Add MS 71164

WILLIAM HOLWAY: Poems and verse-translations, in English and Latin, etc.; circa 1633-1657. Mostly autograph fair-copies. Holway, who was born in Dorset in 1614, matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1632 and took the M.A. in 1637, serving as Vicar of Milton Abbas from circa 1650-1657. The thirty-eight pieces of his own composition preserved here are signed either with his initials or with 'Holw:' or 'Holway'. They are arranged apparently in chronological order, beginning with an elegy 'Uppon Dr Ashworth's death' (f.3) and concluding with a series of New Year's poems (ff.28-40 passim) addressed to his patron, John Tregonwell (1598-1677) of Milton Abbas, annually from 1650 to 1657, the year in which the writer became rector of North Cheriton, co. Somerset. Some verses 'Uppon the birth of the Duke of Yorke. To the Queene' (f. 3v) were printed in Oxford University's Vitis Carolinae Gemma Altera, 1633, sig.K3r. Other Oxford compositions include an answer to the song beginning 'Come oh come I brook no stay', from The Ordinary, a play composed about 1635 by William Cartwright, Student of Christ Church, the two poems being copied in parallel (f. 13v); and Holway's translation into Latin (ff.12-13) of Cartwright's verses 'On the great Frost. 1634'. At the end of the manuscript occurs a text of Cartwright's original (ff. 71-72), followed by a further poem on the same subject by 'Dudley Digg[e]s, e coll: omn: animarum' (ff. 72-73) and some verses 'On the dry summer an: dom: [1635]' (73, 73v), attributed to 'Mr Hen: Coventry' of the same college. Also included in the first section are verses 'On the Puritan's [sic] going to New England' (ff. 9-10v), beg. 'Were I to sing the voyage from Troy to Greece', which from their position here seem to date from between April 1634 and February 1634/5. Several of the earlier pieces carry autograph revisions. Individual poems are listed in the 'Index of English and Anglo-Latin Verse in British Library Manuscripts' of which a printout is available in the Manuscripts Students' Room. From the collection of Edwin Wolf 2nd (d.1991), formerly Librarian of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Purchased of Marlborough Rare Books, May 1993.

Paper: ff. i+78. Contemporary pagination runs from [1] to 73. 185 x 145mm. Consisted originally of five gatherings of 16 leaves each, the final gathering now wanting two leaves. Evidence of surviving stubs shows that one leaf (f. 11) was excised after copying but before pagination, while three more (ff. 23-25) were removed following both. Remains (f. i) of contemporary limp vellum front cover. Formerly preserved in a modern fawn buckram fold-over case, lettered in gilt on the spine 'HOLWAY MS.', and now preserved separately as Add. 71164*.