Add MS 74272

THOMAS SPARROW: Collection of theological and religious tracts, sacred verse, etc.; circa 1658-1661. Copies and extracts. Partly Latin and Greek. Imperfect, owing to removal of unsalvageable sections. The signature of the compiler occurs, along with some mottos in Latin, on a preliminary leaf (f. i). He was son and heir of Thomas Sparrow of St. Botolph's, Aldersgate, and took his B.A. degree from St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1633, enrolling at Gray's Inn in Aug. 1635. Two sacred epigrams (f. 88v) in Latin are attributed to his college contemporary 'Wm Bourchier. Joan[ensis].', while the tract (ff. 129-139) To all, paupertatis ergo ne peream fame . . . Whether it be better to turn Presbyterian Roman . . ., 1658, is by Thomas Swadlin, curate of St. Botolph's from 1635 to 1662. Much of the volume consists of tracts or extracts from tracts by orthodox Anglican or Puritan divines, with some verse in Latin and English. Before its acquisition by the Library the manuscript incorporated extracts from St Peters Complaint, 1595, by the Catholic poet Robert Southwell. A collection by Sparrow of prayers mostly taken from Jeremy Taylor is now Cambridge University Library MS Add. 5355. Presented by Arthur Freeman, March 1999.

Paper; ff. iv+228. 179 x 147mm. Imperfect. The fifteen surviving gatherings, all but the last consisting of sixteen leaves each, are numbered consecutively in the top left hand corner from 2 to 13, followed by an illegible number and finally 15 (altered from 13). The first six (ff. 1-96) are paginated consecutively from 1 to 190. Watermarks include pots lettered either 'F/DC' or 'F/DA' and posts lettered 'ARO', the latter resembling Heawood, Watermarks, no. 3535 (London, 1657). Text transcribed throughout in brown and red ink within red-ruled margins. Formerly pasted inside the front cover was the armorial bookplate of 'Sir Joseph Copley, Bart.', that is, probably, 3rd Bart. 1806-1838.

The contents also include:

1. ff. 1-69v. Robert Bolton's Four Last Things, 1632, etc., here entitled 'De Quatuor Novissimis'.

2. ff. 119v-123v. Extracts from John Andrewes's A Golden chaine to linke the penitent Sinner to Almighty God, 1637.

3. ff. 157-172v. George Herbert's poems 'The Church Porch' and 'The Church Militant', first published in The Temple, 1633.

4. ff.102-208 passim. Writings by or attributed to Jeremy Taylor, including:-

(a) ff. 102-106. 'Octo Beatitudines, The Eight Beatitudes or Blessednesses'.

(b) ff. 139v-156v. Dedicatory epistle from The Great Exemplar of Sanctity and Holy Life, 1649.

(c) ff. 173-200. Discourse 'Of Prayer' from A Collection of Offices or Forms of Prayer in Cases Ordinary and Extraordinary, 1658.

(d) ff. 99, 208. Two prayers.

5. ff. 215v-228v. 'Christus Patiens', a series of nine verse-elegies, in Latin, by the Flemish Jesuit Carolus Malapertius (d. 1630), printed in his Poemata, Antwerp, 1616.