Add MS 5956

A folio volume, much injured by damp, containing a miscellany of prose and verse. The items are in a number of different hands. They include dramatic political events (especially relating to Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and Lady Frances Howard); verses (including by John Donne, Sir Walter Ralegh, Edmund Spenser and Richard Barnfield); epigrams and aphorisms; and letters, including letters of courtship.

Contents:

ff. 1r-v: Notes on Homer.

f. 2r: Verses of epigrams, identified in the 19th-century British Museum catalogue as Arguments of certain epigrams of Martial.

ff. 3r-16r: Arraignment of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, Westminster, 19 Feb 1601. Copy.

ff. 16r-18v: Execution and last dying words of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 25 Feb 1601. Copy.

ff. 19r-20v: Last speech of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. 25 Feb 1601. Copy.

ff. 21v-22r: Letter of Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper, to Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, Earl Marshal, 1599. Copy.

ff. 22v-23r: Letter of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, Earl Marshal to Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper, 1599. copy.

f. 24r: Verse libel, 20 Dec 1599. First line: 'Admire all weakenes wrongesth right'. (Reprinted from copy in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. Poet. 26, f. 20v, http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/essex_ralegh_section/A8.html [accessed 24 Jan 2020], and from copy text in National Library of Scotland, Advocates MS 34.2.10 f. 93v, with textual notes on the different versions in Steven W. May and Alan Bryson, Verse Libel in Renaissance England and Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 133-36).

ff. 23v-24r: Verses made by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, in his absence from the Court, 1598. Copy. So ascribed in the heading: other MSS give the author as Henry Cuffe. First line: 'It was a time when silly Bees could speake'.

f. 24v: Accounts, 1598, 21 Sep -21 Oct 1598.

ff. 25r-v: Six stanzas of poetry. First line: 'Are bees waxt wasps & spiders to infect'. The last stanzas (bottom of f. 25r and top of f. 25v) have been identified as a version of part of Sir Walter Ralegh's poem, 'The Excuse' (Banjetta, 'Unrecorded Extracts by Sir Walter Ralegh', pp. 138-140).

ff. 26r-27v: Verse libel against William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1641: 'Upon the Commitmt. of Wm: Lo: Bpp of Canterbury an odious Ode'. laud was imprisoned in the Tower of London on 1 Mar 1641.

ff. 28r-v: Verse libel. First line: 'The parlament sits with A Sinod of Witts'. On the Parliament of 1624. (Reprinted from BL MS Sloane 826, fols. 159r-160v in Early Stuart Libels, http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/buckingham_at_war_section/Oi1.html [accessed 24 Jan 2020]).

ff, 29r-v: Latin verse. First line: 'Judicis ad mores se frigit quisque minister'.

ff. 30r-v: Stanzas (written by J.C. in Alcilia Philoparthens louing folly. Whereunto is added Pigmalions image. With the loue of Amos and Laura, published in 1613, 1619 and 1628). First line: 'Nowe have I spunne the web of myne owne'.

ff. 31r-32v, 34r-v, 33r: Trial of Lady Frances Howard before the King's Delegates, 1613. Copy.

ff. 35r-36v: Love letter, n.d.

ff. 37r-v: Miscellaneous aphorisms.

f. 37v: [John Donne], 'Upon the inconstancy of women'; first line: 'Goe and catche a Fallinge Starre'.

ff. 38r-v: Letter of G.G. to Philip Warwick, Secretary to the Lord Treasurer (William Juxon), Inner Temple, 22 Jul 1636.

ff. 39r-v: Letter in English and Latin to 'My honered good Lord', n.d.

f. 40r: Letter to 'Best worthie and respected Mistress', n.d.

ff. 41r-v: Love letter, n.d.

f. 42r: Letter of C.C. to 'Worthy Mistress', 16 Aug 1628. With brief notes on family and property, f. 42v.

ff. 43r-44v: Letter of |G.G. [possibly J.G.] to Mrs Pinnott, 20 Aug 1606, at midnight. Copy.

f. 45r: Letter of H.A. to Mrs B (addressed as 'my most respected frende' and as 'Worthy mistress'), Southwark, 11 Feb 1617. Copy.

f. 45v: Two letters to Mrs Butler, 22 Feb 1617, 11[?] Mar 1617, signed T.C. [?, or J.C]

ff. 46r-v: Letter of G.G. to Elizabeth Marshall, 28 Sep 1617.

f. 46v: Letter of G.G. to Mr Langridge, [?]Wensfield, 28 Sep 1617. Copy.

f. 47r: Letter to 'Worthy Mistress', n.d.

f. 47v: Letter to Elizabeth Marshall (addressed as 'Worthy Mistress'), Sep 1617.

ff. 48r-v: Letter addressed to 'Mistres'. The name of the actual recipient has been lost in damage at the bottom of the page.

ff.: 49r-50v: Letter to Mrs Pinnott, 13 Dec 1606. Copy.

ff. 51r: Letter to Dear Mistress, 10 Dec 1606. Copy.

ff. 51v-52v: Letter to 'my Mistress', 13 Dec 1606. Copy.

ff. 53r-v: Love letter, dated 9 May 1607. The signatory is possibly Henry Iden, but the first letter of the forname in uncertain, and 'Iden' may be 'Idem'.

ff. 54r-v: Letter of G.G. to Mr Jackson, 13 May 1607.

f. 55v: Poem, crossed out; first line: 'The purest gold of all will soonest weare'.

ff. 55r-59v: Verses and aphorisms in same hand. The first line of the verses, on f. 55r., is; 'As much disease in to much pittie as in Tyrannie'.

ff. 60r-64r: Miscellany of aphorisms and prose extracts mainly in the same hand, with verses f. 62v. First lines: 'Fayle not my vowed selve to remedie' and ' To a read man read thy read'.

ff. 65r-67v: Miscellany of aphorisms and prose extracts.

ff. 68r-v: Miscellaneous prose extracts.

ff. 69r-v: Miscellaneous prose extracts, largely involving Socrates.

f. 70r: Passage quoting Mr Shute on St Paul saying that godliness is great riches, which no man would take his part to; if he said riches are great godliness, ' the merchantes and shopmen in London of all sortes, & in every Towne would have held one his side'.

ff. 71r-72v: A miscellany of extracts of prose and poetry, in English and Latin. Poetry extracts include passages by Richard Barnfield and Edmund Spenser (the latter a translation from Ariosto).

f. 73r: A miscellany of scabrous verse and humorous gossip and aphorisms (reference to Gondomar places in the reign of James I). The first is a verse entitled, 'Mrs Barker of Hollyfax' with first line, 'I saw of late one Mr Holt'.

ff. 74r-82v: Text of 'The Mountbank's Masque' or 'The First Antimasque of Mountebanks'[entertainments at Gray's Inn, 1618].

ff. 83r-84v: 'The followinge parradoxes were read at Grayes Inn but left out at [illegible] to avoyd tediousnes'.

f. 85r: Set of paradoxes. This possibly belongs with ff. 83r-84v (possibly the same hand) but the numbering for each item counts against it.

ff. 86r-87v: 'John Bale his questions'. A set of humorous, and sometimes obscene, riddles and aphorisms. In the same hand - and on paper showing the same effect of damage caused by damp - BL, Add MS 33498, ff. 35r-37v, headed 'Aphorismes'. These two items are identified as part of the same manuscript in notes in Add MSS 5956 and 33498.