Add MS 70639

ARTHUR LANGFORD: miscellany of prose and verse owned, and probably copied, by him; 1 May 1629-circa 1630. The manuscript is described and three poems from it printed by Peter Beal in Yearbook of English Studies, X (1980), pp. 190-203. First lines of poems, names of authors, etc., will be included in the computerised Index of Manuscript Verse in the British Library. Inscribed in a contemporary hand or hands on a front flyleaf (f. 3) is 'Arthur Langford / his booke' and, beneath it, 'the first of May 1629'. Further contemporary jottings include the names of John Slaughter (ff. 3, 84v), and of Francis Webb and Robert Thurketil (f. 86). Formerly Additional MS. 51 in the collection of the Trumbull family of Easthampstead Park, co. Berks.: a pencilled note on the front cover (f. i) reads 'Downshire Parliamentary Journals (1)'. See also Sotheby's sale-cat. 15 Dec. 1989, lot 11. Purchased by private treaty through Sotheby's, 22 March 1991.

Paper; ff. ii + 87. 186mm x 129mm. Original limp vellum covers (ff. i, ii), on which ff. 1 and 87 were formerly pastedowns.

The principal contents are: -

1. ff. 5-56. 'A true relation of every daies proceedings in Parliament since ye beginninge thereof being tuesday the 20th January 1628'; 20 Jan.-2 March 1628/9. This copy was not extensively collated for Commons Debates for 1629, ed. Wallace Notestein and Frances Helen Relf, Minnesota Studies in the Social Sciences, no. 10 (Minneapolis, 1921), pp. 1-106. For further manuscript copies see ibid., pp. 273-276.

2. ff. 56v-64. Petition by Sir Robert Heath, Attorney General, and others to King Charles I for leave to issue subpoenas to Sir John Eliot and seven other Members of Parliament following disturbances on the closing day of the session; circa 2-3 March 1628/9. See P.R.O. Acts of the Privy Council July 1628-April 1629, no. 1090, for nine warrants issued on 3 March.

3. ff. 67-70. Three items forming part of a dispute in verse between Philip Massinger and Thomas Carew rel. to the respective merits of the Cockpit and Blackfriars Theatres; circa Jan.-April 1630. The dispute had begun with Carew's commendatory verses to Sir William Davenant's The Just Italian (licensed 2 Oct. 1629 and printed early in 1630): see The Poems of Thomas Carew, ed. Rhodes Dunlap (Oxford, 1949), pp. 95-96. The present texts are printed by Beal, loc. cit.; and see further Donald Lawless in Notes and Queries, Sept. 1986, pp. 391-392. As follows:

(a) f. 67. Philip Massinger: 'Prologue to the Maid of honour', beg. 'To all that are come hither, and haue brought'; circa 10 Jan.-17 April 1630.

(b) ff. 67v, 68. Anonymous verses 'To my honored Freind Mr Thomas Carew at Sr Richard Leightons house in Boswell Court these', beg. 'So the rude carpenter or mason may', prefaced by a prose note on Massinger's prologue (a) above.

(c) ff. 68v-70v. Philip Massinger; verses in reply to (b) above, beg. 'I'me in my Circle & I haue thee here'.

4. ff. 65-66v, 70v-72. Miscellaneous verses, mainly humorous, amatory and political, several of them by or attrributed to Sir Walter Ralegh, Thomas Carew, Sir William Davenant and William Juxon; 1612-circa 1630, n.d.