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Add MS 43827 A
- Record Id:
- 040-002056939
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002056938
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000001102.0x0001cc
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165150257.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 43827 A
- Title:
- Autobiographical account of the life of Rose Lok
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains an autobiographical account of the life of Rose Lok (b. 1526, d. 1613), an English businesswoman and Protestant exile during the Tudor period, written by her in c. 1610 when she was 84. Rose was the daughter of Sir William Lok (b. 1480, d. 1550), a gentleman usher to Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547), mercer, and later sheriff of London. She was married and widowed twice: first to Anthony Hickman (d. 1573), a London mercer and merchant adventurer, and second to Simon Throckmorton (d. 1585), who served as MP for Huntingdon.
Rose’s account covers the early part of her life and the story of her family, particularly the role of her father in the spread of Protestantism in the days of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn; her memories of the illicit trade of Protestant literature in England; and the persecution of her family during the reign of Mary I (r. 1553-1558) and their eventual flight to Antwerp. It ends with her return to England on Mary’s death in 1558 and the coronation of Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603).
This manuscript also contains a brief account of certain 'Deliverances' apparently granted to Rose's son Sir William Hickman (b. 1549, d. 1625). They include his recovery from a serious illness at the age of six; his escape from drowning at the age of 12; his survival after a fall from a rooftop as a schoolboy; and finally, at the age of 18 or 19, how he was lost and found in the Russian steppes while working for Thomas Randolph (b. 1523, d. 1590), who was on a special embassy to Russia on behalf of English merchants.
Rose's autobiography exists in two other copies, also housed at the British Library, both of which are incomplete. Add MS 43827 B was probably made as a writing exercise by one of her descendants, Elizabeth Hickman, in 1667. It is now bound together with Add MS 43827 A. Add MS 45027 is a late 17th-century copy of the text that also includes a transcription of Lok’s epitaph and an account of her extended family.
For an edition of Rose's account based on Add MS 43827 A, see Dowling and Shakespeare, ‘The Recollections of Rose Hickman’ (1982), 94-102.
Contents:
f. 1r-18v: An autobiographical account of the life of Rose Lok, dated 1610.
ff. 19r-24v: An account of certain 'Deliverances' granted to Rose's son Sir William Hickman.
f. 1v is blank.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
Medieval and Renaissance Women - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002056938
040-002056939 - Is part of:
- Add MS 43827 A-B : AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REMINISCENCES, Written down circ. 1610 (see below), of Rose Throckmorton (d. 1613), daughter of Sir William…
Add MS 43827 A : Autobiographical account of the life of Rose Lok - Hierarchy:
- 032-002056938[0001]/040-002056939
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Add MS 43827 A-B
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100165150257.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1625
- End Date:
- 1649
- Date Range:
- 2nd quarter of the 17th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Paper.
Dimensions: 140 x 100 mm (text space: 120 x 75 mm).
Foliation: ff. 24 (+ 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 1 at the end).
Collation: Mounted on paper guards.
Script: 17th-century secretary hand.
Binding: British Museum in-house. Blue half-leather binding. Rebound 9 March 1962. The manuscript is bound together with Add MS 43827 B.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
Sir Hickman Beckett Bacon (b. 1855, d. 1945), baronet: presented by him to the British Museum in 1935 together with Add MS 43827 B.
- Publications:
-
Adam Stark, History and Antiquities of Gainsborough, 2nd edition (1843), pp. 452-58 [edition].
Eric George Millar, 'Narrative of Mrs Rose Throckmorton', The British Museum Quarterly, 9 (1935), 74-76.
Conyers Read, Bibliography of British History, Tudor Period, 1485-1604, 2nd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), no. 2154.
Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum, 1931-1935 (London: British Museum, 1967), p. 240.
Maria Dowling and Joy Shakespeare, 'Religion and Politics in Mid-Tudor England through the Eyes of an English Protestant Woman: The Recollections of Rose Hickman', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 55 (2007), 94-102 [edition].
Jennifer Higginbotham, 'The Exile of Rose Hickman Throckmorton', Reformation, 15 (2010), 99-114.
Jennifer Higginbotham, The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Sisters: Gender, Transgression, Adolescence (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), pp. 14, 183, 196-98.
Jennifer Heller, The Mother's Legacy in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 8, 97-104, 179.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)