A.D. 1615
Richard Connock, auditor and solicitor to Prince Henry of Wales, gave a MS. book of Horæ67, which had formerly belonged to Mary I, and afterwards to Prince Henry. The donor, in a note prefixed, records that he gives the volume, ‘not for the religion it contains, but for the pictures and former royall owners’ sake.’ It is a volume of the early part of the fifteenth century, in small quarto, containing 224 leaves, and ornamented with very beautiful illuminated borders and exquisite drawings in camaieu gris. Among these is one of the martyrdom of Becket, which, doubtless in consequence of the book being in the possession of the Princess Mary, has entirely escaped the defacement and obliteration ordered by her father to be made in all Service-books where the office for S. Thomas of Canterbury occurred. The following inscription (nearly effaced at its close by over-much handling in former years), addressed by Mary to one of her ladies, whose name does not appear, to whom probably she presented the book, occurs in the blank portion of one of the leaves:—
‘Geate you such riches as when the shype is broken, may swyme away wythe the Master. For dyverse chances take away the goods of fortune; but the goods of the soule whyche bee only the trewe goods, nother fyer nor water can take away. Yf you take labour and payne to doo a vertuous thyng, the labour goeth away, and the vertue remaynethe. Yf through pleasure you do any vicious thyng, the pleasure goeth away and the vice remaynethe. Good Madame, for my sake remembre thys.
‘Your lovyng mystres,
‘Marye Princesse.’
This inscription (which does so much credit to its writer) was first printed by Hearne at the end of Titi Livii Forojulien. Vita Hen. V. (p. 228) and last, in Bliss’ Reliquiæ Hearn. i. 105. Mr. Coxe has noted (from Alstedii Systema Mnemonicum, 1610, i. 705) that the latter part is taken directly and literally from Musonius, while indirectly it comes from an oration by Cato68. Probably the first part may be traced to some similar source.
Another autograph inscription by Mary while Princess is found in a small book (Laud MS. Miscell. i.) of private prayers in Latin and English, which belonged to Jane Wriothesley, wife of Thomas Earl of Southampton, and which she seems to have employed as a kind of album. At f. 45a are these lines, which appear to form a triplet, although not written in metrical form by the Princess:—
‘Good Madame, I do desyer you most hartly to pray,
That in prosperyte and adversyte I may
Have grace to keep the trewe way.
‘Your lovyng frend,
to my... [power?]’
Unfortunately the conclusion, with the signature, has been cut off. A couplet, signed by Queen Katherine Parr, has an equal, and most regal, disregard of the restraints of metrical rhythm (f. 8b.):—
‘Madam, althowe I have differred writtyng in your booke,
I am no lesse your frend than you do looke.
‘Kateryn the Quene KP.’
Other inscriptions are inserted by Margaret Queen of Scotland, Mary Countess of Lennox and mother of Lord Darnley, and by the Countess of Southampton’s daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, and Anne.
James Button, Esq., of the county of Worcester, gave, on March 28, a curious relic of the ancient language of Cornwall, being three Miracle-Plays of the Creation, the Passion, and the Resurrection, in Cornish, contained in a MS. on vellum, small folio, eighty-three leaves, written in the fifteenth century; now numbered Bodl. 791. A copy on paper of the Play of the Creation, written by John Jordan in 1611, is also in the Library, numbered Bodl. 219, which appears to have come from the library of King James I, having the royal crown stamped on the parchment cover, with the initials I.K. A second modern copy has also been recently presented (in 1849) by Edwin Ley, Esq., of Bosahan, Cornwall, which is accompanied by a translation by John Keigwyn, made in 1695. The dramas were printed in two volumes at the University Press, with a translation, notes, and glossary, by Mr. Edwin Norris, in 1859.
Some MSS. were given about this time by the three sons of Rich. Colf, D.D., and in 1618 twenty Greek volumes by Cecil, Earl of Exeter.
Notes
67 The gift is omitted in the Benefaction-Register, apparently because it was a rule not to record donations of single volumes [Reliquiæ Bodl. pp. 91, 283]; consequently several books of the greatest value are omitted.
68 George Herbert expresses the same idea at the end of his Church Porch:—
‘If thou do ill, the joy fades, not the pains;
If well, the pain doth fade, the joy remains.’