A Brief Treatise of Arithmeticke (1588)

In looking for something completely different, I browsed through bits of John Mellis’s 1588 manual on bookkeeping, A briefe instruction and maner hovv to keepe bookes of accompts after the order of debitor and creditor & as well for proper accompts partible, &c. […] (London. STC 18794. EEBO. Huntington Library). It contains A Short and Plaine Treatise of Arithmeticke in whole numbers, comprised into a briefer method than hetherto hath bin published, from whence the following lovely little late Elizabethan arithmetick problem cometh:

p. 15

But now in manner of a recreation, as wel as for exercise, I propose one question more: as thus.

A Gentlewoman for a certayne trespasse committed, was enioyned by her Soueraigne a certaine penance, which was this: That in her owne person going a foote, and being accompanied with two of her honest seruants she should goe from Saint Dauids in Wales to Douer, which is accempted to bee the breadth of Englande, And at each Furlongs ende, being eight in a mile, she and her men should gather in a heape, great and small togeather, two hundred and fourty stones. Uppon which harde sentence geuen by her Soueraigne, after she heard that her iourney was three hundred miles, she tooke the matter heauilie, and humbly sought and craued tolleration herein. Which in fine vpon her humble suite, and the earnest request of other Ladies and Gentlewomen, was absolutely remitted, vpon a condition, which was this. That if the Gentlewoman there presently before her Soueraigne, without the ayde of any other, could of her owne pregnant capacitie, make an absolute resolution, and accompte how [p. 16] how many stones in all she ought to haue gathered, that thereupon she should be cleerely dismissed of this pennance.

The Gentlewoman glad of this, and hauing a little sight in Arithmeticke, called for penne, inke, and paper, and wrought as here appeareth, and hauing finished the worke, did giue vp her accompt thus, that shee shoulde haue gathered iust 576000. stones in all. Which was most true, and thereuppon shee was remitted and pardoned &c.

(This is followed by calculations, but I leave those, for I am sure my readers are perfectly able to calculate the number of stones and arriving at the same result.)

The next question is, what’s the Elizabethan equivalent of “a train leaves London heading North at 100mph; a second train leaves York heading South at 75mph: where will they meet and at what time?”..?

rabbits and open veins

Hmm, coming across nice little peeks into Early Modern life today:

This inclosed for your lordship was sent me euen now by sir mychell hickes, with a message that it requyrd hast and withall came thes 4 rabitts which I send by this bearer a footman, not being willing to truble a messenger vnless I had knowne the busines to be of importance, I truble your lordship with noe other matter nowe bycause I wryght with the hand whose arme hath had a vayne opened but an howre since /

Ruttland howse 4 Sept 1607

Your lordships most bonden servant

Tho wilson

(Thomas Wilson to the Earl of Salisbury, CP 193/147)

More offerings of dead animals, this time for eating. But it’s the reference to blood-letting which is more interesting here. Wilson suffered from malaria (and possible other recurring illnesses). I remain amazed at the Early Modern propensity for drawing blood – surely at least someone noticed that patients lost rather than gained strength when leeched? (Thus I reveal my ignorance of Early Modern medicine. I’m sure my colleagues down the corridor could enlighten me – but this is digression enough.)

Deer heads for Mr Secretary

This inclosed to your lordship is from francis Seagar seruant to the lantgraue of Hess [.]  he hath sent also to your lordship 2 deeres heades the one of a Rayne deere, the other of an Ealand a kynd of deer soe caled ther [.] the heades are heer att my chamber att somersett howse vntill I vnderstand your lordhip‘s pleasure for the tyme it please you to haue them brought to Cort to see them, they were sent to me by Garter king att Armes francis seagars brother, who wold haue attended your lordship with them him selfe but that he is sicke. It may please your lordship to lett me knowe when I shall send bringe them vp, bycause the messenger that brought them desyres to be att the deliuery of them.

Somersett howse
9ber 30. 1605 .

your lordships most humble seruant
Tho: wilson.

***

(Thomas Wilson to the Earl of Salisbury, CP 113/60)

I should of course only post this blog with some commentary on the above, but it will have to suffice for me to say that I was amused by the idea of someone sending deers’ heads as a gift to Cecil. I am presuming they are mounted for display. Which raises the question, how long has taxidermy been around to decorate the smoking rooms of the rich and famous more rich..?

I could do with a rent like this

From a document in TNA WARD 5/39, listing the lands etc of the recently deceased John Bowyer, knight:

                               Comitate Cestrie

A messuage and twoe Cottages with thappertunances
in the County of Chester in Bradwall Are holden of
Thomas Venables esquire as of his Baronie
of kindertone in the said county of Chester by
the yerly Rent of one paire of white gloves
or one penny at Ester for all Services And are
worthe in all issues aboue Reprisented    }   –   xl shillings

The reliability of “Winwood’s Memorials”

The three-volume Memorials of affairs of state in the reigns of Q. Elizabeth and K. James I, collected (chiefly) from the original papers of … Sir Ralph Winwood, edited by Edmund Sawyer, published in 1725 (2nd ed. 1727), is a hugely convenient work for those working on late Elizabethan and early Stuart State Papers, since it prints hundreds of letters from the English diplomatic correspondence with Ambassadors on the continent. However, it is not a reliable source of information, and one should bear this in mind. Not that there is such a thing, of course! But my gripe to you today is a simple one. Observe:

Winwood, vol. 2, p. 357 (1727 ed.):

TNA SP 94/14 f. 214, draft of the same letter:

Now, regular (?) readers will know that I have a Thing About Dates, and here, too, it is a date that is the matter at question. In Winwood, Sawyer has Cecil say his last letter to Cornwallis was of the “6th of September.” In the draft in the State Papers, however, the date for the same letter is given as “27. of Septembre”.

Okay, you say, so Sawyer printed the wrong date. So what? Well, if you are charting a correspondence – consisting primarily of when letters were sent and received, and to some extent of the paths they took and who they were carried by – and particularly if you are trying to establish the transmitting of information, three weeks makes a world of difference, even in the Early Modern period, even for distances such as that between London and Madrid. For instance, when there was a real emergency at either end, news of which would be transmitted immediately, reconstructing the sequence of events today becomes frustrating to the extreme if dates do not match. Particularly since the matter is compounded by the usage of Old Style and New Style dates, which add a ten-day bracket to every date anyway..

In the end, I suppose more important than one antiquarian-minded scholar’s griping at imperfect editions, is the fact that it is cases like this – coming across and resolving conflicting sources – which helps develop one’s understanding of the inherent unreliability of the surviving records of the past.

(By the way, ironically, the letter from Cecil to Cornwallis of 27.9.1607 does not survive as a draft in TNA SP 94/14, but it is printed in Winwood (1727 ed.), vol. 2, p. 340…)

on the wagon

charrette, n. a final, intensive effort to finish a project before a deadline

Thus saith Futility Closet. And I thought, there’s a definition of my state if ever one was. But of course one has to check these things (words) in the OED, which says:

charet | charette, n. Obs. A wheeled vehicle or conveyance.

..que? Only by scrolling to the bottom, there is more:

Draft additions March 2007

Chiefly N. Amer. (orig. Archit.). A period of intense (group) work, typically undertaken in order to meet a deadline.

[Probably originally with reference to the former custom among French architecture students of using a cart to carry their work on the day of an exhibition: see Trésor de la Langue Française s.v. charrette.]

A relatively new coinage, then. I’ll still take it.

Sir Charles Cornwallis in his valley of misery

The first English Ambassador in Spain post-Elizabeth, Sir Charles Cornwallis, got bit of a rough deal. English trade with Spain had just been opened up again (in 1604), but relations were still somewhat strained, and many English merchants found themselves in trouble in Spain – some of it their own causing, but much of it not. These merchants naturally sought redress by going to the Spanish Court themselves, but more frequently through contacting the English Ambassador and asking – if not demanding! – his help in pursuing their suit. Cornwallis did his best, but received flak equally from importunate English merchants who put much more effort into complaining than actively trying to sort their matters out, from local nobles at the Spanish Court who felt Cornwallis demeaned his post as Ambassador by acting as a solicitor for the English merchants, and also somewhat from the Lords of the Privy Council of England who perhaps did not fully appreciate Cornwallis’s situation.

In this light, the following closing of a letter written 16 November 1607 (Old Style), is not particularly uncommon:

And so my good lord, trauayling on in this vale of mysery,
with none other earthly hope, & comfort, then to serue my
master & my cuntry with myn vntermost [sic] dilligence, & deuty, I
recommend myn humble seruyce & affection to your lordship to
whom I wyll neuer be other then

one of your faythfyllest
seruantes, and truest poore
frendes ./

Charles Cornwaleys

Madrid 16o Nouember 1607
stilo veteri ./

(TNA SP 94/14 ff. 212-213)

 

What’s Early Modern English for “Tom, Dick & Harry”?

The other manner of my prosecution of my cuntrym{ens} causes they so farr myslyke, as one Don francisco (a Judg delegate for the assisting of the Councell of warr, in Causes ther depending in law) hauing lately receaued very sharpe letters from his majestie here, reprouing his slow proceeding in those of ye King my masters subjects) vpon tewsday last sayd vnto one of my secretaries, that he so much honored and loued me, as he must of Necessity lett me know playnly what he thought, and others sayd of me, which was, that I performed here rather the part of a solycitor then an Embassador ./ […]
He then […] sayd; That were he in my place, he would wright to the King playnly, tho{ugh} yt neyther agreed with his majesties honor nor with the reputation of the place that I represent of his person to make me a solycitor of the Causes of Peter, Jhon, and James; That yt was not an office becomming an Embassador […]

– Sir Charles Cornwallis, English Ambassador at the Spanish Court, to the Privy Council in London, 27 June 1607 (TNA SP 94/14 ff. 65-68)

Here’s the real question: is “Peter, John and James” i) the/an EModE equivalent English idiom we now know as “Tom, Dick and Harry”, or ii) a calque from Spanish? (“Pedro, Juan y Diego”?) I leave it to you, dear hypothetical reader, to google for the answer.

 

“I like not these gold-makers”

I haue had ferther conferrence with the Scotsman / which came from madrid 15 dais past, he sayeth he hath Letters from my lord Ambassador and that his lordshipp gaue hym fyve hvndred Crowns per order from his majestie of England /. and that an vnckell he hath in madrid gaue hym fyve hvndred Crowns more. and as he passed per the monts of ronsevall per a place called Santa Crus. an abbat or Churchman Cozoned hym of all his money he hauinge delyverd it vnto hym to keepe it, & the other denyed the recept theirof /. soe he came to my lodginge & offered me ringes & Jewls in pawne to lend hym money vpon them for that he would dispach his man back into Spaine / I promis yow I was loth to enter in with hym because as he said he hath the vse of the philosofers ston to make gould and siluer / & that he had Spent more gould then would fill my Countinghouse in seekinge for it / […]

in fine. I lyck not these gould makers. that want gould at the first accointance a man hath with them, & the rather because the[y] Aske to borrow money of them the[y] never say in ther life before / he is called sr. Cornelius / he is determened to stay heare for 20 dayes or a moneth & hath taken a Chamber / & sent to a glashouse to haue Cyrten glasses made accordinge to the mark in the margent. soe it seemeth he meneth to trye his art heare /.

Sounds like a great character! Cocks goes on to say,

he speketh latten, English, french Spanish and Italian. hie duch & nedarlandish. & as he sayeth the Arabian tonge / & as he sayeth he hath byn at Constantianople. Jerusalem / & other places ferther then those. soe I think he will proue a second Sir John mandeuill / out of dowbt the man hath som extraordenary qualletys in hym / once it is Cyrten he wanteth noe tonge –

I like the tone of Cocks’s description – bemused, slightly exasperated, relishing the irony, subtly sarcastic. Cocks was a man who appreciated a good story, whatever the truth value of the account. Of Sir Cornelius we hear no more..

(From TNA SP 94/13 f. 138, Richard Cocks to Thomas Wilson, prob. 12 January 1607)