oath provided to bee kept, and on all occasions desired by the people and made good unto them by the reiterated promises of princes.”97 “Princes,” in the plural, indicates that this continued past the rule of Edward into that of William I and his successors. Twysden’s evidence for this aspect of early Norman rule comes from the laws of William’s son, Henry I – the LHP: Hee [Henry I] seemes to me to have very justly kept his word, not onely restoring the lawes of the Confessor, and the customes of the countrey, by him called “lex provinciae,” but enumerating the prerogatives of the crowne, and the penalties the subject lay under for severall offences, advising in cases of difficulty to have recourse to Westsaxe, as the fountain; which, as I beefore touched, had beene very improper, had hee not restored the English lawes.98

94 95 96 97 98

Ibid., 22. Ibid., 30. Ibid., 35. Ibid. Ibid., 44.

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Twysden recognized the LHP’s debt to the (translated) Old English law codes on which its author drew and grasped the importance of this to his argument. Twysden’s treatise continually points to the LHP alongside the Laws of St. Edward as evidence of legal continuity from “Saxon” England until well into the later Middle Ages. He states that at the conclusion of the civil wars of the twelfth century, Henry II “wisely forseeing nothing could give a people a durable happinesse, or settle any kingdome in a continewed way of subsistance, but the due administration of justice, at his very entrance renewed his grandfather’s lawes” – those of Henry I.99 Henry II’s decision to re-issue the LHP met with wide approval, Twysden notes, “And certaynly those were happy dayes, for Magna Charta refers things to bee carryed no otherwise then they were in his tyme; a certayne token the law was then duely administered.”100 In fact, the reign of Henry I became a touchstone in the document to which King John was forced to assent: “But the prince [was], 1215, prest to confirme Magna Charta, conteining for the most part no other then the auntient rights and customes of the realme, extracted out of the laws of the Confessor and Henry the First… .”101 Magna Carta finalized the status of the LHP as safeguards for the English to retain their Saxon-derived laws and rights. The LHP formed a necessary part of the “ancient rights” sought by the barons at Runnymede. After the multiple confirmations of Magna Charta by John’s son Henry III, the status of the document and its approach to legal history were canonized beyond all debate: Since when Magna Charta … was never doubted to bee law; and in that it doth conteyne in effect no other than the auntient customes of the kingdom, extracted from the lawes of Henry the 1 and St. Edward, and certified by oath, 1223, I may call it the foundation of our common law; and though in some few perticulers (apparently for the common good) it did change those usages, yet, if I should say that never people in Europe have had the rights of monarchy better limyted, with the preservation of the subject’s liberty then the English, from this basis, I might perhaps not bee justly found fault with… .102

The LHP form a major piece of evidence, inseparable both from the Old English laws from which they were extracted and from the confirmations of rights that referred back to them from the thirteenth century onward. Twysden’s early Norman addition to Lambarde is not merely an adjunct to the Old English laws. The LHP shows how crucial and relevant the Old English laws were after the Conquest, and thereby in the Caroline constitutional crisis. With that foundation laid, Twysden’s arguments about the “Saxon” origin of Parliament and of coronation oaths that limit the monarch’s power become relevant to the present day, a continuity that may not always be apparent but still remains. As he admits, “If any expect to find in the Saxon tymes such formall houses of parliament

99 100 101 102

Ibid., 52. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 58. Ibid., 59–60.

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as are now, certainly he will be deceived. During the eptarchy the whole kingdome could not bee called into one place… .”103 He continues: But I conceive it enough to prove the Saxons beeginers of parlyments, or at least that they were in their tyme, if it can bee shewn in the councells held by them, the bishops, noblemen … and commons, were present in those consultations; though perhaps there neither was a formall calling by writ, nor of sending burgesses for towns or knights for shires, till after the conquest… .104

Twysden believes that these counsels, however different in surface procedure, still implied consent of the English to their kings’ edicts. This is the bedrock of his historically derived political theory, for “This maxime that the king cannot alone alter the law, etc. is (I conceave) the basis or grownd of all the liberty and franchise of the subject.”105 The “basis and ground” was laid deep in Saxon history and persisted until his present day. That Twysden saw timeless rights in the law was not unique to him, although he is especially careful to articulate it. His reflection on liberty as an abstract concept also resonates with the concerns of his own day: [English liberties] did precede those writers or statues which mention them, and were a rule or square to judge and condemne what is in them complayned of. To number them all, as perhaps one might the graunts of princes, is impossible, they beeing a stopp to all novelties whatsoever which can any way happen either by ill interpreting the law or otherwise, so as the subject may have just cause of complaint that hee is opprest. These liberties doe thus differ from the concessions of kings, in that this latter is not atteyned but by his favor and graunt, whereas the other are such rights as have conserved this kingdom in freedome since the first estabilishing of it in the state of monarchy.106

Liberty supports stability in the polity, and the evidence is rooted in early medieval laws. Examining how conceptions of the Middle Ages (defined by those conceiving of it) bring the present into existence, Chris Jones argues, “in stating that British culture from the Renaissance onwards began to site the origin of all its institutions and traditions somewhere in the Middle Ages, we are saying nothing short of the fact that British culture is ‘medieval,’ and that, taken with its other forms and names such as ‘Gothic,’ medievalism can be seen as one of the enduring and defining characteristics of British literature” – and much the same can be said for its historiography.107 Early insular history is the sine qua non of Englishness. Twysden’s writings, I argue, exemplify this mode of medievalism in the early seventeenth century, as he claims the medieval isn’t actually past – it remains in legal rights that have not changed.

Ibid., 121. Ibid. 105 Ibid., 89. 106 Ibid., 82. 107 Chris Jones, “Medievalism in British Poetry,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism, ed. Louise D’Arcens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 15. 103

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Twysden elides historical distance in his discussion of ancient rights, at least in writing for publication. The observation with which this chapter opened, that Twysden’s understanding of his forests is analogous to his understanding of English law, can help us make sense of his views. Trees in a forest may fall (or be timbered) and new trees are planted, but the existence of the woodland itself remains – and it is, in most significant ways, the same forest. At moments, one may observe superficial alterations in the laws, but these are not significant. Twysden’s belief in English liberty as a form of what we might now call civil rights required that any indication of distance between medieval and modern be kept as minimal as possible. The ancient roots of the law still showed in the rights protecting English subjects.

4 Monuments and Memory: William Somner’s Antiquities of Canterbury and Poems on the Regicide

I

n 1654, William Somner began receiving funds from Sir Henry Spelman’s and Sir Simonds D’Ewes’s endowment to support early medieval studies, becoming the second medievalist to be paid for his work.1 Both he and his predecessor in the endowment, Abraham Wheelock, produced impressive publications. Wheelock produced the first editions of the Old English translation of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica and ASC, described in chapter two, and in 1659 Somner succeeded in compiling and seeing through publication the Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum, the first Old English dictionary ever printed. Even though Wheelock gave actual lectures on “Saxon” and Somner did not, Somner was arguably the more important, as his dictionary not only crowned his own intellectual arc but enabled subsequent explorations by those wishing to read the language of England before the Norman Conquest. The foundational nature of this publication, combined with Somner’s receipt of funding directly for his historical and lexicographical efforts, has made him seem recognizably professional. At the same time, as this chapter will argue, Somner believed that monuments from the past exerted force in the present. The past he studied was not only relevant but still active; its agency and immediacy made his work urgent in his own day. Somner’s view of the past as an active present force calls into question our assumptions about “professional” medievalism. Dinshaw, in her influential discussion of medievalism, pushes back against the way our modern view of time shapes our beliefs about how medieval studies “ought” to be conducted by professionals in the period: Kathryn Lowe details the process by which Somner, although not at a university and not tasked with lecturing, received the funds: “‘The Oracle of his Countrey’? William Somner, Gavelkind, and Lexicography in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in The Recovery of Old English: Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Timothy Graham (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), 281–300. Other important works on Somner are Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 181–189; Rachel Ann Fletcher, “‘Most Active and Effectual Assistance’ in the Correspondence of Sir William Dugdale and William Somner,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 78 (2018): 166–184; and Kathryn Lowe, “William Somner, S 1622, and the Editing of Old English Charters,” Neophilologus 83 (1999): 291–297. Works focusing on his lexicographical endeavors specifically will be cited below and in the next chapter. 1

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I offer this book as a contribution to a broad and heterogeneous knowledge collective that values various ways of knowing that are derived not only from positions of detachment but also – remembering the etymology of amateur – from positions of affect and attachment, from desires to build another kind of world.2

Dinshaw observes that the human perception of time is often contingent – that is, we do not realize it passes unless something changes, a notion dating back to Aristotle. Nonetheless, our post-Enlightenment heritage still requires us to conceive of time as a series of measurements, minutes passing away into hours and days, irrevocably lost to us as they pass by and demanding that we account for them as a commodity. Dinshaw argues that this conception of time intertwines with our notion of “professionals” in the realm of historical and cultural studies – namely those who are paid for their time spent in activities of historical recovery. The historical narrative of progress thereby created also vindicates the separation between the professional medievalist and the dilettante, Dinshaw states: “Time-as-measurement hitched to Western European concepts of progress toward a singular goal is also, I maintain, the time of specialization, expertise, professionalization; amateurism is everything the professional leaves behind on the modern train forward of progress.”3 Non-professionals are excluded from the rigid temporal framework in which academic medievalists conduct their work: “Operating on a different time scheme from professional activities, amateurs’ activities do not require punching a time clock and do not follow a predestined career path, since they are not wage labor.”4 Somner, of course, was a pre-Enlightenment figure, working before the time-as-measurement worldview had achieved its current cultural hegemony – before the triumphant professionalist narrative and the rejection of “amateurs” from medieval studies. As such, the “temporal heterogeneity” (to use Dinshaw’s phrase) in Somner’s desire for the past could and did form part of his research, in ways that have much to teach contemporary medieval studies as it confronts its broader social and cultural implications.5 As mentioned in the introduction, those of us with institutional posts have realized we must be part of wider conversations about the understanding of and desires for early medieval culture in contemporary discourse and particularly must push back against “Anglo-Saxonism” as a shorthand for white supremacism. Somner was recognizably professional and has been called the “most proficient Anglo-Saxonist of the [seventeenth] century.”6 He also engaged in wider cultural discourse, particularly in his chorographic work and his poems about the regicide. Somner’s medieval studies unabashedly sprang from “desires to build another kind of world,” and this chapter and the next will closely examine how that played out in his writing. Examining Somner as someone who bridges the gap between professional disinterest and amateur investment, we can question the validity of the supposedly Carolyn Dinshaw, How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 6 (emphasis original). 3 Ibid., 20–21. 4 Ibid., 22. 5 Ibid., 41. 6 Parry, Trophies, 181. 2

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self-evident binary. Somner’s studies were both professional and motivated by his Laudian and royalist desires as he sought to recover and even re-create the past. His religious and political convictions not only shaped but drove his medieval studies. In the face of the increasing republican and puritan hegemony that resulted in the Commonwealth and Protectorate, Somner’s culturally “out of sync” religious and political sympathies drove his chronologically “out of sync” conception of England’s early medieval past.7 Those aspects of Somner’s work that deliberately claim the past in the now, imagining it as present and powerful despite – or because – of its absence do not stem from an “amateur” sloppiness in his theorizing or methodology. Instead, they are fundamental to his work as one of the first paid early medievalists. This chapter and the next will trace Somner’s uses of and desires for the past in several of his works, including not only the obviously trans-temporal ones such as The Antiquities of Canterbury and the Dictionarium but also his poems on the execution of Charles I. Somner’s wide range of publications allows us to examine his medievalism and contemporary desires in a variety of literary modes, from chorographic to poetic to lexicographic. This chapter will often refer to “monuments” – both those Somner studied, and those he created. Monuments were an important visual and literary category in early modern England. The most basic meaning, structures and texts to commemorate the dead, meant that monuments were a site of gender, class, and religious performances for families of the deceased.8 Poetic epitaphs, whether actually inscribed on grave markers, printed in books, or circulated in manuscript, formed a literary genre with a wide readership.9 To think about the past is to think about the dead; trans-temporal desires give the dead agency to speak. To write monuments for one’s contemporary dead is also trans-­temporal – it extends their agency to the future. The persistence of such structures and texts across time also meant that they were crucial sites for historical knowledge, of course, and Somner often refers to records and documents that do not explicitly commemorate the dead as “monuments.” Doing so gave these charters and other texts agency, for as Peter Sherlock observes: “Monuments are designed to be deliberate messages from the past to posterity. Unlike most historical sources, which are read, analysed, dissected and contextualized by the inquisitive historian, a monument is the self-proclaimed voice of the past.”10 Somner’s understanding of not only tombs and inscriptions but also buildings, charters, and other documents as witnesses to the past and agents in the present guided his own textual monuments to the slain Charles I, who was Dinshaw, How Soon Is Now?, 4. Peter Sherlock, “Patriarchal Memory: Monuments in Early-Modern England,” in Practices of Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Megan Cassidy-Welch and Peter Sherlock (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 279–299; and Jessica Barker, Stone Fidelity: Marriage and Emotion in Medieval Tomb Sculpture, paperback ed. (2020; Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2022). 9 Claire Williams, “Manuscript, Monument, Memory: The Circulation of Epitaphs in the 17th Century,” Literature Compass 11 (2014): 573–582. 10 Peter Sherlock, Monuments and Memory in Early Modern England (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 1. For literary depictions of monuments and their inscribed texts, see Scott Newstok, Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs beyond the Tomb (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and Brian Chalk, Monuments and Literary Posterity in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 7

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denied a burial marker after his hasty interment in St. George’s chapel, Windsor. In the following chapter, I will examine how Somner’s temporal heterogeneity, overlaying the past and the present, also shaped his lexicographical work in the ground-breaking Dictionarium. The Antiquities of Canterbury Somner’s 1640 Antiquities of Canterbury narrated the city’s geographic, civic, and episcopal history in a tradition of chorography that stretched back to Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent and continued unabated for centuries. Somner’s “Preface to the Reader” opens with a sweeping statement of trans-temporal desire: It is the observation of some ancient Philosophers (who also prove it by divers good argument) that all men, for the most part, have a natural desire to immortality. But this we all know by common approv’d experience, that Man that is borne of a Woman is of short continuance… . Some therefore who knew not of any other world after this, in defence of natures wayes and providence, maintained, that she had in some manner satisfied the desire of man in making him generative … But if there be any immortality in this, it can be but an immortality of the body, not of the minde, the best and chiefest part of man. The immortality of the minde (all that it is capable of in this world, which though it be not immortality properly, yet may certainely much conduce to allay the complaints of mortall men concerning their shortnesse of life) doth, as I conceive, especially depend from that Memoria praeteritorum, and Providentia futurorum (Remembrance of things past and Foresight of things to come) which the Latine Orator speakes of.11

The desire to avoid the experience of time forms part of the human condition: not just Somner, but “all men” desire to live forever. The claim itself extends through time, as the “ancient” Philosophers had already “proven” this to be so. And yet, the very characterization of the proofs as “ancient” shows that we operate within time, claiming temporal distance as an authorizing agent even in an argument about the human desire to reject time’s results. Somner’s solution is to separate mind and body – the body must feel the results of time, but the mind, “the best and chiefest part of man,” can in fact extend through time through the faculties of memory and prediction. Memory can be augmented, as Somner goes on to explain: As for the first, he certainly that knowes no more of the world (the time of a mans life being so short as it is) then what hath happened in his time, though he may be in yeares, and perchance very old in regard of his body, yet in regard of his minde and knowledge, he can be accounted but a very child… . If therefore a man living in a place of note, can by his industry, out of undoubted Records and Monuments (if such be the happy condition of the place, that it afford them) certainly finde, Somner, Antiquities of Canterbury or a Survey of That Ancient Citie with the Suburbs and Cathedrall, Containing Principally Matters of Antiquity in Them All (London, 1640), [1–2]; hereinafter cited in this chapter as Antiquities. The preface has no page numbers; I have provided numbers in [ ] for ease of reference, assigning page [1] to the first page. 11

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what have been the severall both materiall alterations (as in respect of buildings, and the like) and historicall events, that have happened to it for divers ages before, and can derive the present times and places that he lives in, by a continuall series of chances and alterations from such or such a beginning, I doe not see (if knowledge be granted to be the life of the soule, as the soule is the life of the body) but he may reckon his yeares according to the proportion of his knowledge, accounting himselfe to have lived so many yeares, as he is able truly and historically to give an account of.12

The age of the mind should be calculated not by years – by measured time – but by its trans-temporal understanding. Such understanding is, in this description, strongly tied to place. Somner admits the potential obstacles in apprehending the past of a location – limited availability of records and the difficulty in certitude about one’s conclusions – but nonetheless any years that the mind could “truly and historically give an account of ” would count in its life span. Somner requires knowledge both architectural and cultural; he demands that one know how structures have changed as well as the actions of earlier residents. His formulation also posits the medieval period as the starting point for this longevity since that is the earliest point from which “undoubted records and Monuments” still exist. The second part of Somner’s formula for immortality also requires understanding the past: “Now for that other part of immortality, which is Providentia futurum, even this hath such dependance of the former, as that he that is well vers’d in the knowledge of things past, may probably foresee what will happen in time to come… .”13 No doubt Somner’s statements about the immortality granted through medievalism are somewhat tongue-in-cheek; ironically elaborate claims appear often in early modern prefaces and addresses to readers. However, his statements should not be entirely written off as fluff, either. While none of Somner’s readers would have really believed that actual immortality resulted from their serious perusal of the volume, his description of the desire to cross temporal boundaries rings true. According to Somner, studying the past was participatory. Understanding what has previously stood or happened at a location enables the historian to extend their own mind back beyond the measured years of a normal human lifespan. The notion of living in both the present and past appealed to Somner and his audience. Somner observes that his study of Canterbury comes in part from personal loyalty, as it is his birthplace and his home. However, Canterbury is the point of origin for more than just Somner himself, and the study of Canterbury needs little explanation in his mind: But the chiefe reason, in my judgement, ought to be, because from thence first the faith of Christ was propagated and derived unto other parts of the Realme of England, after the Saxons our fore-fathers were become Lords and possessors of it… . And doe not all piously-affected English owe so much honour and respect to the place, from whence the light of Christs glorious Gospell first shined unto their fore-fathers, as to desire to be acquainted with the present and past estate of it?14 12 13 14

Antiquities, [3]. Ibid. Ibid., [7].

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This statement ignores the Christian missions to the north of early medieval Britain from Christian Ireland before Augustine’s arrival in Canterbury. Somner was well read enough to have known about them, and his omission must have been deliberate. His claim (however inaccurate) that Canterbury was the sole point of origin for the Christianization of the “Saxons, our forefathers” means that the learned reader of his book can move through time to the foundational moment for contemporary England – the time when the Saxons took up Christianity and began the legacy that Protestant England believed it had inherited as a chosen people of God. Somner also locates in Canterbury the origin of the kind of intellectual training that allows him to explore the past: I have spoken of religion onely, but I might adde humanitatem, learning, and good literature too. For with religion came learning: and in the dayes of Theodorus the seventh Archbishop of Canterbury (if publike schools wherein all good Arts and Sciences, philosophy especially, are learnedly taught and professed make an University) Canterbury was a famous University: yea, and was afterwards a patterne (as some have written and published) for the erection and foundation of a famous University in this land.15

Somner’s claim that Canterbury was the first university alludes to the widespread, (mostly) good-natured wrangling between graduates of Oxford and Cambridge over which university came first. Somner (wisely not naming which “famous University” was first founded) claims that either one would have only been following the model of the “University” that had been at Canterbury. Even if the school at Canterbury was too early to have used the word university, its emphasis on “Arts and Sciences” qualifies it. A familiar temporal challenge between the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford over primacy, a status that can only exist if the measured conception of time holds supreme, means little in the trans-temporal exploration that Somner wishes to undertake. Indeed, given the participatory nature of his investigation, whereby the learner about the past can be understood to have mentally “lived” in it, neither university can claim precedence over those who read his book. Despite the introduction’s rather startling claims, in his main text Somner remains conservative about what does and does not constitute evidence. Although his introduction had posited the post-Celtic, pre-Conquest period as the origin for the English genetically (“our forefathers”) and spiritually, he acknowledges that evidence of the city’s physical spaces before the Normans is sparse: Now what was the generall state and condition of it in either the Britains, Romans, Saxons, or Danes times: no man may exact or expect any accompt of me, in regard no History or other Record enables me to show it. The Survey taken of it in the Conquerours time, and recorded in the booke of Doomesday, is the first and most ancient description of it anywhere extant.16

Along with the lack of textual description, changes in building practice reduced evidence for Canterbury’s structures before the Normans: 15 16

Ibid., [8]. Ibid., 4.

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Indeed it is observed, that, before the Normans advent, most of our Monasteries and Church-buildings were of Wood (all the Monasteries in my Realme, saith King Edgar, in his Charter to the Abbey of Malmesbury, dated the yeare of Christ 974, to the outward sight are nothing but worme-eaten and rotten Timber and Boordes:) and that upon the Norman Conquest such Timber-fabrickes grew out of use and gave place to stone buildings raised upon Arches: a forme of structure introduced by that Nation furnished with stone from Cane in Normandy.17

However, part of Somner’s evidence that stone structures largely post-date the Conquest is a text from a century before it – Edgar’s charter. Somner draws heavily on charter evidence in the Antiquities; he edits and prints several of them as appendices to the volume. What the “Saxons” lack in stone they make up in parchment and ink. In the section of the book on “Temporall Government,” Somner observes: Neverthelesse the City still had a Portreve to superintend and rule over it. For in the same Archbishop Anselmes time, one Calveal, by the name and title of Portgreva, is mentioned as a witnesse to an exchange of houses betweene the Church, and the City; the Deed whereof, for the old English-sake, and because withall a good evidence of that ages plainnesse and simplicity, as much (it seemes) affecting the Imperatorian Brevity, as ours abhorres it (an age truly then in which men were never more extraordinarily cautious, and yet never more ordinarily cousened) it shall not be amisse here verbatim to insert.18

The charter appears in a typeface that imitates insular minuscule, followed by Somner’s translation into Early Modern English. The text demonstrates the use of English after the Conquest, as Somner acknowledges that it dates from Anselm’s episcopacy.19 It also serves as an example for his readers of “plainness” in legal writing, something he felt was missing in his own day. The visual difference of the “Old English” font sets it apart: documents from the later Middle Ages are printed in the same italic font that Somner uses for proper nouns and emphasis and do not therefore contrast visually with the main text to the extent that his Old English fragments do. The Old English is both visually engaging and foreign, simple in style and yet requiring translation. The reader views the past directly by the mechanism of the font used for the Old English charters. Somner maintains a participatory mode of discourse as he often describes his readers as actual visitors to the past. His discussion of the city walls and gates takes the metaphor of a perambulation, a walk on which the reader joins him. He concludes his discussion of Ridingate by observing a recent change: Let me onely acquaint you that over this Ridingate, was sometimes, and that in the memorie of many yet living, a Bridge lying upon the underprops or Buttresses Ibid., 156–157. Ibid., 365. 19 Rachel Fletcher discusses Somner’s ideas of linguistic periodization in “Pushing the Boundary: The Periodisation Problem in Dictionaries of Old English” (PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2021). 17

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yet standing on either side the Gate; by which when it stood, a man might have continued his walk from the lesser to the greater Dondgehill, and é contra, but it is decayed and gone. And so I walk on to Worthgate. Of which I can say but little, and the rather because I am not as yet perswaded to be of their opinion who think that Winchep-gate, that now is, and so called, is the ancient Worthgate. For my part, I rather conceive the gate now disgated sometime leading out of the Castle-yard into Winchep to be Worthgate… .20

Somner’s metaphor of an actual physical walk around the walls controls his text to the point that a now-missing bridge interrupts his route. Yet even as contemporary structures (or their absence) govern his description’s order, he also presents himself and the reader as walking to places that are not there – Worthgate no longer exists by that name. The move from present to past is represented physically, now in one time, now in another, spanning and combining various historical moments as the walker/reader moves through Canterbury. The slippage between the physical status of past Canterbury and Somner’s bodily movement through it is also expressed in terms of “Natural Philosophy,” observation of the natural world: “Come we now to Queningate. But where shall we seeke it? There is none of the name at this day, and few know where it stood. I sought as narrowly for it as for Ants-paths, and at length having found it will shew you where it was. It stood against the Priory of Christ Church… .”21 Somner’s search for the past location of Queningate bears comparison to an early modern student of nature tracking ants. The natural world, to risk some over-generalization, was proving comprehensible based on observation and the data it produced, without recourse to supernatural or moralizing explanation.22 Somner was of course writing before Isaac Newton’s Principia kicked off what most modern scholars regard as “the Enlightenment” proper, yet the intellectual groundwork for Newton was being laid by writers such as Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and William Harvey (1578–1657).23 Educated readers were beginning to see interest in such natural phenomena as ant colonies as laudable; Somner’s comparison of his own antiquarian studies with natural philosophy aligns his exploration of the past with the most cutting-edge intellectual pursuits. In doing so, he also blurs significant distinctions, however. Searching for Queningate does not rely on observation of the physical, extant world, but on textual sources. Somner extrapolates from them to the physical world, casting his search for the vanished gate in terms that imply he sought it physically, not just textually. Epidemiology, another facet of natural philosophy, also shapes Somner’s understanding of the past – in this case, more directly as he discusses the city hospital: Antiquities, 20–21. Ibid., 29. 22 For this period’s advancements in scientific theory, see Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform 1626–1660 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1976). 23 Bacon’s 1620 Novum Organum moved toward a theory resembling the modern scientific method; Harvey’s 1628 De Motu Cordis first described the circulation of the blood. Webster, Great Instauration, 336–342; 137–144; Thomas Wright, William Harvey: A Life in Circulation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 20 21

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I will now crosse the meadows and river and make up to Herbaldowne, to take a survey of the Hospitall there. It lies also (I confesse) out of the liberty of the City. Yet, for neighbourhood sake, and in regard it was built for the benefit of leprous people of the City (as I conceive:) and continues a harbor to the aged poore… I have thought it worthy our survey. Before I enter upon which (because this was also a Lazar house) let me take a little notice of the wondrous commonnesse of that loathsome disease, the Elephantiasy, or Leprosie in this kingdome of old time: which Mr. Cambden thinks entered this Iland with the Normans. A rare disease amongst us (thanked be God) in these dayes, and from what cause so much abounding as in our forefathers, is not now of us easily discovered. It seems to have been a nationall malady, and accordingly in all parts provision made for receit and relief of such persons as that (as I may call it) comitiall disease had marked out for sequestration from publick commerce.24

Somner seems to agree with Camden, or at least does not question his judgment that leprosy came with the Normans – making the “English-Saxons” free of the disease, as Somner says his contemporary English are. Somner takes care not only to point out that leprosy changed the physical structure of Norman-era cities and their hinterlands, but to elucidate when it was most prevalent. The side comment here does much to undermine the Normans, carriers of a “national” malady that was nevertheless unknown in both pre-Conquest and Early Modern England, as biologically foundational to the modern polity. Somner’s history also confronts current religious debates: For the first (the Antiquity of Archbishops, &c) I shall not need take much paines to search it out. For truth is, the Antiquity both of the name and office of an Archbishop is already so fully laid downe and proved to my hand by the worthily admired Author of the Defense of the answer to the Admonition, and so vindicated and cleered from the aspersion of Antichristianisme (wherewith some late turbulent Innovators have beene pleased falsly to stigmatize them)… .25

While Somner claims he will not spend much time on the “antiquity” of archbishops, he certainly makes clear his views of those who dislike them. Discussing an argument that the institution of episcopacy grew from the “Flamins” of Roman pagan practice, he dismisses its relevance: Let these Cavillers (which distasting our Aristrocracy (for such is our Church governement) and desirous, as it seemeth, of an Anarchy, a Church like to Plinies Acephali, all body and no head) be allowed their so much desired premisses; yet still a non sequitur will attend on their conclusion. For were it (think they) a good collection to say that because there is now a Minister of the Gospell placed, where in the Popes time there was a massing Priest: Ergo the Ministery of the Gospell is framed by the example of massing Priests?26 24 25 26

Antiquities, 80. Ibid., 223–224. Ibid., 225.

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Somner appeals to a Protestant commonality with his opponents; he argues that since replacing Catholic priests with Protestant ministers does not make the latter Catholic, an episcopal government is not pagan just for following a pagan administrative model. He regards anti-episcopal views as supporting anarchy in the church as in the state, and piously prays that they will never get the upper hand: And so enough of this, onley pray we that Anarchy never get possession of our Stage, lest Confusion shut of the Scene. And that maugre the malice of all turbulent Innovators, our Church may still glory in this (the commendation given her by the late learned Isaac Casaubon) that she Inter vel excessu vel defectu peccantes mediam viam sequitur [follows a middle way between the faults of excess and deficit]. And may continue to deserve that Encomium given her of divine Herbert… .27

Somner’s theatrical metaphor of the “Stage” of the church, and the confusion that he feels threatens its “scene,” is a direct response to those who felt that the church and its rituals were too theatrical, too gaudily full of spectacle. He continues by reprinting in full George Herbert’s poem “The British Church.” The inclusion of Herbert’s poem deserves some comment; at first blush, a poem published not even ten years earlier sits oddly in a book on “antiquities.” Although Frank Brownlow argues that Herbert’s title, “The British Church,” gestures toward the myth of a pure church existing in Britain from the time of the apostles, Somner omits this title and goes directly into the poem’s first lines:28 I joy deare Mother, when I view Thy perfect lineaments and hiew, Both sweet and bright. Beauty in thee takes up her place, And dates her letters from thy face, When she doth write.29

The main thrust of the poem is to establish the British church as the best version of Christianity in contrast to Roman Catholicism and the Reformed Churches. The British church’s external appearance signifies its superiority – “Beauty in thee takes up her place, / And dates her letters from thy face / When she doth write.” The origin of the British church marks time itself, as regnal years do, or (if Brownlow is correct that the audience would have understood this to be apostolic) perhaps as Christ’s own birth led to a new dating system. In contrast to the lovely “mother” church and her “fit aray” is the Church of Rome: She on the Hills, which wantonly Allureth all in hope to be By her preferr’d Ibid., 225–226. Frank Brownlow, “George Herbert’s ‘The British Church’ and the Idea of a National Church,” in Literature and Nationalism, ed. Vincent Newey and Ann Thompson (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991), 111–119. 29 I quote the poem from the text in Antiquities, 226. 27

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Hath kiss’d so long her painted Shrines, That even her face by kissing shines, For her reward.30

On the opposite end from gorgeous but faded Roman Catholicism are the bare Genevan churches: Shee in the Valley is so shye Of dressing, that her hair doth lye About her eares While she avoides her neighbours pride, Shee wholly goes on th’other side And nothing wears.31

Herbert’s “dearest mother,” on the other hand, maintains a middle way: “The meane thy praise and glory is, / And long may be.”32 After the Restoration, Herbert was read as a thoroughgoing Laudian, and such claims influenced scholarship into the twentieth century. The poem Somner selected for inclusion in his Antiquities perhaps more than anything led to this view, as Christopher Hodgkins notes, “Aside from Izaak Walton’s Life of Herbert (1670), probably no statement has more influenced readers of The Temple (1633) than George Herbert’s own lyric, ‘The British Church.’”33 Achsah Guibbory also reads “The British Church” this way: The clearest indication of Herbert’s commitment to ceremonial worship is “The British Church,” one of his most partisan poems. In the face of puritan criticism of England’s ceremonies, “The British Church” praises the established church as the mean between the excesses of an overly ceremonial Rome and a plain, thoroughly reformed Geneva.34

Herbert’s view in this poem is not necessarily indicative of The Temple as a volume; as Guibbory observes, other poems such as “Sion” seem to take a position more supportive of such “puritan criticism.” Guibbory ultimately argues that The Temple (and presumably Herbert himself) found a dynamic, conflicting, and unsustainable middle way that emerged from embracing different views at different moments without reconciling them. Hodgkins argues that even “The British Church” is not as overtly ceremonial or Laudian as it might appear, pointing to the poem’s emphasis on the British church’s bodily beauty, her “lineaments,” “hiew,” and “face,” instead of her clothing, which is merely called “fit.” It is the face and form, he claims, “where Ibid. Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Christopher Hodgkins, “The Church Legible: George Herbert and the Externals of Worship,” The Journal of Religion 71 (1991): 217. 34 Achsah Guibbory, Ceremony and Community from Herbert to Milton: Literature, Religion, and Cultural Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 51–52. 30 31

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living personality and rationality are most clearly displayed.” Moreover, the poem never makes explicit what ceremonies and church equipment are under discussion: “Herbert gives no direct, literal referent for the ‘fit’ – not ‘fine’ – ‘aray’ that he celebrates. We have no warrant to assume that this array includes the railed altars, additional stained glass, and statuary that Laud instituted.”36 While Guibbory and Hodgkins provoke us to consider Herbert’s poetry and “The British Church” as more complex and multi-valent than it appears, even a simplistic equation of Herbert’s poem with elaborate Laudian ceremonies and ceremonial spaces would not entirely explain how “The British Church” fits in Somner’s antiquarian project. For one thing, Somner does not include the text in his discussion of any of the physical structures of Canterbury Cathedral. Instead, he places it in the preamble to his catalogue of Archbishops of Canterbury. The poem celebrates the body of the British church, and Somner focuses on the human bodies of the archbishops, so the link is somatic. He believes the detractors of episcopacy would decapitate the body of the English church, and Herbert’s poem defends that body. Herbert’s emphasis on the British Church’s physical beauty, augmented by its “fit aray, / Not too meane, nor yet too gay” contrasts with the disfigured and headless monster (“Plinies acephali”) that the anti-episcopal movement would support. The emphasis on the church’s metaphorical body sets up Somner’s ensuing discussion. Somner centers the human bodies of the archbishops in his narrative of the Cathedral’s past, as he faithfully, almost obsessively, records the site of each one’s burial. This includes saints such as Dunstan, whose interment at Canterbury, Somner tells us, was later challenged by the monks of Glastonbury: 35

The Monks of Glastonbury (amongst whom [Dunstan] was brought up) in Hen 7. time began to boast and give out that they had them [i.e. Dunstan’s remains] in possession, being translated thither from Canterb. (as Capgrave in the life of Dunstan affirms) in the year 1012. Hereupon the Monks built him a Shrine. and by that and other means the stream of benefit formerly running to Christ Church became turned to Glastonb. This at length so troubled the Archbishop of Canterb. and his Monks, that … they resolve on a scrutinie to be made in his Tombe or Altar; by opening thereof to see whether really his corps, his reliques, were there inclosed or not. The scrutiny is made, and the searchers finde for the Christ-Church Monks. Whereupon Warham the then Archbishop forthwith directs and sends his letters to the Abbat and Monks of Glastonb. straightly charging them to desist… .37

Somner derides the motives behind both institutions’ claim of Dunstan’s relics. The incident, however, takes place in fairly recent history – just over a hundred years earlier – when the church was on the brink of reform. Somner’s ambivalence toward the narrative of Dunstan’s contested burial is no surprise given that Dunstan had become associated with papal abuses of power (as discussed in chapter one). Nonetheless, Somner chooses to include the story – which ends with confirmation that Dunstan is indeed buried in Canterbury Cathedral. At other times, Somner omits 35 36 37

Hodgkins, “Church Legible,” 230. Ibid., 231. Antiquities, 237.

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biographical details – and tells us that he does so – to focus on episcopal burial, as he does with Robert Winchelsey: Much might be said of his admirable liberality and charitie to the poore, but hereof Archbishop Parker, and from him Bishop Godwin and others have said enough already. And I passe over his whole life, and come to his buriall place, which is not now extant by any monument of him in the Church. But certain it is he once had one there, and it stood (say those Authors) beside the Altar of S. Gregory by the South-wall.38

Somner reviews the evidence and agrees that “By the South-wall then of this Crosse-Ile sometime stood this Archbishops tombe.”39 Even if other writers have discussed Winchelsey, Somner’s statement that he will “pass over his whole life” is still striking. Instead of providing a biography, he emphasizes that Winchelsey, like most of his predecessors, is buried in the cathedral, lack of monuments to him notwithstanding. Somner’s reiteration of the physical presence of the archbishops’ bodies might strike us as a bit odd. Why does it matter where they are buried – why isn’t the fact of their holding office enough to make his historical point? Comparison with colonial English activities in Ireland suggests an answer. Philip Schwyzer has argued that, as with more recent colonizers’ attempts to desecrate ancestral burial grounds, the English understood that part of what constitutes a homeland is the burial of one’s dead in the soil. Schwyzer’s analysis deals with literary texts, both late medieval and early modern, that “describe, from an English point of view, the excavation of the bodies and artifacts of subjugated peoples… . These are narratives of exhumation or recovery that seek to overturn or weaken the claims of the indigenous population to original and continuous possession of the land.”40 Human remains stake possession; they intrude (from the colonizers’ perspective) from their past into the present, raising the questions, “How do you build a homeland … in alien soil, full of someone else’s dead? How do you subdue – or begin to negotiate with – the dust under your feet?”41 These dilemmas led to the fantasy in several texts (including Edmund Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland and Faerie Queene) of exhumed “native” bodies that vanish, erasing themselves from the soil that can then become the true homeland of the new settlers. Somner’s emphasis on the archbishops buried in the cathedral shows an equal awareness of the importance of ancestors in the ground – in his case, ideological ancestors, rather than physical ones. While Spenser fantasized about the removal of the Irish dead from the soil and the obliteration of their remains, Somner multiplies examples of the episcopal bodies and bones remaining below Canterbury Cathedral. The buried dead bring the past into the “now” with forceful intimacy. Tombstones often directly address the present reader (“Good friend, for Jesus sake Ibid., 257. Ibid. 40 Philip Schwyzer, Archaeologies of English Renaissance Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 39. 41 Ibid., 40. 38 39

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forebear / to dig the dust enclosed here”); visitors speak to the dead at graves as if they can hear.42 Somner’s catalogue of archbishops and their places of rest (especially those in Canterbury Cathedral) bring centuries of voices from the medieval past into dialogue with those who would reject episcopacy. Somner creates an ideological “homeland” with his book’s constant reiteration of the presence of the dead archbishop in the ground below. As Dinshaw writes, “asynchrony is in our bones, providing the ground for that constant sense that other times press upon merely sequential chronology.”43 Somner stresses this asynchrony by presenting his reader with literal bones and literal ground. Somner’s book depicts an English church in line with Laudian ideals, both in the distant past and in the present – unsurprising, since Laud was Somner’s patron and the book’s dedicatee. The emphasis on episcopacy’s transcendent historical role of course aligns with this, as Laud was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Somner also stresses church decorations. His book contains lovingly detailed descriptions of monuments and epitaphs, and a pull-out illustration of the cathedral’s baptismal font appears between pages 180 and 181 in the midst of these descriptions. The font, however, is not properly speaking one of the “antiquities” that Somner’s title promises. Text below the engraving notes its donation “this present year 1639” – it is in fact contemporary, but Somner’s placement depicts its consonance with the other “ancient” structures in the cathedral. The continual timeline of the cathedral’s structures from its origins to “this present year” establishes a trans-historical identity for the English church, and perhaps for the English themselves. Moreover, this identity is based on visual elements in the church structure – an aspect of worship with which Laud and his push for the “beauty of holiness” was identified.44 Since Somner’s text is participatory in its use of plural pronouns relating the experience of travel through ancient Canterbury, it extends the Laudian identity to the reader as well. Commemoration, another trans-temporal activity, also factors into Laudian ideals, especially with regard to the saints. Somner, as we have seen, was skeptical of relics and particularly of contention over them among various religion institutions. However, in his “Epilogue to his Country men” at the end of the volume Somner lists which saints local churches originally commemorated: Conceiving that it may give content to … you who (not out of any either superstitious or riotous instinct, I hope, but for those good and pious ends which the first Institution of the Encaenia had regard unto, namely, not onely the encouragement of others to the like acts of piety and devotion, by a thankfull commemoration See the discussion in Sherlock, Monuments. The practice even extends to virtual representations of the grave site; commenters on the website Find a Grave often directly address the person whose burial site is pictured. See, for an example, the page for Archbishop Laud: https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=16367683. 43 Dinshaw, How Soon Is Now?, 59. 44 Graham Parry, Glory, Laud and Honour: The Arts of the Anglican Counter-Reformation (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006); Charles Carlton, Archbishop William Laud (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987); and Leonie James, “This Great Firebrand”: William Laud and Scotland (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017); see also the sources on Stuart religious debates in chapter two. 42

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of his or their bounty and munificence who had either founded or endowed the Church, as at the first; but also the manifestation and maintenance of Christian Union, charity and good society, by a kind of Love-feast, as afterward the manner was) are desirous to reduce that ancient laudable Custome, sometime consonant to Canon, of observing those Feasts of Dedication, now, through ignorance most what, I suppose, of their Saints names, generally in these parts laid aside; conceiving it, I say, an acceptable thing to revive and restore to each Parochial Chuch and Chapell the forgotten name and memory of such Saint or Saints as at their dedication … were given (and are therefore proper) to them.45

Saints were not to be worshipped; that was “superstitious.” Honoring them, however, was a way of honoring churches’ founders. Saints’ commemoration had overtly community-building qualities – “the manifestation and maintenance of Christian union, charity, and good society.” The group identity that parishes gained from commemorating their churches’ saints and history mirrors the one Somner’s reading audience gained from the textual/physical traversing of the city’s and cathedral’s antiquities. “In-security of Princes” and “Frontispiece of the Kings Book Opened”: Somner and the Eikon Basilike White Kennett’s biography of Somner, printed as a preface to Somner’s Treatise of the Roman Ports (1693), identifies Somner as the author of two anonymously published royalist poems: When no endeavours could stop the madness of the people, nor save the effusion of Royal blood; [Somner] could no longer contain himself, but broke into a passionate Elegy, The insecurity of Princes, considered in an occasional meditation upon the King’s late sufferings and Death. Printed in the year, 1648, 4o. And soon after he publisht another affectionate Poem, to which is prefixt the Pourtraicture of Charles the first, before his Eikon Basilike, and this title, The Frontispice of the King’s book opened, with a Poem annexed, The insecurity of Princes, &c.46

The second volume, with the poem discussing William Marshal’s famous frontispiece to the Eikon Basilike as well as an expanded version of the “In-security,” ties Somner’s excursions into verse to the “King’s Book” – one of the most significant publications of the Interregnum, if not the seventeenth century.47 A composite volume consisting of some of Charles I’s own papers, augmented by his former chaplain Edward Symmons and ultimately put into final form by John Gauden, the Eikon Basilike shaped the interpretation of Charles’s life and death for his subjects.48 Antiquities, 510. “The Life of Mr. Somner,” 90–91. 47 The Frontispice of the Kings Book Opened, with a Poem Annexed, The In-security of Princes (London, 1649). 48 Robert Wilcher gives an overview of the complex authorship in “Eikon Basilike: The Printing, Composition, Strategy, and Impact of ‘The King’s Book,’” in The Oxford Handbook of Literature and the English Revolution, ed. Laura Lunger Knoppers (Oxford: Oxford 45

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Understanding Somner’s verse requires some discussion of the Eikon Basilike, as well as other poetic responses to the regicide and to the Eikon. The Eikon Basilike gave the reader the king’s thoughts and responses to key events leading up to the wars and his trial. Each chapter narrates his version of events such as the execution of Strafford, Charles’s flight from London, his capture by the Scots (and their surrendering of him to the Parliamentary forces), and his imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle.49 Chapters end with an italicized prayer in which Charles asks for divine consolation and help in his troubles, forgiveness for his opponents, and peace for his kingdoms. The prayers frequently drew on Psalms, situating Charles’s praying voice in a sacred tradition extending back to the ancient Hebrews. The first edition of the book was available either the day of or the day after Charles’s execution; subsequent editions were quickly printed and augmented with additional prayers (one of which was borrowed from Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia) and narratives of Charles’s final visit with two of his young children. Nearly forty editions of the Eikon, whole or in part, came out in the year following the regicide. This short description only hints at the multi-faceted text that is the Eikon Basilike. In the words of its most recent editors, “The King’s Book is in fact, a curious hybrid of genres: political memoir, apologia, spiritual autobiography, martyrology, hagiography, meditation, and Psalter.”50 Charles maintained throughout that his refusal to accede to the demands of his Parliamentary opponents was based on his own “conscience” and sense of his moral duties as God’s anointed representative. He argued that for him to surrender monarchical rights would be a sin against God: That I consented to the Bill of putting the Bishops out of the House of Peers, was done with a firm persuasion of their contentedness to suffer a present diminution in their Rights, and Honour for My sake, and the Common-weal’s, which I was confident they would readily yield unto, rather than occasion (by the least obstruction on their part) any dangers to Me, or to My Kingdom. That I cannot add My consent for the total extirpation of that Government (which I have often offered to all fit regulations) hath so much further tie upon My Conscience, as what I think Religious and Apostolical; and so very Sacred and Divine, is not to be dispensed with, or destroyed, when what is only of civil Favor, and privilege of Honour granted to men of that Order, may with their consent, who are concerned in it to be annulled.51

University Press, 2012), 289–308. See also Sean Kelsey, “The King’s Book: Eikon Basilike and the English Revolution of 1649,” in The English Revolution c. 1590–1720: Politics, Religion, and Communities, ed. Nicholas Tyacke (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 150–168. I will refer to the author of the Eikon as “Charles I,” however corporate that identity may actually have been, as royalist readers believed it to be his work. 49 Austin Woolrych, Britain in Revolution 1625–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 155–433, discusses these events; see also the other general histories cited in chapter one. 50 Eikon Basilike with Selections from Eikonoklastes, ed. Jim Daems and Holly Faith Nelson (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview, 2006), 23. 51 Ibid., 84.

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Charles also discusses the one instance in which he did (in his view) offend his conscience by bowing to Parliament’s demands and signing the Bill of Attainder for Strafford’s execution in 1641: I never met with a more unhappy conjuncture of affairs, than in the business of that unfortunate Earl: when between My own unsatisfiedness in Conscience, and a necessity (as some told me) of satisfying the importunities of some people; I was persuaded by those, that I think wished me well, to choose rather what was safe, than what seemed just; preferring the outward peace of My Kingdoms with men, before that inward exactness of Conscience before God.52

By all accounts, Charles was haunted by his part in Strafford’s death for the rest of his life.53 He gives his rationale for the decision here but admits that it was wrong and that he had been swayed by well-intentioned advisors (including Strafford himself, who sent to Charles asking the king to sign the bill and save himself).54 Ironically, Charles’s bowing to Parliament’s demands for Strafford’s head actually entrenched him more deeply against future accommodations that he felt touched his conscience: “Nor hath any thing more fortified My resolutions against all those violent importunities, which since have sought to gain alike consent from Me, to Acts, wherein my Conscience is unsatisfied, than the sharp touches I have had for what passed Me, in my Lord of Strafford’s Business.”55 Such insights into the mind of a king, combined with the pattern of prayers at the end of each chapter, created a public idea of Charles that the Rump Parliament, after his execution, could do little to contain. Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler’s insightful discussion of the Eikon Basilike argues that it created a cult of “celebrity” around the king, in the modern sense. Skerpan-Wheeler observes that “Celebrity … requires commodification, whereby the reader or viewer appropriates the representation of the famous person in order to identify and even interact with it.”56 Nothing aided this interaction more than the famous frontispiece to the book, shown here as reproduced in Somner’s volume, which portrayed (on its right side) Charles kneeling before an altar, discarding his royal crown in order to reach for a crown of thorns while gazing up at a heavenly crown appearing in a window. The left side of the image drew on common emblems: a palm tree burdened with heavy weights that grows tall nonetheless, a sun shining through clouds, and a rock beset by crashing waves and wind. This visual element, Skerpan-Wheeler argues, was key to the book’s effect. The artist, William Marshal, echoed not only images of Gethsemane, but also Ibid., 54. Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford, had been not only Charles’s advisor but one of his closest friends; puritans and members of the Long Parliament hated him, believing that he had intended to raise an army in Ireland to bring the Long Parliament to heel after Charles had lost the Bishops’ Wars. Charles had promised Stratford that he would not suffer because of the responsibilities Charles had given him in Ireland. Michael Young, Charles I (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997), 141–142. 54 Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, 196. 55 Eikon Basilike, 55. 56 Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler, “The First ‘Royal’: Charles I as Celebrity,” PMLA 126 (2011): 916. 52 53

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Figure 6: William Somner, The Frontispice of the Kings Book Opened. Frontispiece.

familiar portrayals of praying saints in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563) and of a Christian at prayer in Thomas Cranmer’s catechism (1548). His portrait of Charles evokes “not just martyrdom but the attitude of faithfulness re-created by Christians as they read the Bible or by the readers of Eikon Basiliké as they read the king’s book.”57 The Eikon Basilike draws heavily on “the language of optics, vision, and perspective”; its very structure invites the audience to identify with Charles.58 And identify they did. Andrew Lacey has traced the outpouring of texts and responses to the regicide, many of which based their interpretation on Charles’s self-presentation in the Eikon Basilike.59 Poetic responses were particularly frequent, and widely available, as Lacey observes, “one of the more obvious Royalist responses to the regicide was elegies and commemorative poems, large numbers of which found their way into print.”60 Many foregrounded the comparison implicit in the Eikon Basilike of Charles to Christ himself, innocent yet allowing himself to be judicially murdered by his enemies for the safety of his kingdoms and people. Charles’s death was also frequently compared to those of early Christian saints and Ibid., 921. Laura Lunger Knoppers, “Imagining the Death of the King: Milton, Charles I, and Anamorphic Art,” in Imagining Death in Spenser and Milton, ed. Elizabeth Jane Bellamy, Patrick Cheney, and Michael Schoenfeldt (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2003), 158. 59 Andrew Lacey, The Cult of King Charles the Martyr (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003). 60 Ibid., 94. 57

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martyrs; writers focused on Charles’s innocence and the “triumph” of his death and apotheosis, contrasted “the glory of Charles in heaven with the sorrows of his subjects left on earth,” and “reflect[ed] upon the inevitable vengeance which would fall on the rebels… .”61 John Cleveland’s “Elegie on the Meekest of Men” further compares Charles’s situation with fiction, silently gesturing toward the inclusion of Pamela’s Prayer from Sydney’s New Arcadia at the end of some editions of Eikon Basilike: “No fond Romance, no fam’d Arcadia treats, / of such Eutopian, frantick Judgment Seats.”62 Thomas Forde’s “Second Anniversary” on the date of Charles’s execution, observes that the King has become a textualized version of himself: “Thou art the best of Texts, hereafter we / Expect no more, but Comments upon thee: / Thou art the great Original, and he / Who will be famous now, must transcribe thee.”63 Charles-as-text served as a focus for commemoration and devotion, particularly the frontispiece to the Eikon Basilike (enraging John Milton’s iconoclastic sensibilities no end).64 The regicides had tried to avoid veneration of Charles, refusing burial in Westminster and allowing only an abbreviated service when he was buried without a marker in St. George’s chapel, Windsor.65 The denial of a monument was, as the royalist Henry King claimed in his poetic response, entirely consonant with the iconoclasm of the puritan government: The tenor of which execrable Vote Your over-active Zelots so promote That neither Tomb nor Temple could escape, Nor Dead nor Living your Licentious Rape. Statues and Grave-stones o’re men buried Rob’d of their Brass, the Coffins of their Led; Not the Seventh Henry’s gilt and curious Skreen, Nor those which ‘mongst our Rarities were seen, The Chests wherein the Saxon Monarchs lay, But must be basely sold or thrown away.66

Ibid., 113. John Cleveland, Monumentum Regale, or a Tombe Erected for That Incomparable and Glorious Monarch Charles the First (1649), 5. 63 Thomas Forde, Virtus Rediviva: A Panegyrick on Our Late King Charles the I (London, 1660), n.p. Although the poem was published in a collection of Forde’s work in 1660, Lacey argues that it circulated previously: Cult, 96. 64 Milton wrote a rebuttal to the work, Eikonoklastes, possibly at the request of Parliament. See Eikon Basilike, 29–34, 217–283; Sharon Achinstein, “Milton and King Charles,” in The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I, ed. Thomas Corns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 141–161; and Richard Helgerson, “Milton Reads the King’s Book: Print, Performance, and the Making of a Bourgeois Idol,” Criticism 29 (1987): 1–25. 65 Charles’s burial without a monument was perhaps not quite as shocking as it appears to modern readers, as Sherlock notes that no royal burials were marked with a contemporary monument between Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria: Monuments, 20. 66 Henry King, An Elegy upon the Most Incomparable K. Charles the I (London, 1649), 8. 61

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The memorials to England’s royal history, from Henry VII back to the “Saxon” monarchs in Winchester, are, King claims, ransacked for gain – even disinterring the pre-Conquest monarchs, in a move that removes English history from the ground itself. The rejection of church structure and adornments rejects the past; the denial of a grave marker to Charles denies his predecessors. The King’s Book, however, thwarts the attempt to obstruct the memorialization of Charles, as he becomes a continually replicating text and monument. The poems surrounding the death of Charles self-consciously served as monuments, linking the present with the past and reaching to the future. The Antiquities of Canterbury had already explored the trans-temporalities inherent in monuments, and even though Somner’s poems on Charles I do not explicitly discuss early medieval history, they participate in a similar reach across time. According to Kennett, Somner first published “The In-security of Princes” on its own before he composed the companion “Frontispice of the Kings Book Opened”; the latter volume contains an expanded version of “In-security,” and I will discuss that version. The “Frontispice” itself is actually two poems: the first a highly compressed ekphrasis of the famous image of Charles from the Eikon, the second a longer discussion, constructed as a dialogue. The first poem is only two stanzas: Before three Kingdoms-Monarch three Crowns lie; Of Gold; of Thorne; of Glory; bright, but vaine; Sharpe, yet but light; eternall to remaine: O’th World; of Christ; of Heav’n: At’s Foot; Hand; Eye Hee spurnes; accepts; expects. Kneeles; yet doth Reigne. A Sun; a Rock; a Palm-tree: (Emblems fit) The Sun in Clouds: the Rock in waves o’th Sea: The Palm-trees boughs depres’t with weights: Yet see, The Sun shines out more bright; the Rock’s unsplit, Unmov’d: the Palm-tree flourishes.     So Hee.67

The two series of threes – three crowns and three emblems – provide structure for multiple descriptions of the objects. The qualities associated with each crown, separated by semicolons, build up to the stanza’s final line’s first part: “He spurns; accepts; expects.” The line’s conclusion presents a paradox that is resolved by the proper understanding of the three crowns: “Kneeles; yet doth Reigne.” As the caesura after “expects” pauses the line, the continuation of “hee” as the subject of the two verbs in the line’s second part ties them together: Charles’s “reign” comes about because of his proper humility and devotional attitude toward God, his expectation of the crown of glory, and his willingness to suffer. The poem’s second stanza explicates the emblems found in the image’s left-hand side. The text describes the sun, rock, and tree minimally, but then calls on the reader to observe more closely: “Yet see.” Further examination by the scrutinizing reader reveals the truth: the sun, rock, and trees are all beset with opposition, but 67

Somner, Frontispice, 1.

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overcome it and thrive. The sun is “more bright” because of the obscuring clouds, and the tree “flourishes” with weights hung on it. The final words of the poem draw the obvious connection between the steadfastness of the emblems on the left, and the figure on the right: “So Hee.” As the Eikon’s frontispiece was re-printed in Somner’s volume, the reader has both picture and text at hand. The “yet see” can direct the reader to gaze further on the image, or to read further in the poem; the two modes are interchangeable. Charles’s image is “opened” textually, but it is also pictographic: distinctions between text and image, between physical drawing and poetic interpretation, break down as Somner creates the volume’s first monument to the executed king. Somner’s second poem on the frontispiece begins on page two, at which point the reader no longer has the image on the left-hand leaf as with the first poem. Headed “Another more at large,” the second poem opens as a dialogue: What have wee here? a Worldling? Surely no. What is he then? a Papist? Neither so. Then haply some Enthusiast? Nothing lesse. Is hee an Atheist then? or what? Expresse.68

The poem’s first voice is of the un-educated viewer, seeing the frontispiece but failing to understand what or who is depicted – a position rather like that of a viewer attempting to decipher faded or worn burial monuments. The second voice, which answers at the end of the first three lines, is that of a knowledgeable, experienced narrator who can explain the images – like Somner in the Antiquities. This voice goes on to explain that Charles cannot be a worldling since he treads his crown underfoot, nor a Papist since he gazes on God’s word rather than a “Missal,” nor an “Enthusiast” (i.e. puritan) since his hope rests in God’s word (as opposed to an inner conviction of elect status), nor finally an atheist as he looks toward heaven. Conjectures disproven, the first speaker demands the answer: If then, no Worldling, nor a Papist hee, An Atheist neither, nor Enthusiast bee; What is hee then? Why, questionless a KING. A King? That’s common, yet no common thing. (What’s here presented to our view) to see A King to Heav’n devoted on his knee.69

Upon learning that the image is of a king, the questioner admits that he was fooled – kings are after all ordinary, but here the spectacle of one kneeling in obedience to God is unexpected and therefore difficult to guess correctly without inside knowledge. This is of course assuming that lines 4–6 above are in fact spoken by the questioner, which is not entirely clear; in any case, the distinction between the interlocutors subsequently blends into one narrative voice explicating the image and further eulogizing Charles. 68 69

Ibid., 2. Ibid.

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The poem continues with an image not present in the frontispiece – Charles as gem: And, thus is shadowed forth of British Pearles (So famous heretofore in forraigne Worlds) The most illustrious, orient, pretious one, That ever yet adorn’d the English Throne: The best of Kings, set o’re the Subjects worst; The Father of the Second, Charles the first.70

Charles, likened to a pearl, is called “orient” – meaning valuable, but also with notions of his “eastern” focus on the heavenly realm. The narrator then turns from his discussion to address the reader directly: Did’st thou not know him, Reader? then looke hence: Here’[s] that at hand will cure thy ignorance: His Picture by his owne rare Pencill ta’ne; None ever by Apelles better drawne: His Golden Manual, so divine, so rare, As, save God’s booke, admits of no compare… . This front is but the Signe, go, enter then; Thy Soule nere lodged in a braver Inne.71

The poem deliberately elides the person of Charles, his “portrait,” and his text, the Eikon Basilike. At first, the reader seems to be told that Charles was the sketch artist responsible for the frontispiece, but then Somner clarifies that in fact the “Golden Manual” is the true portrait, the visual drawing of the kneeling king no more than the sign of an inn where a traveler can take rest. Finally, Somner dismisses his own text as worthless in comparison to the Eikon: “But Reader! on, leave Strawes and gather Pearles; / Leave these, and to the Lines of brave King CHARLES… .”72 Perhaps Somner envisioned that someday his verses might be included in one of the reprinted editions of the Eikon. The last poem in the volume, “The In-security of Princes,” takes as its main topic the common claim that only humble settings provide safety from the blows of fortune, while worldly power stands exposed to opposition: O How doth sad experience verifie His perilous estate that sits on high! Would’st thou far off from thunder-stroke remove, Then keep thy distance, come not neere to Jove: Whil’st high-pitch’d Towres ly ope to wind and weather; The low-thatch’d Bowre’s insensible of either.73

70 71 72 73

Ibid., 3. Ibid., 3–4. Ibid., 4. Somner, Frontispice, 4.

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Somner’s declaration of this theme is followed by the poem’s second section, titled “Votum Authoris.” Votum here could mean vow or resolution, but also prayer. Somner models for the reader how to internalize the lesson in a series of first-­ person statements: Were I then of the twaine my choice to make I’d leave the Palace and the Cottage take. A Prince or Pesant might I choose to bee, The Pesant rather then the Prince for me! … Ever preferring safe obscurity To envied in-secure sublimity… .74

The movement from outward sensory and intellectual observations to the appropriate mental and emotional response resembles the strategy of Somner’s poem on the frontispiece, but while there he enacted it through two conversing narrators, here his poem moves to an intimate resolution of the poet’s own self. Like the experience that the first poem urged on the reader, transitioning from an external view of Charles to an exhortation to experience the king’s interiority, “In-security” moves from a public (and proverbial) understanding of power to the author’s internal experience of that truth. The third section of the “In-security,” simply titled “Another,” continues the meditation on the fraught nature of worldly power, and refers to the familiar images from the Eikon’s frontispiece: What though a golden Crowne his browes adornes? Tis little better than a Crowne of thornes. … For worldly Crownes how fond is th[e]n the strife! No Crowne for me, except the Crowne of Life! Those, like to worldly glorie, post away; This immarcessible, and lasts for ay.75

The brief first person interjection blends the “Votum Authoris” portions with this one and prompts a personal identification with Charles (and his image) as an object of meditation. Somner then touches on a moment in the Eikon’s text that figures the regicides as types of the Hebrew Bible character of Korah: “Rebellious Corah’s, worst of Belials sons; Whom as hee here with patience, so there / Beholds with pity, and with smiling cheere… .”76 The narrative of Korah in the Hebrew Bible occurs in Numbers 16, where Korah and his followers are swallowed by the earth after rebelling against Moses and Aaron. When Charles’s own text evoked this narrative, it was in a rather more ominous vein: 74 75 76

Ibid., 5. Ibid., 5–6. Ibid., 6.

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The punishment of the more insolent and obstinate may be like that of Korah and his Complices (at once mutinying against both Prince and Priest) in such a method of divine justice, as is not ordinary; the earth of the lowest and meanest people opening upon them, and swallowing them up in a just disdain of their ill-gotten worse-used Authority: upon whose support and strength they chiefly depended for their building and establishing their designs against Me, the Church, and State.77

Somner’s Charles looks upon his killers in patience and pity, but the Eikon itself takes satisfaction in imagining the regicides’ downfall at the hands of the populace. Somner’s poem/monument bolsters the image of Charles as the brave martyr for his country that the “cult of Charles” inculcated throughout the Interregnum: “of his Country such a tender father; / That, than wrong it, hee Martyrdome Chose rather.”78 The final “Votum Authoris” section considers the “Voluptuous Worldlings” who now indulge their vices, and the narrator addresses his soul to reject such actions: But thou my Soule! abhorre such prostitutions! Such sensuall Epicurean base pollutions! … The Crosse let bee thy portion, sanctifi’d! Thy Soveraign, next thy Saviour, bee thy guide! Went thy sweet Saviour to the fatall Tree, Thy Soveraign to the Block, so willingly? And wilt thou startle at a petty crosse?79

Having resolved to patiently bear his own misfortunes, the narrator concludes, “Then set a period here. Let contemplation / Make up the rest in silent admiration.” The first edition of the poem had slightly different wording: “A period therefore sure. Let admiration / Make up the rest in silent contemplation.”80 The shift to the imperative “set” (whether still directed from the speaker to his own soul, or to the audience) demands firmer action, the adjustment of the second sentence so that “contemplation” becomes the subject stresses again the proper response of the poem’s (and the Eikon’s) readers – to participate in trans-temporal meditation on the dead king’s monuments. While Somner neither has nor merits wide recognition as a poet, his verses are far from the worst politically motivated poetry of the time. Somner’s poems reveal him as a man keenly aware of textual nuance, not only in those works that he read but in his own writing. Although the Frontispice’s texts are not explicitly antiquarian, they nonetheless resonate with ideas from the Antiquities. The Frontispice acts as a sort of funeral monument or memorial like those that Somner had detailed in the Antiquities, and that the Rump Parliament had tried to deny Charles by insisting on 77 78 79 80

Eikon Basilike, 200. Somner, Frontispice, 6. Ibid., 8. Somner, In-security, 6.

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his unmarked interment in Windsor. Even as Somner’s description of Canterbury Cathedral had emphasized the importance of such funerary structures, he helps to create one for Charles I – and instructs his reader on the proper sort of interaction with these memorials. Somner’s labors in Canterbury had made clear to him that the truth could only be uncovered by a combination of text and object, as graves and memorials were mixed up, eroded, and lost to time. He understood the importance of written records and visual images both – as Margaret Sparks states of Somner’s efforts in locating archiepiscopal tombs, “it is fascinating to see Somner making his notes in the Cathedral and struggling with dusty parchments in the Treasury, trying to get things right.”81 A similar interplay between text and image, past and present underpinned his poems, which should be read against his earlier work on funeral monuments and their textual traces. Somner’s understanding of history would also have chimed with that of the Eikon. David Loewenstein argues that the Eikon presents itself as rebuttal of the regicides’ views of the past as burdensome and damaging to the rights of English subjects, and the Commonwealth as a new structure arising from cleansing conflict. “Eikon Basilike thus challenges the perception of history as a dynamic and unsettling process of change: rather it encourages its readers to perceive that, in the violent clash between monarchy and revolution, the authentic view is one which affirms history as predictable and fixed.”82 Somner’s Dictionarium, to which I now turn, supports the “predictable and fixed” view of time, although his trans-temporal desires simultaneously question the divide between past and present.

Margaret Sparks, “William Somner and the Archiepiscopal Tombs,” Canterbury Cathedral Chronicle 89 (1995): 37. 82 David Loewenstein, Milton and the Drama of History: Historical Vision, Iconoclasm, and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 54. 81

5 “The Saxons Live Againe”: William Somner’s Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum

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ad Somner been a superstitious man, he might have had second thoughts about undertaking the compilation of an Old English dictionary for the purpose of publication.1 Several of his most notable predecessors had made a similar attempt, and all of them had been prevented by death – not only Wheelock and D’Ewes, but Johannes de Laet abroad, and (in the reign of Elizabeth) Laurence Nowell and John Joscelyn (1529–1603). Nonetheless, Somner remained undaunted by the string of mortalities following scholars’ resolutions to produce a printed dictionary of the earliest version of English. After all, while few of the above-­mentioned scholars were elderly at their deaths, none were exactly young – one did not attempt such an undertaking until one had spent years, even decades, in the study of the language. Additionally, Somner had several advantages over his predecessors. First, he had their works to draw on. Nowell’s manuscript dictionary was available to him, as was Joscelyn’s. The latter came in a copy by D’Ewes, who had augmented it with his own lexicographical efforts. What’s more, Somner had compiled a glossary for Twysden’s Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores X (1652), so Studies of Somner’s lexicographic work include Mary Joan Cook (depositing as Joan Katherine Cook), “Developing Techniques in Anglo-Saxon Scholarship in the Seventeenth Century: As They Appear in the Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum of William Somner” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1962); Cook, “Minsheu’s Guide into the Tongues and Somner’s Dictionarium,” Mediaeval Studies 24 (1962): 375–377; David Yerkes, “Dugdale’s Dictionary and Somner’s Dictionarium,” English Language Notes 14 (1976): 110–112; M.S. Hetherington, The Beginnings of Old English Lexicography (self-pub., Spicewood, TX, 1980); Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 181–189; Kathryn Lowe, “‘The Oracle of His Countrey’? William Somner, Gavelkind, and Lexicography in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in The Recovery of Old English, ed. Timothy Graham (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), 281–300; Paola Tornaghi, “‘Certaine Things to be Considered & Corrected in Will. Dugdales Saxon-Lexicon,’” in Words and Dictionaries from the British Isles in Historical Perspective, ed. John Considine and Giovanni Iamartino (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 50–80; Rachel Ann Fletcher, “William Somner’s Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum: Method, Function, and Legacy” (MPhil. thesis, University of Glasgow, 2017); Fletcher, “‘Most Active and Effectual Assistance’ in the Correspondence of Sir William Dugdale and William Somner,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 78 (2018): 166–184; and Fletcher, “Pushing the Boundary: The Periodisation Problem in Dictionaries of Old English” (PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2021). 1

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he had lexicographic experience. He alone brought to the task not only thorough study of Old English, but hard-won expertise in compiling a dictionary. Somner also had, as Mary Joan Cook points out, several printed works to mine as resources, including Willliam L’Isle’s 1623 A Saxon Treatise concerning the Old and New Testament, Wheelock’s OE Bede and ASC, Lambarde’s laws (re-issued by Wheelock and Twysden), and Junius’s 1655 edition of the biblical poems in the manuscript now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11.2 Somner also made thorough use of the glossaries in British Library, Cotton Cleopatra A.iii, and the texts in British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B.i (the OE Orosius, the Abingdon version of the ASC, and the Menologium), British Library, MS Royal 7 C.iv (Defensor’s Liber Scintillarum glossed in OE), and British Library, MS Royal 12 D.xvii (Old English medical texts). Somner’s 1659 Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum cemented his place in the history of Old English studies and stands as a mammoth achievement in the field.3 It was also an achievement embedded in the conflicts of the 1650s. Eleanor Adams dates the publication to April of 1659.4 Oliver Cromwell had died the previous September, leaving the leadership of the polity uncertain. His son Richard had been appointed Protector, probably in accordance with Oliver’s wishes.5 However, he failed to find a legislative settlement that would fully empower Parliament and representative government while achieving the reforms desired by most of the army and other Independents who had served in his father’s government – a balance between sweeping reform and constitutionalism that had also eluded his father.6 The army and the House agreed on one thing, however: their dislike of Richard Cromwell. He stepped down from the Protectorship in May, the month following publication of the Dictionarium. Most histories of the time focus on the rapidly evolving political situation and the movement of army forces (especially that of General Monck in Scotland, who would ultimately turn the tide to the restoration of the Stuart monarchy but who kept his cards close to his chest while events played out to the south).7 Few discuss how well this information disseminated to the provinces and the civilians living there, although Jason Peacey persuasively claims that pamphlets had a wide reach during the period.8 No doubt Somner in Canterbury would have known of the upheaval and uncertainty, although we cannot know how Cook, “Developing Techniques,” enumerates Somner’s sources. Somner, Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum (Oxford, 1659). 4 Eleanor Adams, Old English Scholarship in England from 1566–1800 (1917; repr. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1970), 64. 5 H.F. McMains, The Death of Oliver Cromwell (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000). 6 Roger Howell Jr., Cromwell (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1977); John Morrill, Oliver Cromwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), Kindle edition; Austin Woolrych, Britain in Revolution 1625–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 684–702; see also the other general histories cited in this book’s introduction. 7 Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, 727–779; F.M.S. McDonald, “The Timing of General George Monck’s March into England, 1 January 1660,” The English Historical Review 105 (1990): 363–376. 8 Peacey, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). See also Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 2 3

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much detail of the constant fluctuations would have reached him. He would have hoped for a return of Charles II as the outcome of the government’s internal divisions, but no one could have confidently predicted it during the final months of his work on the Dictionarium. Given the previous two decades, it must have seemed equally likely that an even less stable government than Richard’s would form, or that England would again be plunged into outright war. Somner’s work reacts to this national uncertainty and the regime preceding it. Dictionaries perform social work just as poems and histories do, and the paratexts immediately signal the volume’s royalist valence. This chapter first examines two of the prefatory poems and Somner’s preface, which explicitly situate his work in the context of the political and religious upheavals of the previous decades and the uncertainty for the future when it was published. I then consider Somner’s use of two particular sources, Bodleian Library Junius 11’s poem Daniel and the medical texts of London, BL Royal 12 D.xvii. The entries from these sources and their often-­ extensive quotations from Old English texts interact with contemporary historical and medico-political discourse. Finally, I shift to a more longitudinal exploration of key themes in his text and examine how his dictionary promotes monarchy and ceremonialism, and excoriates sedition, in a range of entries taken from several different sources. In all, Somner’s Dictionarium argues that continuation of the English governments of the 1650s would be fatal to the body politic. Saxons and Stuarts: The Prefatory Poems and Somner’s Introduction Four poems appear at the front of the published Dictionarium praising Somner’s achievement. As Rachel Fletcher observes, three of these are in the fair copy now Canterbury Cathedral Library MS Lit E.20, two in Somner’s hand, suggesting that “Somner was directly involved in the inclusion of the dedicatory poems.”9 The first of the English prefatory poems, by John Boys, complains that Somner’s work will not be valued in the current climate.10 It opens with a catalogue of reasons that the book should not have been compiled: What mean’st thou man? think’st thou thy learned page, And worthy pains will relish with this age? Think’st that this Treasury of Saxon words Will be deem’d such amidd’st unletter’d swords? Boots it to know how our forefathers spoke Ere Danish, Norman, or this present yoke Did gall our patient necks? Or matters it What Hengist utter’d, or how Horsa writ?

Fletcher, “William Somner’s Dictionarium,” 67. The poem is signed “Johannes de Bosco, Hodiensis”; Parry identifies the author as “John Boys, a gentleman of Kent and Somner’s neighbour”: Trophies, 187. Fletcher discusses Boys’s identity as well as that of the other contributors: “William Somner’s Dictionarium,” 66–72. The pages on which the prefatory poems appear are not numbered and the poems are not in the same order in every copy, so I will not cite them individually. 9

10

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These questions are of course rhetorical, encouraging the audience to share in the writer’s outrage at the possibility that contemporary culture would reject such a scholarly contribution. Boys hints, however, at the relevance of Old English studies even as he pretends to reject it. Equating the “yokes” of Danish and Norman Conquest with the Protectorate tacitly aligns royalism with the pre-Conquest English. The “Saxon” language matters, at least to those who see the Protectorate as a “yoke.” Boys also equates the Dictionarium with physical monuments that have been destroyed or threatened: Think’st that we, who have destroy’d what e’re Our Grandsires did, will with their language bear? That we (who have all famous Monuments Raz’d, and defeated thus all good intents Of former Piety:) will honour give To antique Characters? shall Paper live, And Inke, when Brasse and Marble can’t withstand This iron ages violating hand?

The status of texts as “monuments” has been touched on in the previous chapter’s discussion of Somner’s Antiquities of Canterbury and poems on the regicide. The irony (as Boys knows) is that paper and ink can indeed survive and can even give “life” to destroyed architectural commemorative features. The poem also underscores the familial relationship of the present to the early medieval past – those who spoke Old English are “our Grandsires.” Nonetheless, Boys argues, contemporary culture will not care about Somner’s work: Thy Barb’rous Saxon, with the heathen Greek And profane Latine, buyers may go seek: Together with the Hebrew, and the rest, Which are the language of that Romish beast.

Greek and Hebrew are, of course, the languages of scripture, and Latin that of the Church Fathers – as well as of later European reformers such as John Calvin, whom the godly English claimed to follow. Boys argues that the Reformist emphasis on translated Bibles and sermons has led to the neglect of the actual Word in its original and the thoughts of those who founded the church. “Saxon” is included with these sacred languages; the records of the early English church have been neglected just as Greek and Hebrew Testaments have been. The English puritans have destroyed sacred history – Protestant history – by their dismissal of early languages and insistence on chopped up Bible passages read and discussed only in Early Modern English. The poem takes its expected turn near the bottom of its first page, as Boys points out that some Englishmen will still appreciate Somner’s volume: All are not Saints; nor for the cause declare: All are not Godly; nor Reformers all; Nor build up Christ by letting Churches fall.

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There yet are left some sober, pious, wise, Learned, discreet, who will thy labour prize: Some Martyrs yet of Truth: some who adore The ages past, and present do deplore.

Just as the “Martyrs of Truth” deplore the “Godly Reformers,” the past opposes the present. The pre-Conquest past does not simply contrast with the present English power structure, but actively resists it. Similarly, as the poem goes on to describe Somner’s “retreat” into scholarly quiet and contemplation of antiquity, it makes clear that this space exists to offer opposition to the present: … nothing scares Thee midd’st thy learned guard of books; there thou Happier then Princes may’st thy self avow: Whose fates thou may’st with unconcern’d thoughts read: And so compare the living with the dead.

The fate of Charles I was hardly viewed with “unconcern” by Somner, who wrote poems lamenting the regicide. Somner’s “learned guard” of books may not offer immediate and enthusiastic violence as do the volumes of the godly, but a guard they remain, offering protection from the present and promising eventual relief in the future: … Do thy self right; Do us; the future times: more largely write. Nor to one Town confine thy straiter care: Thy hands more ample ruins must repair. Loe; the whole Kingdome call’s thee: in time save Its falling Monuments: them from the grave Rescue: that thy worth with the ages crimes May be compar’d by the succeeding times.

In this plea for Somner to expand his chorographic writing from Canterbury to all of England, Boys imagines a future that also opposes the prevailing power structure of his day. The shameful “now” stands bracketed and contested by the past and the future, which merge in their opposition to the present. The final poem by William Jacob also highlights the contemporary role that Old English studies could play in opposing the Protectorate.11 He addresses Somner as the bringer of truth from the distant past through which he has traveled: Haile bold Researcher! With thy rich returnes From the darke coasts of Monuments and Urnes. Like St Pauls storme, all thy vast Travells ar Through times long nights, without a Sun or Starre. Fletcher suggests that this is the William Jacob who was an MP for Canterbury in 1679: “William Somner’s Dictionarium,” 67. 11

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Jacob seems to imagine that Somner drew his words from stone and ceramic structures, the “coasts” of the distant land, as much as from books. The reference to the Apostle Paul underscores Somner’s Christian mission – if the darkness of the past resembles that of the storm threatening Paul and his companions in Acts 27, then the man who comes safely through that storm may also be “apostolic” in contrast to the self-styled saints governing England. Somner not only brings forth the truth, but he also gives life-saving aid to England’s past: … and now thy Care Doth homewards bend, with piety that farre Exceeds Anchises gratefull Son; for he Shew’d but a single Antipelargy. One dry old man, but for the Trojan fire Too light had been, to make him sweate or tyre. But thy more filial shoulders stooping bend, Do reverence at once, and succor lend To all our Fathers dust, which Time, alas! Had bury’d deepe ith’ bottom of his glasse.

Somner “carries” all the fathers of England in a feat surpassing that of Aeneas – and it is worth mentioning that the Trojan refugees were widely believed to be the founders of Britain. Trojan history was British/English history, so as Somner saves England’s own “Saxon” ancestors from destruction, his action is not simply a recovery but a re-founding. Jacob continues this image to its logical conclusion – carried to the present by Somner’s research, the past has been brought back to life: Thus from thy teeming head, and fertile braine, Minerva-like, the Saxons live againe. Wellcome great Hengist, and thy Brother too. Tis no invasion, but a Visit now. Our wakefull beacons serve, not as before, To give alarm’s; but light you to our shore: … We are your Owne, you Ours; wee’l now forget Our femal French and Norman Sibbolet. Hence Moot; Vous-avez hence; for now we heare Our Lawes with an intelligible Eare; And after all our Feuds, reduc’d to sense, ‘Tis hop’d we may learne Obedience.

The Saxons whom Somner saved not only live but sit poised to cross the Channel and be welcomed by the grateful inhabitants of England. Jacob imagines celebratory fires lit not to warn the English but to guide the arrivals. The approaching monarch heralds “no invasion” but a visit – a royal progress through one’s own territory. Readers would have quickly realized that it was not “Hengist, and thy

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Brother too” whom Jacob imagined hailing, but Charles II and his brother James, the Duke of York, whose arrival from the Continent the author longed for – an outcome by no means certain in April 1659. This imaginary synthesis of Stuart and Saxon monarchs will lead to purity in the English language and the English people, as they reject French and Norman for Old English (never mind that Charles II’s mother was French, or that the court had been in exile in Paris for several years). The Stuart-Saxons will clarify English laws by removing Law French from circulation (perhaps a jab at the Protectorate, which had tried repeatedly to bring about legal reform, with little success).12 Linguistic re-arrangement of the legal system will put an end to all “feuds” and, Jacob hopes, restore obedience. Jacob’s Restoration fantasy ties the identity of not only the Stuart monarchy but the rest of England’s elite to Old English, for “yee men of steel; ‘twill be your care / To list your names in this Vocabular.” It is not entirely clear whether the men of steel are to find their name-elements’ etymologies in Somner’s actual Dictionarium; to act such that their names retroactively enter the lexicon; or, on a more literal level, buy a copy in which to inscribe themselves. Nor does it matter exactly how Jacob’s trans-temporal identification imagines this free flow of identity between the present and the early medieval. This identity imparts imperial sway to the English language: Old-English gave Pannonia law, with Greece, And all the Tract from Spaine to th’Hebrides To these commanding sounds great Empires threw Their Scepters downe: the frighted Eagles flew And quit their perch: the Capitol obeys: And now Honorius flyes a thousand wayes.

Old English gave law to the Roman empire, and the very words of Old English law drove Rome closer to falling. The decaying Roman empire probably points to the Roman Catholic Church, as is often the case in early modern English writing, but the claim that Old English law codes can topple both is striking. Even if Jacob’s literal claim is that Old English laws and history can overshadow Imperial Roman historical and legal achievements, his statements also resonate in the present with his poem’s prior identification of Hengist and Horsa with Charles II and James II. Not just royalist, but all English Protestant hopes depend on the Stuarts embracing their pre-Conquest legal history. Somner’s own preface also engages in current political and ideological discourse, as it sharply criticizes government agents who dismantled the offices and decoration of Canterbury Cathedral (and of all English churches). Somner leaves no doubts about his own stakes in recent conflicts. In his second paragraph, he refers to “our then famous & flourishing, however since, by the dismall rage of a Culmerian cure,

12 Morrill, Oliver Cromwell, especially 93–107; Alison Chapman, “Milton and Legal Reform,” Renaissance Quarterly 69 (2016): 529–565.

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miserably deformed, Canterbury Cathedral.”13 The “deformities” were the alterations carried out by Richard Culmer, whom the Kent County Committee charged with removing items from the cathedral that did not align with the puritan desire for unadorned worship space.14 Somner’s description of Culmer’s actions minces no words: the cathedral has been “deformed,” bent from its structural and spiritual ideal and fallen from its “flourishing” past. Somner’s narrative mentions his own losses as the cathedral personnel were removed: Thus prompted then & encouraged to a prosecution of that study, I tooke all opportunities of spare & vacant houres from my other occasions & employment in the place or office of a Register, (a profession of good account in those times, however sithenne, by an unhappy change of times, decried, & to my very great dammage in particular, abolished) to verse myself in all sorts of our Saxon monuments, whether manuscript, or printed, that I could meet with… .

Somner’s cathedral office had enabled him to conduct the research for his Antiquities of Canterbury and to begin his study of Old English. The slippage between “monuments” as architectural features and as textual ones aligns Old English studies with the physicality of England’s ancient structures – those structures that were being deformed by Culmer and his co-sectaries. To care for the past, to claim it as fundamental to present identity, was to care for monuments, and to care for monuments was to oppose oneself to puritans. Somner furthers this distinction between royalists who care for the past and their opponents who do not by downplaying the role of D’Ewes, the early medievalist most prominently aligned with the forces against Charles I and his high-church policies. Somner may not have done this for political reasons alone – D’Ewes had a knack for making people dislike him – but it conforms with the pattern established in the prefatory poems and the effect, however motivated, is the same. When Somner discusses his use of the texts from MS Junius 11, which D’Ewes had owned, he highlights the published version: “a very ancient Saxon paraphrase upon some parts of the old & new Testament, since that time at Amsterdam printed & published, and (for the publick sake) would I could add, translated, by the learned Francis, the sonne of Fr. Junius.” His stress on the poems’ availability in a printed volume is only reasonable – after all, readers could more easily consult it – but in a later discussion of his use of the actual manuscript, he refers to it as “that Saxon Paraphrase, (the use Somner wrote an English version of his preface that survives in Canterbury Cathedral Library as MS DCc ChAnt. M.352; this is the version that I quote. A few alterations took place between this version and the final one in the printed edition, but on the whole Somner’s Latin text follows the English one closely. 14 Adding insult to injury, Culmer used Somner’s Antiquities of Canterbury as a guide to find art to destroy in the cathedral. Richard Greaves, “A Puritan Firebrand: Richard Culmer of Canterbury,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 50 (1981): 359–368; Alan Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion 1640–1660 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1966); Jacqueline Eales, Community and Disunity: Kent and the English Civil Wars, 1640–1649 (Faversham, Kent: Keith Dickson Books, 2001), especially chapter 4; and Clive Holmes, “Centre and Locality in Civil-War England,” in The English Civil War: Conflict and Contexts, ed. John Adamson (New York: Palgrave, 2009), 153–174. 13

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whereof I thankfully acknowledge myself to owe to that most reverend Primate of Ireland, James Usher, late Archbishop of Armagh, a man indeed incomparable, & most worthy, to be had in perpetual memory).” Ussher certainly owned the volume at one point and gave it to Junius for publication, but it was D’Ewes who showed it to Somner. 15 Somner wrote in his transcription of the manuscript: “Caedmonis Paraphrasis Saxonica, transcriptus e pervetusto libro in Bib. Deuvesiana” [Caedmon’s Saxon paraphrase, transcribed from an ancient book in D’Ewes’s library].16 When Somner transcribed the book, it was in D’Ewes’s collection, but Somner’s preface makes no mention of D’Ewes’s role in allowing Somner to access the volume. Somner similarly minimizes D’Ewes’s efforts at lexicography. In his list of manuscript dictionaries of Old English on which he drew, Somner mentions that of “Mr John Jocelin, (which Sr Simonds D’ewes had word for word transcribed).” D’Ewes certainly had Joscelyn’s dictionary transcribed, but he did so as a foundation for his own compilations as described in chapter one. He heavily augmented the main text. His copy, now the latter part of London, British Library MS Harley 8 and Harley 9, contains large spaces for additional entries, and expands several definitions (in particular, adding Early Modern English equivalents to the Old English and Latin). D’Ewes enlisted the aid of his contemporaries for this: Junius’s hand appears in Harley 8 and 9 – as does Somner’s own. Somner assisted D’Ewes in his research in the late 1640s and may even have lived in his house. Somner obviously knew that all the entries in D’Ewes’s glossaries were not just those carried over from Joscelyn. In fact, one of Somner’s tasks for D’Ewes was compiling entries from the Old English interlinear gloss to the Latin Liber Scintillarum in BL Royal 7 C.iv, a text Somner would eventually also draw on for his Dictionarium.17 Loreen Giese speculates that most Dictionarium entries identified as being from D’Ewes’s glossary might in fact have been provided to D’Ewes’s glossary by Somner in the first place.18 He may have used the same notes that he had originally taken to assist D’Ewes, leading to another of Giese’s points, “we can now say that Somner not only started his Old English dictionary before 1650, but also compiled another dictionary before 1650.”19 Nothing in Somner’s own narrative of his journey toward Old English lexicography mentions this, or the influence that his time with D’Ewes must have had on his Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh 1640–1656, was keenly interested in history and penned several works on chronology as well as on the ancient British church. He was theologically Calvinist, although obviously episcopalian. Katherine Birkwood, “‘Our Learned Primate’ and That ‘Rare Treasurie’: James Ussher’s Use of Sir Robert Cotton’s Manuscript Library, c. 1603–1655,” Library and Information History 26 (2010): 33–42; Alan Ford, James Ussher: Theology, History, and Politics in Early-Modern Ireland and England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Parry, Trophies, 130–156. D’Ewes’s ownership is also attested by Johannes de Laet; see Peter Lucas’s introduction to the facsimile edition of Junius, Cædmonis Monachi Paraphrasis Poetica (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), xiv; and B.J. Timmer, The Later Genesis Edited from MS Junius 11 (Oxford: Scrivener, 1948), 9. 16 Canterbury Cathedral Library Lit C.5, item two. 17 Cook, “Developing Techniques,” 41–42; Tornaghi, “Certaine Things,” 58. 18 L.L. Giese, “An Anonymous Seventeenth-Century Bodleian Manuscript Dictionary: Its Authorship and Significance to Old English Studies,” Bodleian Library Record 14 (1992): 148. 19 Ibid. 15

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studies. De-emphasizing the most prominent Parliamentarian voice in early medieval studies (even if his primary motive could have been personal dislike) helps Somner ensure that Old English studies and the claims based on it for contemporary English policy, religion, and identity are royalist and Laudian in valence. More credit is given to Wheelock, even though the latter shared D’Ewes’s Calvinist inclinations. Somner first mentions him in the list of his predecessors in Old English lexicography: Afterwards, Mr. Abraham Whelock, the late learned Arabick professor at Cambridge, encouraged to the studie of the language by that singular lover & master thereof, that noble, learned, & pious knight, Sr. Henry Spelman, arrived at much proficiency therein. And as for the more advowing & better propagating the language, he sett forth the old Saxon translation of venerable Bedes eclesiast. history, ascribed (& not without good warrant) to K. Alfred, together with large notes, full of larger quotations from the Saxon homilies, & a Saxon Chronology, with a Latine translation of his owne annexed: so at the close of his preface his new edition of the Saxon lawes, bound up in the same volume with the former, he promiseth a Saxon Glossary of his owne composing: but died also re infecta [with it not finished].

Somner credits Wheelock with “much proficiency,” but not the “mastery” that he ascribes to Spelman – nor Spelman’s nobility, piety, or knowledge. Nor does he mention Wheelock’s Professorship of Saxon, only that of Arabic. Wheelock’s primary achievement, the Old English Bede, receives due notice, but Somner’s opinion of Wheelock’s translating abilities is lukewarm, as becomes clear later: It may not be forgotten, that the reason why I more frequently quote the Saxon Chronology published & translated by Mr Whelock, than most other Saxon books or monuments … is because I found his version in all or most these places very faulty. And although I desire not any credit to my selfe by discrediting other men, by discouering (I meane) their slips & sphalmata especially if men of so much learning, candor & modesty as he: yet I thought my selfe bound (on this same occasion offered rather then taken) to prevent the readers seduction into error, by suffering him to swallow those (for the most part) material, though doubtlesse involuntary, Errata.

It is not clear whether or not Somner knew Wheelock personally. He commends the latter’s work and learning but also points out that Wheelock’s attempt at translating the ASC is so faulty that it seems more likely to seduce readers “into error” than help them with their study, as they swallow wrong meanings like the forbidden fruit. This is the language of religious controversy, not merely early English lexical studies, and Somner probably refers as much to Wheelock’s anti-Laudian bent in the Bede as to his inadequacy as a translator of the Chronicle.20 The reader, it seems, should distrust Wheelock’s errors of all kinds. 20 Highly contentious commentary on others’ works would come to feature heavily in nineteenth-century Old English studies, often with similar language. For just one example, see Anne Van Arsdall’s discussion of Oswald Cockayne’s attacks on Joseph Bosworth:

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Somner’s Sources and Royalist Lexicography: Junius 11 and Royal 12 D.xvii While the Dictionarium has 148 citations to the ASC, that number is dwarfed by those to the “Saxon Paraphrase” poems in Junius 11 (256), and the “Physicke-booke” or “Liber Medicus,” the Old English medical texts in Royal 12 D.xvii (373).21 Somner also foregrounds these manuscripts in his narrative of the Dictionarium’s compilation: Those two books indeed (the Physicke-booke & Paraphrase) found me much worke. For not being translated … and the latter of them (especially) written in such an old obsolete, uncouth, poeticall, swelling, effected, mysticall, enigmaticall style & phrase, & so fulle of strange hyperbata, & transpositions … I was enforced to plod much & dwell very long upon many (I might say, the most) of the words & phrases in them both, the latter especially, before ever I could master them. Nor with all my paines, patience & skill could I sometimes expedite or extricate my self: in so much as I am faine, very often to passe over & waive a positive & certaine, and with a fortasse [perhaps] rove onely at a probible & conjectural exposition of the word.

Somner no doubt struggled mightily with the poetic language in Junius 11’s poems Genesis A and B, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan, as well as the technical language of the medical tracts. However, he still chose to engage in that effort. Other Old English manuscripts, on the other hand, he excluded from consideration: When, many other, Saxon pieces I know there are, both in the publick Librarie of our several Universities, & in those more private, yet (by the good favour of their noble keepers) to me as publick, & to my accesse as free: such as Sr. thomas Cottons … some of which I have seene, borrowed, & turned over, & yet thought it not so needfull to transcribe them, partly in regard of one simple mans insufficience, in point both of labour & leesure, for so great a taske: and partly also, because in these pieces, though for number many, & for the variety of their subjects, & the age of the authors, different; yet I was not like to find (as I conceived) any other language, nor almost any other words than what I had already met with in those mannye manifold other wherewith I nowe so well already scored [i.e. scoured] in which opinion I became in no small measure afterwarde confirmed, when I had procured & perused certaine collections of Saxon Words, dictionary wise digested, that namely of Mr. Laurence Nowel, & another of Mr John Jocelin, (which Sr. Simonds D’ewes had word for word transcribed) besides some other more ancient ones form [recte from] & yet extant in that famous & noble treasury of antiquities & pretiows rarities both foraine & domestick, that Library, of Sr Thomas, Sonne of Sr Robert Cotton, Baronet.

Somner’s claim that detailed study of all surviving manuscripts containing Old English surpassed the capability of a single researcher certainly seems plausible, but the rest of the paragraph should give us pause. London, British Library MS Medieval Herbal Remedies: The “Old English Herbarium” and Anglo-Saxon Medicine (New York: Routledge, 2002), 6–11. 21 Cook, “Developing Techniques,” 44–45.

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Cotton Vitellius A.xv, which contains Beowulf and Judith as well as the Old English version of The Wonders of the East and an Old English Life of St. Christopher was one of these manuscripts available to him. Beowulf alone has a high rate of hapax legomena – words that appear in only one place in the surviving corpus of OE – and contains many other words attested on sparsely. Certainly Somner would not have been merely replicating vocabulary had he chosen to mine it. The same could be said for other Cotton holdings, such as Otho B.xi, yet none of these texts are used for the Dictionarium. The point of this is not to castigate Somner for omitting some texts and manuscripts, but rather to observe that some of the arguments against his inclusion of codices like Vitellius A.xv could just have easily militated against his labor over the texts from Junius 11 and Royal 12 D.xvii. Nonetheless, Somner did go to the effort – often very difficult – of copying and attempting definitions of words found in those texts; presumably they had particular value to him. The entries from them reward careful study. “Saxon Paraphrase”: Lemmata from Junius 11 The biblical poems in Junius 11 mostly adapt Hebrew Bible narratives and would have appealed to early modern English readers. Guibbory writes: “English Christians [in the seventeenth century] understood contemporary experience and defined their religious identities in relation to biblical Israel, Jewish history, and Judaism.”22 Like the biblical Children of Israel, many English saw themselves as the “Chosen People,” on whom it was incumbent to keep the truths of Protestantism alive against violent opposition both without and within. The dissent about what precisely these truths were, even among people all identifying as Protestant, did not diminish this belief. Part of their argument for England’s chosen status was the view that beliefs in alignment with Protestantism could be found at several points in England’s religious history, especially among the pre-Norman English church. What’s more, Old English writers based several works on the Hebrew Bible and also identified with biblical Hebrews, as discussions of early medieval literature and culture have argued.23 The shared perspective identifying biblical Hebrews as types for the English would have made such Old English texts a natural fit for seventeenth-­ century readers. As the early modern English looked to the Hebrew Bible to help make sense of their world, they would have been drawn to texts from their predecessors who had done the same. However, no agreement emerged from the widespread use of Hebrew scriptures to think through contemporary circumstance. Guibbory analyzes royalists’ understanding of the texts during the wars and in the decade following the regicide. After the king’s death, “The biblical Jews helped Royalists, dispossessed of their national Church, understand their experiences and survive.”24 The previous chapter touched Achsah Guibbory, Christian Identity, Jews, and Israel in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 1. See also the discussion in chapter one. 23 Old English Literature and the Old Testament, ed. Michael Fox and Manish Sharma (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012); Samantha Zacher, Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse: Becoming the Chosen People (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). 24 Guibbory, Christian Identity, 121. 22

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on the use of Psalms as comfort and as literary inspiration for Charles I in the Eikon Basilike. In addition, some of the books of prophets gave guidance and consolation, as “the narrative Royalists found most compelling was the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE” and the ensuing Babylonian captivity.25 These events are treated in the Junius 11 poem, Daniel. I will focus my discussion on Daniel not because I believe Somner was uninterested in the Genesis poems, Exodus, or Christ and Satan, but because this poem would have had particular resonance when examined by someone of his leanings. It provides a good test case for how seventeenth-century royalist readers might have understood an Old English biblical poem. Although the biblical book of Daniel does not explain in detail the events that led to Daniel and his cohort living in Babylon, the Old English poem contains an extensive description of how the Judeans lost the favor of God and were conquered as a result.26 The narrator explains that after the return from Egypt, the Hebrews had dominion over their idolatrous neighbors at first. This status only lasted: Oðþæt hie wlenco anwod Deofoldædum, Ða hie æcræftas Đa geseah ic þa gedriht Israhela cyn Wommas wyrcean.

æt winþege druncne geðohtas. ane forleton… . in gedwolan hweorfan, unriht don, Đæt wæs weorc gode!27

[Until pride invaded them, drunken thoughts at wine-taking with the deeds of the devil. They abandoned all law-crafts… . Then I saw that host wandering in error, the Israelites did evil, they labored in crimes. That was a grief to God!]28

God sent wise prophets to lead the Hebrews back to his teaching, but the effects were short lived, lasting only oðþæt Eorðan dreamas Þæt hie æt siðestan Drihtnes domas,

hie langung beswac eces rædes, sylfe forleton curon deofles cræft.29

[Until desire for earthly joys cheated them of eternal guidance, so that at last they abandoned in themselves the laws of God, chose the treachery of the devil.] Ibid., 134. This has been observed by J.R. Hall and others. Hall, “The Old English Epic of Redemption: The Theological Unity of MS Junius 11,” in The Poems of MS Junius 11: Basic Readings, ed. Roy M. Liuzza (New York: Routledge, 2002), 20–52, first published in Traditio 32 (1976): 185–208. 27 I quote the edition of Daniel in The Junius Manuscript, ed. George Krapp, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 17–24. 28 Translations are my own, although I refer to those of S.A.J. Bradley, Anglo-Saxon Poetry (London: Everyman, 1982). 29 Daniel, 29b–32 25

26

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The Old English Daniel not only goes beyond its source in the description of the recidivism of the Israelites but also extends the description of the Babylonians’ sacking of Jerusalem and despoiling of the Temple: Đa ic eðan gefrægn Winburh wera. Bereafodon þa receda wuldor Since and seolfre, Gestrudan gestreona Swilc eall swa þa eorlas Oðþæt hie burga gehwone Þara þe þam folce Gehlodon him to huðe Feoh and frætwa, And þa mid þam æhtum

ealdfeonda cyn Đa wigan ne gelyfdon, readan golde, Salomones templ. under stanhliðum, agan sceoldon, abrocen hæfdon, to friðe stodon. hordwearda gestreon, swilc þær funden wæs, eft siðedon… .30

[I have heard that a race of ancient enemies laid waste to the people of the town where wine was drunk. Those warriors did not believe [in God], they despoiled Solomon’s Temple, the glory of halls, of red gold, treasure, and silver. They plundered the treasures under stones, indeed all that the men might possess, until they had broken open each of the fortified places, of those that stood a protection for that people. They took for themselves as spoil the treasure of the wealth-guards, property, and decorations, such that was discovered there. And then they departed again with those riches… .]

Compare this to the brief description in Daniel 1:2: “The Lord let King Jehoiakim of Judah fall into [Nebuchadnezzar’s] power, as well as some of the vessels of the house of God. These he brought to the land of Shinar, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his gods.”31 The Old English poem expands on its source to emphasize the plunder and despoiling of riches, not just those of the Temple but also of private property. As Guibbory has argued, the English understanding of their place in sacred history often led to viewing contemporary events in terms of divine favor or punishment. Just as D’Ewes was convinced that the national violence of the 1640s was directly caused by the Laudian church’s “idolatry” in its ceremonial practices and examined Old Testament narratives to support this, royalists saw the removal of decorations and adornments from churches in terms of Babylonians defiling the Temple. The Old English Daniel’s description of the Babylonians not only taking sacred vessels, but burrowing under stones and in structures, ripping out decorations and removing all that was valuable or beautiful as they broke open and destroyed anything in their path would no doubt have resonated with anyone witnessing the acts of the New Model Army, or Richard Culmer and other Parliamentary representatives Daniel, 57–67. All quotations from the Bible are from The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version, ed. Pheme Perkins et al., 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), Kindle edition. 30 31

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carrying out their mandates in cathedrals and churches throughout England. What one side saw as cleansing in order to expurgate national sin, the other side viewed with equal sincerity as defilement of God’s holy Temple, allowed to happen in order to chasten the English.32 The emphasis on Babylonian ravaging in the Old English Daniel almost pre-packaged this particular version of the biblical narrative to appeal to the latter group as it describes the events in terms that royalists would recognize and respond to. The besetting sin of the Hebrews that leads to their downfall is their “wlenco,” pride.33 Although their bibulous habits render them susceptible, the real issue is not their wine-drinking or feasting but their pride and apparent belief that they need not heed God’s word or warnings by his prophets. Laudians frequently accused puritans of being too proud of their own learning and righteousness.34 From a ceremonialist perspective, the puritans’ scorn for set prayers and ritual rejected God’s biblical warrants for such aspects of devotion. Their pride led them instead to wallow in their own perceived holiness and superiority to other believers, signified by their long, spontaneous prayers and intricate sermons. Their certainty of their elect status and styling of themselves as “saints” seemed the height of sinful presumption to those Protestants whose theology followed Arminius rather than Calvin. The upshot of pride in the Old English Daniel, the final indicator that the Israelites had fallen into such error that God allowed their conquest and captivity, was their rejection of God’s laws (æcræftas). The following of divine commandments for ritual and dietary restrictions is of course a point of emphasis throughout the Hebrew Bible as a marker of identity and status for God’s chosen people. As Hilary Fox observes, the Old English Daniel likewise links divine and human law: “Losing affinity with God entailed violations of the divinely instituted order that provided the laws by which political and social lives and identities were governed… .”35 Such emphasis was another way in which early modern English thinkers could identify themselves with the biblical Hebrews, for English law, as we have seen in chapter three’s discussion of Roger Twysden and in Jacob’s prefatory poem, was a touchstone of national identity. For royalists, the rejection of God’s anointed bishops violated this law. Politically, socially, and ceremonially, the actions of the dominant faction in the 1640s and 1650s undermined the whole of English society, in their opponents’ view. It would hardly have mattered to Somner and his colleagues that in contemporary England the prideful sinners themselves were the ones carrying out the destruction of the holy places and the stripping of their treasures and adornments. In fact, it might well have seemed to be the culmination and logical extension of the warning in the Old English Daniel. As the Israelites then, so the English now, 32 Culmer’s activities in Canterbury Cathedral were particularly “defiling.” An angry mob trapped him inside as he worked, forcing him to eventually urinate in the cathedral: Greaves, “Puritan Firebrand,” 361. 33 Graham Caie, “The Old English Daniel: A Warning against Pride,” English Studies 59 (1978): 1–9. 34 For examples, see the discussion of Robert Shelford’s Five Pious and Learned Discourses in chapter two. 35 Hilary Fox, “Denial of God, Mental Disorder, and Exile: The Rex iniquus in Daniel and Juliana,” JEGP 111 (2012): 427.

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only this time God had not employed an invading army but had instead allowed the English to savage themselves. I will focus on the Dictionarium’s quotations from Daniel describing Nebuchadnezzar’s power and eventual downfall. If the Babylonians were the type of the Parliamentarian troops, then Nebuchadnezzar would figure Oliver Cromwell, the conqueror. In the middle of a lengthy definition of “Beorn. Vir, homo, masuculus. a man,” Somner includes an instance, not necessary to his definition, where the word refers to Nebuchadnezzar: Nabuchodnosor, Rex ille Babylonicus, longé latéque notissimus, cujus dominum pervenisse dicitur in fines terrae. Dan. 4.22. unde illud P.S. p. 202. swa se beam geweox. heah to heofonum. swa ðu hæleðum eart-ana eallum eorð-buendum. weard & wisra. nis ðe wiðer-breca. man on moldan. nymðe metod ana… . [Nebuchadnezzar, That king of Babylon, famous far and wide, of whose rule it is said to reach to the ends of the earth. Dan. 4:22, whence that P.S. p. 202. As the tree grows high to heaven, so you are sole ruler and sage of all the earth-dwellers. There is no adversary for you on the earth, except the Lord only… .]36

The passage is extracted from the episode where Daniel interprets for Nebuchadnezzar the latter’s dream of a mighty tree that was destroyed by an angel. This portion explains that the tree represents the king himself; the last line’s final clause sets up the rest of the narrative, which Somner’s audience would have known. Nebuchadnezzar, the world’s mightiest king, would soon be humbled and would live powerless and insane in the wilderness. The same passage appears again in the entry Metod, repeating the adversarial relationship between the Babylonian king and the Lord: “nis ðe wiðer-breca. man on moldan. nymðe metod ana” [there is no adversary for you on the earth, except the Lord only]; again Somner takes care to explain the addressee: “De Nabuchodnosoro dictum” [said to Nebuchadnezzar]. If God was one’s enemy, no amount of worldly sway could help. The reasons for God’s anger against Nebuchadnezzar also appear in the Dictionarium’s entries. In his second definition for God-spellian [to foretell, to prophecy], Somner again cites Daniel’s words to Nebuchadnezzar: Swa ær Daniel cwæð. þæt se folc-toga findan sceolde. earfoð siðas. for his ofer-medlan. swa he oftlice god-spellode. metodes mihtum [So Daniel had said previously that the leader of people should find hard journeys for his pride, as he often prophesied through God’s power]. i.e quemadmodum antea Daniel dixerat: quod (scilicet) populi Dux (Nabuchodnosor) difficilia inveniret itinera, (difficultates scil. & anguistias sustineret) ob suam superbiam: prout ipse (Daniel) saepe prædixerat, Dei virtute. Somner’s polyglot entries present challenges to translate. In general, where he provides an Early Modern English translation for his Old English, I offer no further translation. If he does not, I provide a translation in square brackets immediately following his Old English text. Where his Latin text expands his ideas or comments on the passage, I translate that as well; Latin passages that reiterate the sense of the Old English I do not translate. As the Dictionarium is alphabetical, it does not contain page numbers. 36

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Figure 7: William Somner, Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum 1659. From the entry Beorn.

Somner carefully spells out in his Latin translation whose pride it is that will earn him wretched journeys and wandering – Nebuchadnezzar’s. He also clarifies that the “hard journey” is more than a rough day or two of travel, as the Latin also expands on the term to include “dificultates scil, & anguistias sustineret” [namely he will endure hardship and anguish]. Pride in a ruler who ignores God’s warnings leads inevitably to suffering. Nebuchadnezzar’s eventual fate appears in detail in the Dictionarium’s entries as well: Wine-leas. Ingratus, molestus, contemptus. unacceptable, grievous, offensive, despised. P.S. pag. 202–203. se ðec aceorfeð of cyningdome ond ðec wine-leasne on wræc sendeð &c. [He will cut you off from your kingly power, and will send you, despised, into exile.] Ipse (Deus) te (Nabuchodonosorum) regno privabit, teque ab omnibus despectum in exilium mittet.

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Somner’s entries depict a tyrant, seemingly holding all worldly power but on the verge of being humbled and made wretched by God. The image must have resonated with his fellow royalists longing for the overthrow of the Protectorate, and with Cromwell’s death in September 1658 if the entries were compiled that late. “Bald’s Leechbook” and “Leechbook III” (MS Royal 12 D.xvii): Disease and the Body Politic A common trope to conceive of the early modern social and political makeup was the human body. In fact, the “body politic” metaphor is so widespread that it is tempting to write it off as merely a cliché. However, it governed English writers’ conception of their human interactions on a fundamental level; consequently, medical discourse and political discourse intertwine in ways that are not always obvious to us now. Margaret Healey tracks how these fields interwove in early modern England, “a period repeatedly described as a highly somatic moment, one that witnessed an unprecedented series of exchanges between medical and other knowledges; between the corporeal and other domains.”37 Healey’s account argues that “discourses of disease … inscribe social tensions and reveal elements in the social process… .”38 Somatic theory was fundamental to how the English understood themselves as a community, so Somner’s heavy use of an Old English medical treatise bears close examination – especially given the way that Somner’s preface foregrounds this “Liber Medicus” as a difficult but essential source. What was this source? The texts in Royal 12 D.xvii contain medical recipes, mostly herbal, with some instructions for their preparation and use.39 The first two sections are now collectively known to medievalists as Bald’s Leechbook. The texts are given this name due to a colophon stating that a man named Bald asked that this book be written (or perhaps compiled) for him by one Cild. Probably both were medical practitioners. Book I of Bald’s Leechbook is organized somatically; the text deals with treatments for diseases or injuries of the head and works down the body (the pattern is broken toward the end of the book, which may indicate later additions to the original version that were subsequently copied as part of it). Book II similarly gathers remedies by area of the ailment, although it has a greater focus on internal diseases, and periodically gives diagnostic advice. Both texts are compiled from various Latin and Greek medical and herbal treatises as well as from native remedies, rearranged to be of maximum use to a practicing physician. The manuscript’s final section, Leechbook III, has less material from the classical tradition; 37 Margaret Healy, Fictions of Disease in Early Modern England: Bodies, Plagues and Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 3; see also Jonathan Gil Harris, Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Sabine Kalff, “The Body Is a Battlefield: Conflict and Control in Seventeenth-Century Physiology and Political Thought,” in Blood, Sweat, and Tears: The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, ed. Manfred Horstmanshoff, Helen King, and Claus Zittell (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 171–194. 38 Healey, Fictions, 16. 39 The texts are edited in Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, ed. and trans. Oswald Cockayne, vol. 2 (London, 1865), hereinafter cited in this chapter as Leechdoms.

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M.L. Cameron believes it represents a more native tradition than the other two portions of the volume.40 Early claims that the texts represent a low point of mindless copying and rank superstition have been successfully countered by more recent examinations.41 Bald’s Leechbook possibly had connections with the court of King Alfred the Great, as some medical remedies included in it are headed by a note that they were sent to King Alfred by Elias, Patriarch of Jerusalem. Audrey Meaney, examining the internal evidence of the remedies, finds no reason to doubt this attribution, as most of the ingredients called for would be found in the Middle East; she speculates that Elias may have sent dried specimens to Alfred along with the directions for their use that were copied into Bald’s Leechbook at Alfred’s court.42 If true, this text had high cultural visibility. Like early modern England, early medieval England also interlaced medical and political discourse at times. Meaney draws attention to Alfred the Great’s emphasis on somatic metaphors in one of his most widely known translations: “Alfred’s English translation of Gregory the Great’s Cura Pastoralis expands the metaphor of the bishop as the soul’s physician, for example by adding a description of the medic examining a swelling by feeling and stroking it, and sharpening as well as hiding the knife which is to perform the operation.”43 Alfred’s discussion of the bishop’s healing role is also a model of political theory; metaphors of the human body and those of the state interacted. The texts in Royal 12 D.xiv and others such as the Old English Herbarium and the compilation of healing charms, Lacnunga, provide an unparalleled store of vernacular medical writing from the early Middle Ages. While this alone perhaps does not provide enough evidence to claim that later pre-Conquest England was also a “highly somatic moment” or that such discourse had wide cultural penetration, it indicates that people near the top of the power structure thought about and through bodily health and healing. Early modern readers looking to see potential reflections M.L. Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 35. 41 Jay Curtis’s remark is typical of early and mid-twentieth-century views: “The Leechbook shows in the majority of the craftas the most unscientific and aimless application of herbs, household and animal matter to a large number of infirmities, the nature of which were apparently little understood and certainly little described”: Curtis, “The Vocabulary of Medical ‘Craftas’ in the Old English ‘Leechbook of Bald’” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 1946), 35. Against this view, Anne Van Arsdall, Audrey Meaney, Stephanie Hollis, Richard Scott Nokes, and Linda Voigts have been eloquent, as has the discovery by the University of Nottingham’s Ancient Biotics research group that a remedy from Bald’s Leechbook is remarkably efficacious against MRSA infections. Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies; Meaney, “The Practice of Medicine in England about the Year 1000,” Social History of Medicine 13 (2000): 221–237; Hollis, “The Social Milieu of Bald’s Leechbook,” AVISTA 14 (2004): 11–16; Nokes, “The Several Compilers of Bald’s Leechbook,” Anglo-Saxon England 33 (2003): 51–76; Voigts, “Anglo-Saxon Plant Remedies and the AngloSaxons,” Isis 70 (1979): 250–268; Freya Harrison et al., “A 1,000-Year-Old Antimicrobial Remedy with Antistaphylococcal Activity,” Microbiology 6, no. 4 (2015): 1–7. 42 Audrey Meaney, “Alfred, the Patriarch, and the White Stone,” Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 49 (1978): 65–79. Emily Kesling also discusses Bald’s Leechbook as a production in line with Alfredian texts and translations in Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2020). 43 Meaney, “Practice,” 223. 40

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of their own culture could have identified this commonality and viewed early English medical culture as consonant with the somatic focus of their own day. Like the Old English poem Daniel, these texts would have sounded a note familiar to the early modern reader. The format and instructions of the OE herbal remedies would have seemed familiar as well. Consider the “salve for all Sores” contained in Salvator Winter’s 1649 tract A New Dispensatory: Take Sallet Oyl, a Pint and a half, as much Turpentine, Rosin a quarter of a pound, Mastix, Myrrhe, Frankincense beaten to a powder, unwrought Wax half a pound, Sheeps Tallow four pound, Ragwort, Plantin, Orpin, Wormwood, Rue Camomil, of each two handfuls. Cut these Herbs and seeth them in the things above written, then put to it one ounce of Red Saunders in fine Powder, let it boyl softly, always stirring it till it be well mingled together; then take it from the fire, and strain it through a strong Canvass… .44

With the exception of the weights, this could have come from an Old English medical text. In fact, many of the same ingredients appear in the Old English medical recipes, perhaps for the same reasons – rue has anti-hemorrhagic properties, and plantain is antibiotic.45 Such similarity in the language and even the ingredients of medical recipes, whether for the early medieval specialist practitioner or (as Winter’s title page pitches) “most necessary and Profitable for all House-Keepers in their Families,” shows that early medieval and early modern England shared expectations – even fascinations – about medical treatment. Elaine Leong describes the pervasiveness of medical recipes in early modern households and their importance in establishing networks and elevating status.46 Recipes that came from the “Saxon” ancestors would have appealed to the many English who were, in her words, “gripped by recipe fever.”47 Contemporary recipe fever helps explain why Somner took care to provide whole remedies to his reader, even when the lexical needs of his Dictionarium did not call for it: Un-tydrend. Infaecundus, sterilis. barren, unfruitful. item castratus, eviratus. Gelded. L.M. p. 1. c. 37. wiþþon þe mon ne mæge his micgean gehealdan. ond þæne geweald nage. swines blædran untydrendes. þæt is gylte. gebærn to ahsan. do on win sele drincan [In case a man cannot hold his urine and has no control over it, burn to ashes the bladder of a sterile, that is a gelded, swine, put it into wine, give it to drink].48 i.e. ad id quod quis urinam suam reterinere nequeat: accipe porci infaecundi, id est, castrati (majalis scil.) vesicam, cinefdo, in vinum immitte, potandum detur. Salvator Winter, A New Dispensatory of Fourty Physicall Receipts (London, 1649), 7. Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine, 123–126. 46 Leong, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). 47 Ibid., 2. 48 Translations of the Old English medical texts are mine, although I refer to those of Cockayne, Leechdoms, and Conan Doyle, “Anglo-Saxon Medicine and Disease: A Semantic Approach,” vol. 2 (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2011). 44 45

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Somner did not need to quote the whole remedy, including the description of the ailment, to support his definition of gelded for untydrend. To give just one other example of Somner’s tendency to include entire recipes beyond what he needs to demonstrate the use of the word in question, consider his entry for “Ream”: Ream. Cremor lactis: item lac integrum. creame. Kiliano, room. L.M. p. 3. c. 10. Wiþþon þe nion blode hræce ond spiwe. genim god beren mela. ond hwit sealt. do on ream oþþe gode flete. hrer on blede. oþ þæt hit sie þicca swa þynn briw. sele etan viiii. snæda. viiii. morgenas on neahtnestig. do þæs meluwes twæde. ond þæs sealtes þriddan dæl. wyrc ælce dage niwne [In case a man coughs up and vomits blood: take good barley meal and white salt, put it into cream or good curds, agitate in a dish until it is as thick as a thin porridge, give it to eat nine doses for nine mornings after night’s fasting. Use two parts of the meal and the third part of the salt. Make anew each day]. i.e. Ad execrationem & rejectionem cruentam: Recipe bonam farinam bordeaceam, & mittes in cremorem lactis, vel bonum laec gelatum; coagitabis in patera usque ad tenuis jusculi (ita ad verbum Saxonica) crassitudinem: dabis manducandum ix. buccellas ix. matutinis jejuno: sint farinae due partes, & salis tertia: renovetur quotidie.

Somner was on fairly certain ground defining ream as cream; he does not label his definition “fortasse” or “forte.” Although sometimes he provides lengthy quotations when the exact meaning is not clear, this is not the case here. He wanted the entire remedy presumably so any readers experiencing bloody phlegm or vomit could have the resource of the Old English recipe, and possibly also to underscore the “contemporary” format of Old English medical remedies. Somner included the entire text for them to note in their own collections. The craze for medical recipes in early modern England also explains why Somner at times inserts his own observations in his definitions. The explanation for “Blogene. Pustula. a blaine. blacan blegene. L.M. p. 1. c. 58. forte, anthrax. a kind of bile [i.e. boil] or ulcer, drawing quickly to a scabbe, with a vehement inflammation of the whole part about it” has a diagnostic ring to it, as Somner discusses the features of the particular ulceration he proposes to translate blogene. The description does not appear in the original, which reads only “Wiþ þa blackan blegene” [Against the black sore] before it discusses the remedy. For “Mer-gealla. L.M. p. 2. c. 6 [recte 65] fortasse, Onocicidae. a kind of galles great and hollow, not of so good effect as the lesse,” Somner makes a comment about the relative efficacy of two natural ingredients; this is not in the Old English.49 Likewise, Somner’s own botanical observations appear s.v. Hleomoc: Hleomoc. hleomoce. herba quaedam. L.M. p. 1. c. 2 & 38. it. p. 3 c. 22. Fasicla. MS. fortasse, Faselus vel Phaseolus. a kind of pulse: fasells [i.e. kidney beans]. Mihi tamen magis arridet, Anagallis. [Nevertheless Anagallis is more pleasing to me]. Pimpernell. L.M. p. 1. c. 38. dolh-sealf wið lungen adle. hleomoce hatte wyrt. sio weaxeð on broce [wound salve against lung disease, the plant called “hleomoc.” it grows in brooks]. i.e. Explastrum vulnerarium, pulmonarium sanans: herba 49

Leechdoms, 296.

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hleomoce dicta: crescit in irriguis. ubi, anagallem aquaticam ipse intelligo [Where, I myself understand to be water speedwell].

Somner questions the first possible definition on the grounds of his own observation that kidney beans do not grow in brooks or even in damp ground, preferring well-drained soil. Somner’s identification of hleomoc as water speedwell seems to be entirely his own observation. Somner presents Old English herbal medicine as efficacious. Many modern studies of pre-Conquest medicine at some point raise the question “does it work?”; Somner simply assumes it does. For instance, in the entry “Duntæhte. L.M. p. 2. c. 65. duntæhte saluie. Salvia alpina, vel montana. mountaine Sage, ad pulmones valet” [Salvia alpine, or mountainous. Mountain sage, good for the lungs], Somner simply states that the herb is good for lung ailments as a medical fact, based on the phrase “dun tæhte saluie” appearing in a remedy for “lung adle.” In fact, Somner misunderstood this text: “wiþ lungen adle læcedom dun tæhte: saluie, rude be healfan þære saluian…” [Against a lung disease, a remedy. Dun taught [it]: sage, rue half as much as the sage …].50 “Dun tæhte saluie” is not a mountainous variety of sage, but three words, one of which is a personal name. The point here is not to criticize Somner for getting it wrong, but to observe the directions in which his mind went as he struggled through the challenging vocabulary of the medical texts. Somner’s misreading is understandable, but with it he simply asserts that “mountainous sage” is good for the lungs. Somner even underscores the efficacy of herbs that he cannot identify: “Eh heoloþe. L.M. p. 1. c. 32. herbae genus: in balneo valet ad vitiliginem” [a type of herb. In a bath, it is good against vitiligo]. There is no logical reason for Somner to say how and for what to use this herb, since he cannot concretely identify it. His decision to do so points to a desire to show the extent of early medieval medicine. Herbal medicine was not the only avenue through which healing could be sought, of course, either in Somner’s or Bald’s days. Much medical advice was dietary and consisted of consuming or avoiding various food items to offset perceived imbalances in the patient. Some of Somner’s extended quotations familiarize his reader with this aspect of early medieval health practices: Finiht. Squameus, squamosus, scaly, rough and full of scales. L.M. p. 2. c. 37. mettas him beoð nytte þa þe god blod wyrceað. Swa swa sint scil-fixas-finihte. ond han wilda hanna ond ealle þe fugelas þe on dunum libbað, etc. [Meats that work good blood are beneficial for him, as are shell fishes, and those that have fins, and a wild cock or hen, and all the birds that live on mountains]. i.e. Cibi ei (sc. splenetico) necessarii sunt ii qui bonum sanguinem efficiunt: quales sunt conchylia, pisces squamosi, gallinæ, phasiani, & omnes aves in montibus degentes. &c.

Somner explains the diet and its rationale to help a man who is “splenetic” (as his insertion into his Latin translation clarifies for his reader). Medical recipes needed available ingredients to be useful to their collectors. Somner’s entries from the texts in Royal 12 D.xvii present his dictionary’s user with a view of Britain as a locale of great potential for healing in its plants and minerals. 50

Ibid., 292.

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Some of these agents were imported, of course, and Bald’s Leechbook is now studied for what it can tell us about cultural and economic interchanges among early medieval England, Continental Europe, and the Middle East. However, unless his source specifically says that a plant is “southern,” Somner guesses something that could be found in England. Somner also notes that minerals had a place in early medieval English medical practice, a gesture that would no doubt have been appreciated by English “Helmontians,” or followers of Jean Van Helmont, a physician in the Paracelsan school.51 One emphasis of the Paracelsans/Helmontians was the importance of minerals in the pharmacopeia, which they felt had been overly focused on botanicals. Such debate might explain why Somner includes nearly an entire chapter from Bald’s Leechbook on the healing and prophylactic powers of jet:52 Gagates. Gagates. the stone called Jeat, or Agath-stone. De quo & virtutibus ejus ita L.M. p. 2. c. 66: Be þam stane þe gagates hatte is sæd þæt he viii. mægen hæbbe. an is. þone þunor rad biþ ne sceðeð þam nion þe þone stan mid him hæfð. Oþer mægen is. on swa hwilcum huse swa he bið. ne mæg þær inne feond wesan. Đridde mægen is. þæt nan attor þam mon ne mæg sceððan þe þone stan mid him hafaþ. Feorþe mægen is. þæt se man se þe þone laðan feond on him deagollice hæfþ. gif he þæs stanes gesceafenes hwilcne dæl on wætan onfehð. þonne biþ sona sweotol æteowod on him þæt ær deagolmað. Fifte mægen is. se þe ænigre adle gedreht biþ. gif he þone stan on wætan þigeþ him bið sona sel. Sixte mægen is. þæt dry-cræft þam mon ne [*]creð se þe hine mid him hæfð. Seofoþe mægen is. þæt se þe þone stand on drince on fehð. he hæfð þe smeþran lichoman. Eatoþe is þæs stanes mægen. þæt nan nædran-cynnes bite þam sceþþan ne mæg þe þone stan on wætan byrigþ. [Concerning the stone that is called jet: it is said that it has eight virtues. One is that when there is thunder, it does not harm the man who has the stone with him. A second virtue is that an enemy may not be in whatever house it is in. A third virtue is that no poison may harm the man who has it with him. The fourth virtue is that if the man who has secretly on him the hateful enemy (þone laþan feond) takes some part of the shavings of this stone in liquid, then immediately appears clearly on him what before was hidden. The fifth virtue is that if he who is afflicted by any disease takes the stone in liquid it will soon be well with him. The sixth virtue is that sorcery does not harm the man who has it with him. The seventh virtue is that he who takes the stone in drink will have the smoother body. The eighth virtue of the stone is that no bite of any kind of snake may harm him who takes the stone in liquid.53] id est: De lapide Gagates 51 Scientific developments such as Helmontianism are discussed in Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform 1626–1660 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1976). 52 Cockayne translates “gagates” as “agate,” but Audrey Meaney persuasively argues that “jet” is meant here, citing the same passage from Bede that Somner quotes. Leechdoms, 297; Meaney, “Alfred,” 73. 53 Meaney’s translation: “Alfred,” 73–74. Meaney observes that this passage does not have a clear origin in Mediterranean lapidary traditions and speculates that some of these may be beliefs that grew up among Germanic populations when they began encountering the stone in Britain.

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dicto fertur quod octo habeat virtutes. Una est: quod tonitruum quando acciderit non noceat ei apud quem idem lapis fuerit. (i. lapidem circumferenti.) Alio (vel secunda) virtus est: quod in quacunque domo (lapis) ille fuerit, Diabolus ibi intus esse nequeat. Tertiae virtus est: quod nullum veneram ei noceat, lapidem illum que penes se habuerit. Quarta virtus est: quod si ille penes quem faedus hostis (i. Diabolus) laetenter manserit, istius lapidis ramentorum quid madidum acceperit, tunc cito (id) manifestabitur in eo quod antea latebat. Quinta virtus est: qui aliquo laborabit morbo, si lapidem illum madidam acceperit, cito sanabitur. Sexta virtus est: quod magica (vel, ars magica) ei non noceat eundem lapidem qui penes se habuerit. Septima virtus est: quod lapidem illum in potu accipienti corpus erit laevius (vel, mollius). Octava hujus lapidis virtus est: quon nullius generis Serptentium morsus eum laedat, qui lapidem illum madidum gustaverit. His nonam adjice, á venerabili Beda, Hist. lib. 1. c. 1. her biþ eac gemetad gagatest. se stan biþ [swylce, in marg.] blæc gym. gif mon hine on fyr deþ. þonne fleoþ þar neddran onweg [A ninth is added, from the Venerable Bede’s History, lib. 1. c. 1. Here also is found jet, a stone that is very black. If one puts it into a fire, then snakes flee away]. gignit (Britannia) & lapidem Gagatem plurimum optimumque. Eit autem nigrogemmeus, & ardens igni admotus, incensus serpentes fugat.

Somner hardly needed to quote the entire discussion of jet from Bald’s Leechbook, and include the statement in Bede that burning jet drives away serpents, to make his point about the word’s basic meaning. Indeed, he could have cited the Old English Bede alone without mentioning the medical text, much less leading with it. The entry for gagates shows how Somner sought to give useful information about early medieval England, explaining customs and technologies beyond simply defining them. A stone found in the soil of Britain can cure an English body of ailments and can also serve as preventative medicine for injuries and venom. It can provide diagnostic information in the case of demonic possession, which the passage makes clear was a medical issue and not (or not only) a spiritual one. The emphasis on the native qualities of this therapeutic stone underscores the “English” history of medical treatments, as does the very existence of Somner’s Liber Medicus. The early modern reader perusing Somner’s Dictionarium would have seen that early medieval medical practice in the Liber Medicus was English in character as well as language. This reader would probably not have been dismayed by the discussion of jet having qualities surpassing those that modern readers expect from their pharmacopeia. For instance, the statement that jet could assist in diagnosing demonic possession would have seemed entirely suitable to a medical handbook, as early modern physicians were also called upon to diagnose possession.54 Possession entails a wrongful party gaining control over a human body and causing it to become disfigured and/or engage in destructive and degrading behaviors. Understood in a symbolic sense, as the body so often was in early modern England, with the body as a figure for the English polity, the “possession” by a “hated enemy” Not all physicians participated in such activities, however, and some actively resisted diabolic diagnoses for illness. See Philip Almond, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern England: Contemporary Texts and Their Cultural Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1–42. 54

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would clearly be applicable by royalists to the Commonwealth and Protectorate governments, which (in their view) had taken control of the English body politic and distorted and disfigured it, with catastrophic results. Although speculative, such a scenario gives us one example of how some seventeenth-century readers could have connected to early medieval medical discourse as it appeared in the Dictionarium. Somner includes several medico-magical treatments against possession and/or attack by spiritual enemies. A prime example is Somner’s discussion of cyric bell as a sub-entry under “bell”: “cyric-bell. L.M. p. 1. c. 63. Campanula sacra: eadem forté quae Latinobarbaris Scilla, Scella, a Skilla, dicta nostratibus, a sacring bell” [a sacred bell, perhaps that same that in barbarous Latin is called Scella. called among us a sacring bell]. Cyric bell in fact just means the obvious – church bell. Somner’s definition ties it to a modern element of church practice, one that had been frowned upon by puritans. The OED notes under “sacring bell”: “In post-Reformation times, sometimes applied to a small bell rung to summon parishioners to morning prayers, or to mark the point in the Communion Service at which the people should go up to communicate.” One of the citations is a complaint, dated 1641, against a parish for having such a bell.55 The formalities associated with the Lord’s Supper were heatedly debated between Laudians and puritans: should parishioners go up to the altar and kneel, or gather, standing, around a plain table set in the midst of the church? Puritans saw no reason to set the ritual apart from the rest of the service by ringing a bell.56 Somner’s association of “church bell” with a particularly contentious aspect of the ritual in his own day is even more striking when we realize that the illness treated in Bald’s Leechbook 1.63 is, again, demonic: the practitioner is to make a drink for a “fiend-sick” patient and have the possessed man drink it “of ciricbellan” [from a church bell]. Other times, Somner matter-of-factly states that magico-medical remedies against possession, mental illness, and witchcraft work. He describes the healing powers of an ingredient he cannot even identify due to a transcription error: “Cristes mæle. Crux sancta. the holy crosse, or Christs crosse. cristes mæles wagu. L.M. p. 1. c. 63. medicamenti quid obsessos sanatis” [some medicine for curing those possessed]. The manuscript reads “cristes mæles ragu,” and the Bosworth–Toller dictionary translates it as “lichen off a crucifix.”57 Somner chooses to include this entry, and states its efficacy, even though he cannot translate it. Remedies against witchcraft are similarly given with no indication that Somner questions (or expects his audience to question) their efficacy or their relevance in a medical treatise: “Rud molin. L.M. p. 3. c. 58. Quoddam (fortasse) molyos genus, rivos amans, & maleficiis obstans. Some kind of moly, rue or herb-grace good against witchcrafts.” Somner’s Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “sacring bell” definition two. Bryan Spinks, Sacraments, Ceremonies, and the Stuart Divines: Sacramental Theology and Liturgy in England and Scotland 1603–1662 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002); Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c. 1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); Graham Parry, Glory, Laud and Honour: The Arts of the Anglican CounterReformation (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006); see also the sources cited in chapter two. 57 Joseph Bosworth and Thomas Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online, ed. Christ Sean and Ondrej Tichy (Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, 2014), http:// bosworthtoller.com, hereinafter cited as Bosworth–Toller. 55

56

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final statement implies that whatever herb is meant, Somner expects that it really is “good” against witchcraft. Medieval medicine and early modern medicine shared a philosophy that spiritual and bodily illnesses were conjoined, and both came within the realm of the physician to cure. They also, as I have mentioned, came within the realm of political theorists. A common somatic-political trope in early modern England was to describe an unpopular regime as a “glutted paunch,” a ruling belly that rapaciously consumed its subjects’ goods and property.58 Tyrants were often described as gluttonous stomachs, and of course in medical theory dietary moderation and restrictions were seen as crucial to maintaining a balance in the humors, and therefore in promoting health. Healey observes, “In the decades prior to and during the civil wars, the poorly regimented, humorally imbalanced body was the site where circulating discourses of pathology (crucial in religious, economic, and political domains) intersected and merged. Even more important, it was the site where ‘cures’ were formulated too.”59 Healey gives a striking example from John Ogilby’s 1651 poetic paraphrase of Aesop’s fables – the government as a ruling belly that has cut off its own head. The volume is political satire couched in terms of the familiar stories. Ogilby’s “Seven and Fortieth Tale” opens with an arresting image of a monstrous body that has a face on its torso, a sword in its hand, and its decapitated head lying by its side. The fable is titled “Of the Rebellion of the Hands and Feet”; the limbs are shown flailing about the grotesque and bloated trunk. In the background is pictured a cooking fire, referencing the gluttony that has rendered the paunch so bloated. The verse explains the image: Reason, once King in Man, Depos’d, and dead, The Purple Isle was rul’d without a head: The Stomach a devouring State swaid all, At which the Hands did burn, the Feet did gaule; Swift to shed blood, and prone to Civill stirs These Members were, who now turn Levellers: The vast Revenue of the little World Is in the Exchequer of the Bellie hurld… .60

The hands and feet demand that the stomach make good its promises that if they cut off the head they should no longer have to labor, for instead of their promised rest in luxury, “Skies, Seas, we spread with Nets, vast Earth with Gins, / To Banquet you [the stomach], who feast seaven deadly Sins.” The Stomach insists that it was more responsible than they for the overthrow of the head, as it had gained control over the other organs: What Acts did you, to those that we have done? Who was it carried the great businesse on? … Healey, Fictions, chapter six. Ibid., 189. 60 John Ogilby, The Fables of Aesop Paraphras’d in Vers and Adorn’d with Sculpture (London, 1651), n.p. 58

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Figure 8: John Ogilby, The Fables of Aesop Paraphras’d in Vers and Adorn’d with Sculpture. 1651. Fable 47.

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Beat up all Quarters of the Heart by Night, And did that Fort with its own trembling fright? Who sweld the Spleen? And made the Gall-ore flow? … Who made the Liver glow, Till all those Purple Attoms in the Blood Which make the Soul, swom in a burning Flood, From whence inflam’d, they seiz’d upon the Head, And ore the Face their blushing Enisgns spread?61

Unimpressed, the Hands and Feet refuse to do any work to feed the Stomach, but they realize their mistake when after a few days they find themselves wasting away. By then, it is too late: the Stomach is also too weak to take nourishment, and the body dies. At the end, the Hands lament their folly to the Feet and harken back to the days of bodily unity, when: … we brought in food, Which the kind Stomach did prepare for Blood, The Liver gave it tincture, the great Vein Sends it in thousand severall streams again To feed the parts, which there assimulates. Concord builds high, when Discord ruins States. But the chief cause did our destruction bring, Was, we Rebell’d ‘gainst Reason our true King.62

Theorizing the state as a body in the way Ogilby and others exemplify (with obvious parallels to the regicide) imparts special importance to diseases of the digestive tract and abdomen, since digestion, blood, and liver were understood to regulate the body.63 Proper nutrition and evacuation uphold not only the body but the state, and Somner’s lexical entries from the medical texts emphasize the dangers of disordered bellies. Somner’s entries on abdominal ailments reach for specific definitions whenever possible to highlight the dangers of gastro-intestinal illness: Ut-wærce. L.M. p. 2. c. 56 fortasse Haemorrhois, marisca, ficus, condyloma, dolor ani exterior. the piles or hemeroides in the fundament of a man. item Ani procidentia. the falling downe, putting forth of the fundament, or some other such like ach, paine, or griefe in that part.

Somner’s definitions identify utwærc as a specific disorder, or rather a pair of them. While Cockayne and the Bosworth–Toller dictionary both define utwærc as a more generalized “painful evacuation,” Somner surmises hemorrhoids, but also suggests rectal prolapse. His impulse, as we see here, is to identify a specific pathology rather

Ibid. Ibid. 63 Thomas Wright, William Harvey: A Life in Circulation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 32–34. 61

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Figure 9: William Somner, Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum 1659. From the entry Frecnan coþe.

than a generalized descriptions of discomfort associated with defecation. He does the same in his discussion of a particularly perilous condition: Frecnan coþe. Morbus ille gravis & periculosus, ab antiquis medicis, Domine miserere, dictus [A certain grave and dangerous illness called “Lord have mercy” by ancient doctors] L.M. p. 2. c. 33. be þ[æ]re fræcnan coþe þe se mon his ut gang þurh þone muð him fram weorp [about the dangerous disease in which a man casts forth his feces through the mouth]. i. de morbo illo periculoso, quo qui afficitur stercum per os egerit. Illiaca passio. an obstruction or stopping of the small gutts, which suffereth nothing to passe downward, causeth a great pain and wringing in that place.

Somner takes frecnan coþe [dangerous disease] to be the name of a specific pathology, instead of the descriptor-noun set that modern translators understand – it is a specific “dangerous disease,” not just any perilous illness. Somner supplies a medical term of his own acquaintance for a digestive pathology: “Domine miserere,” the “Lord-have-mercy” disease.64 As Somner’s description makes clear, the condition referred to is an intestinal blockage, so the label hardly exaggerates – modern-day medical practitioners consider such obstruction an emergency, as it can quickly lead 64 Mentioned in, for instance, Jean Goeurot and Thomas Fayre, The Regiment of Life … Newly Corrected and Enlarged by T. Phayre (London, 1550). I am indebted to Curtis Perry for this reference.

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Figure 10: William Somner, Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum 1659. From the entry Frecnan coþe.

to peritonitis and/or sepsis.65 Somner’s understanding of the adjective-noun compound as a particular disease, known as “the dangerous illness,” underscores the perils of disordered digestion and an unruly “paunch” that fails to operate within its designated framework in the body. In other entries, Somner goes even further and creates compounds from words that are not adjacent in the source text. For instance, consider “Magan-aþenung ond ablawung. L.M. p. 2. c. 15. Morbus. stomachi distentio & inflatio. the stretching or retching, and puffing up of the stomach.” The recipe referred to reads “Sio aþenung þæs magan ond sio ablawunge hæto cymeð of þam blacum omum” [The swelling of the stomach and the heat of the puffing up comes from dark phlegm].66 Nowhere does “magan” appear immediately before “aþenung” or “ablawung” in such a way that this could be mistaken for a compound noun: it is clearly descriptive, referring to distention and bloating of the stomach, and is not the name of a specific ailment. Somner invents a lexical item that does not, in fact, appear in his source, emphasizing the abdomen and digestive tract as a potential source of illness. Somner’s mind also gravitates to purgatives and other pharmaceutical remedies for the bloated paunch and its ailments. “Dægfæsten. L.M. p. 2. C. 25. aliquid ventrem purgans. fortasse, diagridium” [Something purging the belly. Perhaps scammony] postulates a remedy for ridding the body of unwanted excess. However, the Old English “word” is actually a two-word phrase made of up the words for day and fasting; the original recommends a day’s fast, not an emetic or laxative. Just as Somner sees the abdomen, especially, in terms of potential pathology, he sees its cures in terms of pharmaceuticals that rid it of its noxious excesses. The parallels to the body politic, as portrayed by Ogilby, are clear – a “remedy” is needed that will not only set the stomach back to right, but will do so through purgation and expulsion of the foul matter that has corrupted it and disrupted its normal function.

65 66

Mayo Clinic, “Intestinal Obstruction,” www.mayoclinic.org. Leechdoms, 192.

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Kings, Spaces, and Rituals: Laudian and Loyalist Views in the Dictionarium Somner’s political and religious beliefs shaped his definitions of key words and concepts in entries from a range of sources. This led to some bizarre moments, as in his definition of “carl”: “Carl. Carolus. Charles. a proper name. it. masculus, the male of a kind. carl-cat. Catus masculus. a boar cat. carl-fugol. avis mascula. the Cock or he amongst fowles or birds.” The name “Carl” is not attested as a proper noun in Old English, and Somner almost certainly knew this. Deciding to name his executed king (as well as that king’s exiled son) in a dictionary setting forth the words and concepts of early medieval England envisions the Stuarts as trans-temporal, embedded in the past and desired in the present; it harkens back to Jacob’s introductory poem, which the reader would have already encountered. Elsewhere Somner emphasizes the importance of the monarch in a peaceful society: “Un-sibba. Infestatio, bellum, tumultus, seditio, simultas, discordia. annoyance or trouble; warre: a tumult: sedition: private hatred, grudge or displeasure, variance, discord, unquietnesse, contention, strife. item. inquietus, seditiosus unquiet seditious.” Somner’s entry includes – even highlights – “sedition” in his list of definitions, especially in the adjectival form at the end. The Bosworth–Toller dictionary includes “unfriendliness,” “strife,” and “division” in its definitions, but not sedition. The overtly political meaning Somner finds in the word, in which “unsibba” means the rejection of one’s lawful government, is his own. Somner’s revision process also reveals his emphasis on royalist themes. His two manuscript copies of the Dictionarium, one a draft and one the actual fair copy for the printer, show a notable addition to the latter at his definition for “þeoden” [prince]:67 Đeoden. Dominus, princeps, Rex, Rector. A Lord, a Prince, a Ruler, a King … Frequens autem admodum hoc in illo scripto Dei epitheton. [Often this is an epithet for God in that language] Chron. Saxon edit. Wheloc. ad ann. 973. ond ða agangen wæs tyn hund wintra getæled rimes fram gebyrd-tyde bremes cyninges Leohta-hyrdes; buton ðer to lafe þa agan (lege get) wæs winter gedæles. þæs þe gewritu secgaþ seofon ond twenti. swa neah wæs sigora frean þusend aurnen ða ða ðis gelamp. ond him Eadmundes eafora hæfde nigon ond twenti niþ-weorca heard wintra on worulde þa ðis geworden wæs. ond ða on ðam xxx. wæs ðeoden gehalgod. [Then was counted ten hundred winters from the birth-times of the glorious king, the Light-guardian; but there was still remaining a winters’ count of twenty-seven, as books tell. So, it was close to a thousand years of the king of glory had passed when this occurred. And Edmund’s son, brave in battle, had been twenty-nine years in the world when this happened. And then on the thirtieth year was consecrated king.68] Novam, si placet, loci hujus ab erudito Interprete parum intellecti; translationem accipe [If one will allow, accept a new translation of this passage from an insufficiently learned translator] -: Tunc autem effluxerant annorum numeratorum mille ab illustris Regis, luminum custodis, (Christi ServaThe draft copy is Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Lit C.9 and C.10. The fair copy is Canterbury Cathedral Archives Lit E.20 and E.21. 68 My translation of the Old English is based on that of Michael Swanton, The AngloSaxon Chronicle (New York: Routledge, 1996), 118. 67

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toris scil.) natalitium, nisi quod (secundum Chronica) supererint (vel, remanserint) adhuc anni numero viginti & septem: ita prope triumphorum Domini annus millesimus erat decursus quando hoc evenerat. Idemqui (Eadgarus) Eadmundi filius viginti & novem aerumnosos & molestos inter mortales contriverat annos quando h[]c facium esset: tricesimo denium anno in Regem fuit consecratus.

Somner hardly needed to add the ASC passage to show the definition of “þeoden,” much less give his own Latin translation (although it gave him a chance to jab at Wheelock’s attempt). The word only appears once in the entire section, and then only at the end, so Somner had other, ideological reasons to include the whole passage giving chronological context for Edward’s death and Edgar’s coronation. The text (which is actually Old English verse) allows Somner to juxtapose Edgar’s reign with that of Christ, underscoring the common vocabulary to name the savior and the monarch; his Latin translation supplies antecedents for pronouns that clarify this relationship between Christ and Edgar even more. Christ as king is the context for Edgar as king. The anointing ritual that Edgar underwent echoed a point often made by royalists – that Charles I had been anointed in a sacred ritual, so that his execution was not only homicide, a crime against another human, but sacrilege – a crime against God himself. Edgar’s anointing underscores the sacral nature of kingship both early medieval and early modern, and points to the abhorrent nature of the regicide. Mentions of mistreated royalty in other definitions also demonstrate Somner’s royalist position: Beþrydian. Expilare, extorquere. to rob, to take by extortion or deceit, to wrest away by violence. he hine wold mid þæm ylcan wrenc beþrydian [he wished to take him with that same trick]. eum eadem arte voluererunt expilare. item, cogere, compellere. to enforce, to compell. he an cyng on his geweald beþrydod butan gewynne [he compelled a king to his control without battle]. unum Regem in suam ditionem coegit (i. subjugavit) sine praelio.

The first sense, of wrongful possession or robbery, still lurks in the second example about compelling kings (wrongfully, the sequence implies). Somner’s juxtaposition of robbery and control of a king heightens the iniquity the second quotation displays. Somner also juxtaposes definitions and illustrative quotations to make a point about the importance of churches as sacred places, against the puritan view of them as utilitarian spaces for worship without intrinsic meaning or value. Perhaps the longest example is his entry for “haligdom”; I will quote only part of it: Haligdom … Templum. a temple. Exod. 21.5.6 gyf se weal cwyð me is min hlaford leof. ond min wif. ond min wenclo. nelle ic gan ut. ne beon frig. bring his hlaford hine to ðæs halidomes dura. ond ðyrlige his eare mid anum æle. ond beo his ðeow a woruld [if a slave says my lord, and my wife, and my child are dear to me, I do not wish to leave, nor to be free, his lord shall bring him to the temple doors and pierce his ears with an awl, and he will be his slave in this world]. i. Si servus dixerit, diligo Dominum meum, & uxorem mean, & prolem meam, nolo exire, nec manumitti, adducat oum Dominus ad templi ostium, per-

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forabitque aurem ejus subula, & sit servus ei in seculum. Heyligh-dom, Kiliano, Sanctuarium, & res sacrae, & reliquae sacrae.

This entire passage was a late addition to Somner’s manuscript. He already had several other definitions that amply show the secondary meaning of “haligdom” as a sacred space, yet he added this one from the Hebrew Bible to underscore even further the relationship between a place of worship and holiness as an abstract concept. Places of worship are holiness in Old English, Somner’s dictionary emphasizes, and he makes an extended case for his claim. As he does in some of his medical entries, Somner’s dictionary at times takes a descriptor-noun combination as a compound noun to emphasize spaces of worship. He makes a single semantic object in his entry “Godes hus. Ecclesia, templum. the church or temple, the house of God.” His definition leads with the idea he wants to foreground for the reader – the church, or temple. The phrase “Godes hus” can hardly have needed translating: both words are straightforward ancestors of modern lexica that would have been familiar to his audience. However, if (as Somner implies) “God’s house” was a single word, the name for a place of worship, it drives home the relationship between the Deity and the space within which he was worshipped. It extends to the structure some of the attributes of divinity – of holiness, as we saw above. The imputation of spiritual qualities to the physical location also appears in its opposite – defiling of sacred space: “Mynstre clænsung. Reconciliatio ecclesiae. the reconciling, cleansing, or purging of a church after some pollution or profanation.” Once more, Somner reifies as a single concept what could have been taken as a two-word phrase from his original. He also expands the concept quite a bit. Bosworth–Toller defines “mynster-clænsung” as “Purification of a minster (within whose walls a man has been slain).” The legal texts from which Somner probably took the phrase make clear that such a procedure is only necessitated by killing. Somner, however, expands the need for purification for other sorts of pollutions – perhaps such as those visited on sanctuaries by Parliamentarian soldiers and iconoclastic county committees. Somner invites his audience to picture a ritual return to the sacred status of worship sites, imagining a time when the proper holy status of the churches can be renewed. From the spaces, Somner turns to the rituals performed within them. In contrast with Wheelock’s Bede, where early medieval sermons are emphasized and rituals downplayed, Somner’s definitions showcase religious ceremonies in pre-Conquest England. “God-gelda. Sacrificium Deo: quid Deo oblatum. a sacrifice of offering to God. it. caeremoniae. rites or ceremonies,” goes directly against the most common Old English meaning for god-gelda (clear from context in Bede and elsewhere) of “idols.” Perhaps Somner took his definition primarily from the Cotton glossaries, but he still transfers a potentially damaging reading of an Old English word to one that supports his ceremonial view of the longed-for past. The slippage between his desires in the present and his understanding of the past is perhaps clearest of all in his entry for “þegnung”: “Đeninge. ðenunge… . a charge, business, duty, part or office … ðening (al. ðenung) bec. Libri officiales, in quibus scil. de officiis tractatur ecclesiasticis. Service books such as those of common prayer and administration of the sacraments, &c.” Somner’s sub-entry on “service books” goes beyond mere

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description – books that tell how the sacraments are to be administered – and parallels such books in pre-Conquest England and in his own day by referring to them as books “of common prayer.” Obviously Somner expects his reader to think of the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer, which had been abolished by the Long Parliament; equally obviously this is an anachronistic reference. Many English Protestants, even those who were moderate Calvinists, associated this book with the glory days of the Elizabethan settlement, the retrospective “golden age” of the Protestant English church; its abolition was an early sign of the extremism that godly reformers moved toward during the 1640s.69 Mentioning the Book of Common Prayer as an example of an Old English “ðeninge bec” collapses the lost (but recovered) medieval past into the lost (but longed-for) ecclesiastical present. The central ritual of the service comes up in several of Somner’s entries, appearing at times in places where one might not expect it. One stealthy reference comes in “Gebeorscipe. Convivium, compotatio, symposium. a feast, a banquet, a potation, a drinking together.” The entry takes up an entire column, perhaps because “drinking was itself a facet of the oppositional discourse of royalism as ranged against the stereotype of abstemious Roundheads.”70 Somner’s expansive entry follows his initial definition with a quotation from the laws of Ine about homicide committed at gebeorship. He quotes the LHP on the subject also, and notes Tactitus’s observation that formalized feasting was common to the Germans, from whom (Somner points out) both Saxons and Normans came. He then quotes from a contemporary text, A Discourse concerning the Lord’s Supper by one R.C., which notes that present-day Germans “still use to conclude of bargaines and ratifie friendship between parties by drinking together, as appeareth by that phrase which they have, den friden trinchen, pacem bibere [to drink peace].”71 Somner is in full anthropological mode here, but his source at the end makes clear he is not only stressing the importance of the Germanic drinking parties for their own sake. Using a source about the Eucharist to show contemporary German customs intertwines the sacred rite with a “racial” trait (shared by both the early English and Normans); by contrast, the puritan de-­ emphasis of the ritual not only misunderstands God’s sacraments but opposes centuries of “their” culture as the descendants of Saxons and Normans. The passage from the Discourse is yet another late addition, made after Somner had completed at least one draft; he did not need it to define the Old English word.

69 Judith Maltby, Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Maltby, “The Prayer Book and the Parish Church: From the Elizabethan Settlement to the Restoration,” in The Oxford Guide to “The Book of Common Prayer”: A Worldwide Survey, edited by Charles Hefling and Cynthia Shattuck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), Kindle edition; Isaac Stephens, “Confessional Identity in Early Stuart England: The ‘Prayer Book Puritanism’ of Elizabeth Isham,” Journal of British Studies 50 (2011): 24–47. 70 Lloyd Bowen, “Seditious Speech and Popular Royalism 1649–60,” in Royalists and Royalism During the Interregnum, ed. Jason McElligott and David L. Smith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 57. 71 I have not been able to identify a book by that title.

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 This chapter has described only a few of the places where Somner’s Dictionarium supported royalism, and by doing so extended that support to the past in a trans-temporal presentation of contemporary issues. The paratexts speak most plainly about the work’s anti-Protectorate and anti-puritan valences and prepare the reader to encounter more subtle emphases and quotations in the definitions themselves. In some cases, critiques of contemporary English polity are encoded in discourses that superficially discuss biblical Hebrews, or early medieval medicine, but a culturally informed reading reveals that they also reflect Somner’s own political and religious leanings. Other entries are less subtle in presenting Somner’s belief in the rightness of monarchical government and the need for a ceremonial church. All, however, share Somner’s desire that the pre-Conquest past critique the present, and all perform cultural work in his own day.

6 The Echoing Past: William Dugdale and Early Medieval Warwickshire Antonio: I do love these ancient ruins. We never tread upon them but we set Our foot upon some reverend history: And, questionless, here in this open court, Which now lies naked to the injuries Of stormy weather, some men lie interred Loved the church so well, and gave so largely to’t, They thought it should have canopied their bones Till doomsday. But all things have their end: Churches and cities, which have diseases like to men, Must have like death that we have. Echo: Like Death that we have.1

John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi 5.3.9–19

R

uins speak. These lines set up the Duchess of Malfi’s “Echo scene,” in which an uncanny Echo responds to Antonio’s and Delio’s dialogue as if to warn Antonio from confronting the Duchess’s brothers. In the lines before the Echo’s first interjection, Antonio regards the ruined church’s disintegration as analogous with human death, even to the point of suffering bodily illness before the inevitable end. Antonio’s words underscore the physical and conceptional juxtaposition of human remains and the built environment – the overlap between stones and bones. Ruined structures’ dilapidation, like interred bodies, marks the uncanny continuity of the then into the now. What’s more, as Antonio learns from Echo, ruins can blur boundaries between not just past and present but living and dead. Andrew Hui states, “while Antonio thinks he is hearing the graves speak back, as if communing with some spectral spirit, in fact he hears only his own echo,” but the scene seems to me more ambiguous.2 Antonio’s comment that the Echo “’tis 1 John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, in The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The Broken Heart, and ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, ed. Jane Kingsley-Smith (New York: Penguin, 2014), 167–322. 2 Andrew Hui, The Poetics of Ruins in Renaissance Literature (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016), 132.

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very like my wife’s voice” indicates that Echo is voiced by the actor who played the Duchess; the audience, who knows as Antonio does not that the Duchess has been murdered, hears the “dead” speak.3 Other critics have certainly interpreted the scene as a ghostly warning to Antonio, one in which the Duchess, although dead, has some limited agency to communicate. The ruins that form the environment of the scene enable this supernatural event and foreshadow the impending ruin of Antonio’s own body as he ignores the warning and confronts the Cardinal and Ferdinand. The play leaves itself open to interpretation on the precise nature of the Echo, whether it is purely mechanical in mimicking Antonio’s words, or whether it engages in a selection principle to predict his death. In either case, “the echo may suggest, as elsewhere walls and darkness suggest, that any landscape on which one might look will be an inward one.”4 What ruins can say is limited by what we in turn say to them, and they cannot speak clearly without interpretation. The 1656 Antiquities of Warwickshire, Sir William Dugdale’s learned chorographic work, would seem a great distance from Webster’s blood-soaked tragedy, yet it also explores the voices that can remain in material artifacts, both standing and fallen, stone and text. Dugdale, a Warwickshire gentleman already well known for his research skills as a herald in the Royal College of Arms, relocated to Oxford with the king at the start of the Civil Wars.5 He was the herald sent to demand that the Parliamentary garrison of Warwick Castle surrender to royalist forces, and he saw action in some skirmishes.6 During the Interregnum, he and Roger Dodsworth (1585–1654) published the first volume of his Latin Monasticon in 1655, expanding his reputation as a meticulous scholar.7 While he conducted that research, he also worked on the Antiquities of Warwickshire, a volume detailing, in geographical order, the history of places and families from his home county. Both the Antiquities of Warwickshire and The Duchess of Malfi explore what it means to have memorials of the past; commemoration, in stone, parchment, or paper, happens only when the past is spoken and listened to. Brian Chalk observes: Webster is deeply preoccupied with death and its relationship to monuments – how people die, how they are represented in death, and how they may or may not be memorialized. This interest in monumentality and its relationship to Malfi, 5.3.27. Leslie Duer, “The Landscape of Imagination in The Duchess of Malfi,” Modern Language Studies 10 (1979): 3. 5 For Dugdale’s career, see Jan Broadway, William Dugdale: A Life of the Warwickshire Historian and Herald (Gloucester: Xmera Press, 2011); Broadway, “Unreliable Witness: Sir William Dugdale and the Perils of Autobiography,” in William Dugdale, Historian, 1605– 1686: His Life, His Writings, and His County, ed. Christopher Dyer and Catherine Richardson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), 34–50; and Graham Parry “Antiquities of Warwickshire,” in Dyer and Richardson, William Dugdale, Historian, 10–33. 6 Marion Roberts, Dugdale and Hollar: History Illustrated (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002), 13; John Barratt, Cavalier Capital: Oxford in the English Civil War (Solihull, West Midlands: Helion & Company, 2015). 7 Graham Parry discusses Dugdale’s Monasticon in The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 227–236. 3

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commemoration, which features repeatedly in Webster’s prefaces, resurfaces as a crucial framing device in his plays.8

The Duchess, speaking as Echo, “undercuts the prophets of despair who speak of ruins but forget that the Ego persists across generations through the agency of just such ruins”; Dugdale mines the smallest details from textual and architectural sources to amplify that persistence.9 Dugdale’s book visually depicts funeral monuments, heraldic windows, and built structures to an extent unrivaled in previous English county histories.10 The Antiquities’s replication of commemorative features in Warwickshire churches, both textual and pictorial in Wenceslaus Hollar’s engravings, creates a discursive relationship among the notable ancestors thus memorialized, the documents and charters Dugdale scoured for their records, their reading descendants, and the wider publics of Warwickshire and England as a whole.11 The Warwickshire landscape’s natural features also commemorate past inhabitants, as Antiquities of Warwickshire exemplifies Walsham’s observation that early modern writers “[thought] of the landscape as a text and an artefact.”12 Dugdale’s ground-breaking use of text and image together elucidates (to use Webster’s phrase) the “reverend history” underfoot and at times provokes echoes that can return to the present. Admittedly, Dugdale’s dry history contrasts sharply with Webster’s vivid lines. Typical is Dugdale’s description of “Bishopston”: Of this place there is no mention in the Conquerors Survey, because it was a Hamlet pertaining to Stratford; and therefore, belonging to the Bishop, gave occasion that it had the name of Bishopesdone at first attributed thereto, the situation being at the foot of an indifferent Hill, as the syllable done or dune imports. In King H. I. time Frethricus de Bissopesdone was enfeoft thereof by Sampson then Bishop of Worcester, as may seem by that Certificate which his successor made in 12 H. 2… . This Frethric (or Fraric; for so he is sometimes written) lived to a great age, there being mention of him in 9 R. 1. and had issue Will. his son and heir; who being a Knight and in that Rebellion with the Barons against King John, was of the retinue to Walter de Beauchamp, one of the principall of them, for which his lands were seized into the King’s hands, but returning to obedience he had resti8 Brian Chalk, “Webster’s ‘Worthyest Monument’: The Problem of Posterity in The Duchess of Malfi,” Studies in Philology 108 (2011): 381. 9 Paula Berggren, “Spatial Imagery in Webster’s Tragedies,” Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 20 (1980): 301. For a discussion of how voice intersected with female agency, see Gina Bloom, Voice in Motion: Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 10 The first county history printed, William Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent (London, 1576), was followed by Richard Carew’s Survey of Cornwall (London, 1602) and William Burton’s Description of Leicester Shire (London, 1622): Parry, “Antiquities,” 10. See also Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 11 See chapter four’s discussion of monuments and commemoration in early modern England. 12 Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 5.

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tution of them in the last year of that King’s reign. To whom succeeded Will. who had several imployments of much trust and note, in his time, within this County. From 11 till 20 H. 3 he was frequently in Commission as a Justice of Assize. In 16 H. 3 he, with John de Lodbeoc were constituted the King’s Eschaetors here… .13

The entry continues in a similar vein, relating the descent, offices, and notable doings of subsequent owners of Bishopston. Most of the Antiquities’s eight hundred folio pages consist of this sort of dry recital; Dugdale begins his entries with manuscript references (or notes their lack, as here), speculates on the etymology of the name, then moves to a list of owners. Often he includes family trees to help the reader visualize the descent of notable land-holding families. The history of Warwickshire’s places is the history of its people; land and inhabitants intertwine in life and death, even as Antonio’s meditation speculates. This chapter explores Dugdale’s interlacing of humans and their memorials with the structures and landscape within which they are found. I will then more specifically look at how his treatment of pre-Conquest history and its places and people differs from his discussion of later events. The Antiquities, I argue, does not conceive of all previous historical periods in the same way. Early medieval history in particular allowed Dugdale scope to move away from strict document-based recitals and engage in stories and descriptions that explicitly allow the past to echo back to the present.  The Antiquities often takes note of prominent buildings in the towns that it describes. The built environment could decay, of course, and Dugdale details this also. His entry for “Caldecote” is typical: This is now a depopulate place, and hath been so a long time. In the Conquerors days Turchill de Warwick possest it, and had severall tenants that held it of him, the extent thereof being somewhat more than one hide. But with the rest of Turchil’s lands it came to the E. of Warwick: for Earl Roger in 23 H. I. gave to his Collegiat-Church at Warwick, then newly founded, half a hide in this village. Of the rest I find not who was enfeoft; but it seemes that the heir female, to whom it descended, became the wife of Will. Pludio; which Will. gave half a yard land of this her inheritance to the Monks of Cumbe.14

Dugdale’s antiquities do not all survive. Nor were such losses trivial, as Walsham observes, “the landscape is a repository of the collective memory of its inhabitants, a mnemonic to their knowledge of previous eras, and a source of ideas about their social identity.”15 Recording absent political units such as lost towns that no longer survive even as ruins – whose traces only remain in archive – Dugdale’s work goes further than meditations upon fallen cloisters and abandoned chantries. His work

Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire (London, 1656), 525. Hereinafter cited in this chapter as Antiquities. 14 Ibid., 211. 15 Reformation, 6–7. 13

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confronts the double absence of the place and of its ruins but confirms its vitality for social identity in his textually grounded study of history and genealogy.16 Moreover, ruined architecture does not constitute any part of the Antiquities’s engravings, even when the structures pictured had been damaged before work on the book was seriously at hand. Dugdale had a long partnership with the engraver Wenceslaus Hollar, whose work appears in the Antiquities of Warwickshire, the Monasticon, and the 1658 History of St Pauls. Marion Roberts notes that Hollar at times worked from sketches Dugdale and others had made in the 1630s of churches and funerary monuments that were later damaged during the wars, concluding, “we must be aware that some of Hollar’s images are reconstructions.”17 Nevertheless, I would argue that “ruins” do appear, in a way that underscores the close tie between humans and their built and natural environment. The volume depicts members of monastic and lay orders, accompanied by lengthy descriptions of that order’s founding, initial establishment in England, and conventional attire. The Cistercian portrait in the entry for “Smite” on page 144 and its accompanying text on the following page are typical: And now, having briefly spoke in Coventre of the beginning and increase of a Monastick life, by reason that Monastery was not onely the greatest, but the most antient Religious House of Monks in this County; it will not be improper, I conceive, because this is the first that was here founded for those of the Cistercian Order, before I proceed further, to point at the beginning of that Rule, and when it was first propagated in England. First, therefore, for its original, I shall deliver the substance of what an approved Author18 hath thereof… . In Burgundy, saith he, is there a place called Molisme, where, in the time of Philip K. of France, Robert, an Abbot, having built a Monastery, and thither gathered a Covent of devout Monks, after a time searching diligently into the strict Rules of S. Benet, would have perswaded his disciples, that they ought to live by the labour of their hands, leaving Tithes and Oblations to the secular Clergy… . Whereupon the said Robert departed from them, with one and twenty which were of his mind, seeking long for such a place, where they might live and observe S. Benets Rule as strictly as the Jews did the Law of Moses. And at the length Odo D. of Burgundy, favouring their devout purposes, bestow’d on them certain lands in a place called Cisteaux … where the said Abbot Robert, with the rest, for some time inhabited; by example of whose strict and holy life in that wilderness, many began to do the like… . This plantation at Cisteaux was in the year 1098 as the same Author affirmeth, with whom agreeth an antient Chron: of the Church of Durham; further manifesting, that this Abbot Robert was an Englishman, his sirname Harding, and a Monk of Shirburne… . But touching the first of that Order erected here in England, I find some difference amongst our Historians; some affirming it to have 16 For early modern literary descriptions of ruined structures, see Hui, Poetics, and Philip Schwyzer, Archaeologies of English Renaissance Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), especially chapter 3. 17 Roberts, Dugdale and Hollar, 24. 18 A marginal note states “Rob. de Monte MS in bibl. Bodl. E.2 1 Tb.”

Figure 11. William Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1656. Page 144.

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been Rievaulx in Yorksh… . But that Waverle in Surrey preceded it (whereof this of Cumbe was a daughter) I am the more confident, in regard ‘tis clear that Will. Giffard Bishop of Winchester was Founder thereof; which Will. dyed 25 Jan. 29. H. I. four year before Rievaulx is said to be founded. And to confirm this that I say, hearken to what our old Poet Robert of Gloucester hath to that purpose. Houses of Religion as I seide er I wene, Kynge Henry loveded moche as hit was wel sene For the ordre of Graye-monkes thorwgh then men brought19 Furst here into Englonde, and peraventer men him bisought As in the Abby of Waverle that hit furst become As in the eight and twenty yeer of his kyngdome. Having said thus much of their original and first coming into England, I shall adde a word or two of the strictness in their Rule, and so proceed with my discourse touching the further endowment of this Monastery.20

Dugdale goes into extraordinary length about the history of Cistercians, and his narrative cannot simply be explained by the supposedly English founder (in fact, Dugdale is in error here; the founder was French, and it was the second abbot of Citeaux, Stephen Harding, who was English). Dugdale’s narrative arguably displays the reforming nature of English believers and their concern that appropriate resources be given to parish clergy. However, this extensive discussion goes beyond the needs of propaganda, especially in Dugdale’s (again inaccurate) assertion that Waverly, from which Coomb monastery at Smite was established, was England’s first Cistercian foundation. Alongside this history is an image not of Coomb itself, but of a Cistercian monk in his habit. As Webster’s play had done, Dugdale interlaces the disintegration of humans and their built environment; the grey monk is the “ruin” pictured in this text. Some fourteen such portraits appear in the work, depicting monks, friars, canons, and military orders such as the Templars.21 Roberts puzzles over these, observing that “images of monks and friars offer no documentary evidence essential to Dugdale’s narrative”; however, I would argue that they figure in the “ruins” of political and religious structures as the text juxtaposes human bodies and built environments.22 Major towns are depicted as they appeared in Dugdale’s present. Tamworth, one of the towns whose description is prefaced by two images showing “Prospects” of it, was an important historical and defensive site in early history: “Tameworth, the most eminent Town, for situation and antiquitie on this side the Countie.”23 Tamworth’s aesthetic, functional, and historical features overlap, as Dugdale goes on to explain: I normalize the yough to “gh” in this quotation. Antiquities, 145. 21 Several of these plates also appeared in Dugdale’s 1655–1673 Monasticon: Roberts, Dugdale and Hollar, 23. 22 Roberts, Dugdale and Hollar, 41. 23 Antiquities, 816. 19

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Figure 12: William Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1656. Page 816.

A place this is, participating chiefly of the commodities which the Wood-lands affordeth, being almost inviron’d by it, and watered with delightfull Rivers, whereby the bordering Meadows are plentifully inricht; yet not wanting a spacious Champaine near at hand, for farther profit and pleasure; so that divers of the Mercian Kings, invited (doubtless) by these advantages, had here a Pallace-royall, as their several Charters do manifest: Of which Kings, the first, that I find mentioned, was Offa… .24

Dugdale goes on to list mentions made in charters of the other kings who resorted to Tamworth: “Ceonulf,” “Berthuulf,” and “Burtherd.”25 Tamworth’s physical features, to which Dugdale gives agency when he describes how it “invited” Offa, are marked by these royal presences: As these authorities do shew, that it was by those Kings thus honoured, so is there not want of other [authorities], to manifest the large extent, and strength thereof: witness that vast Ditch, to this day called King’s Ditch; which stretching forth in a streight line, from the River Anker, somewhat below Bowl-Bridg; then making 24 25

Ibid. Ibid., 817.

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a right angle, keepeth on its course paralell to the River, for the space of neer four hundred paces, and so returning by another right angle, runs into Tame… . Which Ditch, though much filled up in most places, appears to have been at least xlv foot broad, as by measure I have observed.26

The archeological evidence stands as an authority equal to the documentary evidence on which Dugdale usually relies. Tamworth speaks for itself – inviting Offa and witnessing its own importance by its physical features. Its defenses were insufficient, however, in the face of the Viking incursions: But such mischief, shortly after, did the Danes make, by their severall invasions, that this place was wasted, and continued desolate, till that renowned Ladie of the Mercians, Ethelfleda, (daughter to King Alfred, and Sister to King Edward the elder) after her husband’s death … restored it to its antient strength and splendor; raysing a strong Tower, upon an artificiall Mount of Earth, called the Dungeon, for defence against any violent assault thereof: upon which Mount, that building now called the Castle, hath of later times been erected: for the body of the old Castle stood below, toward the Marcate-place, and where the Stables at present are. And here it was, that the said famous Ethelflede departed this life xix. Cal. Julii anno DCCCCXVIII… . but in the Abbie-Church of S. Peter at Gloucester, of hers and her husband’s Foundation, she had sepulture.27

The built environment and the natural landscape, past and present, are on display for the reader, and thereby the history of the people can be viewed also. Especially striking in the example of Tamworth are the accompanying images, which allow the reader, however remote, to see the mound, the contemporary castle, the church, and the current collection of houses, all framed by woodland and, in the second image, with trees in perspective appearing in the “view” so that they obscure part of the town. The land, the image, the records – all speak the history of place and people. Graham Parry, in his insightful analysis of the Antiquities, observes that, in comparison to Somner’s focus on physical structures, “Dugdale … concentrates on family histories and land ownership, legal rights and duties, the interaction of ecclesiastical and secular powers, and links between Warwickshire history and the larger national history.”28 However, personal histories and architectural ones intertwined; Somner’s focus and Dugdale’s are not utter contrasts but choices within a continuum of possibilities. As in Malfi, where the identities of the ruined bodies intertwine with the structure crumbling above them, the built environment Dugdale describes exists in relation to the personal and political moments in and for which it was created. This relationship underlies the Antiquities of Warwickshire’s largest category of image – engravings of funerary structures and memorial windows in churches throughout the county. Part of the impetus for such images, of course, was the hope of sponsorship from the descendants of those who were thus twice memorialized in stone and ink. Yet the display of hundreds of such images goes beyond the need for 26 27 28

Ibid. Ibid. Parry, “Antiquities,” 13.

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economic support for Dugdale’s undertaking. Dugdale was aware (as was Somner) of “the strong connexions between antiquarianism and nationalism, and the political and legal importance of their scholarship.”29 Throughout the book, the history of the county and country is the history of its people and its structures together, commemorated when the past speaks to the reading present. Pre-Conquest England in the Antiquities My main interest in this chapter, of course, is Dugdale’s depiction of the early medieval past of Warwickshire. The Antiquities elucidates the personal and familial histories revealed in documents, monuments, and built structures of the past – all overwhelmingly dating from after the Norman Conquest. Given Dugdale’s research interests, we should not be surprised that (as Parry puts it) “in the early stages of the book, Dugdale confesses that there will not be much detail about Saxon Warwickshire in his account, as there are insufficient records to work from, and the history of local events is vague and confused.”30 Dugdale indeed denies the possibility of “memorials” from early medieval England: Perhaps there are some who may expect in this my undertaking, that I should ascend much higher with my discourse of divers Places and Families than I have done, supposing it as possible to speak of the Saxons times, as those since the Norman Conquest: but to the consideration of such I shall offer, what likelyhood there is, that Memorialls of any thing could be preserved, where War did so much abound: For in the time of the Saxon Heptarchie most certain it is, that there was no little striving by those petty Kings to enlarge their Dominions, whereby great wast and spoil was occasioned: And no sooner had King Egbert subdued the Northern Britans, with those that inhabited Cornwall, overcome Bernulph King of Mercia, united Kent, Surrey, the South and East-Saxons to his West-Saxon Kingdom (being therefore reckoned the first English Monarch) and left the possession of all to his son Ethelwolph … but that the Danes, with other barbarous Northern Nations began to infest this Kingdom, vehemently afflicting and wasting the land by the space of CCCXXX years, even unto the coming of the Normans, sparing neither age nor sex… . Nay, the very Clergie themselves were so ignorant, as that in the beginning of King Ælfred’s reign … there were few Priests on the South of Humber that understood the Latine service, or that could translate any writing from Latine into English… . Not a few years before the coming of the Normans, the Clergie were content with disorderly learning, being scarce able to stammer out the words of the Sacrament; he which understood the Grammar being admired of the rest. So that it is not such a merveil that we have no more light of storie to guide us in these elder times, as tis a wonder that there is anything at all left to us, by reason that learned men were exceeding scarce, and that Monasteries, which were the preservers of what is left of us of that kind, suffered such miserie by those barbarous people, who were grown so powerful in this Realm, that for 29 Nigel Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 17. 30 Parry, “Antiquities,” 15.

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fear of loosing all, King Edmund was constrained to yield, that Aulafe King of Norway should enjoy the whole Land from Watling Street Northwards… . (n.p.)

Certainly, Warwickshire has fewer records surviving from its pre-Conquest history than other parts of southern Britain.31 However, the situation is not quite as dire as Dugdale makes out. Dugdale’s explanation for the lack of solid evidence lists several related causes: continual warfare among various contenders for power; organized opposition that especially targeted religious foundations and therefore undermined the possibility of record-keeping; a widespread ignorance among the clergy, who (Dugdale implies) failed in their duties to educate themselves on sacred language, ritual, and history; and the weakening of the English monarchy, forced to cede control to outsiders. Such aspects of early medieval history have been often remarked upon, especially by contemporaries such as King Alfred the Great and Archbishop Wulfstan. Dugdale’s list, however, points at his present as well as at the distant past. He omits any reference to an obvious reason for the missing records: the subsequent destruction of early medieval records in the later Middle Ages or Renaissance. Instead, he implies that the documents never existed in the first place. While he composed his book, England experienced devastating civil strife, concluding in the seizing of power by those who abolished church administrative and documentary roles such as cathedral registrars, who encouraged clergy to focus on spontaneous and emotional prayers, and who had attempted to force Charles I to cede major concessions to Parliament (and, failing that, tried and executed him). As Jan Broadway notes, “The Antiquities of Warwickshire was not an overtly Royalist publication, but the political sympathies of its author would not have been in doubt to his readers.”32 Dugdale’s list of ancient disruptions – warfare, lack of documentary centers, ignorant clergy, and disenfranchised monarchs – was also a criticism of his contemporary scene, from the perspective of a staunch royalist. His silence on the fact that records had almost certainly existed but later perished make his criticism even stronger. These parallels, listed at the same time Dugdale insists that the “Saxon” period of history cannot be recovered, makes Warwickshire’s – and England’s – pre-Conquest history a narrative space where he can push and even ignore the boundaries between solid historical reality (or its appearance) and his desires for the past, a space offering more imaginative and didactic possibilities than later periods. As Schwyzer notes discussing Dugdale’s friend Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682), early medieval England “was … a site where the most pressing debates concerning the nation’s racial, constitutional, and religious identity found their centre of gravity. One way or another, the Anglo-Saxons still mattered.”33 Dugdale’s insistence on the instability of historical knowledge about the pre-Conquest past lets that period provide what we might call an “Echo moment” when the voice speaking to the past receives an John Blair also comments on the paucity of documentary evidence from much of the area in Building Anglo-Saxon England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 18. 32 Jan Broadway, “‘The Honour of This Nation’: William Dugdale and the History of St Paul’s (1658),” in Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum, ed. Jason McElligott and David L. Smith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 198. 33 Schwyzer, Archaeologies, 194. 31

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answer reflecting its own discourse. My thoughts on Dugdale’s use of early medieval history have been shaped by recent theories of a more modern form – medieval film. Several studies of both cinema and contemporary medievalism have argued that films set in the Middle Ages share a fundamental approach to that time period, in contrast to other historical films. As Arthur Lindley argues in a foundational essay, such films present “a version of the Middle Ages that has been carefully lifted out of a historical sequence in order to serve as a mirror and an alienating device for viewing the midcentury present… . The Middle Ages are not a subject of interest – though they may be a subject of curiosity – in themselves. They are … a way of reading the present.”34 Building on Lindley’s observations, Bettina Bildhauer sees a divergence between academic medieval studies (and even, to some extent, historical novels) and medievalism on screen: “What has been happening in many medieval films (but not in academic history) throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries … is that the Middle Ages are represented as prehistory rather than part of our history, as a supernatural rather than real period.”35 Audiences enjoy the illusion of verisimilitude, and perhaps enjoy arguing about its minor details, but factors such as accurate representations of military technologies, dress, or cuisine are not important to the audience’s experience of medieval movies. Ultimately, “audiences will enjoy a film more if it looks authentic to them… . However, they will also enjoy a film more if it offers a satisfying artifice with a star adding contemporary or monumental grandeur, beautiful images, and exciting narratives – features that draw attention to its filmic nature rather than simulate transparent access to the past.”36 Films set in the Middle Ages, even if they claim a particular place or moment for the action, carry disruptive potential. As Robert Mills argues about Derek Jarman’s films, “‘medieval’ is not simply a period in time, locked in a chronological straitjacket. Rather, it also regularly signifies out of time, reverberating across the temporal boundaries that conventionally organise history.”37 What modern filmmakers have found in the “medieval” (often undefined and perhaps undefinable in actual chronological terms) Dugdale seems to have located in the pre-Conquest past specifically. While his depiction of later medieval and Tudor materials “simulates transparent access” to the people and time periods he describes, his discussions of earlier events incorporate legend and images that draw attention to their narrative modes and their status as “prehistory.” When he narrates early medieval history and culture (both in text and visually in the illustrations), the events he describes, like Jarman’s films, “reverberat[e] across temporal boundaries” in a way that his discussions of later occurrences do not. In Dugdale’s work, the history of Warwickshire (and of England) before the advent of the Normans and 34 Arthur Lindley, “The Ahistoricism of Medieval Film,” Screening the Past 3 (1998), online. 35 Bettina Bildhauer, Filming the Middle Ages (London: Reaktion Books, 2011), 19. 36 Ibid., 20. 37 Robert Mills, Derek Jarman’s Medieval Modern (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2018), 28–29, italics original. Other discussions of medieval films include Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman, Cinematic Illuminations: The Middle Ages on Film (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), and Nickolas Haydock, Movie Medievalisms: The Imaginary Middle Ages (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008).

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the more robust survival of archival records provides a narrative space for mythic history of contemporary customs, for fantastic story, and for an emotional response to a time period that could reverberate – echo – back to his present. We might be tempted to attribute Dugdale’s inclusion of more fantastic events from before the Conquest to flaws in his understanding and conclude that he just wrote bad history. However, Dugdale probably recognized what he was doing in his decision to deploy such narratives from early medieval England. Fran Dolan observes: It has sometimes been argued that the early modern period did not distinguish between fact and fiction in quite the way that we do now and that the boundary between the two thickened in the eighteenth century… . In contrast, I argue that the boundary between true relation and fiction in the seventeenth century was not as fuzzy as such narratives suggest. If it had been, contemporaries would not have devoted so much energy to negotiating it. Nor is the boundary now as clear as this narrative of change asserts.38

Dugdale’s assiduous attention to manuscript evidence (and citation of that evidence), careful construction of descriptions from both the built environment and the written word, and conscientious admission when he was forced to postulate beyond his sources, support Dolan’s claim. Dugdale and his contemporaries understood the difference between fact and fiction, both in contemporary reporting (as Dolan explores) and in historical writing. Dugdale’s willingness to shift at certain moments in Antiquities into a more ahistorical mode when discussing “Saxon” history was a choice, not a failure. Of course, Dugdale’s narration of pre-Conquest events often has some historical grounding, just as medievalist film uses visual elements that “look real” to an audience while recounting narratives whose reach and import engage with current events. In his discussion of Stratford-super-Avon, Dugdale traces the diocese of Worcester’s possession of the land for some three hundred years, starting with the grant of King Berhtwulf (“Berthuulf ”) of Mercia bestowing privileges to the bishops. Dugdale includes the Latin charter of Berhtwulf to emphasize the documentary evidence for this claim of ownership.39 In a similar vein, Dugdale briefly recounts a battle that occurred centuries before the Norman Conquest at Sekindon: This place is famous for a memorable Battail fought thereat, in the year from our Saviour’s Incarnation DCCLVII betwix Cuthred, King of the West-Saxons, and Ethelbald King of the Mercians, wherein the same Ethelbald was slain by Beornred one of his own military Commanders, and buried in the Monasterie of Repandune (now called Repton in Derby-shire) not far distant. But Beornred had little enjoyment of that rule, which by the death of Ethelbald, he expected; for within a short space, he was cut off by King Offa, who succeeded the said Ethelbald in the Kingdom of Mercia.40 Frances Dolan, True Relations: Reading, Literature, and Evidence in SeventeenthCentury England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 6. 39 Antiquities, 514. 40 Ibid., 813. 38

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In the margin, Dugdale cites Ranulf Hoveden, Ingulf ’s History of Croyland, and William of Malmesbury. This episode ties in with several of Dugdale’s interests in the Antiquities: dynastic succession, of course, but also murder narratives – Dugdale enjoyed a good “true crime” story. However, the episode, with its spare telling of a king murdered by an ambitious commander who wanted to rule himself, would have had obvious resonance in the Protectorate. Beornred’s ambition, instead of establishing himself in power, opened the way for Offa, arguably Mercia’s most powerful and famous pre-Conquest king. Temporary instability resulting from the killing of a monarch led to the permanent thwarting of those who wanted to benefit from his death. Dugdale’s wishful thinking is not spelled out – he does not state the potential parallels to his own day and his own desires – but he hardly needs to do so. The pre-Conquest past, meticulously documented in this case, supports his own reading of the present. Place can also locate abstract concepts such as holiness and piety, pre- or post-Conquest. As Parry observes, “The horror of sacrilege is a pervasive theme in The Antiquities of Warwickshire.”41 Dugdale most often brings up the topic describing the Dissolution and subsequent seizure of monastic lands, which Dugdale believed had been an offense against God. The sacrilege of the early sixteenth century has an echo moment in the period before the Conquest, as Dugdale relates of Loxley: This place was given by Offa King of the Mercians unto the Church of Worcester about CCC years before the Norman Conquest, and continued thereto till the time of King Canutus the Dane: but then the whole Realm being burthened with grievous taxes, and a Constitution made, that if any place did fail in payment by the space of 3 days of what was so exacted, he that should deposite the money to the Shiriff might presently possesse himself thereof; this with divers other lands … was by that crafty advantage most injuriously taken from it; Sed Deus hanc sui rapinam absque ultione non dimisit (saith the Monk of Worcester) nam unusquisque eorum, qui huic fraudi operam dederunt, digna ultione percussi, aut luminibus privati, aut paralysi dissoluti, aut in insaniam versi sunt; plurimi etiam semetipsos interfecerunt [But God does not dismiss such theft from Himself without vengeance … for each one of those, who gave work to this crime, was struck by suitable revenge, either deprived of life, or destroyed by apoplexy, or turned into madness; even more destroyed themselves].42

Dugdale did not see seizure of monastic lands in his own lifetime, of course, although as a herald he probably knew more about them than most of his contemporaries. He had, however, witnessed the Commonwealth and Protectorate take episcopal properties from their previous owners. The dire warning against using the mechanisms of a state to undermine the church – whether through taxation, as under Cnut, or appropriation, as under Cromwell – echoes in the present as well as in the observations of the Registrar of Worcester. Dugdale’s sympathy for monastic life appears throughout Antiquities. Parry observes that he had “a considerable respect for the ideals of the monastic movement 41 42

Parry, “Antiquities,” 19. Antiquities, 512.

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and for the contribution of the monasteries to the economy and to the amenity of medieval society.”43 Dugdale, after remarking that Polesworth has no record in the Domesday Book, goes on to relate its pre-Norman history: Of this place, though there be no particular mention in the Conquerour’s Survey (as of divers the most antient Towns and Burroughs is not) yet, for antiquitie, and venerable esteem, needs it not give precedence to any in this Countie; being honoured with the plantation of the first Religious-House therein, that was in all these parts; founded by King Egbert, our first English Monarch.44

Dugdale’s claim that Egbert was the first “English” king ties the monastic foundation to the very notion of English political unity and identity in the fantasy space of pre-Conquest England. What’s more, the foundation’s own history is tied to royal succession: King Egbert, having one onely son, called Arnulph, who was a Leper; and hearing by a Bishop, which came from Ireland, that the then King of Connaught had a Nun to his daughter, called Modwen, that healed all diseased people repairing to her, sent his said son, at the perswasion of that Bishop, into Ireland, where he was accordingly cured by the same holy Woman: which great favour so pleased King Egbert, that he forthwith invited St. Modwen to come into England, promising that he would found a Monasterie for her and her Convent: Of which tender, she soon after accepted … and brought over with her, two of her fellow Nuns. Whereupon the King, having a great opinion of her sanctitie, recommended his daughter Edith unto her, to be instructed in Religion after the Rule of St. Benet, giving her a dwelling place in the Forest of Arderne, then called Trensale, where the said Edith, together with St. Lyne, and St. Osithe, lived together in a holy manner; and soon after, founded a Monasterie for them, on the bank of the River Anker, at this place called Pollysworth… .45

Arnulf, son of the first “English” monarch, Egbert, receives miraculous healing from the Irish Modwen, preserving the succession. When Modwen brings her two nuns to England, Egbert’s daughter learns from her, and then Modwen drops entirely out of the narrative. Edith, with her two fellow saints, receives land and becomes the first Abbess of the convent at Polesworth. The royal house takes the lead in establishing Warwickshire’s first convent. The miraculous healing in this narrative does not mean that Dugdale necessarily regards these events skeptically: he took seriously stories of miracles performed by early English and British saints and matter-­of-factly recounts several of them in the Antiquities. What this narrative and others like it echo back to Dugdale’s present is that the continuance of the English monarchy depended on a good working relationship with the church, and vice versa. More than just signaling Dugdale’s respect for religious foundations of the 43 44 45

Parry, “Antiquities,” 16. Antiquities, 797. Ibid.

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past, it critiques the unstable government of Dugdale’s own day, in which both the monarchy and religious institutions such as episcopacy were abolished. Ceremonies and Saxons Dugdale spends some time explaining the history of an English institution near to his heart: the Knights of the Bath, and the history of bathing as part of a knighting ceremony more generally. He opens his discussion with an assertion that the ritual dates from before the Norman Conquest: That the making of Knights, by this solemn manner of Bathing, and other sacred Ceremonies (notwithstanding the originall thereof, cannot now be discerned) is of no less antiquity than the times of our ancestors the Saxons, is not (I think) to be doubted: for though in that mention made by Will. Malmesb. of K. Alfred making his grandson Athelstan a Knight, he instances no more than the purple Robe, with the Sword and rich Belt; yet ‘tis apparent, that when Geffrey of Anjou, in order to46 his marriage with Maud the Empress, onely daughter to our King H. I was made Knight at Roan, by the same K. Henry … it is said by Iohn the Monk of Marmonstier, that he, with xxv Esquires, then attending him, were Bathed, according to antient Custom… . And concerning Robes, and other ornaments, goeth thus on: … There being put upon him harness of double Mail, and gilt Spurs, a Shield of the Lions of Anjou hung on his neck; a rich Helm on his head, and an armed Spear put into his hand, and lastly a Sword out of the King’s store … and that thus armed, he mounted a Spanish Horse, which was also first given him by the King, the Feast that belong’d to his reception of this dignitie, (called Festum Tyrocinii) being honoured with Tourneaments and Masques, which lasted no less than seaven days.47

Dugdale, basing his claim on one post-Conquest description of a putative knighting ceremony by Alfred and a side comment about “ancient custom” in the early Norman knighting of Geoffrey of Anjou, argues that such ceremonies must therefore have been celebrated in pre-Conquest England. His evidence here hardly measures up to the kind of meticulous documentation we find in most of the volume. Dugdale must be aware that he is on shaky ground factually, but early medieval history operates according to different narratological and evidentiary rules. He does admit that perhaps “some particulars varied” in later manifestations, but still insists “that aswell the Sacred as Courtly Ceremonies, used at the conferring this dignity, have been very antient.”48 Splendid visuals also help mark the fantasized past as fantasized. Dugdale accompanies the text with several pages of illustrations, copied from a late medieval manuscript, the plates for which belonged to his friend Edward Bysshe. Bysshe had used them in his 1654 edition of Nicholas Upton’s De Studio Militarii (as Dugdale A word is obviously omitted here, perhaps “solemnize.” Ibid., 530–531. 48 Ibid., 531. In the margin, Dugdale cites John Selden’s Titles of Honor (London, 1614), page 781. 46 47

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observes) – also the original of a French document that Dugdale translates.49 Dugdale’s English version and the accompanying illustrations are more tightly joined than in Bysshe’s volume. Each scene in Dugdale’s version of the images has a number, and the accompanying text also contains numbers at various sections corresponding to the depiction. Dugdale highlights the point-by-point relationship between text and image, and his reader here is more emphatically also a viewer than at any other point in the Antiquities. Moving back and forth between the detailed descriptions in the tract and the images, the reader participates in the recreation of the past – and Dugdale has already made clear that, although the images are late medieval, they recreate a pre-Conquest ritual. The chronological mash-up highlights the trans-temporal nature of early medieval culture, which can reverberate through time like Jarman’s medieval films instead of being “straightjacketed” into historical accuracy. The illustrations’ main purpose seems to be to emphasize the fantasized nature of the pre-Conquest ceremony, for they are not strictly necessary. The text itself gives vivid detail about the activities involved in the ceremony. To pick just one example, section 13 states that after the esquire to be knighted has bathed, dressed, and performed his vigil: The grave Knights shall get on Horsback, and conduct the Esquire to the Hall, the Minstrells going before, making Musick: But the Horse must be accoutred, as followeth: the Saddle having a cover of black-leather, the bow of the Saddle being of white wood quartered, the Stirrop-leathers black; the Stirrops gilt; The Paitrell of black lether gilt, with a Cross paté gilt, hanging before the breast of the Horse, but without any Crooper: The Bridle black, with long notched Raines, after the Spanish fashion, and a Cross paté on the front. And there must be, provided a young Esquire, courteous, who shall ride before the Esquire, bare-headed, and carry the Esquire’s Sword, with the Spurs hanging at the handle of the Sword: and the Scabberd of the Sword shall be of white leather, and the Girdle of white leather, without Buckles. And the Youth shall hold the Sword by the point, and after this manner must they ride to the King’s Hall, the Governours being ready at hand.50

One could easily form a mental image of this scene by reading it, but Dugdale still includes the illustrations. The medieval past, extending back to the pre-Conquest period, is literally on display. The viewing self of the reader, confronted with image and text, experiences the prior time in the moment of the present – the Echo that reverberates throughout medieval history into the now. Dugdale’s discussion of the knighting ritual perhaps comes closest to the medievalism of modern film as both embrace images and the visual to transcend the audience’s own historical moment into an imagined space of the past. Guy of Warwick: A Saxon Hero for Dugdale’s Times 49 Dugdale’s use of these plates, engraved by P. Lombard and apparently loaned him by Bysshe, is discussed in Roberts, Dugdale and Hollar, 26. 50 Antiquities, 533.

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Figure 13: William Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1656. Pull-out illustration between pages 522 and 533.

The most striking “pre-Conquest” material Dugdale includes relates to the romance hero, Guy of Warwick; these moments blend mythic and documented history when describing the pre-Conquest past.51 The ultimate origin for Guy’s legend is the Old

The legend of Guy remained popular throughout the early modern period, as Ronald Crane pointed out in an early article, “The Vogue of Guy of Warwick from the Close of the Middle Ages to the Romantic Revival,” PMLA 30 (1915): 125–194; Velma Richmond offers further analysis in The Legend of Guy of Warwick (New York: Routledge, 1996); Helen Cooper focuses specifically on the post-Reformation navigation of Guy’s eremiticism: Cooper, “The Knight and the Hermit: Crossing the Reformation,” in Timely Voices: Romance Writing in English Literature, ed. Goran Stanivukovic (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), 39–59. The several essays in Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor, ed. Alison Wiggins and Rosalind Field (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2007) offer a variety of perspectives on the legend. Especially relevant to my discussion are the editors’ introductory essay and contributions by Helen Cooper, (“Guy as Early Modern English Hero,” 185–199) and Sian Echard (“Of Dragons and Saracens: Guy and Bevis in Early Print Illustration,” 154–168). 51

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French Gui de warweck.52 Middle English translations soon followed, in particular the poetic narratives found in the famous Auchinlech manuscript.53 These verse romances had been a staple of printing presses since the days of Wynkin de Word, and ballad versions had begun to appear at the close of the sixteenth century. In 1608, Samuel Rowlands published a new poetic retelling in twelve cantos, which was also popular and widely reprinted.54 While the story of Guy would have been familiar to most of Dugdale’s audience, the narrative is less well known today, so a quick overview is in order. Guy, son of the steward of the Earl of Warwick, loves Phelice (Phyllis/Felicia), the Earl’s daughter. In the story’s first section, Phelice demands that Guy win renown as a knight before she returns his affection, so he sets off for the Continent with his friend Herhaud. The two engage in a series of adventures. The second part of the narrative, however, provides the best-known episodes. In this portion of the work, Guy, who has won fame, returned to Warwick, and married Phelice, repents of his violent life of battle in the name of love rather than the name of God. He abandons his pregnant wife and secretly leaves England to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While on his travels, he engages in several combats, but all his battles now are in the name of God and serve justice and the Christian faith. He returns to England, where he undertakes the climactic combat of his life and the most famous episode of the legend – his duel on behalf of King Athelstan against the champion of the invading Danes, an African giant named Colbrand, to decide the ruler of England. Athelstan had been unable to find anyone to battle Colbrand, but a vision reveals that a Palmer entering the city of Winchester the next day would be victorious. That Palmer is, of course, Guy, who after demurring, agrees to champion Athelstan and England and fight the giant. Guy successfully overcomes the Danish champion in a battle near Winchester, and then retires to Guy’s Cliff outside Warwick where he eventually dies in sanctity. Dugdale first describes “Guy’s Cliff,” the supposed site of Guy’s hermitage at the end of his life: This being a great Cliff on the Western bank of Avon was made choyce of by that pious man S. Dubritius (who in the Brittons time had his Episcopal seat at Warwick) for a place of devotion; where he built an Oratory dedicated to S. Mary Madg. unto which, long after, in the Saxons days, did a devout Heremite repair: who finding the natural Rock so proper for his Cell, and the pleasant Grove, wherewith it is back’d, yielding entertainment fit for solitude, seated himself here. Which advantages invited also the famous Guy (sometime E. of Warwick) after his notable atchievements, having weaned himself from the deceitfull pleasures of this world, to retire hither, where, receiving ghostly comfort from that Heremite, he abode till his death (as by my discourse of him in Warw. shall more fully be manifested.55 52 Richmond, Legend, gives an extensive overview of the legend’s origin and evolution up to the present day. 53 These versions are discussed in Richmond, Legend, and in Rosalind Field, “From Gui to Guy: The Fashioning of a Popular Romance,” in Wiggins and Field, Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor, 44–60. 54 Crane, “Vogue,” 152–153. 55 Antiquities, 183.

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Although Dugdale tells us he will relate the fuller narrative of Guy’s life later, he includes in his entry for “Guyes-Cliffe” images of the place and monuments to Guy and John Rous (or Rouse), a fifteenth-century chronicler of English kings. It matters that Guy is introduced here, in the place most firmly associated with his legend. As Robert Rouse argues: “Places make the past real; they provide concrete connections with the world of these historical romances by encoding the narrative into a landscape familiar to the audience.”56 Dugdale’s interest in the tale probably stemmed from the connection between Guy’s legend and places in England; this figure from pre-Conquest “history” came already embedded in the landscape. John Rous was responsible for the inclusion of Guy into the genealogy of the Earls of Warwick; Dugdale had made a manuscript copy of Rous’s chronicle and of his beautiful illustrations of Guy as both knight and pilgrim.57 The image of Guy’s Cliff in the Antiquities labels the original cave, as well as showing the chapel and the contemporary buildings on the site; it also depicts the River Avon flowing nearby. Anonymous people appear within the scene, fishing or sitting by the riverbank, while cattle graze nearby. Guy’s locale (and eventually, his story) are read with daily life of the seventeenth century overlaying the view. Below the “prospect” is a picture of “The statue of the sometime famous Guy standing here within the Chapell of S. Mary Magdalen.”58 Guy holds his sword and shield, rather than appear in the dress of a palmer or cenobite, but his face turns contemplatively to heaven. The statue seems to depict the moment when Guy repents of his previous bloodshed and abandons his secular pursuits – showing his martial supremacy in his dress, but his holiness and submission to divine will in his posture. This is the mental image Dugdale’s readers would have had when they encountered the full narrative in the entry for the city of Warwick. Dugdale mentions Guy out of chronological order as he relates Warwick’s first founding under the Britons: [Bishop Dubritius] also erected divers private Oratories in these parts, the chief wherof was that of S. Mary Magd. where the sometime famous Guy, bidding farewell to these worldly pleasures, lived a Heremites life a while before his death; and which from him took the name of Guyes-Cliff: howbeit, such were the troubles that arose in this Land by the Saxons entrance, at the invitation of K. Vortigern, that … the said Bishop left this place.59

Dugdale goes on to narrate the various re-foundings of Warwickshire after its destruction in wars, and the eventual establishment of the Earldom. However, into this chronological narrative of documented events erupts a figure out of romance – Guy of Warwick, whose legend placed him late in the reign of King Athelstan but whom Dugdale mentions at the beginning of the entry. Guy alerts us to his mythic status by disrupting and displacing chronological time, coming into the tale even before King Vortigern. Dugdale gets to his story shortly:

56 Robert Allen Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005), 60. 57 Richmond, Legend, 127–129. 58 Antiquities, 184. 59 Ibid., 297–298.

Figure 14: William Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1656. Page 184.

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But I will … descend to our reputed Earles of the Saxon race: whereof the first that my Author mentions is Rohand. This man, being a famous Warriour, and inricht with great possessions, lived in the dayes of K. Alfred, and K. Edw. the elder, and left issue one onely daughter named Felicia, that married unto Guy son of Siward Baron of Wallingford, who in her right became Earle of Warwick; The memory of which Guy, for his great valour, hath ever since been, and yet is so famous, that the vulgar are of opinion he was a man of more then ordinary stature; and the Welch, taking notice of his brave exploits will needs have him to be descended from Brittish parentage: but of his particular adventures, least what I say shoud be suspected for fabulous, I will only instance that Combate betwixt him and the Danish Champion Colebrand, whom some (to magnifie our noble Guy the more) report to have been a Giant.60

The narrative begins in a manner by now familiar to Dugdale’s readers: listing the head of a family (in this case an Earl), his daughter, and the name of her husband who then assumes through her the rights to land and title. However, even here Dugdale gives indications about the turn to mythic history that approaches. Rohand, we are told, is a “famous warrior, enriched with great possessions” – not just any Earl of Warwick. His successor, of course, will be Guy, whose greatness is such that the Welsh attempt to co-opt him into their own ancestral histories. Dugdale’s narrative, he implies, will set that record straight, locating Guy and his exploits firmly in the “English” past of pre-Norman kings such as Alfred, Edward, and (shortly) Athelstan. Here Dugdale pauses to justify his venture into Guy’s history, simultaneously signaling and denying the mythic status of what he is about to relate: The storie whereof, however it may be thought fictitious by some, forasmuch as there be those that make a question whether there was ever really such a man; or if so, whether all be not a dream which is reported of him, in regard that the Monks have sounded out his praises so hyperbolically: yet those that are more considerate will neither doubt the one, nor the other, inasmuch as it hath been so usual with our ancient Historians, for the encouragement of after-ages unto bold attempts, to set forth the exploits of worthy men with the highest encomiums imaginable; And therefore, should we for that cause be so conceited as to explode it, all history of those times might as well be vilified. And having said thus much to encounter with the prejudicate fancies of some, and the wayward opinions of others, I come to the story, which, from certain Authors of good credit, is in substance as followeth.61

Dugdale, despite having previously stated that he would say little about pre-­ Conquest history due to lack of reliable documentary evidence, here staunchly defends unreliable narratives and their use to historians. The shift signals a change in narrative purpose: Dugdale accepts historical narratives’ exaggerations because they aimed at “the encouragement of after-ages unto bold attempts.” The Saxon 60 61

Antiquities, 299. Ibid.

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time period functions as an atemporal space where truth value can be subjugated to moral commentary, and where actions described are explicitly done so in order to instruct later generations. Dugdale alerts us that he is shifting to a narrative mode in which more stress will be placed on story than on fact, despite his claims of “Authors of good credit.” Guy, as Dugdale notes, had some doubters in the seventeenth century. Dugdale makes clear his views of those who disbelieved in Guy when he describes their views as “prejudicate fancies … and wayward opinions.”62 Who was Dugdale concerned with? Ronald Crane observes that until the mid-eighteenth century the mainstream view held that Guy, who featured prominently in ballads and broadsheets throughout the early modern period, was a real historical figure.63 The vehemence with which Dugdale rejects any opinion to the contrary as “prejudicate fancies” makes one wonder if the disagreement extends beyond debate over a pre-Conquest warrior’s existence. 64 One notable doubter of Guy from Dugdale’s time with whom he would have disagreed on nearly everything was William Prynne, militant puritan member of the Long Parliament. Prynne was (among other things) one of the driving forces in the trial and execution of Archbishop Laud and a Parliamentary propagandist during the first Civil War.65 After the regicide (which he did not support), Prynne wrote his 1654–1657 A Seasonable, Legal, and Historical Vindication of the Fundamental Liberties, Rights, and Laws of England, in which he argued (among other things) that the eventual course of the Long Parliament and England’s switch to a Commonwealth and Protectorate was a plot of the Jesuits and no fault of Presbyterian MPs such as himself.66 In his historical discussion, he relates the legend of Guy as described by “Henry de Knighton … and some other fabulous Authors.”67 Prynne comments, “But this Relation being contrary to the truth of History, and the Stream of all our Historiographers, I shall repute it meerly fabulous… .”68 Prynne was, of course, in the right from our perspective; Guy of Warwick is fiction, and no such earl ever existed. Certainly, Prynne’s screed (one of many in his long career as a polemicist) would not have found much sympathy from Dugdale, who would have scorned Prynne’s wild and self-soothing claims that the regicide was caused by Jesuits, not puritan reformers. Indeed, Prynne dismissing Guy’s historicity might have Ibid. Crane, “Vogue,” 190–191. 64 Lois Potter argues that the romance genre itself was “firmly associated with Royalists”: Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature, 1641–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 74. 65 Mark Kishlansky observes that “There were many moderate puritans in Caroline England, but William Prynne was not among them”: Kishlansky, “A Whipper Whipped: The Sedition of William Prynne,” The Historical Journal 56 (2013): 603–627. Prynne’s writings are discussed by Jason Peacey, who describes Prynne as “the most prolific polemicist of the period”: Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda During the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 106. See also David Como, Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 66 Prynne, A Seasonable, Legal, and Historical Vindication of the Fundamental Liberties, Rights, and Laws of England, 2 vols. (London, 1654–1657). The text was reprinted as one volume in 1659, titled Historiarchos. 67 Seasonable, Legal and Historical Vindication, vol. 2, 96. 68 Ibid., 96–97. 62 63

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been enough on its own to inspire Dugdale to include the extended narrative in his county history. This is of course speculation, but at least one writer whom Dugdale had cause to dislike had sneered at the legend of Guy in the mid-1650s. Even though several versions of the Guy narrative were in print in the seventeenth century, Dugdale grounds his authority in part on manuscript artifacts whose circulation was limited and access to which marked him as a specialist in his research – further separating himself from Prynne. Next to the phrase “authors of good credit,” he lists his sources, many only in manuscript. “Hist. MS. Tho. Rudburn in bibl. C.C.C. Cantab” – now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 350, Rudborne’s Historia Major de Fundatione Ecclesiae Wintoniensis – narrates the legend of Guy’s combat against Colbrand and is the first to name the location of that battle as “Denemarche.”69 The second source, “Hist. MS. Gerard: Cornub. in Bibl. Coll. S.M. Magd. Oxon” refers to Oxford, Magdalen MS 147, a manuscript containing a copy of Higden’s Polychronicon. At the end of the text in this manuscript a version of the Guy narrative appears attributed within the text to Gerald of Wales’s De Gestis Regum, which is otherwise unknown.70 The final “author of good credit” Dugdale cites is “chron. MS. H. Knighton”; Dugdale may have also consulted the edition printed by his friend Sir Roger Twysden in his 1652 Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores X. In fact, Knighton is the base text for much of Dugdale’s narrative, which often translates Knighton’s account. Dugdale’s main “author of good credit” is the lone named author in Prynne, whose addition “some other fabulous authors” implies that Knighton, too, is resorting to fiction. Dugdale, with his comment that without using such sources “all history of those times might as well be vilified,” continues unperturbed by Prynne’s view. The combination of devotion and martial skill in the second part of the narrative set Guy’s story apart from similar romances, as did its thorough grounding in the real geography of England. Although most of the events that Dugdale narrates take place in Winchester, “Guy’s Cliff ” established strong ties between Warwickshire and the hero, as did his putative lineage in the earldom. The angelic vision that Athelstan receives telling him how to find his champion, which Dugdale reports without demur, demonstrates that Guy works God’s will: But it so fell out, that God, being moved with the sorrowfull tears and intercessions of the English, sent a good Angel to comfort the King as he lay upon his bed the very night of the Nativity of S. John Bapt. directing that he should arise early on the morrow, taking two Bishops with him, and get up to the top of the North-gate of that Citie, staying there till the hour of Prime, and then should he see divers poor people and Pilgrims enter thereat, amongst which there would be a personable man in a Pilgrims habit, bare footed with his head uncovered, and upon it a Chaplet of White-Roses; and that he should intreat him for the love of A digitized copy of this manuscript can be seen on the “Parker Library on the Web” site, http://parker.stanford.edu/parker. Rouse, Idea, 143. 70 George Clement Boas and William Prideaux Courtney, Bibliotheca Cornubiensis: A Catalogue of the Writings, Both Manuscript and Printed, of Cornishmen, and of Works Relating to the County of Cornwall with Biographical Memoranda and Copious Literary References, vol. 1 (London, 1874). 69

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Jesus Christ, the devotion of his Pilgrimage, and the preservation of all England to undertake the Combat, for he should Conquer the mighty Colbrond, and deliver his realm from the Danish servitude.71

Dugdale even chose to include direct discourse between Athelstan and Guy, a feature present in Knighton’s chronicle but uncommon in the Antiquities. For instance, after the king has acquainted Guy with Colbrand’s challenge he concludes: Therefore we do desire you, for the love of Christ our Saviour, and for the pardon of your own sins, that you will heartily undertake this Duel against that cursed Pagan, for the cause of Gods Church and Christian Religion. To whom the Palmer answered, Oh my Lord the King, you may easily see that I am not in any condition to take upon me this fight, being feeble and weakened with dayly travail: Alas, where are your stout and hardy Souldiers, who had wont to be in great esteem with you?72

Such conversations reported exactly are not required for the basic narrative, nor is the detailed description of Guy’s preparation for the combat, nor the battle itself. This dramatic scene is narrated with a relish more in keeping with a prose broadsheet than Dugdale’s scholarly chorography. Guy rides out from Winchester to the place assigned for the duel: where he waited for Colbrond; who, shortly after, came so weightily harnessed that his Horse could scarce carry him, and before him a Cart loaded with Danish-­ axes, great Clubs with knobs of Iron, squared barrs of Steel, Lances, and Iron hooks to pull his Adversary to him: And so soon as he saw the Palmer make towards him, calling loudly, he bad him get of his Horse and cast himself down with submission: But the Palmer, arming himself with the sign of the Crosse, and commending himself to God, put Spurs to his Horse to meet the Gyant, and in the first encounter pierced his shield so far that his own Lance broke into shivers; which so enraged the Gyant, that he bore up fiercely towards the Palmer, & smote his horse with such strength, that he cut of his head. The Palmer therefore being dismounted, nimbly and with great courage directed his blow at the Gyants Helmet; but by reason of his height could reach no further then his shoulder. Then Colbrond smote at the Palmer with a square bar of steel; but he, seeing his danger, interposed his sheild, which bore of the blow, and on a suddain did so vigorously lay at the corner of the Gyants target, that his Club bossed with Iron fell to the ground; which whil’st he stretched out his arm to take up, the Palmer with his sword cut of his hand: whereupon the Danes grew much dismayed; and on the other side was there as great rejoycing by K. Athelstan and the English; and yet nothwithstanding did Colbrond hold out the Combate till the evening of that day, that by loosing so much bloud he fainted, so that Guy, with all his strength fetching a blow, cut off his head.73 71 72 73

Antiquities, 299–300. Ibid., 300. Ibid., 300–301.

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Dugdale again keeps almost all the details from Knighton; this section is a close translation of the original. For instance, Knighton alone depicts Colbrand arriving at the appointed field with a cart full of weapons “like a manic golfer,” as the most recent editor memorably observes.74 Elements of Dugdale’s narrative highlight themes found elsewhere in his work. Dugdale, unlike many of his contemporary English Protestants, respected some of the elements of medieval Catholicism. Much of the material that he retains from Knighton supports this. We are told that Guy rides from Winchester with armaments given him by Athelstan, “the sword of Constantine the great” and “S. Maurice his Lance” – fitting weapons in what Dugdale presents as spiritual warfare as well as bodily combat. Yet, despite these near-magically significant weapons, after Dugdale (following Knighton) catalogues Colbrand’s excessive array of weaponry, he tells us that Guy rides out “arming himself with the sign of the Crosse, and commending himself to God.”75 The relics coexist with faith in God, and both cooperate to protect Guy and give him the victory. Dugdale further emphasizes Guy’s status as a spiritual warrior, effectively combining outward piety and artifacts with inward faith, by describing him almost exclusively in this scene as “the Palmer,” italicizing the word as he does proper nouns. His wording departs from Knighton, whom Dugdale is closely paraphrasing/translating, and who more usually uses “Gydo” in this scene. In contrast, Dugdale calls Colbrand by his name or refers to him as “the Gyant” (despite earlier denying that Colbrand was a giant). The effect in Dugdale is to universalize the battle as a spiritual one in which holy wanderers and seekers after God overcome worldly foes (whatever their size, or that of their weapons cache). A similar desire may have motivated Dugdale’s other major change from Knighton – Colbrand’s origin. Knighton makes clear that Colbrand, although the Danish Champion, is originally African.76 In Knighton, Athelstan tells the pilgrim that “voluntas Dei nostri est ut ferias bellum cum Colibrando nephando Saraceno Affrico in salvationem totius gentis nostrae Anglicanae & liberationem a jugo servitutis imposito” [it is the will of our God that you wage a battle with Colbrand, the wicked African Saracen, for the salvation of our whole English people and freeing [them] from the yoke of imposed slavery].77 Dugdale renders this “it is the will of God, that you must encounter with that wicked Colbrond the Saracen, for the safeguard of us and all the English Nation, and freedom thereof from the yoak of slavery.”78 Dugdale retains “Saracen” – a description that could encompass nearly any non-Christian, as both texts subsequently refer to Colbrand as “pagan” – but omits the racial identifier. Later references in Knighton to Colbrand as African are likewise omitted by Dugdale.

Henry Knighton, Knighton’s Chronicle 1337–1396, ed. and trans. G.H. Martin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), xxviii n. 47. 75 Antiquities, 300. 76 See Ivana Djordjević, “Saracens and Other Saxons: Using, Misusing, and Confusing Names in Gui de Warewic and Guy of Warwick,” in The Exploitations of Medieval Romance, ed. Laura Ashe, Ivana Djordjecvić, and Judith Weiss (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2010), 28–42. 77 Twysden, Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores X (London, 1652), col. 2323. 78 Antiquities, 300. 74

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Dugdale’s discussion of Colbrand presents this chief opponent of the pre-­ Conquest English as religiously in error, but not dark-skinned. Dugdale declines to posit a racial Other against which to set his English champion; the English identity he wishes to locate in early medieval England is one predicated on confessional identities, not racial ones. As Guy’s story echoes from the past to Dugdale’s readers, all racial categories disappear in favor of an emphasis on religious disposition. This, despite writing at a time in history when racial identity as we conceive of it was gaining traction and cultural force – Dugdale knew what he was aiming for in his depiction of Guy as a champion for right-thinking English Christians, and he omitted any possible distractions from that focus. What mattered to Dugdale were the religious overtones of a Palmer (subsequently dwelling in a Warwickshire hermitage) overcoming a “Pagan” force threatening to take English sovereignty from its monarch and subjects (who would have subsequently suffered the “yoke of slavery”). In Dugdale’s fantasized early medieval past, such distinctions as “whiteness” did not matter, so he left Colbrand’s African origin entirely out of his narrative. The Guy narrative, recounting events supposedly from pre-Conquest England, is entirely distinct from most of Dugdale’s matter-of-fact, dry recounting of descents and property transfers. The early medieval past gives him the scope to link together contemporary landscape – Guy’s Cliff – with unabashedly heroic deeds told in a style more appropriate to balladeers than the sober antiquary whose portrait appears at the front of the work. Physical, persistent geographic reality collides with Dugdale’s partisan desires, and the merger results in a remarkable moment in the Antiquities. Early medieval history, although nominally grounded in reality, gives scope for a kind of fantasy that Dugdale never again allows himself.  The pre-Conquest past in Dugdale’s Antiquities provides an imaginative space where narratives can erupt into documentary history, and actions – ritual or legendary – resonate into the present. Even as Dugdale notes the lack of records from early medieval inhabitants, the people themselves provide their own “monuments,” and their stories inscribe information for the present. Few, if any, pre-Conquest funerary monuments survive in Warwickshire, but their lack is mitigated by the visions of knighthood ceremonies and Guy’s deeds in defense of all England and of true Christianity. In his portraits of early religious orders, discussion of Guy, and images of the ritual of the Bath, Dugdale delineates a “Saxon” identity that is not only spiritual but ceremonial – a clear challenge to the anti-ceremonial biases of puritans. Such ceremonial characteristics deployed themselves in the defense of the English monarchy and realm, as with Guy and his fellow knights, as well as in the county identity of Warwickshire. The human narratives ultimately convey the “antiquities” more effectively than physical remnants of dwellings and burials, for the people of Warwickshire still inhabit their own narratives and become themselves the monuments that Dugdale claims are missing from early medieval history. With echoes of a ceremonial, valiant, and patriotic history ringing out to them, they too can learn to “love these ancient ruins” and their relevance to the present.

Epilogue: Texts in Conversation John Milton’s Paradise Regained and the Old English Christ and Satan

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or decades, early modernists and early medievalists alike have speculated about possible connections between the Old English poems of Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11 concerning Satan and the Fall, and John Milton’s epic treating the same topic.1 Paradise Lost and Genesis B, in particular, have several intriguing parallels. Could Milton have learned Old English, or had an amanuensis who did, and used Junius’s edition of the poems as a source for his work? The answer is almost certainly no. However, as an epilogue to my discussion of early medieval studies in early modern England, I argue that this recognition need not close off side-by-side examination of Milton’s works and the Old English poems, which were available in print to the scholarly reading public by 1655. Pre-Conquest literature and culture resonated with that of the seventeenth century, and we need not limit ourselves to source studies to examine how early medieval texts could contribute to wider discourses on the topics of law or religion, and shape individual responses to crisis. Rather than focus on what one writer might or might not have known, we can choose instead to focus on potential readers of both texts and inquire how such readers might have perceived points in common. As a case study, I will consider together Milton’s later work, Paradise Regained (1671), and Christ and Satan, the final poem in the Junius manuscript. Both poems describe the fall of the rebel angels and the Temptation of Christ in the desert. In their depiction of these events, both differentiate between good and bad kings, both frame this understanding in the legal discourse of their contemporary culture, and both explore the difference between literal and spiritual understanding. Seventeenth-century readers sensitive to these topics could have found the two poems constantly in dialogue. Milton’s attitude toward early medieval English culture remained negative, which is one reason to doubt that he made the effort to learn Old English. He believed that the introduction of bishops into the Christian religion was one of its greatest errors, The strongest case was made by J.W. Lever, “Paradise Lost and the Anglo-Saxon Tradition,” The Review of English Studies 23 (1947): 97–106. 1

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and his anti-episcopal sentiment spilled into his attitude toward pre-Conquest England. In his historical writings, he uses pre-Conquest England as a shorthand for the literal, earthly mode of reading that he believed led to sin if not directly to hell itself. Thomas Corns argues that Milton’s skewering of Celtic and Saxon England in his History of Britain arose from his dislike of episcopal structure and ultimately led him to break with prior and present trends in English historiography: Milton’s history is a journey away from grand narratives. He abandons the myth of England as a chosen and privileged nation. He abandons the legacy of sixteenth-­century Protestant historiography … with its patient chronicling of the sufferings and triumph of the godly in the providential progress towards and English reformation.2

Milton’s treatment also broke with the research of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries in the writing of early English history, as Nicholas Von Maltzahn points out: “Compared with Selden or Spelman’s ground-breaking studies, for example, Milton’s interpretation of the past provides a much flatter vision of the history of English government and institutions, one less informed by comparative historical study, or by ideas of constitutional innovation and corruption.”3 Indeed, Milton’s treatment of early insular history has “often disappointed students of Milton” (to say nothing of students of Old English).4 He had an axe to grind when describing British history, and not even the anti-ceremonial tendencies of Wheelock’s Bede (which Milton knew) could interest him in a more nuanced understanding.5 Milton had little patience with historians whose views did not support his own anti-prelatical ideal of church government.6 His distaste for early medieval England probably left him disinclined to study its language and texts. Something did, at any rate, for Milton had opportunities to learn Old English.7 He could, had he wished, have studied with Wheelock while the latter was the “Professor of Saxon” at Cambridge, as his tenure there overlapped

Thomas Corns, “Milton and the Limitations of Englishness,” in Early Modern Nationalism and Milton’s England, ed. David Loewenstein and Paul Stevens (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 212. 3 Von Maltzahn, Milton’s History of Britain: Republican Historiography in the English Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 167. 4 Ibid., 166. 5 Wheelock’s Bede is the subject of chapter two. 6 David Weil Baker, “‘Dealt with at His Owne Weapon’: Anti-Antiquarianism in Milton’s Prelacy Tracts,” Studies in Philology 106 (2009): 207–234, describes Milton’s attitude toward historical scholarship. 7 Many biographies of Milton have been written, notably Nicholas McDowell, Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020); Gordon Campbell and Thomas Corns, John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography, Revised Edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); John Shawcross, John Milton: The Self and the World (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993); and Shawcross, The Arms of the Family: The Significance of John Milton’s Relatives and Associates (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004). 2

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with Milton’s undergraduate study at Christ’s College. Several volumes of Old English texts, many with Latin translations, appeared in his lifetime: William L’Isle’s A Saxon Treatise on the Old and New Testament (1623), the first volume of Spelman’s Concilia (1639), Wheelock’s Bede, both in the first edition (1643) and the second that included a reprint of Lambarde (1644), Junius’s edition of the “Caedmon” manuscript (1655), and Somner’s Dictionarium (1659). Most of these predate Milton’s total loss of his sight in March or April of 1653. Even after Milton went blind, he could have had access to Old English texts. Edward Phillips, Milton’s nephew, amanuensis, and eventual biographer, worked closely with his uncle.9 Phillips had employment with Elias Ashmole, Dugdale’s closest friend and son-in-law. Had Milton wanted to consult Old English texts through Phillips, Phillips had some of the best personal resources available to help him. Both Phillips and Milton were proud of the latter’s literary and linguistic achievements and, had he either learned Old English or accessed the texts through Phillips’s mediation, it is hard to imagine that either of them would have been quiet about it. Nor need Milton have done so to explain some of the similarities between his biblical poems and those of the Junius manuscript. Common details, such as the flames of hell that give “No light, but rather darkness visible” (Paradise Lost I.64) and Satan’s complaint that hell is paradoxically fiery and dark (Christ and Satan 104), can be shown to stem from the long tradition of writing about the Falls of Satan and of Adam and Eve.10 Martin Evans’s thorough elucidation of several aspects of this tradition put paid to the notion that Milton must have known the Junius poems (even as Evans himself was unwilling to rule the possibility out).11 Evidence points to Milton’s not reading Old English, and not drawing on the poems in the Junius manuscript as source material for his own works. Milton did not make the effort to learn the earliest recorded version of English. However, as this book has argued, the texts and history of pre-Conquest England contributed to debates about politics and religion, debates in which Milton participated. Even though Milton declined to directly engage with this material, considering his works in parallel to those Old English poems available to him and his contemporaries shows the resonance between early medieval and early modern discourse. We can consider how early modern readers familiar with both texts might have experienced their commonalities, even if doing so requires some speculation. I focus here on Christ and Satan, the only Junius 11 poem to consider events from the New Testament as well as the Hebrew Bible.12 I will consider this 8

Francis Utley, is, as far as I know, the first to have observed that Wheelock’s professorship and Milton’s Cambridge studies overlapped: “Two Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Poems,” Modern Language Quarterly 3 (1942): 243–261. 9 Shawcross, Arms, 73–94. 10 Quotations from Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, hereinafter cited as PL and PR respectively, are from John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (Indianapolis: Odyssey, 1957); quotations from Christ and Satan are from Christ and Satan: A Critical Edition, ed. Robert Finnegan (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1977). 11 J. Martin Evans, Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968). 12 The poem has no title in the manuscript or the 1659 edition; the name is a scholarly convention dating from the late nineteenth century. 8

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text alongside Milton’s “brief epic,” Paradise Regained (with an occasional glance at the better-known Paradise Lost). Both texts depict interactions between Satan and his subordinates, and both narrate Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. As they do so, each takes an unorthodox (in Milton’s case frankly heterodox) view of the persons of the Trinity. Each recounts the interactions between divine and demonic beings in terms of the political and legal systems of their own day. Each contrasts literal, measurable physicality with spiritual understanding. Finally, each goes beyond the brief narration in the Gospel of Matthew and makes Satan’s actions in the Temptation evocative of early medieval structures of political leadership. Milton’s anti-Trinitarianism has been known to scholars ever since the 1825 publishing of his De Doctrina Christiana, which denies the eternity of the Son and subordinates him to the Father as a facet of the created world.13 In Milton’s poetry, the Son’s created status heightens the tension between Satan and the Son, as Satan engages in a form of bizarre sibling rivalry after the Son’s creation. In Paradise Lost Book V, Raphael recounts to Adam how, after the creation of the angels, God proclaimed the begetting and supremacy of the Son: This day I have begot whom I declare My only Son, and on this holy Hill Him have anointed, whom ye now behold At my right hand; your Head I him appoint; And by my Self have sworn to him shall bow All knees in Heav’n, and shall confess him Lord.14

This proclamation spurs Satan’s rebellion. Satan: … fraught With envy against the Son of God, that day Honor’d by his great Father, and proclaim’d Messiah King anointed, could not bear Through pride that sight, and thought himself impair’d.15

This envy sets Satan primarily in opposition to the Son, although his later insistence to the other angels that, since they can’t remember their own creation, they might as well be self-generated also denies the creating power of the Father.16 Satan’s antagonism toward the Son in particular continues in Paradise Regained, which narrates the Temptation – the only time in Scripture when Christ and the devil directly interact.17 As Milton’s poem opens, Satan has already witnessed Jesus’s baptism in the River Jordan, and recounts to the other fallen angels the subsequent events: Milton’s heterodoxy is detailed in Maurice Kelley, “Milton and the Trinity,” Huntington Library Quarterly 33 (1970): 315–320. 14 PL, V.603–608. 15 Ibid., V.661–665. 16 Ibid., V.856–859. 17 Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Milton’s Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning, and Art of “Paradise Regained” (London: Methuen, 1966) remains a standard reference on the poem. See also Emilie Babcox, “Physical and Metaphorical Hunger: The Extra-Biblical Temptations of 13

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I saw …

thence on his head A perfect Dove descend, whate’er it meant, And out of Heav’n the Sovran voice I heard, This is my Son belov’d in him am pleas’d. His Mother then is mortal, but his Sire, Hee who obtains the Monarchy of Heav’n, And what will he not do to advance his Son? His first-begot we know, and sore have felt, When his fierce thunder drove us to the deep; Who this is we must learn, for man he seems… .18

Satan does not recognize that this is, in fact, the same “Son” of God, and implies that the Father, like the devils themselves in masquerade as pagan deities, slept with a human woman. He refers to God the Son as the person who, with thunderbolts, drove the rebel angels from heaven to their infernal home. Satan’s bitterness over God’s “favoritism” toward Jesus leads to his snide comment that “what will he not do to advance his Son,” and the passage makes clear Satan’s emotional stakes in the conflict. During their interactions in the desert, Satan’s confusion over his own status keeps him from recognizing that of Jesus. Satan, as in the biblical account of the Temptation in the Gospel of Matthew, at one point offers to give to Jesus the kingdoms of the world in return for worshipping him. Jesus responds more sharply than to any of the previous offers: … dar’st thou to the Son of God propound To worship thee accurst, now more accurst For this attempt bolder than that on Eve, And more blasphémous? Which expect to rue. … Get thee behind me; plain thou now appear’st That Evil one, Satan for ever damn’d.19

At last revealed by name (although Jesus certainly knew already his interlocutor’s identity), Satan backtracks – with a revealing quibble on his own identity:

Paradise Regained,” Milton Quarterly 26 (1992): 36–42; Helen Cooper, “Milton’s King Arthur,” The Review of English Studies n.s. 65 (2014): 252–265; Andrew Kau, “The Eve Function in Paradise Regained,” Huntington Library Quarterly 76 (2013): 161–179; Colin Lahive, “Milton and the Resource of Romance,” in Timely Voices: Romance Writing in English Literature, ed. Goran Stanivukovic (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), 88–109; David Quint, “The Disenchanted World of Paradise Regained,” Huntington Library Quarterly 76 (2013): 181–194; and Patricia Taylor, “The Son as Collaborator in Paradise Regained,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 51 (2011): 181–197. 18 PR, I.79; 83–91. 19 Ibid., IV.178–181; 193–194.

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To whom the Fiend with fear abasht replied. Be not so sore offended, Son of God, Though Sons of God both Angels are and Men; If I to try whether in higher sort Than these thou bear’st that title, have propos’d What both from Men and Angels I receive… .20

Satan, whose rebellion was spurred by envy over the later “begotten” Son of God being given lordship in heaven, even now fails to understand him. Satan’s reply bases itself on a claim that all created beings are “Sons of God,” denying, as he previously had in heaven, the divine nature of Jesus. Satan still believes himself to be of equal status to the Son – any Son – of God the Father. Later in Book IV, he makes the case even more strongly. Satan says that he came to learn: In what degree or meaning thou art call’d The Son of God, which bears no single sense; The Son of God I also am, or was, And if I was, I am; relation stands; All men are Sons of God… .21

Satan still claims that he is a son of God. His fallen understanding cannot properly comprehend what his place is, much less what it ought to be. The Old English poem likewise goes beyond strict orthodoxy and shares this focus on the Son as Satan’s main antagonist in the fall, assigning to that person of the Trinity extra-biblical roles. In the poem’s first several lines, we are told “godes agen bearn” [God’s own Son]: Seolua he gesette Swa se wyrhta Serede and Eorðan dæles Heaum holme.22

… daga enderim þurh his soðan might. þurh his wuldres gast sette on six dagum up on heofonum

[established himself the tally of days, through his true power. Likewise, by means of his spirit of glory up in heaven, he created and established in six days the regions of the earth and the deep sea.]

Robert Finnegan, in the introduction to his edition, observes that “it can hardly be argued that [the poet] intended anything other than the second person of the Trinity as the creative agent.”23 This view was not strict orthodoxy, as it went against the Nicene Creed, but was not entirely uncommon in the early Middle Ages, when Ibid., IV.195–200. Ibid., IV.516–520. 22 Christ and Satan, 10; 12–16. Translations are mine, at times referencing those of S.A.J. Bradley, Anglo-Saxon Poetry (London: Everyman, 1982). 23 Christ and Satan, 26. 20 21

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trinitarian doctrine was still somewhat in flux. In addition to the Son’s role as creator, the Son is also the main antagonist of the rebel angels in the battle in heaven. As in Milton, he is the person credited with their expulsion – a role he takes in other Old English poems as well – after Satan refuses to acknowledge his authority.25 The devils in hell blame Satan for their downfall, telling him “þu us gelærdæst ðurh lyge ðinne / þæt we helende heran ne scealdon” [you persuaded us with your lies that we should not obey the Savior].26 Although the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary notes that hælend can be used of pre-Christian deities other than Christ, in the overwhelming majority of uses it refers to Jesus.27 As in Milton, Satan in Christ and Satan balks at obedience to the Son in particular.28 Christ and Satan also shows Satan making claims (and perhaps believing them) equating himself to God the Father, possibly even claiming credit for the creation of the Son. The devils, recounting Satan’s arguments in heaven, accuse him: “Đuhte þe anum þæt ðu ahtest alles gewald / Heofnes and eorþan, wære halig god, / Scypend seolfa” [you thought to yourself that you possessed all sovereignty of heaven and earth, were holy God, the Creator himself].29 Shortly after appears one of the poem’s most notorious cruces: “Segdest us to soðe þæt ðin sunu wære / meotod moncynnes” [You said to us that your son truly was the measurer of humankind].30 “Metod,” probably related to a pre-Christian word for “fate,” is also related to the verb “metan,” “to measure” and is (as Bosworth–Toller notes) a common epithet for God.31 There are two possible ways to take these lines. First, Satan claimed that his son was the controller of human fates, which requires us to explain who Satan’s son might be. Possibly the poet was familiar with an apocryphal tradition that Satan had a son.32 The second is that Satan said that the controller of fates, that is, Christ, was his own son (not God the Father’s). Predicates often precede subjects in Old English poetry, especially with a “to be” verb, so either interpretation is equally likely. The latter is how S.A.J. Bradley translates the lines. If Satan can falsely claim that he himself is the father of Jesus, this would certainly imply that Jesus was “begotten” (to use Milton’s word) after the angels and was not co-eternal with the Father, in a conception similar to Milton’s. 24

Charles Sleeth describes medieval traditions of the Son as Creator: Studies in “Christ and Satan” (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 11. 25 Thomas Hill points to parallels in Resignation and Andreas: “The Fall of Satan in the Old English Christ and Satan,” JEGP 76 (1977): 318. 26 Christ and Satan, 53–54. 27 Joseph Bosworth and Thomas Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online, ed. Christ Sean and Ondrej Tichy (Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, 2014), http:// bosworthtoller.com. Hereinafter cited as Bosworth–Toller. 28 Hill observes that Miltonists such as Evans had already noticed this similarity: “Fall of Satan,” 317. 29 Christ and Satan, 55–57. 30 Ibid., 63–64. 31 Thomas Hill discusses the etymology and importance of the word “metod” in “The Measure of Hell: Christ and Satan 695–722,” Philological Quarterly 60 (1981): 409–414. 32 Thomas Hill finds an Augustinian source describing Satan as the “Father of Lies” – “Lying” would be his son, in that case: Hill, “Fall.” 24

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The narrator goes on to explain how Christ overcame the rebel angels “Crist heo afirde, / dreamum bedelde” [Christ expelled them, deprived of joys].33 Similarly, Satan in Paradise Regained recounts to his council how the Son cast them from heaven: “[God’s] first-begot we know, and sore have felt, / When his fierce thunder drove us to the deep.”34 Again, this is not without precedent, although the more usual narrative has it that God the Father was the object of the angels’ envy and rebellion, and that person drove them into hell. Both texts, in their departures from the received version of the war in heaven and from trinitarian orthodoxy, heighten the drama of their narrative. As Satan and the Son were the two main opponents in heaven, so will they be in the Temptation scenes that provide the climax of both works. Paradise Regained contrasts physical and spiritual understanding, and I argue that Christ and Satan does also. In Milton’s poem, Satan tells Jesus that he is indeed “that Spirit unfortunate, / Who, leagu’d with millions more in rash revolt, / Kept not my happy Station” but points out that God allows him freedom to move about earth and even, on occasion, heaven.35 The Son’s answer emphasizes that physical movement, even to heaven, does not make Satan any less damned: The happy place Imparts to thee no happiness, no joy, Rather inflames thy torment, representing Lost bliss, to thee no more communicable, So never more in Hell than when in Heaven.36

This hearkens back to the famous moments in Paradise Lost when first the narrator, then Satan himself, emphasize that hell is an internal state independent of the fire, chains, and darkness of Satan’s new home: … horror and doubt distract [Satan’s] troubl’d thoughts, and from the bottom stir The Hell within him, for within him Hell He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell One step no more than from himself can fly By change of place.37

Satan himself echoes this in his ensuing monologue “Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell.”38 Satan, although he can recognize this about himself, is incapable of grasping the extent to which internal reality likewise surpasses external circumstance for Jesus in Paradise Regained. In contrast, the capacity of the Son to understand spiritually defends him from Satan’s tricks; he immediately sees through Satan’s disguise

33 34 35 36 37 38

Christ and Satan, 67–68. PR, I.89–90. Ibid., I.358–360. 625 Ibid., I.415–420. PL, IV.18–23. Ibid., IV.75.

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as an “aged man in Rural weeds” in I.314, plainly stating “I know who thou art” some forty lines later.39 Especially important is Jesus’s understanding that true kingship is inherent, just as the true experience of hell or heaven is. Satan offers Jesus wealth, so that he may begin to amass followers and gain political influence. Jesus, of course, rejects this offer and the kingship that Satan seems to promise: For therein stands the office of a King, His Honor, Virtue, Merit and chief praise, That for the Public all this weight he bears. Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules Passions, Desire, and Fears, is more a King… .40

True kingship is internal; self-regulation makes one “more” a king, not just equal to those who hold political sway. In the final book, the question becomes even more specific, as Satan tries to goad Jesus into accepting “David’s throne” and taking up leadership of the Jews to free them from Roman sway. Milton’s Jesus gives an answer steeped in Pauline supercessionist theory: I was not sent … to free That people victor once, now vile and base, Deservedly made vassal, who once just, Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquer’d well, … What wise and valiant man would seek to free These thus degenerate, by themselves enslav’d, Or could of inward slaves make outward free?41

The Jews’ true slavery is internal, so they would not understand the kingship Jesus will eventually offer – that of spiritual self-control and orientation toward God. Neither does Satan. When Satan offers to give Jesus knowledge by taking him to Athens, seat of wisdom and learning, the Son responds in a similar vein that the internal state matters more: … who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior (And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek) Uncertain and unsettl’d still remains, Deep verst in books and shallow in himself… .42

Satan makes the same mistake repeatedly in his temptations, for he cannot understand the interior spiritual state of Jesus, even as he is punished by his own internal hell. 39 40 41 42

PR, I.355. Ibid., II.463–467. Ibid., IV.129–134; 143–145. Ibid., IV.322–327.

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The climax of the poem is also the final point at which Satan reveals his inability to understand spiritually. Enraged at his failures, he places Jesus at the pinnacle of the temple, and tells him to stand there or cast himself down and have angels rescue him. Since balancing should not be possible, Satan thinks he can trick the Son into prematurely revealing himself and abusing his divine powers. However, the Son stands without difficulty, and Satan is vanquished and falls himself. Noam Reisner reads this passage as the epitome of the physical/spiritual dichotomy in the poem.43 Milton subscribed to the Johannine/Pauline construction that Christ’s body was the new temple, so Satan’s asking him to balance there was asking him to control his body both human and architectural.44 Standing on the temple was like standing on his feet, in other words. The temple has associations not only with Judaism, which Milton believed had been superseded by Christianity, but with Roman Catholicism, which he believed replicated the supposed Jewish emphasis on the physical nature of religion. Christ’s standing atop it symbolizes his overcoming not just of Satan, but of faith systems that placed (in Milton’s view) too much importance on physical structures and bodily ritual. The true temple is internal, in Jesus and in his followers, which is why he can stand. Christ and Satan at first appears to differ from Milton’s approach here, as its repeated emphasis on measurement in relation to God could seem to associate him with concrete physicality and less on internal holiness. I have already mentioned the regularity with which the poem uses Metod [Measurer] to describe God the Father and God the Son. Constance Harsh points out that Satan, in contrast, is characterized by vague, imprecise measuring.45 His followers are referred to as “menego,” “a many,” rather than an exact number. Ultimately, “Satan and his band are characterized by the poet’s use of imprecise language to contain them: they seem to inhabit a confused realm of indefinite description and duration.”46 Harsh argues that when the poem concludes with its most striking departure from Matthew’s account – Christ’s command that Satan, as a punishment for his attempts at temptation, must go measure hell with his hands – it is Satan’s failure that is the point. Because Satan cannot measure hell, he loses the last vestige of lordship over his followers, who curse him. I am not sure the poem unambiguously states that Satan cannot measure hell, however, since he does finally give an approximate estimate of depth, at least: Đa him þuhte To helleduru Mila gemearcodes, Þæt þurh synne cræft

þæt þanon wære hund þusenda swa hine se mihtiga het susle amæte.47

43 Noam Reisner, “Spiritual Architectonics: Destroying and Rebuilding the Temple in Paradise Regained,” Milton Quarterly 43 (2009): 166–182. 44 Ibid., 167. 45 Harsh, “Christ and Satan: The Measured Power of Christ,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 90 (1989): 243–253. 46 Ibid., 244. 47 Christ and Satan, 719–722.

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[Then it seemed to him that from there to the doors of hell were marked out a hundred thousand miles, as the Mighty one had ordered him, to measure that prison through his guile.]

Perhaps Satan is just estimating here, but he seems to finally have some understanding of the magnitude of his punishment. In any case, I do not think the poem’s emphasis on God as Measurer argues that we must take God as primarily concerned with concrete reality. God has the measure of reality, certainly, but as an internal state and as part of who he is. The first twenty lines emphasize the Son’s enumerative capabilities: godes agen bearn … ariman maeg dropena gehwelcne; seolua he gesette

raegnas scuran daga enderim þurh his soðan miht.48

[God’s own son may count each drop of the rain showers; he established himself, through his own might, the number of days.]

We never see the Son engage in counting or measuring. When we are told that as the creator he can count the raindrops, I do not think we should understand this as stating that Christ can stand in a thunderstorm and perform superhuman feats of visual acuity and arithmetic. The point is that he doesn’t have to, any more than he has to live throughout time to count the days. He already knows the numbers and measures because he made them, and they are part of his mental, spiritual make-up. A reader of Milton who also read Christ and Satan could recognize that in the Old English poem God is the “Measurer” because he intrinsically possesses all the measurements as part of his divine nature, not because he must take them. Milton’s Satan lacks this internal understanding, and while he does not get sent back to hell with a ruler, it certainly would have fit well with his character. Perhaps this mutual emphasis on Satan with physicality and the body and Christ with internal, spiritual purity led to another shared innovation. In Matthew’s account, “the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple” (Matt. 4:5).49 However, both Christ and Satan and Paradise Regained add the detail that this transportation involves actual violence toward the Son. Milton’s Satan admits that his temptations of “Honors, Riches, Kingdoms, Glory” have all failed, and that he must now resort to a new strategy.50 “So saying, he caught him up, and without wing / of Hippogrif bore through the Air sublime / Over the Wilderness and o’er the Plain.”51 As opposed to the biblical account’s neutral “took,” here Satan

Ibid., 10–13. Quotations are from The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version, ed. Pheme Perkins et al., 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), Kindle edition. 50 PR, IV.536. 51 Ibid., IV.541–543. 48 49

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clearly seizes Jesus and hauls him through the air. The Old English Christ and Satan presents the physical interaction in even more detail: Atol þurh edwit Herm bealowes gast,

Đa he mid hondum genom and on esle ahof, and on beorh astah… .52

[Then the devil out of scorn seized him with his hands, and the malicious spirit of evil heaved [the Son] up to his shoulder and ascended on a mountain… .]

The Son in Christ and Satan is manhandled into a sort of firefighter’s carry as Satan takes him to the site of his last temptation. Satan’s punishment in the Old English poem, it has been suggested, stems in part from this undignified treatment of the Divinity; he laid hands on God, so with his hands he must measure hell.53 However, it also fits more broadly with the emphasis, in both poems, on Satan with worldly, bodily being. When all his words fail, he resorts to his body and to violence against his opponent. Both texts also narrate the interactions between Satan and Jesus in terms of the English legal and political system of their respective times. I have already quoted the passage where Milton’s Jesus discourses on the nature of true kingship, and Laura Lunger Knoppers has persuasively argued that Milton’s Son pointedly demonstrates what temporal kingship should look like, in opposition to the manipulation of images that the Stuarts engaged in.54 Christ and Satan likewise casts both the Son and the devil in terms of political lordship, a good dryht (leader) versus a bad one. As Harsh observes, the devils try to establish a political unit in hell, with Satan as lord and the devils as his thanes. In the Old English poem, one temptation is for Christ to simply accept a gift from Satan: Ic þe geselle Folc and foldan. Burh and breotone Rodora rices, Engla and monna,

on þines seolfes dom Foh hider to me Bold to gewealde, gif þu seo riht cyning swa ðu ær myntest.55

[I give to you, for your own glory, land and people. Receive hence from me city and spacious home, control of the heavens’ kingdom, if you would be the true king of men and angels, as you previously intended.]

This compares strikingly to the account in Matthew, where Satan offers Christ the kingdoms of the world if he will worship him. In the Old English account, worshipping the devil is not part of the temptation – accepting the gifts would by itself place Christ and Satan, 679–681. Harsh, “Christ and Satan,” 51. 54 Laura Lunger Knoppers, Historicizing Milton: Spectacle, Power, and Poetry in Restoration England (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994). 55 Christ and Satan, 684–688. 52 53

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the Son in subjugation. Receiving land and authority from a lord or king established not just loyalties but hierarchies in early medieval England, or at least in its literary productions such as Beowulf. For the poem’s audience, adding the detail about worshipping the devil would be otiose – the act of formally accepting Satan’s gifts would place Christ in an inferior position and would grant Satan dominance. Satan manipulates elements of early English political practice to try to gain the upper hand. Milton also makes several alterations to Matthew’s account pointing to early medieval lordship. The first temptation is the same: Satan asks the Son to make stones into bread, although he adds an appeal to Jesus’s compassion for all who live in the waste and have little to eat. The next temptation, in Book 2, continues the general theme of Jesus’s hunger from his fast, as Milton adds an offer of a feast laid by Satan: A Table richly spread, in regal mode, With dishes pil’d and meats of noblest sort And savor, Beasts of chase, or Fowl of game, In pastry built, or from the spit, or boil’d Grisamber steam’d; all Fish from Sea, or Shore … And at a stately sideboard by the wine That fragrant smell diffus’d in order stood Tall stripling youths rich clad, of fairer hue Than Ganymede or Hylas; distant more Under the Trees now tripp’d, now solemn stood Nymphs of Diana’s train … And all the while Harmonious Airs were heard Of chiming strings or charming pipes… .56

Satan’s offer has affinities with early medieval Germanic lordship, where feasting (gebeorscip) played a key role in affirming and extending the social and political bonds between the presiding lord or king and his retainers.57 Many modern readers first encounter this aspect of culture in Beowulf, but Milton would have seen it in Bede and in Tacitus’s Germania.58 Somner’s Dictionarium, in its entry for gebeorscipe, had discussed at great length the importance of the feast among Germanic leaders PR, II.340–364. Allen Frantzen, Food, Eating, and Identity in Early Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014); Christina Lee, Feasting the Dead: Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon Burial Rituals (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007) also contains some discussion of the role of feasting in building solidarity. See also Lee, “Earth’s Treasures: Food and Drink,” in The Material Culture of Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World, ed. Maren Clegg Hyer and Gale Owen-Crocker (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2011), 142–156. Gale Owen-Crocker describes how visual images of feasting can criticize rulers’ behavior: “Hunger for England: Ambition and Appetite in the Bayeux Tapestry,” English Studies 93 (2012): 539–548. 58 Milton read several histories, as described by Paul Stevens, “Archipelagic Criticism and Its Limits: Milton, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the Matter of England,” The European Legacy 17 (2012): 151–164. Tacitus’s Germania in particular shaped early modern English ideas about the pre-migration Germanic peoples, although many of his depictions may not have been accurate: M.J. Toswell, “Quid Tacitus … ? The Germania and the Study of AngloSaxon England,” Florilegium 27 (2010): 27–62. 56 57

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and their followers, citing Tacitus as well as Old English law codes that assessed strict penalties for anyone threatening or perpetrating violence at such an occasion. Milton had certainly read these codes, as “Saxon laws” (presumably in Lambarde’s Latin translation) make up part of the curriculum in his pedagogical treatise “Of Education.”59 A reader well versed in early medieval texts would have recognized that Satan, in his invitation to the banquet, tries to build a lord–retainer relationship between himself and Jesus. Another well-known symbol of this bond in early medieval England was the offering of gold to the retainer – a potent public act whose importance appears in one of the poetic words for a lord: goldwine, “gold-friend.”60 Satan’s next temptation to Jesus after the feast, again a departure from the Gospel version, is of wealth. Satan is at least clever enough to appeal not to avarice, but to the necessity of gold for raising and maintaining followers: Money brings Honor, Friends, Conquest, and Realms; What rais’d Antipater the Edomite And his Son Herod plac’d on Judah’s Throne (Thy throne) but gold that got him puissant friends? Therefore, if at great things thou wouldst arrive, Get Riches first, get Wealth, and Treasure heap, Not difficult, if thou hearken to me, Riches are mine, Fortune is in my hand; They whom I favor thrive in wealth amain… .61

Directly following the feast, Satan’s offer of wealth also has striking resemblances to early medieval rituals of lordship, again visible in histories as well as in much of the heroic poetry such as Beowulf. Satan’s strategies do not just embed him in physical, worldly affairs, but do so in a way that harkens back to pre-Conquest culture. Jesus, with his spiritual, internal awareness, rejects the offer, and perhaps by implication the early medieval culture it mimics. Again, this is not to argue that Milton read Old English; he could have obtained information about early English culture elsewhere. Indeed, at one point he commented in notes on possible future poems that King Alfred the Great would be a good subject.62 His decision to attribute qualities of pre-Conquest culture to Satan’s attempt to gain lordship comes into relief when we read his poem alongside the Old English one. Both Milton and Christ and Satan’s poet meditated on sources of earthly power, both shaped their poems dramatically around interactions between the Son and the devil that indicate an interest early medieval lordship, and both argue the need for internal, spiritual understanding against literal, bodily ideals. Milton, “Of Education,” in Hughes, John Milton, 636. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, “Heroic Values and Christian Ethics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 206–226. 61 PR, II.422–430. 62 McDowell, Poet, 362. See also Sandra Glass, “The Saxonists’ Influence on SeventeenthCentury English Literature,” in Anglo-Saxon Scholarship: The First Three Centuries, ed. Carl Berkhout and M. McCormick Gatch (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1982), 91–105. 59

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Early modern readers of Paradise Regained and Christ and Satan would have found much in these two treatments of the Fall and Temptation to further their thinking on these topics. This comparison of Christ and Satan and Paradise Regained indicates the ways that Old English texts could operate as cultural agents in early modern England. The scholars I have discussed in this book had been showing this already in a range of contexts for many years. Old English texts were not merely antiquarian curiosities but spoke directly to crucial discourses of the seventeenth century. They fit into the time of their study and publication as well as the time of their original composition. The similar themes in Christ and Satan and Paradise Regained could have caught readers’ attention for decades following the initial appearance of the two works, as the long eighteenth century wrestled with its own crises in government, war with France, and resistance in its colonial holdings.63  Old English texts and the medievalism that embedded them in early modern culture were nothing if not polyvalent. Graham Parry observes that most antiquarians were politically conservative and supported Laudian religion.64 This is accurate but should not be overstated – it stems as much from accidents of mortality as any inherent tendencies in the scholars or the materials they studied. Had D’Ewes and Wheelock lived as long as Somner and Dugdale did, we would have a different impression of “typical” antiquarians. Had Milton written his epic about Alfred the Great’s victory over the Vikings, the picture would have shifted entirely. The Saxons might not literally “live again,” as one of the poems in Somner’s dictionary claimed, but their texts certainly did, and in their new life they spoke to the best minds of the seventeenth century about the most critical issues of state, church, and identity.

Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation; 1707–1837, rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005) discusses the period. 64 Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 17–18. 63

Bibliography Manuscripts Bodleian Library Junius 11 Selden supra 63 British Library Additional 11750 Additional 34164 Additional 34601 Cotton Cleopatra A.iii Cotton Julius A.i Cotton Nero A.i Cotton Otho B.xi Cotton Tiberius B.i Cotton Titus A.xxvii Cotton Vitellius A.xv Egerton 3138 Harley 5 Harley 8 Harley 9 Harley 18 Harley 19 Harley 55 Harley 172 Harley 315 Harley 374 Harley 483 Harley 533 Harley 596 Harley 624 Lansdowne 171 Royal 7 C.iv Royal 12 D.xvii Sloane 1301

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Cambridge University Library Ff i.27 Gg iv.32 Kk iii.18 Canterbury Cathedral Library DCc. ChAnt. M.352 Lit. C.5 Lit. C.9 Lit. C.10 Lit. E.20 Lit. E.21 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 350 Kent History and Library Centre CKS-U47 Z2-3 CKS-U49 Z15 Magdalen College, Oxford MS 147 Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre DRc/R1 (Textus Roffensis) National Archives (Kew, England) E 164/2 (Red Book of the Exchequer) Printed Primary Sources Ælfric. Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar. Edited by Julius Zupitza. Berlin, 1880. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Edited and translated by Michael Swanton. New York: Routledge, 1996. Anglo-Saxon Poetry. Translated by S.A.J. Bradley. London: Everyman, 1982. Bacon, Nathaniel. An Historical Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England: The First Part from the First Times till the Reigne of Edward the Third. London, 1647. Burton, William. Description of Leicester Shire: Containing Matters of Antiquitye, Historye, Armorye, and Genealogy. London, 1622. Carew, Richard. The Survey of Cornwall. London, 1602. Christ and Satan: A Critical Edition. Edited by Robert Finnegan. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1977. Chronograms Continued and Concluded: More Than Five Thousand in Number. Edited by James Hilton. London, 1885.

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Theses and Dissertations Brackmann, Rebecca. “Language, Land, and Law: Laurence Nowell’s Anglo-Saxon Studies in Sixteenth-Century England.” PhD Diss. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2005. Cook, Mary Joan (depositing as Joan Katherine Cook). “Developing Techniques in AngloSaxon Scholarship in the Seventeenth Century: As They Appear in the Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum of William Somner.” PhD Diss. University of Toronto, 1962. Curtis, Jay. “The Vocabulary of Medical ‘Craftas’ in the Old English ‘Leechbook of Bald.’” PhD Diss. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 1946. Day, Patrick. “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the Seventeenth Century: Transmission, Translation, Reception.” PhD Diss. Florida State University, 2017. Doyle, Conan. “Anglo-Saxon Medicine and Disease: A Semantic Approach.” 2 vols. PhD Diss. University of Cambridge, 2011. Fletcher, Rachel Ann. “Pushing the Boundary: The Periodisation Problem in Dictionaries of Old English.” PhD Diss. University of Glasgow, 2021. ——. “William Somner’s Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum: Method, Function, and Legacy.” MPhil. Thesis. University of Glasgow, 2017.

Online Resources Bosworth, Joseph, and Thomas Northcote Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online. Edited by Sean Christ and Ondrej Tichy. Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, 2014. http:// bosworthtoller.com. British Library. Main Catalogue. www.bl.ac.uk. Bierbaumer, Peter et al. Dictionary of Old English Plant Names. oldenglish-plantnames.org. Early English Books Online. ProQuest. Proquest.com/eebo. Find a Grave. www.findagrave.com. Hamilton, Alistair. “Abraham Wheelocke (c. 1593–1653), Linguist and Librarian.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online. https://www.oxforddnb.com. Internet Archive. www.archive.org. Journal of the House of Commons. British History Online. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/ search/series/commons-jrnl. Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME). Edited by Ian Lancashire. University of Toronto. https://leme.library.utoronto.ca. Mayo Clinic. www.mayoclinic.org. Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford University Press. www.oed.com. Parker Library on the Web. Corpus Christi College and the Stanford University Libraries. http://parker.stanford.edu/parker.

Index Adamnan 62–3 Ælfric of Eynsham Grammar and Glossary  15, 17, 33–4 homilies  17, 56–57, 62, 64, 66 see also homilies, Old English, in 1643/4 Bede Letter to Wulfsige see Ælfric’s Letter to Wulfsige under edition of Archaionomia under Twysden, Sir Roger Aeneas 132 Æthelbert, King of Kent  59, 66–7 laws of  76 Alfred the Great, King  145, 172, 177, 202–3 Cura Pastoralis of Pope Gregory the Great, translation of  145 laws of  86, 95 Old English Bede, supposed translator of  54, 57, 59–61, 63, 136 Alphege, St., Archbishop of Canterbury  29, 30 altars, debate over  40–1, 54, 82, 151 ancient constitution of England  7, 14, 21, 28, 70, 87–8, 99 see also Twysden, Sir Roger Anglo-Saxon, use of term  3, 103 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle  2, 18, 137, 158 see also Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under editions under Wheelock, Abraham animals in churches  8, 83 anointing of monarchs  158 Anselm, St., Archbishop of Canterbury  29, 30–2 anti-Calvinism see Arminianism; Laudianism apparatus-style edition  74 Argyll, Earl of  43

Arminianism  13, 24–5, 39–41, 51, 56, 141 see also Laudianism Arminius, Jacobus  40 artwork in churches, debate over  40–1, 50 see also images, debate over; churches, furnishing and status of, debate over Ashmole, Elias  191 Athelred the Unready  78 n.28 Augustine of Canterbury, St.  59, 66–7, 107 Augustine of Hippo, St.  56 auricular confession  54, 61–3 autobiographies  6, 12 see also Autobiography under D’Ewes, Sir Simonds Bacon, Sir Francis  109 Bacon, Nathaniel, An Historical Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England  23, 27 Bald 144 Bald’s Leechbook  22, 144–52 Bale, John  63 Battle of Hastings  88 see also Norman Conquest of England Becket, St. Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury 30 Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica  51–4, 56, 201 Old English translation of  2, 53, 54 See also Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica under editions under Wheelock, Abraham Beowulf  78 n.28, 138, 201–2 Bishops’ Wars see Charles I’s wars with under Scotland Bodleian library, discarding of Shakespeare’s First Folio  91 Bodley, Thomas  30 body politic, theory of  144, 150–2, 156

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Boniface, St.  29 Book of Common Prayer  42, 45, 63, 159–60 Book of Sports  21, 85 Bosworth, Joseph  136 n.20 bowing during church services, debate over  40, 54, 57–61 Bowyer, Thomas  18–23, 37 Boys, John  129–31 Browne, Sir Thomas  172 Buckingham, 1st Duke of  1, 40, 44, 68 Burton, William, Description of Leicester Shire 164 Bysshe, Edward  177–8 Caesar, Sir Julius  94 Calvin, John  31, 130 Calvinism  39–41, 50, 141, 160 Cambridge, University of  16, 38–41, 44, 49–50, 107 Cambridge Muses  44 Camden, William  110 Canons of Edgar see under edition of Archaionomia under Twysden, Sir Roger Canterbury Cathedral  5, 113–15, 126, 133–4 see also Antiquities of Canterbury under Somner, William Canterbury, city of  52, 106–10, 126 see also Antiquities of Canterbury under Somner, William Carew, Richard, Survey of Cornwall 164 Carisbrooke Castle  117 Causabon, Isaac  111 Cecil, Sir William  36 ceorl, meaning of  46–7 ceremonialism in English Church under Laud  17, 40–41, 61, 64–5, 82, 86, 112–3, 129, 151, 188 see also Laudianism; sacraments, debates over Charlemagne 48 Charles I, King  1–2, 21, 25, 26, 40–50, 54, 61, 68, 70, 85, 131, 134, 158 burial  105, 120, 121, 125–6 and Catholicism  44, 48, 51, 54, 59, 68, 84 see also Popish Plot commemoration of  104, 119–20 see also Frontispice of the King’s Book

Opened under Somner, William; Eikon Basilike Eikon Basilike see Eikon Basilike execution 117 Personal Rule  2, 7, 42–3, 69 travel to Scotland  42–4 See also Charles I’s wars with under Scotland Charles II, King  2, 9, 133 chorography  52, 103–5, 131, 163–4 see also Antiquities of Canterbury under Somner, William; Antiquities of Warwickshire under Dugdale, Sir William; Perambulation of Kent under Lambarde, William Christ and Satan  10, 137, 139, 189, 191–2, 194–6, 198–203 chronograms 44–5 church courts  79–82, 86 churches, furnishing and status of, debate over  82–3, 86, 113, 115, 158–9 see also artwork in churches, debate over Cild 144 Civil Wars  2, 7, 35–7, 49, 55, 68, 163, 184 Clare College, Cambridge  38 clerical marriage  85 Cleveland, John  120 Cnut, King  19 n.34, 78 n.28, 98, 175 laws of  15, 19–22, 86, 89, 96, 98 Cockayne, Oswald  136 n.20 Coke, Sir Edward  48 Institutes 90–1 Colman, Bishop of Lindisfarne  67 commemoration of saints  63–4, 67, 84, 115–16 Commonwealth, English  9, 104, 126, 151, 175 confession  54, 61–3 constitutional royalism  5, 7, 88 see also under Twysden, Sir Roger coronation oaths  98, 99 Cotton, Sir Robert  15, 24, 30, 32 Cotton, Sir Thomas  137 Court of High Commission  43 Court of Star Chamber  2, 43 Cowley, Abraham  49 Cranmer, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury 119 Crashaw, Richard  61 n.106

Index Cromwell, Oliver  2, 128, 142–4, 175 see also Protectorate Cromwell, Richard  128–9 Culmer, Richard  133–4, 140–1 Cuthbert, St.  67 Daniel, biblical book of  139–44 Daniel, Old English poem  137–44 Daniel, Roger  50, 68, 72, 95 Davenant, John  40 David, St.  27–8, 32 Decalogue 95 Dee, John  24 D’Ewes, Sir Simonds  5, 8, 68, 72, 75–6, 85, 87, 134, 203 Archaionomia, copy of   18–22, 37, 72 Autobiography  6, 12, 37 Calvinist beliefs  11–13, 18, 21, 51 diaries  6, 12–13, 37 episcopacy, views on  28 historical compilation see Harley 624 under British Library under manuscripts library 16–17 manuscript collection  5–6, 16–17 Old English dictionary  6, 11, 15–16, 33–7, 127, 135–6, 137 opposition to Laudianism  5–6, 7 ownership inscriptions in books  11–13, 16–18, 34, 37 ownership of Bodleian MS Junius 11 134–5 parliamentary journals  5, 13–14, 35 political career  5–6, 11, 14, 36–7 sponsorship of professorship of Saxon  3, 5–6, 11, 34, 38, 51, 72 Directory of Public Worship 80 Discourse concerning the Lord’s Supper 160 Dissolution of the monasteries  175 Dodsworth, Sir Roger  36, 163 Dugdale, Sir William  4, 35, 95, 191, 203 Antiquities of Warwickshire  9, 163–71 depiction of early medieval England  165, 171–7 Guy of Warwick in  178–88 knighting ceremony in  10, 177–9, 188 monastic orders in  166–8 career in College of Arms  5, 163, 175 History of St Pauls 166 Monasticon Anglicanum  36, 163, 166, 168

229

Oxford, residence in during Civil Wars  5, 9, 163 royalism  9, 36, 172, 184, 188 Dunstan, St., Archbishop of Canterbury  29, 30–1, 32, 113 Durham 28 early English laws, debates over  70 see also ancient constitution of England ecclesiastical courts  79–82, 86 Edgar, King  157–8 Canons of Edgar see under edition of Archaionomia under Twysden, Sir Roger charter to Malmesbury Abbey  108 laws of  15, 22, 81, 89, 98 Edinburgh 42–4 Edith, St.  176 Edward the Confessor  88, 98 laws attributed to see Leges Edwardi Edward II, King, deposition of  26 Edward III, King  26, 93, 95 Edwin, King of Northumbria  59 Egbert, King  171, 176 Eikon Basilike  8, 116–26, 139 Elector Palatine  42 Elias, Patriarch of Jerusalem  145 Elizabeth I, Queen  39 Emma, Queen, wife of Athelred the Unready and Cnut  78 n.28 Emmanuel College, Cambridge  50 England as chosen nation, belief in  18–19, 22–3, 37, 107, 138, 190 episcopacy abolition of by Long Parliament  7, 70–1, 141, 177 debates on  14, 37, 83, 111, 113, 115 history of  8, 14, 24, 28, 37, 110, 115 episcopal visitations  83 epitaphs  104, 114–15 eucharist  24, 30, 57, 160 see also sacraments, debates over Exchequer  90, 152 Exodus  137, 139 faith, theological debates over  40, 57, 62, 65–6 see also grace, divine, theological debates over fall of rebel angels see fall of under Satan fasting 20–2

230

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Forde, Thomas  120 Foxe, John  53 Book of Martyrs 119 Franks 48 free will, theological debates over  40–1, 56–7 see also predestination Fursey, vision of  61–2 Gauden, John  116 see also Eikon Basilike Genesis A  137, 139 Genesis B  137, 139, 189 Geoffrey of Anjou  177 Gerald of Wales  27 De Gestis Regum 185 Germanus, St.  25–6, 32, 66 Gildas 25 De Excidio 27 Glastonbury Abbey  113 Glorious Revolution  48 Gloucester, 4th Duke of, son of Charles I 26 Goeurot, Jean and Thomas Fayre, The Regiment of Life 155 grace, divine, theological debates over  40–1, 56–7, 65–6 Grand Remonstrance  43–4, 49, 51 Guthlac, St.  29 Guy of Warwick see Guy of Warwick under Antiquities of Warwickshire under Dugdale, Sir William hagiography  15, 30–3 see also miracles in saints’ lives Hamilton, James  43 Harvey, William  109 Heavenfield 57 Hebrew Bible  27, 124, 138, 141, 159, 191 Helmontians 149 Hengist and Horsa  9, 25, 132–3 Henrietta Maria, Queen  1, 25, 47–8, 133 Henry I, King  31, 86, 88, 90, 98 laws of see Leges Henrici Primi Henry II, King  99 Henry III, King  99 Henry VII, King  121 Herbarium, Old English  145 Herbert, George, “The British Church” 111–13 High Commission, Court of  43

Historia Brittonum  25, 26–8 Hloþhere, King of Kent  76–7 Holdsworth, Richard  44–5, 49 Holinshed’s Chronicle 34 Hollar, Wencelas  36, 164, 166 homilies, Old English, in 1643/4 Bede  54, 56–68, 82, 136 Horace, Ars Poetica 52–3 Horn, Andrew  93–4 Howlett, Richard, Abcedarium Anglico-Latinum 93 iconoclasm see under puritans idolatry, concerns over  6, 19, 22, 27, 31, 83–4, 95 see also puritans; D’Ewes, Sir Simonds images, debate over  40, 49–50 see also iconoclasm under puritans Incident, the  43 Independents  2, 128 Ine, King of Wessex  76, 160 intercession of saints, debates over  63–4 Ireland  42, 63, 107, 114, 118 n.53 uprising in  43–4, 49 Irenodia Cantabrigiensis 44–9 Jacob, William  131–3, 141, 157 Jacob and Esau  46 James I, King  1, 21, 39–40, 45–6, 48, 84, 85 James II, King  9, 133 Jesuits  51, 184 jet 149–50 John, King  99 Joscelyn, John  33–6, 127, 135, 137 Junius, Francis the Younger  22, 33–4, 135 Cædmonis monachi paraphrasis poetica Genesios  128, 191 see also Junius 11 under Bodleian Library under manuscripts Kennett, White, biography of Somner  116, 121 Kent County Committee  69–71, 89, 134 Kentish Petition  7, 71 King, Henry  120–1 kneeling during church service, debate over  54, 57–9, 151 Knighton, Henry, Chronicle 185–7

Index Knights of the Bath  177 Korah 124–5 Lacnunga 145 de Laet, Johannes  34, 127, 135 n.15 Lambarde, William  13, 74, 97 Archaionomia  6, 7–8, 14–15, 18, 22, 33, 37, 39, 46–8, 68, 71–6, 95–6, 128, 202 see also Additional 11750 under British Library under Manuscripts; Archaionomia, copy of under D’Ewes, Sir Simonds; edition of Archaionomia under Twysden, Sir Roger Perambulation of Kent  52–3, 105, 164 Lambeth Articles  40 Lanark, Earl of  43 Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury  1, 7, 8, 25, 28, 37, 115 Arminian beliefs  24, 39–41, 54 ceremonialism  54, 57, 61 see also ceremonialism in English Church under Laud imprisonment and execution  37, 42, 49, 184 Laudianism  1, 25, 39–43, 45, 51, 54, 56–9, 62–5, 68, 86, 112, 115, 134, 140–1 see also Arminianism Law French  14, 133 Leechbook III 144–52 Leges Edwardi  15, 18, 48, 71, 99 Leges Henrici Primi  86–7, 98–9, 160 see also edition of Leges Henrici Primi under Twysden, Sir Roger leprosy 110 Liber Rubeus Scaccarii  87, 90–1 life-writing  6, 12 see also Autobiography under D’Ewes, Sir Simonds L’Isle, William  35 A Saxon Treatise concerning the Old and New Testament  128, 191 livestock in churches  8, 83 London 42–3 Long Parliament  2, 7, 14, 24, 26, 36–7, 42–4, 49–50, 68, 69–71, 80, 89, 118, 160 Louvain 53 Lucius, King, legend of  53 Lupus, Bishop  66 Magna Carta  99

231

Manchester, 2nd Earl of  50 manuscripts Bodleian Library Junius 11 (Caedmon manuscript)  2, 9, 10, 128–9, 134–5, 189 see also Daniel; Christ and Satan; Bodleian MS Junius 11, entries from under Dictionarium Saxonico-AnglicoLatinum under Somner, William Selden supra 63  13 n.6 British Library Additional 11750  17 see also Archaionomia, copy of under D’Ewes, Sir Simonds Additional 34164  69 Additional 34601  34 n.91 Cotton Cleopatra A.iii  128, 159 Cotton Julius A.i  26 Cotton Nero A.i  18, 22 Cotton Otho B.xi  138 Cotton Tiberius B.i  128 Cotton Titus A.xxvii  93–4 Cotton Vitellius A.xv  138 Egerton 3138  24 Harley 5  18 Harley 8  33–6, 135 see also Old English dictionary under D’Ewes, Sir Simonds Harley 9  33–6, 135 see also Old English dictionary under D’Ewes, Sir Simonds Harley 18  17 Harley 19  17 Harley 55  15, 18, 22 See also laws of under Cnut, King; laws of under Edgar, King, Harley 172  17 Harley 315  24, 30 Harley 374  35 n.95 Harley 483  12 Harley 533  28 Harley 596  22 Harley 624  15, 17, 24–33, 37 Lansdowne 171  94 Royal 7 C.iv  128, 135 Royal 12 D.xvii  9, 128, 129 see also Bald’s Leechbook; Leechbook III; Royal 12 D.xvii, entries from under Dictionarium Saxonico-AnglicoLatinum under Somner, William

232

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manuscripts: British Library (continued) Sloane 1301  94 Cambridge University Library Ff i.27  26–8 KK iii.18  54 Canterbury Cathedral Library DCc. ChAnt M.352  134 n.13 Lit. C.5  135 Lit C.9  157 Lit C.10  157 Lit E.20  129, 157 Lit E 21  157 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 350  185 Kent History and Library Center CKS-U47 Z2-3  97 CKS-U49 Z15  97 Magdalen College, Oxford MS 147  185 Medway Archive and Local Studies Center DRc/R1 (Textus Roffensis)  18, 22, 76 National Archives (Kew, England) E 164/2 (Red Book of the Exchequer)  87, 90–1 marriage 8 early medieval  77–81, 86 early modern  71, 77–81, 86 Marshall, William  116 see also Eikon Basilike Matthew, biblical book of  192–3, 198–202 medical recipes in early modern English households 146–8 medieval films  10, 173–4, 178 medievalism  3–4, 10, 100, 106, 173–4, 203 and professionalism  102–4 Mellitus, Archbishop of Canterbury  52 memorials see monuments Milton, John anti-episcopal views  189–90 anti-Trinitarianism 192 De Doctrina Christiana 192 Eikonoklastes  8, 120 knowledge of Old English  10, 189–91 Paradise Lost  189, 191–2, 196 Paradise Regained  10, 189, 191–203 miracles in saints’ lives  31, 52–3, 63, 67 Modwen, St.  176

Monck, Gen. George  128 Montague, Edward  50 monuments  115, 121, 122, 125–6, 130–1, 163–4, 188 and trans-temporality  104–5, 114–15, 121 Murray, William  43 natural philosophy  109 Nebuchadnezzar  140, 142–4 Nennius 25 New Model Army  2, 128, 140 Newton, Sir Isaac  109 Nicene Creed  194 Norman Conquest of England  23, 86, 97, 108, 130, 171 see also William the Conqueror Northcote, Sir John  14–15 Nottingham 49 Nowell, Laurence  22, 35–6, 74, 127 Verba Anglica Obscura, copy of  93–4 Vocabularium Saxonicum  13, 35–6, 127, 137 Oda, St., Archbishop of Canterbury  29, 30, 32–3 Offa, King of Mercia  169–70, 174–5 Ogilby, John, The Fables of Aesop Paraphras’d  152–4, 156 Orkney Islands  47 Oswald, St.  57, 59 Oxford, Charles I’s residence in during first Civil War  5, 9, 163 Oxford, University of  40, 44, 49, 107 Paris 133 parishioners, conduct during church services 85–6 Parker, Matthew, Archbishop of Canterbury  26, 36, 53 Parliament, Long see Long Parliament Parliament, origin of  99–100 Parliament, Short  2, 42 Paul, the Apostle  46 n.41, 131–2, 197 Paulinus, Bishop of York  59 Pelagianism  25, 27–8, 32, 56 Peterhouse College, Cambridge  41, 49–50 Phillips, Edward  191 Pipewell Chronicle  26

Index Popish Plot  1, 51, 84 see also and Catholicism under Charles I, King possession by demons in Old English and early modern medical texts  150–2 Prayer Book, Anglican see Book of Common Prayer preaching see sermons, importance of predestination  39–41, 56–7 Presbyterianism  2, 28, 42–3, 50, 83, 184 priests, marriage of  85 priests, parish, role of  81–6 Pride’s Purge  36 Protectorate  9, 104, 129, 130–3, 144, 151, 175 see also Cromwell, Oliver Proverbs, biblical book of  17 Prynne, William  184 A Plea for the Lords 97 A Seasonable, Legal, and Historical Vindication of the Fundamental Liberties, Rights and Laws of England 184–5 Psalms, biblical book of  117, 139 Purgatory 51 puritans  39–41, 43, 45, 49, 61, 65, 83, 104, 130, 134, 141, 158 iconoclasm  120, 133–4, 140–2, 159 see also idolatry, concerns over life-writings of  6, 12 see also Autobiography under D’Ewes, Sir Simonds opposition to Laudianism  1, 40–41, 51, 54, 56–7, 61–2, 68, 85–6, 112–13, 141, 151, 188 use of term  1 n.1 See also Calvinism; Presbyterianism Pym, John  43–4 Quadripartitus  86–8, 93–4 Queens’ College, Cambridge  40 racial identity in early medieval studies  4, 187–8 rebel angels  65 see also Satan Red Book of the Exchequer  87, 90–1 Rehoboam, King  47 Restoration of the English monarchy  2, 10, 128, 133 resultative edition  74 Retchford, William  44–9, 54 n.84

233

Rhygyfarch ap Sulien, Vita Davidis 27–8 ritual, importance of see ceremonialism in English church under Laud Roman empire  133 Rous, John  181 Rudborne, Thomas, Historia Major de Fundatione Ecclesiae Wintoniensis 185 Rump Parliament  118, 120 n.64, 125 Sabbath, keeping of  1, 20–1, 67, 76, 83–4 sacraments, debates over  40–1, 65–7, 151, 160 see also ceremonialism in English church under Laud sacring bell  151 Satan in Christ and Satan 194–6 fall of, 189, 191 in Milton’s epics  192–203 Scotland 46 Charles I’s wars with  2, 42, 46, 118 Kirk of  28, 42 second commandment  95 see also idolatry, concerns over sedition  129, 157 Seldon, John  22, 190 self-fashioning  6, 11, 37 see also D’Ewes, Sir Simonds sermons, importance of  7, 17, 32, 40–1, 61, 64–8, 82–6, 141 Shakespeare, William epitaph 114–15 First Folio  91 Hamlet  47 n.46 Measure for Measure 79 Richard III 79 Shelford, Robert  41 Five Pious and Learned Discourses 41, 61–7, 141 n.34 ship money  7, 43, 69–70 Short Parliament  2, 42 Sidney, Sir Philip, New Arcadia  117, 120 Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge  40, 50 Solemn League and Covenant  50, 51 Solomon, King  46–7 Somner, William  11, 203 Antiquities of Canterbury  8, 104–16, 122, 125, 130–1, 134, 170–1

234

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Somner, William: Antiquities of Canterbury (continued) Archbishops of Canterbury, discussion of  113–15, 128 charters, use of  108 insular minuscule font  108 Old English in  108 preface to the reader  105–7 Dictionarium Saxonico-LatinumAnglicum  2–3, 5, 8, 9, 102, 104, 126, 128–9, 191, 201 Bodleian MS Junius 11, entries from  129, 137–44 Laudianism in entries  157, 158–60 preface 128–9 prefatory poems  9, 129–33, 203 Royal MS 12 D.xvii, entries from  129, 137–8, 144–56 royalism in entries  157–8, 160 employment by Simonds D’Ewes  5, 33–4, 36, 135 Frontispice of the King’s Book Opened 8, 104, 116, 125, 130–1 “Frontispice of the Kings Book Opened” 121–3 “Insecurity of Princes”  121, 123–5 Laudianism  9, 36, 104, 136, 157, 158–61 monuments, understanding of  104, 105, 134 recipient of endowment for early medieval studies  3, 11, 102 registrar in Canterbury Cathedral  5, 8, 36, 134 royalism  8, 104, 129, 136, 157–8 see also Frontispiece of the Kings Book Opened under Somner, William; Dictionarium Saxonico-LatinoAnglicum under Somner, William trans-temporal understanding of early medieval England  104–8, 115, 126, 157 Treatise of the Roman Ports 116 South English Legendary  30, 33 Spelman, Henry  6, 11, 34–5, 38, 54 n.84, 81, 102, 136, 190 Concilia Ecclesiastica Orbis Britannici  48, 74, 76–7, 86, 191 Spenser, Edmond Faerie Queene 114 View of the Present State of Ireland 114

St. Augustine’s, Canterbury  93 St. George’s chapel, Windsor  105, 120 St. Martin’s Priory, Dover  90–1 Stapleton, Thomas, translation of Bede’s Historia  53–4, 59–62, 66 Star Chamber, Court of  2, 43 Strafford, 1st Earl of  1, 42–3, 117–18 Stuart, Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I  26 Stuart, Henry, son of Charles I  26 supercessionist belief  46, 197–8 Symmons, Edward  116 see also Eikon Basilike Synod of Dort  40 Tacitus, Germania  160, 201–2 Temple in Jerusalem  140 Temptation of Christ  10, 189, 192, 193 see also Paradise Regained under Milton, John; Christ and Satan Textus Roffensis see MS DRc/RI under Medway Archives and Local Studies Center under manuscripts Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury  107 Theodulf of Orléans, Capitula 77 tombs archiepiscopal 113–14 inscriptions on  104, 114–15 See also monuments Treaty of London  46 Trinity College, Cambridge  38 Trojans, believed to be founders of Britain 132 Tudor dynasty  46 Twysden, Sir Roger  4, 7, 141 Certain Considerations upon the Government of England 96–101 Commoner’s Liberty 97 conception of English legal history  7, 70 see also early English laws, debates over; Certain Considerations upon the Government of England under Twysden, Sir Roger concern for woodlands  69–70 constitutional royalism  68, 69, 97–101 copy of 1568 Archaionomia  71 n.10, 73, 75 copy of 1644 Archaionomia, annotations in   88, 90–1, 92 edition of Archaionomia  5, 39, 68, 71, 72, 74, 97–8

Index Ælfric’s Letter to Wulfsige  75, 77, 85–6 Canons of Edgar  75, 77, 81–5 editorial practice in  74–5 index 95–6 Wifmannes Beweddung  75, 77–81 edition of Leges Henrici Primi  5, 8, 39, 74, 86–92 estate at Royden Hall  69–70 distraint of  7, 69, 89 Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores X 74, 127, 185 imprisonment by Long Parliament  5, 7, 69–72, 89, 93, 97 library, concern for  91 manuscript studies  70, 88–9, 91–2 Verba Anglica Obscura, copy of  39, 87, 92–5 Upton, Nicholas  De Studio Militarii 177 Ussher, James, Archbishop of Armagh  27 n.61, 36, 41, 135 Vaughan, Henry, Mount of Olives 31–2 vestments, debate over  40, 82–3, 85–6 Villiers, George see Buckingham, 1st Duke of de Voragine, Jacob, Legenda Sanctorum 30 Vortigern 25 Ward, Samuel  40 Warwick Castle  163 Webster, John, The Duchess of Malfi  162–4, 168, 170 Weldon, Sir Anthony  71, 89 Wentworth, Thomas see Strafford, 1st Earl of Wheelock, Abraham  5, 11, 34, 36, 38, 72, 75, 87, 127, 203 Cambridge University Librarian  6, 38 editions Anglo-Saxon Chronicle  5, 7, 38, 51, 68, 72, 102, 128, 136, 158

235

Archaionomia  5, 8, 22, 71, 136, 191 see also edition of Archaionomia under Twysden, Sir Roger Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica  2, 5, 7, 38, 50–1, 54–68, 72, 82, 96, 102, 128, 159, 190–1 see also homilies, Old English, in 1643/4 Bede editorial practices  74 grammar of Old English  54–5 poem in Irenodia Cantabrigiensis  7, 38, 44–9 see also Retchford, William professorship of Arabic  6, 38, 136 professorship of Saxon  3, 6, 38, 102, 136, 190 puritan views  7, 54, 56–68, 136 royalism  7, 44–50, 68 Whitgift, John, Archbishop of Canterbury 40 Wifmannes Beweddung see Wifmannes Beweddung under edition of Archaionomia under Twysden, Sir Roger Wihtred, King of Kent, laws of  76 William the Conqueror  88, 90, 98 laws attributed to  14, 71 William Rufus, King  31–2 Winchelsey, Robert, Archbishop of Canterbury 114 Winchester 121 Windsor 126 Winter, Salvatore, A New Dispensatory of Fourty Physicall Receipts 146 witan 68 witchcraft  84, 151–2 works, role of in salvation, debate over  40–41, 54, 56–7 Wulfsige, Bishop of Sherborne  85 Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, 172 Canons of Edgar 81–5 I–II Cnut  19–20, 22, 81, 89 see also laws of under Cnut, King Hadbot 76–7

Medievalism I Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination edited by David Clark and Nicholas Perkins II Medievalist Enlightenment: From Charles Perrault to Jean-Jacques Rousseau Alicia C. Montoya III Memory and Myths of the Norman Conquest Siobhan Brownlie IV Comic Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages Louise D’Arcens V Medievalism: Key Critical Terms edited by Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz VI Medievalism: A Critical History David Matthews VII Chivalry and the Medieval Past edited by Katie Stevenson and Barbara Gribling VIII Georgian Gothic: Medievalist Architecture, Furniture and Interiors, 1730–1840 Peter N. Lindfield IX Petrarch and the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France: Translation, Appropriation, Transformation Jennifer Rushworth X Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century Andrew B. R. Elliott XI Translating Early Medieval Poetry: Transformation, Reception, Interpretation edited by Tom Birkett and Kirsty March-Lyons XII Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones Shiloh Carroll

XIII William Morris and the Icelandic Sagas Ian Felce XIV Derek Jarman’s Medieval Modern Robert Mills XV François Villon in English Poetry: Translation and Influence Claire Pascolini-Campbell XVI Neomedievalism, Popular Culture, and the Academy: From Tolkien to Game of Thrones KellyAnn Fitzpatrick XVII Medievalism in English Canadian Literature: From Richardson to Atwood edited by M.J. Toswell and Anna Czarnowus XVIII Anglo-Saxonism and the Idea of Englishness in Eighteenth-Century Britain Dustin M. Frazier Wood XIX Subaltern Medievalisms: Medievalism “from Below” in Nineteenth-Century Britain edited by David Matthews and Michael Sanders XX Medievalist Traditions in Nineteenth-Century British Culture: Celebrating the Calendar Year Clare A. Simmons XXI Old English Medievalism: Reception and Recreation in the 20th and 21st Centuries edited by Rachel A. Fletcher, Thijs Porck, and Oliver M. Traxel XXII International Medievalisms: From Nationalism to Activism edited by Mary Boyle