DOCSLIB.ORG

A Forgotten Jacobethan Coin Collector

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Forgotten Jacobethan Coin Collector A FORGOTTEN JACOBETHAN COIN COLLECTOR D.W. DYKES Fig. 1. John Harrison (1552–1628), High Master of St Paul’s School, 1581–96. (Reproduced by courtesy of St Paul’s School Archives). Note: The arms displayed in the portrait are those confirmed by Robert Cooke, Clarenceux King of Arms, in 1575: Gules an eagle displayed and chief or. Crest: A snake vert entwined round a broken column or (Burke 1884, 460). ON Tuesday, 4 June 1630, the archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, wrote to William Laud, then bishop of London. Congratulating Laud on his election as chancellor of the University of Oxford, Ussher took the opportunity to remind him of his predecessor’s (William Herbert, 3rd earl of Pembroke) gift of Greek manuscripts to the Bodleian Library the year before. He went on to say that he had lately been offered ‘a great bargain of ancient Coins to the number of 5500, gold, silver, and copper pieces, to be sold for 600li. A greater number, I suppose, are not to be found together in any part of Europe, that collection of Abraham Gorlaeus only Acknowledgements. I am very grateful to Hugh Pagan and Robert Thompson for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. I am also indebted to Dr Lynsey Darby, Patricia McGuire, Eleanor Cracknell and Alexandra Aslett, the Archivists respectively of the College of Arms, King’s College, Cambridge, Eton College and St Paul’s School, and to Jacqueline Cox, Deputy Keeper of Cambridge University Archives, and Theresa Palfrey of the Norfolk Record Office for their ready and help- fully full responses to my queries about John Harrison. My thanks are due too to Adrian James, Assistant Librarian, the Society of Antiquaries of London, and Michael Frost, Assistant Librarian, the Inner Temple Library, London. D.W. Dykes, ‘A forgotten Jacobethan coin collector’, British Numismatic Journal 86 (2016), 215–31. ISSN 0143–8956. © British Numismatic Society. 216 DYKES excepted, which Prince Henry purchased, and left unto his Majesty’.1 It would be a ‘Treasure’, he added, that would make the ‘University Library … without all comparison farr to exceed all the other Libraries, that are in Christendom’. 2 Although an historian, a scholar of considerable range and an assiduous user of Sir Robert Cotton’s extensive library, there is little evidence that Ussher knew much about coins, and his flattering picture of the ‘bargain’ may perhaps have been as much the result of persuasive sales-talk as of reality.3 It is not obvious that Ussher had even seen any of the coins and Laud was naturally cautious in his reply. Tartly making the point that it had been he who had been ‘the means’ of securing Pembroke’s gift for the university, he stressed that his own purse was ‘too shallow’ for such a major purchase and that other potential benefactors such as ‘my Lords, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Pembroke’ were dead. 4 Nevertheless, he asked for further particulars: You say they [the coins] are a great bargain at 600l.; I pray therefore if you have so much interest in the seller, send me word, as soon as you can, how many ounces the gold coin comes unto, and how many the silver, and then I shall be able to judge of the copper; and then, upon my return to those your letters, I will give you answer, whether I can find any noble spirit that will deal for them or no. In his reply of 25 August 1630 Ussher failed to provide the information Laud had requested but he did reveal that ‘The Bargain of ancient Coins’ had been offered to him by ‘the son and heyr of Mr. Harrison sometime schoolmaster at Saint Pauls London’.5 The existence of such a remarkable collection of ‘ancient coins’ apparently never mentioned by informed contemporaries must have come as some surprise to Laud.6 While no antiquary himself he always had his ear close to the ground for possible cultural benefactions for his beloved university, manuscripts, books and coins.7 Yet there the matter rested and as far as we know it was never pursued by Laud although the vindictive ransacking of his papers by his pathologically-driven nemesis William Prynne and the subsequent disappearance of much of them might well have thrown a lamentable veil over the episode.8 Ussher’s ‘Mr. Harrison sometime schoolmaster at Saint Pauls London’ is an obscure figure today, although his stormy relationship with the Worshipful Company of Mercers – the governors of St Paul’s School – is well documented.9 According to the Alumni Cantabrigienses Harrison – John Harrison – was born in London in 1552, the younger son of Rychard Harrison, rector of Bradeston and Narford in Norfolk.10 It is, however, a statement that pre- sents us with some difficulty. While Harrison’s date and place of birth are not subject to ques- tion,11 it has proved impossible to establish the Venns’ authority for their assertion as to his 1 For the Gorlaeus Purchase and Prince Henry’s collection of coins and medals see the Appendix, pp. 225–9 below. 2 Ford 1991–92, 13: 4 June 1630. 3 Cotton’s cabinet was said to have comprised the best collection of coins and medals in Britain until Prince Henry’s pur- chases. Ussher’s only known interest in Cotton’s coins arises from his researches in church history and a note in his Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates that among them was a likely coin of ‘King Lucius’, to him a proof of the existence of this mythical figure allegedly the first Christian king in Britain: Ussher 1639, 39–40. See Dolley 1952–54, 254–8 for his identification of the coin as a Gallic stater. 4 Bliss 1857, 275: 5 July 1630. The royal favourite George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, assassinated in 1628, was a notable collector of works of art, manuscripts and books. His political rival William Herbert, 3rd earl of Pembroke (1580–1630), was a generous patron of literature and the arts, Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones being among his protégés. The collection of 250 Greek manuscripts presented by him to the Bodleian in 1628 had cost him £700: ODNB. 5 Ford 1991–92, 14: 25 Aug. 1630. 6 Laud, as bishop of London, would no doubt have been aware of the elder Harrison’s schoolmasterly reputation but would not necessarily have known anything about his antiquarian or numismatic interests. 7 Laud donated over 1,000 manuscripts as well as coins (see n. 8 below) and books to the university, founded a lectureship in Arabic and augmented the stipend of the professor of Hebrew, and was a considerable benefactor of his college, St John’s. 8 Perhaps Ussher’s prompting may have put into Laud’s mind the desirability of making a numismatic gift to Oxford because he later acquired the cabinet of John Barkham, dean of Bocking, which he presented to the Bodleian Library between 1636 and 1639. 9 See especially McDonnell 1959, 109–63. 10 Venn and Venn 1922, 315. 11 Cooper and Cooper 1861 give 1553 as the year of Harrison’s birth. They are not always accurate in their dates, however, for instance erroneously giving 1598 as Harrison’s death. A FORGOTTEN JACOBETHAN COIN COLLECTOR 217 parentage.12 A Pedigree of the Harrison Family of Co. Norfolk, a mid-nineteenth century pro- duction compiled from earlier sources, suggests that he was the nephew, not the son, of the rector of Bradeston, and that his father was the rector’s brother, Robert, a London gold- smith.13 There can be little doubt that this Robert was the Cheapside goldsmith and London citizen of St Vedast’s parish who died in the spring of 1568 leaving a wife, Thomasyne, and an unspecified number of children.14 It seems at least possible that the ‘John Harryson’ baptised at St Margaret’s Westminster on 29 August 1552 was one of these children, although the church register gives the father no Christian name, but it is not without interest that at the time Alexander Nowell, Headmaster of Westminster School (1543–55) and a close family connec- tion, held the second prebendal stall at Westminster (1551–54).15 It is not unlikely that Harrison was also related to William Harrison, Holinshed’s collaborator and author of the Description of England, who himself seems to have been the son of a Cheapside goldsmith of an earlier generation.16 Nowell, who became dean of St Paul’s in 1560, played a not unimportant role in Harrison’s life. He was the executive trustee of the estate of his brother Robert, one-time attorney-gen- eral of the Court of Wards, who died in 1569, and disbursed small monetary gifts from the estate on a number of occasions to young Harrison referring to him as ‘our coosyn’ [kinsman] or variants thereof.17 His mother, too, ‘Mrs Harrysonne in chepsyed’, one of twelve ‘woomen of welthe’, received thirty shillings in 1569 towards the cost of a black gown for Robert Nowell’s obsequies.18 Apparently entered as a commensal19 at Eton in 1565, Harrison was elected a King’s Scholar of the college the following year.20 In 1570 he was elected a scholar of King’s College, Cambridge, becoming a fellow three years later. At Michaelmas 1579, however, he was deprived of his fellowship.21 No reason for his dismissal appears in the college records but the eighteenth-century Cambridge historian, Thomas Baker, a painstaking and nor- mally trustworthy scholar, noted that Harrison was expelled ‘ob doctrinam minus sanam in concione evulgatum, quam retractare noluit’.22 Unless Harrison was blatantly wayward in his teaching these words might be taken to suggest some publicly radical dissent from the23college’s religious conformity though there is little hint of any heretical leanings, either puritan or papist, in Harrison’s subsequent career.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Surrey Feet of Fines 1558-1760 Courtesy of Findmypast
    Feet of Fines – Worcester references plus William Worcester publications: http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk Abstracts of Feet of Fines: Introduction The aim of this project is to provide abstracts of the medieval feet of fines that have not yet been published, for the period before 1509. A list of published editions, together with links to the abstracts on this site, can be found here. Alternatively, the abstracts can be searched for entries of interest. Background In the late 12th century a procedure evolved for ending a legal action by agreement between the parties. The agreement was known as a final concord (or fine). Originally this was a means of resolving genuine disputes, but by the middle of the 13th century the fine had become a popular way of conveying freehold property, and the legal action was usually a fictitious one, initiated with the cooperation of both parties. This procedure survived until the 1830s. Originally, each party would be given a copy of the agreement, but in 1195 the procedure was modified, so that three copies were made on a single sheet of parchment, one on each side and one at the foot. The copies would then be separated by cutting the parchment along indented (wavy) lines as a precaution against forgery. The right and left hand copies were given to the parties and the third copy at the foot was retained by the court. For this reason the documents are known as feet of fines. The following information is available online: Court of Common Pleas, General Eyres and Court of King's Bench: Feet of Fines Files, Richard I - Henry VII (to 1509) and Henry VIII - Victoria (from 1509) (descriptions of class CP 25 in The National Archives online catalogue) Land Conveyances: Feet of Fines, 1182-1833 (National Archives information leaflet) [Internet Archive copy from August 2004] CP 25/1/45/76, number 9.
    [Show full text]
  • Antiquarian Prints1
    Antiquarian Topographical Prints 1550-1850 (As they relate to castle studies) Bibliography Antiquarianism - General Peter N. Miller, (2017). History and Its Objects: antiquarianism and material culture since 1500. NY: Cornell Univ Press. David Gaimster, Bernard Nurse, Julia Steele (eds.), (2007), Making History: Antiquaries in Britain 1707-2007 (London, the Royal Academy of Arts & the Society of Antiquaries, Exhibition Catalogue).* Susan Pearce, (ed) (2007). Visions of Antiquity: The Society of Antiquaries of London 1707–2007. (Society of Antiquaries).* Jan Broadway (2006). "No Historie So Meete": gentry culture and the development of local history in Elizabethan and early Stuart England. Manchester: Manchester University Press. R. Sweet, (2004). Antiquaries: the discovery of the past in eighteenth-century Britain. (London: Hambledon Continuum). Daniel Woolf (2003). The Social Circulation of the Past: English historical culture 1500–1730. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anthony Griffiths, (1998) The Print in Stuart Britain: 1603-1689,[Exhibition Cat.] British Museum Press.* Philippa Levine, (1986). The Amateur and the Professional: antiquarians, historians and archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). J. Evans, (1956), A history of the Society of Antiquaries, (Oxford University Press for the Society of Antiquaries) D. J. H Clifford (2003), The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford (The History Press Ltd). Topographical Prints and Painting - General Ronald Russell, (2001), Discovering Antique Prints (Shire Books)* Julius Bryant, (1996), Painting the Nation - English Heritage properties as seen by Turner, (English Heritage, London)* Peter Humphries, (1995), On the Trail of Turner in North and South Wales, (Cadw, Cardiff). Andrew Wilton & Anne Lyles (1993), The Great Age of British Watercolours, (Prestel - Exhibition catalogue)* Lindsay Stainton, (1991) Nature into Art: English Landscape Watercolours, (British Museum Press)* Especially Section II ‘Man in the Landscape’ pp.
    [Show full text]
  • John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery and the Promotion of a National Aesthetic
    JOHN BOYDELL'S SHAKESPEARE GALLERY AND THE PROMOTION OF A NATIONAL AESTHETIC ROSEMARIE DIAS TWO VOLUMES VOLUME I PHD THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK HISTORY OF ART SEPTEMBER 2003 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Volume I Abstract 3 List of Illustrations 4 Introduction 11 I Creating a Space for English Art 30 II Reynolds, Boydell and Northcote: Negotiating the Ideology 85 of the English Aesthetic. III "The Shakespeare of the Canvas": Fuseli and the 154 Construction of English Artistic Genius IV "Another Hogarth is Known": Robert Smirke's Seven Ages 203 of Man and the Construction of the English School V Pall Mall and Beyond: The Reception and Consumption of 244 Boydell's Shakespeare after 1793 290 Conclusion Bibliography 293 Volume II Illustrations 3 ABSTRACT This thesis offers a new analysis of John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, an exhibition venture operating in London between 1789 and 1805. It explores a number of trajectories embarked upon by Boydell and his artists in their collective attempt to promote an English aesthetic. It broadly argues that the Shakespeare Gallery offered an antidote to a variety of perceived problems which had emerged at the Royal Academy over the previous twenty years, defining itself against Academic theory and practice. Identifying and examining the cluster of spatial, ideological and aesthetic concerns which characterised the Shakespeare Gallery, my research suggests that the Gallery promoted a vision for a national art form which corresponded to contemporary senses of English cultural and political identity, and takes issue with current art-historical perceptions about the 'failure' of Boydell's scheme. The introduction maps out some of the existing scholarship in this area and exposes the gaps which art historians have previously left in our understanding of the Shakespeare Gallery.
    [Show full text]
  • To SAMUEL LYSONS, Wednesday 19 March 1794
    To EDWARDS 12 MARCH 1794 249 Berkeley Square, March 12th, 1794. LORD ORFORD feels himself most sensibly obliged by Mr Ed- J wards, for allowing Miss Berry to communicate to him the frag­ ment of The Life of Lorenzo de' Medici1—Lord O. has not enjoyed so much and such unexpected pleasure a long time, as from this most able, informing and entertaining work—which, though it will leave a most agreeable impression on his mind, gives him great inquietude too, as he does not think that it will appear very soon—an afflicting cir­ cumstance to Lord O.—as very soon may be of great consequence to a very infirm man of 76, and who has no hopes of being so well amused as he should be by reading the completion of this work, for the sight of which he again thanks Mr Edwards. To SAMUEL LYSONS, Wednesday 19 March 1794 Printed for the first time from transcript of MS in the possession of Lindsay Flem­ ing, Esq., Aldwick Grange, Bognor Regis, Sussex. MS given by Lysons to James Dallaway, who pasted it in his copy of his Inquiries (see n. 1 below), which passed to his grandson, Canon W. L. Grane; sold by Hodgson and Co., 1928, to Mr Fleming. Address: To Samuel Lysons, Esq., in the King's Bench Walk, Temple. Note in Dallaway's hand: 'This autograph of the Rt Honble Horace Walpole, the last Earl of Orford, was kindly given me by S. Lysons, F.R. and A.S. It was written on the 18th March 1794.
    [Show full text]
  • Arundel Castle As a “Palladium of English Liberty”’, the Georgian Group Journal, Vol
    Oliver Cox, ‘Arundel Castle as a “Palladium of English Liberty”’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. XXI, 2013, pp. 123–136 TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2013 ARUNDEL CASTLE AS A ‘PALLADIUM OF ENGLISH LIBERTY’ OLIVER COX Arundel Castle is a reminder of the spectacular ntering the great courtyard of Arundel Castle, Victorian finale to the association of castles with EWest Sussex, the well-prepared nineteenth- landed power. C.A. Buckler’s work overshadows all century visitor, confronted with a twenty-foot bas- earlier restorations. Yet at the close of the eighteenth relief crowded with bearded figures and Anglo- century, the eleventh Duke of Norfolk commissioned Saxon text, could turn to his guidebook for help in J.C.F. Rossi to sculpt a striking Coade stone tableau decoding the scene before them (Fig. ): of King Alfred Instituting Trial by Jury on Salisbury ‘The visitor will be riveted with admiration in Plain as part of a series of extensive restorations and reviewing a large basso relievo representation of one of alterations. These changes told the story of English the most important constitutional laws, handed down liberty in stone, inflected with the Duke’s own to posterity, namely, “Trial by Jury”. It is an historical partisan interpretation, to a growing number of representation, founded upon fact, therefore we give the subject subsequent to a description.’ domestic tourists. Fig. ‘King Alfred Instituting The Trial By Jury’, in A Visit to Arundel Castle. Profusely Illustrated (Arundel and London, ) THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI ARUNDEL CASTLE AS A ‘ PALLADIUM OF ENGLISH LIBERTY ’ King Alfred, elevated, crowned and robed, holds a define drunkenness as ‘the Duke of Norfolk drinking roll of parchment with the phrase, ‘The man in every common gin with the Royal Sovereign, at her hundred shall find Jury’ written in Saxon lodgings in Strand-lane’.
    [Show full text]
  • Bristol in the Early Middle Ages
    r f ,· .:f. ; I {) ,} I· BRISTOL IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES t. DAVID WALKER I ISSUED BY THE BRISTOL BRANCH OF THE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION THE UNIVERSITY, BRISTOL Price Twenty Five Pence 1 9 7 1 Printedby F. Bailey & Son Ltd., Dursley, Glos. v -< . 11 ·& r- ( BRISTOL BRANCH OF THE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION LOCAL HISTORY PAMPHLETS Hon. General Editor: PATRICK McGRATH Assistant General Editor: PETER HARRIS by DAVID WALKER Early Medieval Bristol is the twenty-eighth pamphlet to be published by the Bristol Branch of the Historical Association. It is based on a lecture given by Dr. David Walker in the University of Bristol in a series of lectures organised by Mr. J. M. Bettey, Staff Why does a town become important? 1 Strategic value is a Tutor in Local History in the Extra-Mural Department of the major factor in the growth of many boroughs, such as Gloucester or Lincoln: Commercial factors are certainly important for the University. The Branch wishes to express its thanks to the Extra­ development of a thriving borough, and they may also help to Mural Department and to the University College, Swansea, for account for the establishment of a borough. Good harbourage, or a site at an important communications junction will account assisting with the cost of publication. for the continued importance of London from Roman times, through the Anglo-Saxon period, into the twelfth century and Dr. Walker is a Senior Lecturer in History in University College, beyond. Local trade was always important, and a town could Swansea, and he has taken as his subject a period of Bristol's thrive as a centre of trade for a comparatively small area.
    [Show full text]
  • On Early Antiquarians in Asia Minor to the Start of the 19Th Century
    Received: October 20, 2018 | Accepted: January 13, 2019 GEPHYRA 17, 2019, 115-167 On early antiquarians in Asia Minor to the start of the 19th century Terrance Michael Patrick DUGGAN Both the range of this subject and its time span are truly vast.1 This paper addresses a few of the issues concerning the activities of European antiquarians and the ancient Greek and Roman inscriptions of Asia Minor over the course of four hundred years from 1400 to 1800, touching upon five matters. Firstly, the collection and removal of antiquities including inscriptions by Europeans. Secondly, the varied functions of the visible ancient inscriptions for the Ottoman state and its inhabitants, both talismanic and therapeutic, and of the “non-literal reading” of an ancient inscription, distinct from the European antiquarian interest in the literal text of inscrip- tions, in establishing record of, and collections of the inscribed historical texts surviving from antiquity. Thirdly, the question of how safe a home was Europe for antiquities, including in- scriptions and manuscripts that were brought from Asia Minor, and how much of scholarly importance that had survived was then lost in transit at sea and in Europe in wars and disasters? Fourthly, the problems with the transcriptions made by hand, the content of the record made and its accuracy. Was the inscription regarded simply as a text, prioritised as a text, or, was the text transcribed in its context including the epigraphic surface, its shape and relief carving, if any, its physical location if in situ, was it understood as forming a whole, and was it recorded as such? Were the letter forms, the number of lines, the different size of letters and words in an inscription, misspellings, etc., accurately noted or not? And, finally, the problems generated through the printed publication from the 16th c.
    [Show full text]
  • Newsletter of the History of Geology Group of the Geological Society of London
    HOGG Newsletter of the History of Geology Group of the Geological Society of London Number 32 February 2008 FRONT COVER The Geological Society Bicentennial Plaque On 13 th November 2007, the Geological Society was exactly 200 years old. To mark this event, an enamelled metal plaque was erected on the wall of the New Connaught Rooms in London, on the exact site of the old Freemasons’ Tavern where the first committee meeting was held. The plaque was unveiled by the President, Dr Richard Fortey. The Society is the world’s oldest geological society. For a full account of the three day event, see inside this issue. (Photograph: Anthony Brook) Editor : Peter Tandy, Department of Mineralogy, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD (tel: 0207-942-5076; fax 0207-942-5537; e-mail p.tandy @nhm.ac.uk) HOGG AGM The HOGG Annual General Meeting for 2007 was held on 13 th November 2007, during the ‘Founding Fathers’ meeting; approximately 30 people were present. The various reports and minutes were accepted, and the new committee duly elected (see below).The committee said goodbye to Chair Cherry Lewis, Vice Chair John Mather, & Committee members Tony Brook and Patrick Boylan. Member Cynthia Burek proposed a vote of thanks to Cherry Lewis for her hard work over the preceding 4 years. _____________________________________________________________________ HOGG COMMITTEE The new HOGG Committee was elected at the AGM. Chair : Alan Bowden Vice Chair : Dick Moody Secretary : Anne O’Connor Treasurer : Beris Cox Newsletter Editor : Peter Tandy Other members (not pictured this time): Nic Bilham, David Earle, Nina Morgan, Hugh Torrens & Leucha Veneer 1 Diary of Future HOGG Events The HOGG Committee has set an ambitious agenda of future meetings.
    [Show full text]
  • Avon Local History & Archaeology
    Paper summaries saints, and people. The paper will examine William's life, place him in historical context, and consider why he gathered so much information. Peter Fleming: 'Politics, Society and Culture in William Worcestre's Bristol’ Roger Leech: ‘Town Houses in William Worcestre's Bristol’ Worcestre’s Bristol was among fifteenth-century England’s most important towns. We know a good deal about its history in this period, partly through Worcestre’s own This paper will explore the streetscape of William Worcestre's Bristol – the thoughts notes, but also through immensely rare and valuable sources like the Mayor of that may have come to mind as William perambulated the streets that he so carefully Bristol’s Kalendar, begun by Robert Ricart, the town clerk, just a year or so before measured for posterity, but which were so commonplace in contemporary thinking Worcestre’s famous visit, as well as the extant records of local government (the Little that they were scarcely worth recording. The forms of houses in late 15th century and Great Red Book, for example), fine collections of local title deeds, and wills. Bristol, discussed in English Heritage’s recently published study of medieval and Using such materials, Professor Fleming discusses Bristol’s internal politics and its early modern Bristol houses, will be shown to have been part of the fabric of later national role during the Wars of the Roses, both of which were at times violent and medieval urban life in England more generally. deeply troubled, and its social structure, including the relationship between the craft Jan Broadway: ‘The Afterlife of William Worcestre’ gilds and religious fraternities and the governing body of the mayor and common council, the role of women, and the differences between the tiny number of rich and Although William Worcestre (Botoner) was included in John Bale's index of British the mass of the poor.
    [Show full text]
  • The Afterlife of William Worcester
    1 The Afterlife of William Worcester Jan Broadway [This paper was given at William Worcestre 1415-2015: the Legacy of an Early English Topographer, a conference organized by the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society and held in Bristol on 31 October 2015.] We are gathered here today 600 years after his birth to celebrate William Worcester as a topographer. Yet for three centuries from his death in the 1480s Worcester was mentioned as a collector, editor, translator, a minor literary figure, even an astronomer, but not as a topographer. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries he attracted little attention from the Tudor and Stuart antiquaries, who did so much to preserve and bring to attention the works of their medieval predecessors. In this paper I want to explore the reasons for this comparative neglect. To ask the question, did they know Worcester was a topographer? And, if not, why not? I will also examine the historical context of the emergence of Worcester as a topographer at the end of the eighteenth century and the particular resonance his work had for his nineteenth-century editor. After Worcester died, his work as an antiquary and compiler of manuscripts was not forgotten. Some six decades later he was included in John Bale's manuscript index of British writers, associated with 2 five miscellaneous manuscripts and the three volumes intriguingly entitled Anglorum antiquitates.1 It was known that he came from Bristol, but had spent much of his life in the service of the Norfolk knight Sir John Fastolf. One of the manuscripts listed by Bale was the now lost Acta domini Johannis Fastolf, an early example of secular biography.
    [Show full text]
  • Women Travellers
    women travellers The Armchair Traveller No 4 · Bernard Quaritch Ltd · 2016 introduction I confess, I am malicious enough to desire, that the world should see, to how much beter purpose the LADIES travel than their LORDS; and that, whilst it is surfeited with Male-Travels, all in the same tone and stufed with the same trifes; a lady has the skill to strike out a new path, and to embellish a worn- out subject, with variety of fresh and elegant entertainment (Mary Astell, 1724) Female travellers have been the subject of studies such as Spinsters Abroad and Wayward Women, and exhibitons including Of the Beaten Track (Natonal Portrait Gallery, London) in recent years. This catalogue combines important manuscripts and associaton copies of well-known ttles by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lady Isabel Burton, Mary Kingsley, and Freya Stark, with similarly remarkable but ofen overlooked books, photograph albums, and manuscripts by less well known fgures. United by their gender, the travellers whose writngs are presented in this catalogue are very diverse: they range from dwellers in the tropics to polar explorers; from travellers on foot and horseback to pilots and drivers soaring through the skies and speeding along roads; and from linguists assimilatng their host cultures and religions to ‘accidental travellers’, carving a life and career out of travel writngs rather than sufering the fate of women widowed too young, supposedly tragically unmarried, or overlooked for other reasons. Many of these travellers contributed signifcantly to botanical and scientfc exploraton and their achievements were recognised by high honours (Freya Stark, items 10-11; Anne Lindbergh, item 28; Margaret Mee, item 40); some found themselves at the nexus of historical politcal events and documented them both as journalists and in their biographies (for example, Clare Sheridan, item 13); while yet others followed their calling as missionaries and contributed to the spread of health care and the knowledge of languages (items 18, 32 – by the frst Englishwoman in Tibet – and 33).
    [Show full text]
  • Bg119900.Pdf
    From the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society Society Pages from 2001, Vol. 119 © The Society and the Author(s) TRANSACTIONS of the BRISTOL AND GLOUCESTERSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY for 2001 EDITED BY JOHN JURˇ ICA VOLUME 119 ISBN 0 900197 55 2 ISSN 0068–1032 Contents PAGE Abstracts of Papers ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 7 From Bristol and Gloucestershire to Greece and Turkey. By P.M. Warren (Presidential Address, 2000) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 9 The Landscape Archaeology of the Lydney Level, Gloucestershire: natural and human transformations over the last two millennia. By J.R.L. Allen ... ... ... ... ... ... 27 A Bronze-Age Burnt Mound at Sandy Lane, Charlton Kings, Gloucestershire: exca- vations in 1971. By Mark Leah and Christopher Young ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 59 An Archaeological Assessment of Hailey Wood Camp, Sapperton, Gloucestershire: a Roman temple complex in the Cotswolds? By Thomas Moore ... ... ... ... ... 83 Excavations at Greyfriars, Gloucester, in 1967 and 1974–5. By I.M. Ferris ... ... ... 95 Aristocratic Poachers in the Forest of Dean: their methods, their quarry and their companions. By Jean Birrell ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 147 Martin Benson, Bishop of Gloucester. By John Fendley ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 155 NOTES A Romano-British Brooch from Pope’s Hill, Gloucestershire. By Julie Reynolds ... 177 A Medieval Lamp from Peter Street, Bristol. By Eric Boore ... ... ... ... ... ... 179 The Question of Hannah Moore’s Membership of the French Academy Resolved. By G.C. Boon and M.J. Crossley Evans ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 182 Archaeological Review No. 25. Edited by Jan Wills ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 185 Gloucestershire Record Office: Summary List of Documents received 2000–2001 ... 211 Reviews. Edited by Nicholas Herbert Henry Hurst (ed.), The Coloniae of Roman Britain: Papers of a Conference at Gloucester, 1997 (John Rhodes) ..
    [Show full text]