British Library Journal (volume 15, number 2, autumn 1989)

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Thomas Tudway and the Harleian Collection of 'Ancient' church music
(1989-11)
Weber, William
ONE of the best known sets of documents in British musical history is Harl. MSS.7337-7342, the first volume of which is titled A Collection of the Most Celebrated Services and Anthems used in the Church of England, from the Reformation to the Restauration of K. Charles If. Composed by the Best Masters, and Collected by Thomas Tudway, D. M. Mustek-Professor to the University of Cambridge, A.D. MDCCXV. This collection, made between 1715 and 1720, is one of the landmarks in the study of English church music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its scores, almost 3,000 pages long, became a key reference for music of that period, and its prefaces are in reality a miniature history of music that holds major significance in that genre. Its own history tells a great deal about Edward, Lord Harley, Tudway's patron, and about Humfrey Wanley, the eminent scholar and head of the Harley library. Since there are major articles on the collection by Edward Turnbull and Christopher Hogwood, this paper will chiefly examine the political aspects of Tudway's career and the collection in the light of previously little known sources in the Portland Papers.
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An unrecognized Spanish edition of Poliziano's Silvae
(1989-11)
Rhodes, Dennis E.
ANGELO Ambrogini, born in 1454 and universally known as Il Poliziano from his birthplace of Montepulciano in Southern Tuscany, wrote four Latin poems which go under the collective title of Silvae. Of these, Manto was first published in Florence in 1482; Ambra was printed without date, also in Florence, probably in 1485; Nutricia was printed in Florence on 26 May 1491 and again in Bologna on 22 June of the same year; and Rusticus appeared in Florence on 7 February 1491/92. A note by the author himself, which we find as explicit to some of the printed editions, shows that he completed their composition at his house in Fiesole on 8 October 1486.'
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A skeleton in the cupboard: James West and the Portland Papers
(1989-11)
Harris, Frances
IN an earlier article in this issue (pp. 123-33), Clyve Jones has surveyed the main collections which make up the archive of Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford. Another small group of strays which is worth noting are the letters to Oxford and his son's father-in-law, John Holies, Duke of Newcastle, in British Library, Lansdowne MS. 1236. Investigation of their provenance uncovers a tale of blackmail and theft and political intrigue.
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Recent acquisitions: Slavonic and East European Collections: three Polish pamphlets on Pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Sevi
(1989-11)
Alsop, J. D.
IN 1669 the press of the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev published a substantial book Messyia pravdyvyi Isus Khristos [The true Messiah Jesus Christ] and in 1672 the Ukrainian version was followed by the Polish, Messiasz prawdziwy. Its Orthodox author, Ioannykii Haliatovskyi (Joanicjusz Galatowski), Rector of the Kiev Academy and archimandrite of a monastery at Chernihov (where he died in 1688) was a profilic writer of homilies and religious polemics. The Messiah was one of the latter, directed against the Jewish religion and in particular against the 'false messiah' Sabbatai Sevi. As the author explained in the preface addressed to Tsar Alexis, ' I have written this book in the Ruthenian, Polish and Latin languages because the Jews living in the Kingdom of Poland and in the Latin [Western] countries mocked and jeered Christ the True Messiah and the Christian people and rejoiced when they heard that in Eastern parts in the city of Smyrna their false messiah, Sabbatai Sevi by name, had appeared, the same as later suffered a horrible death in Constantinople'.
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Robert Harley's parliamentary apprenticeship: 1690-1695
(1989-11)
Rowlands, Ted
WILLIAM'S 1690 Parliament has a claim to a particular place in the development of parliamentary procedure and processes. From 1690 began the unbroken record of annual sessions. The House of Commons met from late October or early November through until March, six days of the week, breaking only briefly for Christmas. Facing an unprecedented burden of business arising from one of the most intense wars the nation had fought, members spent more time in session than their predecessors. The House began sitting at eight or nine a.m., followed by afternoons and evenings in the committee of the whole. A host of other committees were appointed, usually meeting in the Painted Chamber at four p.m. But two new major activities were added to the traditional functions of supply and legislation, the examination of the estimates and the scrutiny of the accounts. This increase in parliamentary scrutiny, with the regularity and intensity of the sessions, created a new parliamentary chemistry, encouraging a greater degree of organization and an ability to assess members' attitudes. Robert Harley, even during this his parliamentary apprenticeship, contributed substantially to the new pattern of parliamentary activity. His parliamentary papers, the correspondence to and from his family, his kinsmen, the Foleys, and new-found political allies. Sir Thomas Clarges and Sir Christopher Musgrave, provide a particular insight into the post-Revolution parliamentary system.
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Sir Robert Harley, K.B., (1579-1656) and the 'character' of a puritan
(1989-11)
Eales, Jacqueline
IN February 1621 Thomas Shepherd caused a furore in the House of Commons by attacking the bill 'for the Punishment of divers Abuses on the Sabaoth-day' at its second reading. It was, he said 'very inconvenient and indiscreete' and 'it savours of the spirrit of a Puritan', and he called Walter Earle, who had preferred the bill, a 'perturbator of the Peace'. The Commons were so scandalized that Shepherd was ordered to withdraw from the debating chamber, and his angry outburst and high words were widely reported, both in parliamentary diaries and by men who were not members of the Parliament. In a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, the English ambassador in the Hague, his correspondent John Chamberlain noted 'yesterday one Shepheard, a lawier, was throwne out of the house and disabled for euer beeing there, for a speach the day before against a bill concerning the sabaoth, wherin girding and glauncing at the puritans, and seeking to make them ridiculous, him self grew foolish and profane'. In a draft letter to Sir Horace Vere, who was commanding the English volunteer force in the Palatinate, the Herefordshire gentleman, Sir Robert Harley of Brampton Bryan, recorded that 'one Shepharde, a lawyer that was of the lower house, made an Intemp[er]at speech ag[ain]st a bill, w[hi]ch was to restraine the profanatio[n] of the sabboth, & Inveyed w[i]th somebitter[nes]s ag[ain]st puritanes sayinge that there were many snares to catch poore pa[pists], but not so much as a mouse trap to catch a puritane. Whereupon the house put hym out, & because I think the p[ar]liament will not proceede to define a Puritane, I take the bouldness to present y[ou]r Lo[rdshi]p w[i]th his Caracter, w[hi]ch bill if it should pass the lower house, the upper would never lett it come to the hassard of receauing Royall assent.'
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Robert Harley's 'middle way': the Puritan heritage in Augustan politics
(1989-11)
Hayton, David
THE character of Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford, was a puzzle to contemporaries and has continued to vex historians ever since. Harley's motives, objectives, principles (if indeed he had any) are of a piece with his notoriously difficult handwriting: often obscure and sometimes quite indecipherable. Of course, for a successful politician, and Harley was by any standards very successful, opacity could well be a deliberate ploy: a little obfuscation might be just what was needed to disarm an aggrieved petitioner, or to fudge a delicate issue in Parliament. Except that in Harley's case the obscuring process became second nature. Some contemporaries considered it to be pathological. Lord Cowper referred to ' that humour of his, which was, never to deal clearly or openly, but always with reserve, if not dissimulation, or rather simulation; and to love tricks even where not necessary'. In common with other hostile observers, Cowper regarded the 'humour' as malignant: it grew 'from an inward satisfaction he took in applauding his own cunning'.
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The Harley family and the Harley papers
(1989-11)
Jones, Clyve
IN 1759 John Dalrymple of Cranstoun, a Scottish observer of British politics, wrote that the English 'bore two very low men Lord Oxford [Robert Harley] and Lord Orford [Sir Robert Walpole] long to reign over them, who had nothing but their own abilitys and their princes favour to support them, men of low birth and of no connexions'. It would be no exaggeration to say that Harley and Walpole were the most influential, and in stature the greatest politicians of the first half of the eighteenth century. Though in the popular mind Walpole is credited with being the first 'prime minister' of Great Britain, Harley has an equally good claim to that title; indeed his own brother referred to him as 'becoming the "Primere" Minister'. Two major differences between Harley and Walpole were, however, the length of time each spent in office as head of the administration, four years in Harley's case and twenty-one in Walpole's, and the amount of personal papers they left behind. Walpole's papers, which form the Cholmondeley (Houghton) Collection in Cambridge University Library, are disappointingly sparse for such a great figure, the remaining items showing evidence of 'weeding' at some time. In contrast, Robert Harley's papers are probably the most extensive surviving for any early eighteenth century English politician (with the possible exception of Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle). Besides his own papers, there is an almost equally vast archive of papers relating to the Harley family. Furthermore, though the papers of the Harley family are scattered, the bulk of them are in five major deposits, the Portland Collection (split between the British Library, Nottingham University Library and the Nottinghamshire Record Office), the papers remaining at the Harleys' ancestral home at Brampton Bryan Hall in Herefordshire, and those at Longleat House in Wiltshire.
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British Library Journal (volume 15, number 2, autumn 1989)

British Library Journal (volume 15, number 2, autumn 1989)

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