Christ Church, Allestree Library MS. F.1.1

Provenance and Acquisition

The close textual proximity between this manuscript and Balliol MS 150 suggests one was copied from the other. The details given in the title of our item 4 reveal a scribe consciously compiling this manuscript from knowledge of more than one exemplar, and placing in an appendix some sermons which (most often correctly) seemed to him ‘unBernardian’ but which were interspersed in the sermon collection as it appeared ‘in quodam exemplari’. If that latter exemplar is the codex now in Balliol which was made at Buildwas in the early thirteenth century, we have both a terminus post quem non for the production of our manuscript, and a possible location for its construction within a Cistercian context. It was not, however, produced by a Buildwas scribe, to judge from a comparison of the palaeography of this manuscript with the plates in Sheppard. Our manuscript also has a close relationship with another manuscript, one which is now lost: the volume of St Bernard’s letters and sermons given to Syon in the mid-fifteenth century by ‘Pynchbek’ (on whom, Gillespie, Syon, 584–85) shares not only the order of the last items but also the rare misattribution of our item 6 to Aelred of Riveaulx. We cannot know for certain which acted as the ultimate parent for the other, but the fact that the Syon book could compress what occupies 290 folios here into under 150 folios either suggests that it was highly selective or had a much smaller – and thus, probably, gothic – script; either hypothesis makes it likely it was derived from our manuscript rather than vice versa . That, though, does not help us localise our manuscript’s whereabouts: even if Pynchbek was the commissioner of a direct copy from it – which is far from definite – his own associations with Oxford, Cambridge and London make it all but impossible to identify where his copy may have been made.

The manuscript has accrued signs of use over the centuries, with the majority coming from the thirteenth century. They include nota marks in at least three hands (fol. 1^v, 2 and throughout; cf. fol. 24^v and 127), a large impressionistic manicula, on one occasion shown holding a bishop’s crosier (fol. 160; cf. fol. 153 – 57^v, 162, 182, 187, 199) and also various drawings, which have little association with the text (horses: fol. 51^v-52; leaves: fol. 52^v; fol. 81: roughly drawn face with ‘noli me tang⟨ere⟩’ above it; flower: fol. 96; music: fol. 107; outline of a coat of arms: fol. 167; bird: fol. 221; heads: fol. 234 and fol. 274^v). It was probably early in its life that the manuscript also gained a few parchment tabs stitched to the outer edge of the leaves as finding aids (fol. 117, 167, 271^v). Later signs of reading include a note cross-referencing the text in a hand which appears to be that of the catchwords, dated above to the fifteenth century (fol. 197^v), as well as annotations in English (fol. 55, s. xvi, and fol. 144, s. xv?) and a note in secretary script (s. xvii) providing in English and in Latin Ecclesiasticus 3:33 (fol. 23). There are also occasional probationes pennae (fol. 207, 240^v, 270^v, 277^v, 296, 299).

There are signatures of a variety of unidentifiable owners or users of s. xv^ex or s. xv/xvi: (a) ‘Jhon’ Clarkson’ (the front pastedown, an erased name below); (b) ‘Jhon’ peruis’ (twice on the front pastedown); (c) the note ‘Henricus Tercius’ and a distich ‘Golde and Seluyr haue y non | þerfor y am a por’ mon’ (not in IMEV) (fol. 301); (d) ? ‘Tome na..ns’ (the front pastedown). There is also a later signature of ‘Timothy Barney’ (fol. 301, s. xvii). This last is presumably the son of Francis, of Worfield, Shropshire; Timothy matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, in June 1637, aged 18 – he was, then, an exact contemporary in Oxford of Allestree – and he was ordained priest in 1646 (AO, 79, CCEd).

It is possible that Barney and Allestree were personally connected: not only were they exact contemporaries at Oxford, Allestree coming up to Christ Church in February 1637, but they were also both Shropshire men, Allestree’s hometown being Uppington, about 20 miles north-west of Worfield. Allestree received the degrees BA in 1640 and MA in 1643, by which date he was already fighting for the King in the first Civil War. He was expelled by the Parliamentary visitors in 1648 and was, for much of the Commonwealth period, based in Hanwell (north Oxon., outside Banbury). He was not entirely absent from Oxford: in Beam Hall on Merton Street, he participated in the subversive practice of reading the Anglican Book of Common Prayer with John Dolben and John Fell (who would later be Allestree’s biographer); it was a shared activity commemorated by the triple portrait by Sir Peter Lely which now hangs in the Hall of the House. He also acted as a royalist agent, taking messages to the exiled court. He was jailed as a royalist in 1659 on capture at Dover. After the Restoration, he was created DD in 1660 and was then canon of Christ Church, chaplain to the king, Regius Professor of Divinity 1663–80, provost of Eton 1665. Most famous for his book, The Whole Duty of Man (Wing A 1169 et seq., 1658), he died on 28 January 1681, aged 61 (AO, 18; John Spurr in Oxford DNB). The bequest of this volume is recorded by the printed label pasted to the front pastedown: ‘In usum Reg. Prof. Theol. Oxon. dono dedit Ricardus Allestree S.T.P.R. Jan. 18, 1680 [Old Style]’.

There is a further note: ‘The last Leaf but one of this Volume was missing when the Library came into my hands W^m Jacobson’ (the front pastedown). William Jacobson (1804–81) was a canon of Christ Church and Regius Professor of Divinity 1848–65, before becoming Bishop of Chester (AOmod, 739; William Hunt, rev. M. C. Curthoys in Oxford DNB). It has been said that Jacobson was the one Regius Professor who showed ‘significant interest’ in the Allestree collection, rearranging it, providing its volumes with their printed labels and producing ‘a rather feeble hand-written catalogue’ of it: Mark Purcell, ‘“Useful Weapons for the Defence of the Cause”: Richard Allestree, John Fell and the Foundation of the Allestree Library’, The Library, 6^th ser., xxi (1999), 124–47 (146).