John Trussell in Literary London (1575-1596)
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When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", University of Southampton, name of the University School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination http://eprints.soton.ac.uk UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Department of History John Trussell: A Life (1575-1648) by Robert Frederick William Smith Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2013 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT FACULTY OF HUMANITIES History Doctor of Philosophy JOHN TRUSSELL: A LIFE (1575-1648) by Robert Frederick William Smith John Trussell of Winchester (1575-1648) was a poet, historian and civic official. His life and works have been little studied, but they are broad in scope, and provide a fascinating insight into early modern religious and political affiliations and the role that manuscript literature of several kinds could play in provincial urban society. Using his extensive unpublished writings as well as printed works, this, the first full-length biography of Trussell, describes his career and the place of literature within it. Trussell’s participation in the pro-sport poetic anthology Annalia Dubrensia, his youthful association with the Jesuit Robert Southwell, the influence of Justus Lipsius’s thought on his own, and the development of his civil war allegiance are critically examined. The thesis shows how the few scholars who have written about Trussell’s literary activities have often tended to form judgements based on a simplified picture of clashing early modern dichotomies, and aims to redress the balance by telling the story of his life in detail, so that the nuances of his attitudes can emerge. It contends that chronological narrative biography is the best tool for understanding the complicated reality of early modern lives, enabling historians to transcend the constraints of scholarly paradigms and established historiographies and achieve a holistic understanding of the way early modern individuals participated in the life of their society. Table of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 1. The wine-jar and the water-pot: John Trussell in literary London (1575-1596) ....... 7 2. ‘Though a stranger born’: the early years in Winchester (1596-1621) ..................... 35 3. ‘Better than sacrifice’: authority and obedience in public life (1621-1637) ............ 59 4. ‘My endeavours in that kind’: Trussell the antiquary (1625-1641) ......................... 89 5. The woken muse: commemoration of charity and revel (1636-1637)................... 119 6. ‘Is my good Genius dead?’: the final years in Winchester (1637-1648) ............... 147 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 171 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 181 Supplementary materials Appendix A ........................................................................................................................ 201 Appendix B ........................................................................................................................ 203 Appendix C ........................................................................................................................ 217 Appendix D ........................................................................................................................ 223 Declaration of authorship I, Robert Frederick William Smith declare that the thesis entitled John Trussell: A Life (1575-1648) and the work presented in the thesis are both my own, and have been generated by me as the result of my own original research. I confirm that: this work was done wholly or mainly while in candidature for a research degree at this University; where any part of this thesis has previously been submitted for a degree or any other qualification at this University or any other institution, this has been clearly stated; where I have consulted the published work of others, this is always clearly attributed; where I have quoted from the work of others, the source is always given. With the exception of such quotations, this thesis is entirely my own work; I have acknowledged all main sources of help; where the thesis is based on work done by myself jointly with others, I have made clear exactly what was done by others and what I have contributed myself; none of this work has been published before submission. Signed: ……………………………………………………………………….. Date:……………………………………………………………………………. i Acknowledgements This project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and would have been impossible otherwise. I would like to acknowledge all those whose help has been invaluable to me in the writing of this thesis, especially David Rymill and all the staff at Hampshire Record Office who have helped me; Suzanne Foster at Winchester College; Vicki Perry at Hatfield House; and David Roberts, who generously made his MA thesis on Winchester available to me, and who pointed out to me the possible existence of a puritanical ‘Riggs-Lisle axis’. At the University of Southampton I must thank Lena Wahlgren-Smith for assistance with some tricky passages of Latin, and in particular Ros King and Mark Stoyle for more than three years of cheerful encouragement. Finally I must acknowledge my mother and father, without whose unfailing belief this thesis would never have been written. iii Abbreviations BL British Library HRO Hampshire Record Office NRO Norfolk Record Office BW John Trussell, The Benefactors of Winchester (Bodleian Library: MS Top. Hants. c. 5). Continuation John Trussell, A Continuation of the Collection of the History of England (London, 1636). Origin John Trussell, The Origin of Cities (HRO: W/K1/11/1) TT John Trussell, The Touchstone of Tradition (HRO: W/K1/12). v Conventions There is no wholly satisfactory way to reference the major manuscripts used in this thesis, because the numeration provided by Trussell is imprecisely correlated to the number of leaves in the volumes, and, worse, has internal inconsistencies. I have adopted the following conventions for referencing: The Touchstone of Tradition manuscript is referenced by folio, taking the first leaf to be the flyleaf, and the subsequent leaves to be f. 1, f. 2, f. 3, etc., irrespective of the numeration on the pages. For the first thirty leaves of the volume, this has the effect of making my citations seem two folios ahead of Trussell’s numeration, but one is made up by an error when Trussell’s numbering jumps from 30 to 32, omitting 31. Throughout most of the rest of the volume my citations appear to be one ahead relative to the manuscript’s numbering, until f. 195 (Trussell’s 194), where four leaves have been removed, and Trussell’s numbering resumes at 199, but mine continues unbroken from 195. For consistency, the Benefactors of Winchester manuscript is referenced in the same way, taking the first leaf bound in the volume to be the flyleaf (which is blank except for a list of the corporation’s scarlet days on the verso side), and the subsequent leaves to proceed f. 1, f. 2, f. 3, etc., irrespective of the numeration on the pages. The Origin of Cities manuscript has two sets of numeration: Trussell’s, in ink, which is much amended, reflecting the work-in-progress nature of the manuscript; and a later archivist’s, in pencil. I have simply followed the later, pencilled-in foliation, since it is accurate and consistent. Except where indicated, dates are given in Old Style, except that the year is taken to begin on 1 January. I have chosen to give all quotations in modernised spelling and punctuation, for the reader’s convenience. vii Introduction John Trussell of Winchester has never been the subject of a full-length biography (if ‘full- length’ is defined as ‘of a length sufficient to be published as a monograph’). This thesis has been written to supply that defect, in the belief that such a biography would be a worthwhile contribution to Renaissance history. I began it still thinking that it would stand as an almost unique contribution to ‘Trussell studies’. As the work continued, however, I found a surprisingly large number of references to John Trussell in the works of other scholars – too many, in fact, to conveniently list here, though most, if not all, are referred to in this thesis where appropriate. However, as well as displaying a natural bias towards his printed works, all but three of the scholarly works of any length that mention Trussell do so in the course of a discussion of something else, mostly in passing, and with little in the way of context. The three that do not are a chapter by Adrienne Rosen on early modern Winchester in Peter Clark’s Country towns in pre-industrial England, Martin