Add MS 39184

CASTRATIONS of Holinshed's Chronicle, ed. 1587, printed, with MS. notes by Francis Thynne. By an order of the Privy Council (1 Feb. 1586-7, Lord Cobham attending) the recently published second edition of Holinshed was ordered to be examined "for as much as the same booke doth allso conteyne reporte of matters of later yeeres that concern the State and are not therefore meete to be published in such sorte as they are delyuered . . . the rather allso for that ther is inserted such mention of matter touching the King of Scottes as may give him cause of offence" (Acts of the Privy Council, 1586-1587, p. 311). The matter chiefly affected by this order was Thynne's Annals of Scotland, but the condemnation seems to have been extended to all his contributions in vols. ii, iii. The present collection covers all the castrations. It contains from vol. ii, pp. 405-464 (ff. 2-23b), minus the castrations (pp. 421-4, 433-6, 443-50), which follow (ff. 24-31b) ; from vol. iii, pp. 1419-1538 (Thynne's Discourse of the Earls of Leicester, John Stow's Annals, 1585-1586, Thynne's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, Treatise on the Cobhams, Catalogue of the Lord Wardens of the Cinque Ports) and (added in a hand of circ. 1700) a transcript of pp. 1556-1559, which were not included in the castrations (ff. 34-95b). The excerpts from vol. i are headed in a late 17th cent. hand "Castrations of Holinshed" (f. 1), and the same hand heads the excerpts from vol. iii (f. 32) "Qn. Eliz. An: Reg. 27 Begins p. 1419 -ends 1538 w^th MS. Notes and MS. Verses out of Bridges book." This last reference, no doubt, is to the uncastrated copy of Holinshed, which (according to Hearne, Diary, vol. lxxiv, p. 240) was in the possession of [? John] Bridges, [the historian of Northamptonshire (1666-1724)], cf. F. J. Furnivall, Thynne's Animadversions, E.E.T.S., 1875, p. lxxxi, note 1. Thynne's formal withdrawal of a statement in ii, p. 443 about the Earl of Shrewsbury is in Egerton MS. 2124, f. 69 ("Althoughe the same be already w^th drawne in most of the bookes and onely remayneth in some fewe w^ch only weare dispersed before therror was sene"). Occasional notes by Thynne occur throughout in the margins and interlined, but the main body of his corrections and additions is concentrated on the treatise on the Cobhams (f. 74). The history of this treatise is now clear. The first collections on the Cobhams are in Cotton MS. Faustina E. viii, f. 39 (1581). These were extended into the treatise as incorporated in Holinshed in 1587. On the castrated sheets Thynne made his corrections and amplifications. From these corrected sheets a new draft of the treatise was made, with fresh additions and arms in tincture (Add. MS. 12514, f. 56), probably in 1597. A presentation copy of the finished work was dedicated to Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, 20 Dec. 1598 (Add. MS. 37666). Paper ; ff. 95. Folio. Circ. 1587-1597. Transferred from the Department of Printed Books.