Egerton MS 3787

JOHN, 2ND BARON HERVEY: 'Agrippina, a Tragedy', etc.; circa 1709-1744. Copies. Hervey's unpublished play forms the main text in a notebook of miscellaneous material that is transcribed in a single unidentified hand. Armorial bookplate (f. ii), after 1756, of the Earl of Ilchester inside front cover, on paste-down (f. i) which also carries letter 'A' jotted in modern pencil in bottom left-hand corner. Purchased, through the Farnborough Fund, from Richard Hatchwell of Chippenham, co. Wilts, 16 May 1973.

Paper; ff. iii+139. 237 x 188mm. Watermark a crowned horn-in-shield with pendent '4' above 'L V G', countermarked with a crown above the name 'Durham'. Contemporary binding of half calf, with large-comb paper covers on boards. The spine, incorporating five raised bands, carries two labels of leather tooled and lettered in gilt, the upper one green and reading 'LETTERS OF LADY HARFORD', the other blue with legend 'AGRIPP &c'.

Contents:

1. ff. 4-11. Items relating to the death in Italy on 11 Sept. 1744 of George Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp, son of Algernon, Earl of Hertford, later 7th Duke of Somerset, and of his wife Frances. These comprise a tract (ff. 4-8) by Thomas Burnet, D.D., prebend of Sarum, entitled 'Meditations proper for a State of Mourning addressed to Lady Hartford on the Death of Her Son by Doctor Burnet 1744', together with a reply (ff. 8, 8v) by Frances Seymour, dated from Percy Lodge in Iver, 15 Nov. 1744, that was printed in The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. XXXII (July 1762), pp. 328-329.

2. ff. 9v-11. 'A Form of Consecrating new Plate given for ye Sacrament Used when Mrs Smithfield gave a Peice of Plate to Queen Charlton in Somersetshire 1709'.

3. ff. 13-49v. 'Agrippina, a Tragedy', a five-act play in heroic couplets by Lord Hervey; circa 1736-1744. This was listed among his works left in manuscript by Horace Walpole, Catalogue of royal and noble authors, ed. Thomas Park, (1806), vol. IV, p. 185, as 'Agrippina, a Tragedy in Rhyme'. Despite the subsequent deletion of the writer's name from the attribution 'This Play was Written by Lord Harvey' found on the preliminary leaf (f. 12), Hervey's authorship is supported by his letter (Add. 51396, f. 163v) of 16 Sept. 1736 to his friend Henry Fox, later 1st Baron Holland, in which he undertakes to send a copy for comment: see Earl of Ilchester (ed.), Lord Hervey and his friends 1726-38 (1950), p. 250, n. 2. The present transcript, which may date from some time after 1744, lacks dramatis personae, prologue or epilogue, but incorporates stage-directions. Corrections made currente calamo by the copyist occur throughout, while from the middle of Act II (ff. 26 et seq.) the number of lines per page increases, underlining for proper names being discontinued from Act III (ff. 32 et seq.). The text, alone in the notebook, is paginated in ink from 1 to 74, the leaves thereafter (ff. 50-139) being blank.