Add MS 41137

"EIRENARCHA: or, the Justice of Peace," by William Lambarde: an early holograph draft referred to as the "Module" in the Epistle Dedicatorie to the first printed edition, 1581. Dated, on the title page (f. 1), August 1579--the month in which Lambarde was first placed on the Commission of the Peace for Kent-and there described as "diuided into fowre (substituted for three) bookes." The table of contents (ff. 2, 2 b), however, is complete only for Books i and ii. In the case of book iii, the original summary of contents, "What things be enquirable at the Sessions of peace, etc.," has been struck out and replaced by a shorter summary, "What statutes be within the auctoritie of the Justices of peace," and a note if; appended, "This booke may be contrived in a smalle volume of the statutes at Large: or otherwise it may be marked out in the Abridgement of the statutes Wch Mr Jhon Tyndal hath done," but the original title remains in the body of the text (f. 69). For book iv, the table originally stated "This last booke conteyneth (altered to should conteyne) onlie, certein selected precedentz concerning the affaires by and before Justices of ye peace." The suggested book is, however, omitted in the MS. On f. 10 is the initialled note,"This treatise first Vndertaken for my private Instruction, emboldened the attempt and publishing of the Emprinted Eirenarcha," and other notes concerning the various editions between 1581 and 1594 occur on f. 1. The first two books of the present MS. contain respectively seventeen and twelve chapters, comprising roughly the material, though in different order, of the twenty-five and twenty-one chapters of the 1582 edition, for which the present text was considerably revised, expanded, and, in some cases, entirely recast (see note on f. 2 b). Book iii of the MS. seems never to have been printed as drafted, but the substance of much of the discussion and of many of the Statutes contained in it has been incorporated in book ii, ch. iv, of the 1582 edition, viz. "of the Articles that are to bee giuen in charge at the Sessions of the Peace." It is quite different from book iii of the edition of 1588 and subsequent editions, in which the first three books are a recasting and expansion of the original books i and ii, and the fourth book, "The Description of the Sessions of the Peace," is an addition. In it, passages made obsolete by recent enaetments have been cancelled, and, at the end, additions made in connection with new legislation up to and including the Statute 35 Eliz. c. 7. An index to subjects of the Eirenarcha is given on f. 193. For a further description of the MS. see Miss B. H. Putnam, "The Earliest Form of Lambard's 'Eirenarcha," in Engl. Hist. Review, xli, 1926, p. 260. Included also in the volume are the following articles, added later on blank leaves at the beginning and end:-Aa) List of the Hundreds of co. Kent by lathes, with the names of the Commissioners of the Subsidy granted by the Statute 29 Eliz. c. 8 (Statutes of the Realm, iv, p. 778), 1587, and indications of the Commissioners of 1589. f. 4;-(b) "Rates of Wages assessed the[re] for all manner of Artificers, Servantes, and Labourers, by the Taske, day, yeare, etc.": wage assessment for co. Kent, originally fixed in execution of the Statute 5 Eliz. c. 4 (S.R., iv, p. 414). A note at the end (f. 173 b) states that the rates "haue bene yearly Certified into the Chauncerye, synce 5°. Elizab. Reg: without any chaunge; and doe standnow.24. June. 31.Eliz.[1589]." Printed by Miss Putnam, loc. cit., pp. 270-273. f. 171 ;-(c) " Ordinances for the house of Correction at Maydstone, agreed vpon by the Justices of the p. etc. at the Easter Sessions of the peace...to be putt in Execution wthin the Lathes of Aylesford and Sutton at Hone," 25 Eliz. [1583], followed (f. 180) by the assessment on the parishes within those lathes for the "gaole money" towards its upkeep, 1583. At the end of the latter (f. 181 b) is the note, "Alle this assesse is chaunged, by occasion of the Statute 35. El. Reg. ca. 4," and a later one, "But it was afterwardes restoared, bycause the gaole was not well provided for wthout it."This is followed (f. 182) by the new weekly assessment for the gaol money in the same lathes and for the relief of maimed and disabled soldiers for the whole county rated at Canterbury midsummer quarter-sessions, 1593, in accordance with the Act of 35 Eliz. c. 4 (S.R., iv, p. 847). f. 175;-(d) Collection of five precedents for the Peace. f. 191 b. Paper; ff. iii + 196. Quarto. A.D. 1579 (with additions to 1600). Contemporary binding of boards covered with brown leather, stamped on both covers with an oval stamp. On the back cover is the note, in a seventeenth century hand : "Fiscus papalis 1621. by a catholique divine," referring to the 1621 edition of William Crashaw's translation of the work of that title published in London. The manuscript remained in the possession of the Lambarde family until 1924 (bookplate on f. 1), when it was sold at the sale of William Gore Lambarde, of Bradbourne Hall, Sevenoaks (Hodgson's sale-cat., 19 June 1924, lot 514).