Add MS 82370

This provincial household book, compiled around 1590, was originally believed to be the production of one John Stanhope, a 16th-century family patriarch, whose name appears in red ink on the first folio of the manuscript. However, it was subsequently discovered that the dominant hand throughout the volume instead belonged to Stanhope's neighbour, John Hanson of Woodhouse (b. 1517, d. 1599), a Yorkshire yeoman who worked as a scrivener and notary (on the palaeographical analysis for this identification, see May, 'Matching Hands' (2013), 345-75).

The manuscript is almost entirely an Elizabethan anthology, containing a wide variety of texts, both literary and non literary, prose and verse, secular and spiritual. They include a long narrative poem about some of the events associated with a mid-14th-century Yorkshire feud between the Eland and Beaumont families, a conflict that spread from southwest Yorkshire into Lancashire and is corroborated elsewhere in the historical record. The volume also contains poetry from the metropolitan centre and the royal court, including two unique copies of ballads describing the procession of Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) through London after the victory over the Spanish Armada, two poems attributed to the Queen herself, and some other verse by courtly writers copied from either manuscript or printed sources.

Contents:

ff. 1r-11v: Recipes for different-coloured inks and for catching fish and fowl, as well as other utilitarian material.

ff. 12r-18v: A prose narrative, entitled 'The dyscowrse of the slaghter of Eland & Beaumont Lockwod Quernby &c’, describing a feud between two Yorkshire families, the Elands of Eland Hall and the Beaumonts of Crosland Hall, in the 14th century.

ff. 19r-26v: Two broadside ballads describing Elizabeth I's procession through London to give thanksgiving at St Paul's for the victory over the Spanish Armada (24 November 1588). The first beginning, 'Amonge the woonderous workes of god / for sauegard of owre Quene’; the second beginning, 'Gyve eare awhile good people all’. These are separated by an excerpt from King Philip II of Spain's proclamation against William of Nassau (b. 1533, d. 1584) in which the Spanish king's assumed titles are flaunted.

ff. 27r-29v: Proverbs and maxims in couplets, taken from the Preceptes of Cato, beginning, 'Loue thy father beynge gentyll and kind / Yf he be wise, obey wythe harte and mynde’.

ff. 30r-31v: A copy of the 'byerley bouke' of Sir John Constable (b. 1526, d. 1579), a binding agreement with tenants of the lordship of Clyfton in Yorkshire, 25 October 1554.

f. 32r: A verse calendar, 'wherbye a manne may knowe the days in euery monthe aswell holy dayes as others', beginning, 'January. Circumstantly thre kynges cam by.nyght / by an hie hill or day light.’

ff. 33r-42r: A ballad about the Eland-Beaumont feud, beginning, 'What welthye wyghtes can here attayn / Alwayes to haue theyr wyll’.

f. 42r: A verse Decalogue, beginning, 'No gods but one, shalt thowe adore / Nor Idols grave to the, / avoyde vayne swearyng euermore / the Saboth sanctyfye’.

ff. 42v-43v: An epitaph for Sir Henry Savile, beginning, 'No wyght can well Dyscryve / The woo and wretchednes'. The subject is most likely Sir Henry Savile of Thornhill (b. 1499, d. 1558), but could also be Sir Henry Savile of Lupset, later of Thornhill (b. 1518, d. 1569).

ff. 44r-45v: An epitaph for Mr Henry Savile of Thornhill (d. 1569), beginning, 'O earth earth take unto [thee] heare / the corpe that taken was owt of the'.

f. 45v: A poem by Elizabeth I, beginning, 'The dowt of future foos exiles my present Joye’.

f. 46r: A poem attributed to Elizabeth I, 'Nowe leaue and let me Rest, dame pleasure be content'.

ff. 46v-47v: A Nativity poem, beginning, 'When Jesus was borne in bethleem / In tyme of herod kynge’.

ff. 47v-49r: An epitaph by Thomas Churchyard (b. c. 1523, d. 1604) for William Herbert (b. c. 1501, d. 1570), 1st Earl of Pembroke, beginning, 'synce playnts wante powere to pearce the skyes / rayse the deade from grave’, printed in STC 5227 (1570).

f. 49r: A poem by Thomas Churchyard, here attributed to Elizabeth I, entitled, 'A verse of farwell', beginning, 'I lost a losse, yowe lost no lesse / Who least lost, lost to muche’, also printed in STC 5227 but in a variant version (beginning ‘I lost a friend ..’) not attributed to Elizabeth.

f. 49r: A Latin epigram on Emperor Frederick II (r. 1220-1250) from John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, beginning, 'Si probitas sensus, virtutum gracia'.

f. 49v: A poem by Thomas Vaux (b. 1509, d. 1556), 2nd Baron Vaux of Harrowden, entitled 'The aged lover Renouncing loue’, beginning, 'I lothe that I dyd loue, in youthe that I thought swete’, first printed in Tottel’s Miscellany, registered as a ballad for publication in 1563-4.

f. 50r: A list of the tenants of Netherwood House and lands in Rastrick, Yorkshire.

f. 50v: A list of the counties of England and Wales with the number of parishes in each.