The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• The Bodleian Ms. of Book V. [1887.]
• Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Book V.
• To the Most Reverend Father In God, My Very Good Lord, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury His Grace, Primate and Metropolitan of All England.
• The Fifth Book. of Their Fourth Assertion, That Touching the Several Public Duties of Christian Religion, There Is Amongst Us Much Superstition Retained In Them; and Concerning Persons Which For Performance of Those Duties Are Endued With the Power of
• Appendix to Book V.

London

HENRY FROWDE

Oxford University Press Warehouse

Amen Corner, E.C.

>Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity, Bk. V.

Collotype: University Press, Oxford.

Bodl. MS. Add. C. 165, fol. 111².

THE BODLEIAN MS. OF BOOK V.

[1887.]

The facsimile placed at the beginning of this volume represents one page in a manuscript of the Fifth Book of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity which was bought for the Bodleian Library by the Rev. H. O. Coxe in 18781 .

The MS. was bought from the representatives of the late Mr. Morison, into whose possession it had come through the Rev. William Woolston, of Adderbury, who died in 1817. He probably inherited it from his father Thomas Woolston, the master of a boys’ school in the parish of Adderbury, and son of William Woolston, of Olney, in Northamptonshire.

The MS. (numbered Bodl. Addit. C. 165) consists of 227 leaves2 , of rather coarse paper, about thirteen inches by eight in size, presenting 453 pages. Save for occasional exceptions, it is written throughout in a clerk’s hand, having two clearly distinguished characters: in the one very formal and stiff and precise, used for the marginal notes, and also in the text for quotations, and occasionally for words requiring emphasis; in the other more like a court hand (with uniform and rather official-looking flourishes), and used for the ordinary course of the text. Both characters are shown on the page here given; in neither has the hand any resemblance to Hooker’s3 .

It is clear that the MS. is that from which the first edition (1597) was printed “by John Windet, dwelling at Powles wharfe at the sign of the Crosse Keyes.” It bears on the first page the authorizing signature of Whitgift, as Archbishop of Canterbury. There are in the margin the printer’s roughly scrawled letters and numerals opposite to a scratch in the text, which is found to correspond with the beginning of a new sheet or leaf in this first edition1 . And at the end of the last leaf but two in the MS. there is the following note by the printer: “Good Mr. Hooker I pray you be so good as to send us the next leafe that followeth this, for I know not by what mischance this of ours is lost, which standeth uppon the finishing of the book.” Either the missing leaf was found or else Hooker had a second copy of it made for the press, for in the MS. it is clearly written by the same hand as the rest.

This note shows that Hooker kept his own MS. in his own possession; that only this clerk’s copy of it was sent to John Windet. But Hooker’s own hand appears unmistakably in many of the marginal notes; and the following are some of those which are most plainly in his writing. Notes 3 and 4 on p. 14; note 1 on p. 15; note 2 on p. 16; note 1 on p. 19; note 3 on p. 29; note 3 on p. 31; notes 1 and 2 on p. 32; notes 1 and 3 on p. 33; note 1 on p. 38; note 1 on p. 45; note 1 on p. 69. In the later part of the MS. his hand comes much less frequently; but note 0 (“Una est nativitas” etc.) on the page photographed for this volume is a very good instance of it. He wrote also the titles of chapters vi-xvii, excepting that of chapter xii. On the page here represented the interlinear words “I bileve one baptisme for remission of sinnes” seem certainly to have been written by him; but it is difficult to say whether any of the other interlinear corrections are in his hand, though they look very little like the clerk’s.

The 140th leaf, containing a part of ch. lxvii, and also the last page, are written in a different and ruder hand. At the top of the 161st leaf, on the second side, a note is scribbled in a hand apparently contemporary: “But as thou livest soe shalt thou die, quoth Salomon in book of Sermons.” At the top of the 173rd leaf, in another and later hand, “Margrat Keynes” is written; and “Margrat” in the margin of the 48th leaf.

The MS. does not contain the “Epistle Dedicatorie,” nor the list of contents. These in the first edition are not included in the pagination of the rest, and occupy sheet a, which clearly had been reserved for them by the printer. The heading “The Fift Booke of Ecclesiasticall Pollity. R. Hooker,” with the designation “Of their fourth assertion” etc., immediately precedes the beginning of ch. 1; and by the side of this designation is written the signature “Jo. Cantuar.” The ensuing list of various readings is the result of a comparison of the MS. with the first edition (1597) and with that of 1865 — the last issue of Mr. Keble’s edition during his lifetime. The minor differences in spelling (as also in punctuation) are exceedingly numerous; and the list here given contains those only which on the ground of their recurrence, their strangeness, their suggestion of the current pronunciation, or of a lingering deference to the derivation of the word, seem to have some special interest. In other cases the variation has been noticed as bearing, though it be but slightly, upon the right form of the text.

[1 ]The date of the receipt is Dec. 14, 1878. Cf. the Athenæum of Dec. 21, 1878, in which it is said that this is believed to be the only known MS. of the Fifth Book. Before it was bought for the Bodleian, and while it was yet in private hands, Mr. Keble was informed of its existence: but he does not appear to have seen it. Probably, thinking the printed text of Book V to have had Hooker’s final sanction, he did not judge it worth while to consult the MS.

[2 ]They are numbered up to 228; but one of the two missing leaves is included in this numeration.

[3 ]There is no resemblance between the writing of this MS. and that of the Hooker MSS. in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.

[1 ]There is also another series of similar marks, showing that the MS. was probably used for another edition or issue of the book.