THE WECKHERLIN PAPERS

LEONARD FORSTER

THE Weckherlin Papers are part of the vast archive of the Trumbull family, which passed through the female line to the Marquesses of Downshire. It was kept at Park in until it was deposited on loan with the Berkshire County Record Office at Reading in 1954. A large section of it came on the market at Sotheby's in December 1989 and was acquired en bloc by the . In 1839 Caroline, Lady Downshire, caused the major part of the archive to be bound in olive morocco in a series of 132 folio and quarto volumes. It is not known who was responsible for the gigantic task of ordering these papers. Let it be said at once that the more one has to do with them the greater one's respect is for this Victorian archivist. He arranged the papers in two groups: the Alphabetical Series according to writer and within that chronologically; and the Chronological or Miscellaneous Series; the order is in practice often irregular and inconsistent. It seems that the original plan was only imperfectly carried out, for many papers remained unbound; there are some 150 items and bundles contained in over twenty archive boxes. When the collection went to the Berkshire County Record Office it came under the care of a distinguished archivist, Peter Walne. He caused the unbound papers and unsorted bundles to be listed and thus made accessible for the first time. The Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts took on the task of calendaring the Trumbull Papers some time before 1924. There have been five H.M.C. reports on the manuscripts; a sixth and final one is in the press. These only cover a fraction of the total material, which runs from the 1540s to the 1770s. The best survey of the whole is the catalogue of the Trumbull Papers prepared by Sotheby's for the sale in 1989. Their cataloguer has done a splendid professional job starting from scratch, apparently without any knowledge of the work that had been done on the Weckherlin papers on the German side during the last fifty years, most of it by me. His work is now an indispensable guide to the whole material. the elder was from 1609 to 1625 English Resident at Brussels. In 1626 he became M.P. for Downton, Clerk of the Privy Council and Muster-Master- General. Charles I granted him the estate of Easthampstead Park in Berkshire in 1628. He died in 1635. His son William was Clerk to the Signet and kept a low profile in the troublous times of the 1640s and 1650s; he died in 1678. In 1638 he married Elizabeth Weckherlin, daughter of Georg Rodolf Weckherlin. Their son William (later Sir 133 William) was born in 1639 and eventually became Secretary of State and a friend of Alexander Pope. Weckherlin was a diplomat in the service of the Dukes of Wiirttemberg and was deeply committed to their protestant politics and their alliance with the Elector Palatine. The Elector Frederick V had married Elizabeth, the daughter of James I of England, and England was seen as an important support of the protestant interest in the years preceding the outbreak of the Thirty Years War. Weckherlin had been on diplomatic missions to England and in 1616 married Elizabeth Ra worth, the daughter of the mayor of Dover. After the fall of Heidelberg in 1622 the future of the protestant cause looked bleak, and it was about this time that the Weckherlin family finally moved to England, where he seems to have had some uncertain employment in Canterbury and Dover, apparently connected with Palatinate diplomacy. In 1625 he entered the service of the English crown, serving as secretary to all successive Secretaries of State until the Civil War. In 1644 under the Commonwealth he became Secretary for Foreign Tongues, in which office he was followed by John Milton in 1649. He died in 1653, without ever having returned to Germany, though he remained in close touch with things German. He occupies an important position in the development of German lyric poetry; there is little in these papers concerned with that side of his life, but what there is is extremely valuable. I based my dissertation, G. R. Weckherlin: zur Kenntnis seines Lebens in England (Basel, 1944), on it and have worked on the papers ever since. The miscellaneous series contains two volumes of' Weckerli(ng) Papers' (so lettered on the spine), one of letters and one containing a diary. The letters are in the main family letters from Weckherlin to his wife and children, written during the various progresses of the Court from palace to palace. After his daughter Elizabeth married William Trumbull the younger most of the letters are addressed to them; they present a charming picture of family life outside the orbit of the Court where Weckherlin had perforce to spend most of his time. They take their place beside the many collections of English family correspondence of the period (for example, the Verney Papers). But they are also the largest body of personal correspondence of a German poet in the seventeenth century and in that respect they are unique, not least in their immediacy and unaffectedness, qualities rare in German baroque letter-writing. Part of the reason for this is the circumstance that they are written in English. These letters are addressed to Easthampstead Park and very properly remained there; they form a perfectly self-contained group, supplemented by a volume of letters from William Trumbull the younger, first to his father and later to his wife, including two to his father-in-law Weckherlin, with whom he was on good terms. Other letters to and from Weckherlin are scattered through other volumes of state and official papers, and the diary too belongs with them, for it mainly records details of official letters sent and received. In the seventeenth century there was no Public Record Office, and statesmen out of office normally took their state and official papers with them into retirement. This accounts for the rich collections of documents in country houses all over England. So it 134 Fig. I. Georg Rodolph Weckherlin; engraving by W. Faithorne after D. Mytens. Reproduced from G. Konnecke, Bilderatlas (1887), p. 114. 1765.b.26 was natural for the elder William Trumbull to bring all his papers over from Brussels and deposit them at Easthampstead Park, to be looked after by his son William, Weckherlin's son-in-law. When Weckherlin himself died his state and official papers would naturally pass to his heirs; this would normally have meant his son, but in the event they went to his daughter. Weckherlin had held office under Cromwell and died in 1653 during the Commonwealth. His son was a Royalist who spent the Commonwealth years abroad. So it is that not only Weckherlin's family letters but also his official and semi-official papers landed up at Easthampstead Park, where his daughter and son-in- law lived a quiet and unobtrusive life with their numerous children. In this way all Weckherlin's papers were taken up into the already very extensive Trumbull family archive. His state and official papers received the same treatment as the Trumbull Papers properly so-called; that is, they were dispersed among the rest, except for the one coherent volume of family correspondence and the diary. The result of this is that though I have tracked down a very large number of letters from him or addressed to him, there may be others lurking in volumes which I have not been able to examine. The discovery of poems by him among unsorted bundles of old bills makes this quite likely. There is, of course, a large body of Weckherlin's official correspondence preserved in other collections, notably in the Public Record Office and elsewhere in the British Library,

135 and in archives up and down the country. I am not concerned with them here; they do not differ in kind from those preserved among the Trumbull Papers. As English Resident in Brussels William Trumbull the elder occupied a key position in the English intelligence network. He was in easy contact with correspondents in France, Holland and the various German states, and the fact that the Southern Netherlands were subject to Spain meant that he could maintain good relations there too. So he was well informed about events in western and central Europe; the Mediterranean and Baltic areas were covered by others. He employed a large number of persons in various places who were paid to report to him at regular intervals; this was normal practice. It was through his connections with the various protestant German states that he first made contact with Weckherlin in his capacity as a diplomat in the service of Wurttemberg. Weckherlin's chief on at least one of the missions on which he was engaged was Benjamin von Buwinckhausen, who regularly supplied Trumbull with news; there is a whole volume of reports from him among the Trumbull Papers, and there are plenty of parallel cases. Trumbull clearly tried to maintain contacts with people in important places who would report to him regularly, and he built up a network of them. How reliable the information was which they supplied obviously varied very much, but it is noticeable how often they were learned men, scholars, professors, parsons, besides officials and diplomats like Weckherlin himself They had their own network of learned correspondence, the celebrated 'commercium epistolicum', and it was a matter of some prestige to be in contact with noted scholars like Heinsius or Grotius, both of whom were also active in diplomacy. News travelled in this way comparatively fast and the eminence of the correspondent was some guarantee of reliability. So it was that the Strasbourg professor Mathias Bernegger, a scholar of considerable repute with wide epistolary contacts, regularly wrote news letters for the English (some of them are in the County Record Office in Warwick); his colleague Lingelsheim wrote to Trumbull weekly. One reason for this was that academics in general were very badly paid and needed to supplement their stipends. The gathering and transmission of news can be seen as an essential but neglected part of intellectual life in the period, of which literary historians have so far taken little account. All this gives some idea of the range of material these papers contain, and an insight into the information at the disposal of the King of England and his advisers at the beginning of the Thirty Years War. Weckherlin in his turn, when he took office in Westminster, worked in the same way, often complaining that his correspondents, for whom he felt responsible, were not being paid regularly. News seems often to have been supplied on an exchange basis, without money passing. Correspondence of this kind is minutely documented in Weckherlin's diary for the years it covers and the letters recorded there can sometimes be traced in the Public Record Office and elsewhere. This sort of correspondence was usually conducted in Latin and French; German diplomats practically never wrote to one another in German, though Englishmen invariably wrote to one another in English. I have been principally concerned with letters to and from Weckherlin himself; this is because I am a Germanist and not a historian and therefore interested in the biography 136 of a German poet rather than in English history. But his papers throw light on the day- to-day working of the office of the Secretary of State, his relations with the King and the formulation and execution of policy decisions. During the Civil War Weckherlin as the Secretary of the Committee of Both Kingdoms (a sort of Anglo-Scottish War Cabinet) was at the centre of things and in intimate touch with events at the highest level. It is sometimes difficult to determine what is or is not a Weckherlin paper. Letters from the King to foreign potentates are often in Weckherlin's beautiful calligraphic hand; this does not necessarily mean that he drafted the text, though it sometimes does. It was his duty to obtain the King's signature, and he was on terms of easy familiarity with him. In the same way letters from the Secretary of State to correspondents abroad are frequently in Weckherlin's hand but signed by the Secretary of State. Weckherlin was in charge of this sort of correspondence and we may be sure that whoever signed the letters and whoever they were addressed to, they all went through his hands. Quite often the official letter would be accompanied by a semi-demi-private note by Weckherlin giving the 'low-down' on the situation. Weckherlin was concerned with an official intelhgence network maintained and paid for by government, and of course each government had its own network; these often overlapped, and experienced correspondents worked for more than one government. They all profited from the private information networks maintained by merchants among themselves and especially, as we saw, by humanist scholars. As Hartlib makes his scholar say in Macaria: 'We scholars love to heare newes and to learn knowledge'; the two went together. Alongside these there were various other information networks, and great lords often maintained their own. Weckherlin himself for a period wrote a weekly news digest for Lord Scudamore. There were two notable private undertakings for news-gathering: the Bureau d'Adresse of Theophraste Renaudot in Paris which had been operating since 1631, and Samuel Hartlib's Office of Address which seems to have been modelled on it. As Hartlib wrote after the Restoration: 'Your Magesties petitioner found an opportunitie to maintaine a Religious, Learned and Charitable Correspondencie with the Chief of Note in Forraine Parts, which for the space of Thirtie years and upward he hath managed for the good of this Nation.' In the difficult years of the 1640s we have a group of covering notes from Weckherlin to Hartlib recommending packets of letters to his care. In 1643-4 Theodore Haak in his capacity as envoy of the Parhament to the Hanse Towns and the King of Denmark makes use of Hartlib's facilities to send his reports to Weckherlin at the Committee of Both Kingdoms in Westminster. As part of his normal duties Weckherlin was concerned with cyphers, and much of his official correspondence contains passages in cypher. Most of them have been decyphered, either by Weckherlin himself or by modern scholars. During the Civil War he was employed as a cryptographer to break cyphers used by the Royalists. There were two main bodies of captured Royalist papers, one after the Battle of Naseby in 1645, the other after the Battle of Sherburne later the same year. Part of this captured correspondence is in the Weckherlin archive, including over fifty Royalist cypher tables. There are other cypher tables preserved, presumably those used by Weckherlin himself and his 137 correspondents; they are quite often mentioned. As far as I know, nobody has tried to marry them up to the cyphered passages in the extant correspondence. That is a task for the future. Weckherlin's collected correspondence is being edited by Dr Gillian Bepler in Wolfenbiittel and myself in Cambridge. The edition will not appear for some years yet, and fresh material may still come to light. I have tried to give some idea of what sort of material one may expect to find in the Weckherlin papers. I would like to close by conveying an impression of the sort of man Weckherlin was. It seemed best to let him speak for himself. Much of his time was spent away from home, accompanying the Court on its various progresses. It is easy to imagine his wife saying: 'What exactly is it you do when you are away?' And so on i March 1628 he wrote her a verse epistle from Newmarket in which the whole man stands before us, with his honesty, his simple piety, his devotion to family and friends, his joie de vivre and his personal charm. There is nothing quite like it in German literature and not very much in English. From Newmarket in haste this i. of March 1627/1628 To my deare Wife Elizabeth Weckherlin Sweet, whose faire face first kindled my true loue. And whose pure soule the same did entertaine. For whose desire I Hue, I loue, I moue: Because I know mine absence is thy paine, 5 Because I wot thy wishes to approue, I'll shew you here how here I doe remaine. When as the Sunne, by his conmforting light. Doth driue away this life restoring sleepe. From humane eyes, and from this earth the night: 10 When other beasts out of their Litters creepe, <# Out of my bed I leap, and stand vpright. As fittest so the course of Life to keepe. I dresse myself, wash then my hands and face. And either sing withall, some harmlesse song, 15 Or thinke vpon this lifes vneuen race. But most of all I thinke vpon the wrong, Which sillie man (void of Gods blisse and grace) To God and man doth by his deeds, thoughts, tong. And so I combe my head, and bring my minde 20 More seriously about, on God to thinke And on that head, without whome wee are blind: On that our head, from which cut we doe sincke In deepest heU; without whome we can find No bread to eat, no well of life to drinke.

138 25 Thoughts (thou doest know) runne so swift, deepe and high. That here my penne forbeares to represent; No colour can present them to our eye. Thy thoughts alone, which com[m]only are bent On him, whose hands haue fram'd the glorious skie 30 And this whole All, can thee best here content. Now when I am quite ready, and haue layd All my things vp in order You know how; I thinking then on thee, my boy, my maid, 35 And on all those, that doe concerne me now, I doe appeare (though hopefull yet afraid) And cast myself before My God full low. To him I sing due praise with mouth and hart. Of him for things amisse I mercie craue, I craue his ayd and grace for Vs apart, 40 I craue his grace our frends and foes to saue. In generall I pray him not to part From his poore flock for which his Sonne he gaue. I doe not meane to boast here of deuotion. He that doth brag of holiness of life 45 hath of the Sp'rit of pride, of pride the motion. And proues betweene his wordes and workes great strife. To seeme but not to bee good, is his notion, I write to me when I write to my Wife. Thus being arm'd I goe forth to the Warre, 50 The world I meane, and (wary) looke about, I doe obserue how things appointed are, I passe the crowd, the wilde (though courtish) rout; There my short[e] sight doth see perhaps as farre. Or further yet, as those that seeme most stoute. 55 There what Mylord commands me I fuUfill The best I can: Besides I allways muse Sometimes on thee, (but this sometimes is still) Sometimes I wish my Boy would make good Vse And my Besse too, of what they know We will: 60 Sometimes I heare and grief to heare some newes. When others goe to breakfast, sweare or play, I turne my eyes vpon some serious booke. Or if I can I turne myself away. And cast my sight abroad like to a hooke

139 65 And catch a frend, and heare What he can say: If none I find, back on myself I looke. When leasure seru's I walke a mile or two. And thinke on things that neuer can bee told. Still finding grief in ioy and ioy in woe; 70 With reason I leaue what I can not hold. Still what I owe, most willingly I doe. That I remaine both innocent and bold. At diner then What I like best I eate. If it bee there. If not, (content) I take 75 With thankes to God such a portion of meate. As I thinke fit for health: thou know'st, that cake. That meate, that toaste is best that by the heate Of thy deare brow's for Me thou self doest make. I drinke not much, whil'st I am farre from thee, 80 Instead thereof I stand in hope to drinke Some pintickens or potkins, when with me Good Master Sering and his wife shall winke, Whome I doe pray to tell I long to see. With them at once our cares in drinke to sinke. 85 The table now I leaue and turne againe To write, to reade, to walke, to talke, to stand. To sing, to thinke, to beate sometimes my braine. Not for a Verse, for that runnes with my hand. But for some thing of a more serious straine, 90 Which, much I wish, my Boy might vnderstand. No supper here doth please my taste so well As when at home I eate with you one bitt. But yet I eate and heare what others teU, And laugh and drinke as much as me thinkes fit. 95 Too great aboundance is to Nature fell. The golden meane preserues both health and witt. Tenne of the cloke at night home doth vs call. Where, when I can, I commonly allone Record with me the past dayes actions all, 100 And then thanke God (but first I doe bemone All faults of mine I know) that he from faU Hath held Vs vp: and kept Vs from our fone.

Then if I can I sleepe and dreame and rest. If not, I dreame a-waking: Thus the night 140 105 Doth passe away: some bird rests in her nest Whitest other sing: Some sleep whilst others fight: Do what We will. We pray. We play. We jeast. We weepe, or laugh. Time continues it's flight. Time continues its flight, and runnes away, no And also We, that once were yong, grow olde: O then therefore since Time We can not sway. Since Age we can not stop, nor yeares with hold. Let Vs Hue so, that We may beare the bay: Let Vs vse Time as hard men vse their gold.

115 But let vs Vse our gold as men doe time. And Whil'st we are quite harmlesse let vs sing. Let vs rejoyce. Let vs talke, play and rime. Send for a frend (which is more then a King Can haue himself) that melancholies slime 120 Bee purged out, all ioyes display their wing. Deare Besse some dish of good meate doe prepare. My Countriman shaU adde a dish of his. For wine we play, for wine's the chiefest ware. To cheare the hart, fritters bee not amisse, 125 Make ready all, when ready aU yee are. My Countriman's faire daughters Til goe kisse. 0 no: not them but Thee: Yes them and Thee, And thee and thee againe: My Httle Besse Hkewise, And Mistresse Sering too: Then let me see 130 A glasse of wine: In wine there bee no lyes, 1 loue thee best, I loue them after thee: Art angrie yet? We must not still be Wise. Thus what I doe I pray thee aske no more, I lake here nought but thee, but Ours, but Wine, 135 I pray commend, as I haue prayed before. To Master Dorel and my Valentine, To Master Sering, his wife and the store Of his and Ours, the seruice, (Loue) of thine 139 Of Thine I say Owne onely Filodor.^

I Leonard Forster, 'Tagwerk eines Hofmannes', in Herbert Singer and Benno von Wiese (eds.). Festschrift fUr Richard Alewyn (Koln-Graz: Bohlau, 1967), pp. 103-22, with commentary on the text.

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