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Add MS 43827 B
- Record Id:
- 040-002056940
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002056938
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000001102.0x0001cd
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165150299.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 43827 B
- Title:
- Autobiographical account of the life of Rose Lok, copied by Elizabeth Hickman
- 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 copy of the account was made by Elizabeth Hickman in 1667, probably as a writing exercise, and ends imperfectly. Hickman signs her name to a number of the manuscript's leaves (ff. 1r, 2r, 3r, 4r, 25v). She is possibly to be identified with the daughter of Sir William Hickman (b. 1629, d. 1682), 2nd Baronet, and Rose's great-great-granddaughter. The final page of the account (f. 28v) is written in a more mature hand.
Rose's autobiography exists in two other copies, also housed at the British Library. Add MS 43827 A is an earlier 17th-century copy of the work, which also features an account of certain 'Deliverances' granted to Rose's son, Sir William Hickman (b. 1549, d. 1625). It is now bound together with Add MS 43827 B. 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:
ff. 1r-27v: An autobiographical account of the life of Rose Lok, written by Elizabeth Hickman and ending imperfectly.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
Medieval and Renaissance Women - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002056938
040-002056940 - 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 B : Autobiographical account of the life of Rose Lok, copied by Elizabeth Hickman - Hierarchy:
- 032-002056938[0002]/040-002056940
- 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_100165150299.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
- Languages:
- English
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1662
- End Date:
- 1672
- Date Range:
- c 1667
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Paper.
Dimensions: 104 x 80 mm (text space: 100 x 70 mm).
Foliation: ff. 28 (+ 1 unfoliated paper flyleaf at the beginning + 3 unfoliated paper leaves after f. 25 + 2 unfoliated paper leaves after f. 27 + 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the end).
Collation: Mounted on paper guards.
Script: 17th-century secretary hand, written principally by Elizabeth Hickman.
Binding: British Museum in-house. Blue half-leather binding. Rebound 9 March 1962. The manuscript is bound together with Add MS 43827 A.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
Elizabeth Hickman (fl. 1667), possibly to be identified with the daughter of Sir William Hickman (b. 1629, d. 1682), 2nd Baronet and great-great-granddaughter of Rose Lok (b. 1526, d. 1613); copied by her in 1667: inscribed with her name (ff. 1r, 2r, 3r, 4r), and the date 1667 (f. 25v).
Inscribed, in a 17th-century hand: 'A Crowne Crowne Crowne make Roome for English man is come' (f. 23v).
Sir Hickman Beckett Bacon (b. 1855, d. 1945), baronet: presented by him to the British Museum in 1935 together with Add MS 43827 A.
- 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)
- Names:
- Bacon, Hickman Beckett, 12th Baronet of Mildenhall, High Sheriff of Lincolnshire and army officer, 1855-1945
Lok, Rose, English businesswoman and Protestant exile, 1526-1613 - Places:
- England
- Related Material:
-
From Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum, 1931-1935 (London: British Museum, 1967), p. 240:
(ff. 28). 'Certaine storyes recorded by [an] old gentlewoman to be perused by her children and posterity'; for the most part copied out, apparently as a child's writing exercise, by Elizabeth Hickman, circ. 1667 (cf. ff. 1-4 and, for the date, ff. 22 b, 25 b; she should perhaps be identified as a daughter of Sir William Hickman, 2nd Bart., and great-great-granddaughter of Rose Throckmorton), but the last page (f. 27b) is written in a more mature hand. Ends imperfectly with the words 'there came to the cort of the Lord of [Barrowe]' (cf. Add. 43827 A, f. 13), but adds to some episodes a few personal details not found in the preceding MS. There is no writing on ff. 23, 23 b except for the inscription on f. 23 b, in another 17th cent. hand, 'A Crowne Crowne Crowne make Roome for English man is come'.