’’
APPENDIX: JOSEPH BARNES, THE ORIGINAL PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD: A STUDY IN POLITICAL PROPAGANDA
1. It might seem an act of sheer effrontery to return to the subject of the foundation of the first printing press at Oxford so soon after the appearance of the first volume of The History of the Oxford University Press in 2013. NOTE 1 I have no fresh evidence to adduce, but I do believe if one draws up a list of the early volumes to issue from the press of Joseph Barnes, Printer to the University of Oxford, in their approximate chronological order and acquires some familiarity with their contents, a new and rather different story clearly emerges. This story turns out to be yet another chapter in a far larger one, the Tudor cooptation of literature for purposes that were au fond political in nature, a hallmark of that dynasty. From first to last, Mary excepted, all their sovereigns embraced both the ability of the written word to move hearts and minds and also the multiplying power of the printing press (and learned to fear these same things when used by others to challenge their authority), a policy towards literature eagerly imitated by the early Stuarts My intention here is to tell that story insofar as it played out at Oxford, and other possible subjects have been ignored. Most notably, I am of course aware that a press was established at Cambridge in the same year, 1584, that two events may (or may not) have been coordinated, and that the motivations behind their foundation and governmental tolerance of their existence may (or may not) have been the same, but these subjects are not investigated here. Appended to this study is a presentation of the evidence upon which it is based, a bibliography listing the volumes issued by Barnes during his first decade of operations.
2. Church Latin could be easily printed in blackletter, but according to the conventions of the time Humanistic Latin called for an elegant serifed Roman font with multiple families and the ability to accommodate such extra features as diacritical marks (á, â and ā as well as a and so forth) and typographical equivalents of traditional manuscript abbreviations, resulting in the need for a considerably larger and more complex font. In addition, Humanistic authors were prone to embedding Greek in their Latin texts, which further complicated a printer’s problem. Since no English foundry was capable of manufacturing a font fitting these requirements, printers were obliged to purchase ones overseas (usually from France) at considerable cost. The result was that no English printer was willing to make the necessary capital investment until well into the reign of Henry VIII (John Leland was the first important English Humanist to be able to have his works printed at London). Clearly the reason for this was that until this time England had lacked a sufficient critical mass of readers interested in purchasing Humanistic Latin books. Thar had to wait until the expansion of the national educational system begun under Henry VII had produced a sufficiently large readership to make the printing of Humanistic Latin a commercially viable enterprise.
3. Hence the first generation of English Humanists was obliged to publish their literary output on the Continent. The same applied to Scotland, with the result that even such important contributions as Polydore Vergil’s comprehensive history of England and its Scottish predecessor by Hector Boece, the source of Polydore’s inspiration, were published overseas (indeed, because of the auld alliance the tendency of Scottish writers to publish abroad persisted long after it had all but died out in England). NOTE 2 The consequences of this fact continue to impede the progress of learning down to the present day. Only volumes printed in the British Isles are listed in A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave’s Short Title Catalogue (2nd edition 1976 – 91) and only items listed in STC2 are made available in photographic reproduction by the Early English Books website. Books issued elsewhere often remain confoundedly difficult to obtain, with the result that the first stages of both English and Scottish Humanism, as well as the literature produced by Anglo-Catholic expatriates, remain understudied.
4. By the time Elizabeth came to the throne such technical and economic problems had been solved and the publication of Humanistic Latin had become a significant part of the London book trade, since now a significant number of printers were prepared to do the work. One needs only leaf through a few pages of the Short Title Catalogue volumes to become impressed by the high percentage of books with Latin titles. Indeed, there were a few London printers (most notably John Wolfe and Thomas Vautrollier) who specialized in such work. (On the other hand, a remarkable amount of literature, particularly that written in Latin, still circulated in manuscript form precisely as it had prior to the invention of the printing press. The most striking case of this was Sir Philip Sidney, who during his lifetime did not countenance the printing of single a word of his literary output, evidently according to the theory that such would be beneath his dignity as a gentleman, and yet it is abundantly clear that during his lifetime works such as Astrophel and Stella had a wide readership.)
5. It would be foolhardy to cross swords with that formidable contemporary scholar Cyndia Susan Clegg, who in a series of revisionist studies has convincingly shown that governmental press censorship was neither as widespread nor as systematic as had been previously assumed. Nevertheless, it is as true as ever that commencing with Henry VIII’s defection from Rome state control of the book trade had in one respect remained absolute and inflexible: the requirement that the printing industry be restricted to London, where governmental supervision could most easily be exercised (after 1557 permission to print books was further limited to members of the Stationers’ Company, which henceforth enjoyed a monopoly). Nascent attempts to start up university presses had been quashed and so the situation remained for the following half century. It is perhaps not the case that this policy (which probably deserves to be called a form of preemptive censorship) was aimed exclusively at the two Universities. Things might have gone considerably worse, for example, had the nonconformist adherents of the Pilgrimage of Grace movement or George Kett and his followers managed to lay hands on a printing press and disseminate their rebellious messages, and the surest way of preventing anything of that kind from happening was to debar presses from the provinces. But surely its principal targets were the two Universities, for an obvious reason.
6. Universities have often been imagined, sometimes rightly and sometimes not, to harbor dissidents and malcontents, and in the reign of Elizabeth the real or supposed miscreants were inevitably motivated by religion. That Oxford did indeed shelter papists is perhaps most graphically illustrated by the mistreatment of the young William Camden at the hands of a Catholic cabal within All Souls College in 1570, which prevented him from receiving a fellowship and taking a degree, as described by his biographer Thomas Smith (in his 1691 Clarissimi Guilielmi Camdeni Vita §6):
Dum studiis literarum sedulo incubuerit, non minus verae religionis quam materno cum lacte imbiberat, quatenus regnantibus Edwardo et Elisabetha a Romanensium corruptelis repurgata fuerit, professione erat intentus, cuius tuendae zelo, quam prae se integra mente tulerit, sibi illorum invidiam, odium et obtrectationem conscivit, qui iuribus suis cessuri, nisi se legibus regni, quibus cautum est ut omnes academici reliquique e clero, interposito iuramento, ritibus sacris uterentur et articulis religionis ecclesiae Anglicanae reformatae subscriberent sub poena amotionis, conformes reddidissent intus in pectore pristinarum superstitionum amorem retinuere, quibus turpi dissimulatione abrenunciasse palam et aperto ore professi sunt. Nec mirum cuiquam videri debet eiusmodi Ardeliones in academia delitescere potuisse, qui consientiam laedere quam fortunis suis exui maluissent, seipsos fortasse sophisticis argutiis et strophis, ne penitus αὐτοκατάκριτοι fierent, excusaturi, cum idem a plurimis multo meliora edoctis, sanctiorisque religionis, quae aequivicationem, dissimulationem, aque iurisiurandi multoties repetiti vinculo dispensationem, caeteraque impia Iesuitarum dogmata rigide damnat, institutiones sectantibus, obstupescente universo orbe Christiano, sub rege Caroli I temporibus viderimus factitatum. Horumce versipellium fraude et invidia effectum erat ut cum in numerum sociorum collegii Omnium Animarum adscisci modeste ambiisset, hac sola de causa, eo quod strenuus doctrinae ecclesiae Anglicanae iuxta normam legum sancitae assertor fuit, iusta sua spe et expectatione exciderit Camdenus, utpote a pontificiorum factione nimium quantum invalescente, qui illius electioni totis viribus intercesserint, exclusus, ut ipse asserit, inque rei veritatem testem adhibet amplissimum virum equestris dignitatis D. Danielem Dunnum, iuris utriusque doctorem et illius splendidissimi collegii olim socium, quem ob prudentiam et solertiam in rebus civilibus administrandis suum in comitiis parlamentariis delegatum iterata vice constituerat academia Oxoniensis, qui illud norat et saepe saepius pro re nata testatus est.
[“While he was assiduously devoted to the study of letters, he was no less bent towards the profession of the true religion, which he imbibed together with is mother’s milk, insofar as it had been purged of the Papists’ corruptions in the reigns of Edward and Elizabeth, and by his zeal for its preservation, which he exhibited with an upstanding mind, he brought upon himself the unpopularity, mislike and disparagement of men who were bound by their oaths to demit their positions unless they were to observe the laws of the realm, by which it was provided that all academics and the rest of the clergy should, upon penalty of removal, take their oath to employ the sacred rites and subscribe to the Articles of Faith of the reformed Church of England, and who outwardly conformed but in their hearts retained an affection for the old superstitions which, by a shameful dissimulation, they had publicly and barefacedly abjured. It should strike no man as strange that Ardelios of that ilk could lurk in the University, of a sort who preferred to do harm to their consciences rather than be deprived of their fortunes, perhaps striving to excuse themselves by sophistic twists and turns, lest they become self-denouncers entire, since, to the amazement of the entire Christian world, in the times of King Charles I we saw the same being done by many men who had been taught far better things, and adhered to the institutions of a holier religion “which stiffly condemns equivocation, dissimulation, excuse from the bond of oath frequently sought, and the rest of the Jesuits’ impious teachings.” By the fraud and backbiting of these crafty gentlemen, when he modestly applied to be enlisted in the number of the Fellows of All Souls’ College, for the sole reason that he was a steadfast champion of the teaching of the lawful Church of England Camden was frustrated in this legitimate hope and ambition, being as those of the Papist party (no matter how it was weakening) interfered with might and main to debar him from election, as he himself asserted and produced for a witness that excellent knight Sir Daniel Dun, Doctor of both the laws and sometime Fellow of that most splendid College, whom for his prudence and skill in the handling of civil matters the University of Oxford twice elected Member of Parliament, who understood this business and very often gave his evidence as to the way things were.”]
7. Cambridge being what it was, Puritans appear to have been the prime mischiefmakers there. They were clamoring for reform with ever-increasing stridency, posing an open challenge to civil, ecclesiastical, and academic officialdom. The story has been told elsewhere NOTE 3 in considerable detail about the trouble caused at Cambridge by Puritans, ever ready to confront authority, even to capture it themselves when the occasion presented itself. In this effort they went so far as to ruin the career and spoil the life of Dr. John Caius, Master of Gonville and Caius College. NOTE 4 At the behest of certain Fellows within the college, Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, weighed in with a letter to Lord Burleigh accusing Caius’ successor Thomas Legge (best remembered as the author of the 1579 trilogy Richardus Tertius) of Catholicism and protecting a coreligionist, and recommended that he be forbidden to have any students (writing this letter required a certain amount of what our Jewish friends call chutzpah because Cambridge’s diocese of Ely lay well outside the archbishopric province of York). To a lesser degree Puritans created problems at Oxford too. No study of Oxford exists that matches Porter’s, but it is scarcely difficult to point to such flamboyant incidents as the one which flared up when the Puritan-leaning Dr. John Rainolds denounced academic dramatics and was publicly lampooned by the poet-playwright William Gager.
8. For reasons such as this, maintaining orthodoxy and allegiance within the Universities was a matter of governmental concern. This was perhaps best illustrated by an innovation introduced in the late 1570’s, one presumes at London’s behest. Starting at that time, University degrees were only to be granted to matriculated members of colleges, and henceforth the matriculation ceremony was to feature individual students’ subscription to a kind of loyalty oath to the Church of England. The halls which had previously lodged students promptly went out of business with the exception of a very few which contrived to morph themselves into new colleges (most notably, perhaps, at Oxford Broadgates Hall morphed into Pembroke College). This change was not introduced as a feature of any kind of educational reform. Rather, its single purpose patently was to prevent recusants and nonconformists from obtaining a university degree in England, and consequently to reduce their numbers and influence within the professions.
9. Understandably, the lack of a press at Oxford chafed on university men, for several reasons. First, it subjected them to the humiliating inconvenience of going down to London for all their dealings with printers. Indeed, trips to London cost money and not all Oxford scholars could afford the expense (as was pointed out in the petition submitted to the government, the contents of which are summarized by Peacy, p. 52). Second, academics were developing an increasing interest in Hebrew NOTE 5 and even an incipient curiosity about such more exotic languages as Syriac were beginning to manifest itself, and the need for printers able to handle such material was becoming obvious. Then too, as anyone with first-hand familiarity with Oxford or Cambridge can attest, an important function of a University press is to perform a constant series of jobbing tasks by turning out documents for internal institutional consumption (a function acknowledged by Peacy, p. 56). Oxford may have keenly felt the need for a local printing operation for this purpose. Hence in 1584 the University petitioned the current Chancellor, the Earl of Leicester, for permission to found one. Such was the parlous background against which this request had to be made. Clearly, the government needed to be handled with considerable delicacy, the task was to convince government that the University could operate a press without posing any threat to the established order.
10. Obviously, Leicester consented to speak in favor of the University’s petition within the Privy Council. But it seems highly likely that he extracted a heavy price for his support, since he must have consented to serve as the University’s spokesman within the Privy Council and otherwise lobby on its behalf. In a well-known study of Leicester’s patronage of literature, Eleanor Rosenberg has shown how he had a program of using literary patronage to foster writers who advanced his own anti-Catholic, aggressively anti-Spanish, and somewhat pro-Puritanical views. NOTE 6 This may well have been precisely the reason why he gave his consent to Oxford’s petition, since he saw how the existence of a press there could be used to further his own program and so made it a precondition for his agreement that a good deal of the press’s output would be, when all the varnish was stripped away, political and doctrinal propaganda. NOTE 7 That the transaction between Leicester and the University ran along lines such these seems all the more likely when one takes into account the historical background against which it occurred. By 1584 it was obvious that hostilities with Spain were impending, so that the need for wartime propaganda would soon become urgent ;and by the following year, when volumes began coming off the press, they had become a reality. It needs to be added that this agreement into which the University entered can scarcely be characterized as some kind of Devil’s bargain, since no great sacrifice of principle was involved. The great majority of contemporary Oxford men appear to have enthusiastically endorsed the political views of the government and the orthodoxy of the Church of England, itself highly politicized.
11. We have no idea of how these negotiations were conducted or to what precise conclusion they came. Indeed, there is no record that the University petition was formally granted. We only know that commencing in 1585 a press was started at Oxford and allowed to conduct operations unimpeded (in 1586 the Star Chamber issued a ruling that Oxford and Cambridge were the only two places outside of London where presses were to be allowed, and in the same year the London Stationers’ Company, considering this concession to be a an infringement of its monopoly on the printing industry, filed a lawsuit which was rejected by the Privy Council). All we are able to see are the results as these plans were put into operation, and the nature of the volumes this infant press issued during its first few years strongly tends to substantiate the speculations advanced in the preceding paragraph. But first, in order to bear fruit the pact drawn up between Leicester and the University required the recruitment of two key figures.
12. One, of course, was a man to operate the press while bearing the title “Printer to the University of Oxford” and enjoying the privilege of putting the University seal on his title pages. This, by the way, implied no University ownership of his press, let alone of the books it produced (the first copyright law was not introduced until 1710). This called for someone who was both a sound businessman and reasonably well-educated in order to handle the kind of material he would be printing and deal successfully both with his authors and also cater to the kind of customers who would be purchasing his books. NOTE 8 The choice fell on Joseph Barnes [1549/50 – 1618], an Oxford bookseller who also ran a wine shop, and Convocation voted him a loan of £100 to start operations (a handsome sum — at this time, the same amount would pay for a ship of war exclusive of guns and rigging — presumably needed to purchase new and larger premises as well as the finest font money could buy). As can be seen from I. Gadd’s Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article, little appear to be known of the man beyond the external and essentially unilluminating facts of his life. There appears to be only one document that offers us any possible insight into his personality. The first full-length book to come from his press was John Case’s 1585 Speculum moralium quaestionum, a commentary on Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, prefaced, among other things, by an epistle to the Earl of Leicester at least purportedly written by Barnes himself:
HONORATISSIMO SUO DOMINO ET PATRONO COMITI LEICESTRENSI &c.
IOSEPHUS BARNSIUS TYPOGRAPHUS OXONIENSIS
Admirabilem hanc artem typographicam (Mecaenas amplissime) primum Iohannes Faustus Moguntiae fauste genuit, eandem Gulielmus Caxtonus civis Londoniensis probe aluit et perpolivit. Laus summa debetur authori qui invenit, laus magna debetur mercatori qui primum ad nos transvexit. Nam ut per illum taedium scribendi antiquorum monumenta evasimus, ita per hunc multorum Anglorum arte nunc fruimur et gaudemus. Londinum diu in hac arte floruit, et non invideo. Cantabrigia eandem nunc didicit, Oxonium recepit, et certe gaudeo. Nam si characteres typographi sint vera insignia et arma Minervae, ubi terrarum potius floreret haec nobilis scientia quam ubi vera publice docetur sapientia? Ut enim a fonte in rivum dulcis aqua, ita hic quidem a mente in praelum dulcissima Musa fluet. Non nugae, non aniles fabulae, non Aristarchi dentata opera hic excuduntur: ea solum ex his praelis in lucem venient quae sapientum calculis approbentur et Sybillae foliis sint verioria. Hoc unum nunc restat (vir inclytissime) ut hunc librum opus alterius ingenii et pignus laboris mei tuo honori offeram. Magna a te renovata sunt beneficia, multa per te impetrata privilegia. Ingrats essem si tacerem, ignavus essem si non scriberem. Ut ergo Thomas Thomasius collega meus sui, ita ego Iosephus Barnesius tibi (vir summe) meo patrono dominoque gratulor. Nos ambo et publico pro multis, et privato nomine pro magnis in nos meritis vobis utriusque academiae patronis devincti sumus, gratias immortales uterque agimus, maiores in posterum pollicemur.
[“TO HIS RIGHT HONORABLE MASTER AND PATRON, THE EARL OF LEICESTER &c.
JOSEPH BARNES, PRINTER OF OXFORD”]
The wonderful art of printing (most generous Maecenas) was originally the happy invention of Johann Faust of Mainz, and the Londoner William Caxton did a fine job of nourishing and refining it. The highest praise is due to its inventor, great praise for the man who first introduced it to us. For just as thanks to the former we have escaped the tedium of copying out the remains of ancient writers, so thanks to the latter we enjoy and rejoice in the art of many an Englishman. London has long flourished in this art, and I do not begrudge it. Now Cambridge has learned the same, Oxford has received it, and assuredly I rejoice. For if slugs of print are truly the insignia and weapons of Minerva, where in the world should this noble science flourish more than where true wisdom is taught in public? For just as sweet water flows from a fountain into a stream, so the sweetest Muse will flow here from the mind to the press. Here no trifles, no old wives’ tales, no fanged works of Aristarchus NOTE 9 are printed here: only those things will come off these presses which are approved by the judgment of wise men and are truer than the Sibyl’s leaves. Now this alone remains, right renowned sir, that to your honor I dedicate this book, the work of another man's wit and the offspring of my labor. Great boons have been renewed by you, many privileges obtained. I should be an ingrate were I not to speak, I should be base were I not to write. So just as my colleague Thomas Thomas thanks his patron and master, NOTE 10 so, excellent sir, do I, Joseph Barnes, thank mine. We are both obliged to you, the patrons of both Universities, on a public score for many things and on a private one for your favors towards us. We both give you our undying thanks, and promise better in the future.”]
13. This address is written in decent Latin and studded with erudite references calculated to parade its author’s learning, and also goes to show its author had mastered the polished rhetoric of courtly flattery. If we could only convince ourselves that Barnes actually wrote this himself and that it was not written or at least translated and embellished by one of his academic supporters, it would raise the intriguing question of how the son of a Berkshire husbandman could have acquired this level of education. Save for a brief dedicatory epistle (written in English the 1586 The Praise of Musicke (probably the work of John Case) and an equally short vernacular address To the Reader at the front of the 1593 Speeches delivered to Her Maiestie this last progresse, at the Right Honorable the Lady Rvssels, at Bissam, the Right Honorable the Lord Chandos at Dudley, at the Right Honorable the Lord Norris at Ricorte edited by Barnes himself, it would appear that he himself did not supply any more prefatory material for the volumes he printed.
14. But Barnes could not make a success of his new printing venture unaided. A close collaborator was required, an academic who could serve as an intermediate between himself and the University and whose responsibility would be to recruit authors willing to provide him with copy and supply some himself. To be sure, Jason Peacy (pp. 53f.) wrote “It is true that the University appointed a supervisory committee, the Delegacy de libris imprimendis, in December 1584, consisting of fourteen eminent scholars, which was succeeded by another committee in January 1586” (one suspects that the original committee was wholly or at least in large part composed of the men responsible for the petition submitted to Leicester). But he hastened to add “However, there is no evidence that these bodies played any direct role in selecting manuscripts for publication or in overseeing the work undertaken by Barnes.” Rather, it would seem that, at least for the first few years of operations, they were content to assign the responsibility of finding copy for Barnes to print to a single individual (we shall see, however, that after 1588 the press took a new direction, at which time this system was perhaps abandoned and the Delegacy took up the reins itself). This called for somebody sufficiently well-connected within the academic community. It is worth speculating that this responsibility was given to William Gager [1555 - 1622], one of the most remarkable young men ever to pass through the University of Oxford. Some Continental universities maintained a University Laureate (i. e., a member authorized to speak on behalf of his entire university in Latin verse on important occasions, just as the English University Orators did and still do in Latin prose). Thus, for example, the German academic playwright Friedrich Hermann Flayder [1596 – 1644] held that title of University Laureate at Tübingen. I am unaware that any poet has ever officially enjoyed this title at Oxford or Cambridge, but, uniquely, Gager came remarkably close to performing this function in an unofficial capacity. Whenever a distinguished visitor came to Oxford, one or more of his plays served as the centerpiece of the entertainment offered for the guest’s benefit. When the time came for the University to publish an important memorial anthology of verse, Gager was the obvious chose to edit the volume. In a number of individual poems written in response to events of national significance he is more or less clearly expressing the sentiments of the entire University, not just his own. When the propriety of academic drama came under attack, it was Gager who responded on behalf of the University. In addition, the gratulatory poems he wrote to preface the books of other men, and those they wrote to preface his, show that he was a full-fledged member of a network of Oxford’s preeminent literary men of his time. Gager was still a relatively young man who had received his M. A. in 1580 but obviously had contrived to gain the trust and respect of men considerably his seniors and of the institution as a whole, and this required not only poetic excellence but a considerable helping of tact and sense of propriety. We have no idea how he managed to earn this trust, but earn it he clearly did.
15, It stands to reason that Barnes must have had a collaborator from within the University: no printer could operate an academic press without such support any more the good men and women who produce the volumes of a modern university press could go about their business without constant reliance on the advice and supervision of professional academics, and if the Delegacy did not do the job then it must have devolved on someone else. So why should we settle on Gager as the man in question? Three considerations point to him. First, during its first few years of operations Barnes’ output was conspicuously dominated by his works. Second, some other early contributors can be identified as his friends and associates. Before contributing a volume on the William Parry affair to the press, George Peele had collaborated with Gager and some unidentified second author – at a guess Richard Eedes, another Gager friend and the only other Christ Church playwright known to have been working at the time – in writing and producing the play Dido as entertainment for the visit of the Polish grandee Adalbert Łaski, Voivode of Siradia in Poland in 1583. Gager contributed gratulatory epigrams for volumes by the Oxford philosopher John Case, and Case for his, and the facts that his 1592 barbed afterpiece Momus aimed at John Rainolds, that outspoken opponent of academic drama, largely consisted of points already made by Case in his 1588 Sphaera Civitatis and the fact that Case wrote gratulatory verse for both of Gager’s 1592 play volumes (at least in part intended to put his side of the Rainolds controversy on the public record) can be regarded as endorsements for Gager’s position reinforces this impression.
16. In the course of his monumental 1990 Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England J. W. Binns shrewdly offered the observation that such liminary epigrams are often useful for determining a writer’s friendships and mapping the existence of literary circles, and by examining Oxford publications from the 1580’s and early 1590’s (prior to Gager’s departure from the University at the end of 1592) it is easy to identify the membership of the one that existed there during this period. It included such individuals as the philosopher John Case, the legalist Alberico Gentili, the poet-playwrights Richard Eedes, Matthew Gwinne and and Richard Latewar (Gager called on all of these for contributions to the Sidney anthology, with the exception of Gentili, who had made a deathbed promise to his father never to write any Latin poetry since – unlike his brother Scipio – he was conspicuously bad at it). It is not difficult to imagine members of this circle foregathering at the local tavern The Bear (presided over by Matthew Harrison, who figures prominently in Richard Eedes’ 1583 satiric travelogue Iter Boreale), just as London literati congregated at The Mitre and The Mermaid. One admittedly has difficulty imagining Lawrence Humphrey belonging to this circle inasmuch as he was a considerably older man and occupied the lofty positions of President of Magdalen College and Regius Professor of Divinity, but again his early contribution to the press and his gratulatory epigrams at the front of two of Gager’s 1592 drama volumes suggests that he was an early supporter of this new enterprise, and he later took Gager’s side in the Rainolds controversy. All in all, Gager appears to have been ideally situated to perform the role of middleman.
17. In the third place, there is a tantalizing passage from his dedicatory epistle to the Sidney anthology, addressed to Chancellor Leicester (as it begins he is in the midst of apologizing for the volume’s late appearance, whereas its Cambridge counterpart had been published at London on the very day of Sidney’s funeral):Cum itaque alii alios muti maestique intueremur, tandem ornatissimus atque optimus vir dominus Iamesius NOTE 11 excellentiae tuae capellanus observantissimus, istius se officii ducem authoremque profitebatur. Cuius quidem consilium tametsi summo omnium assensu excipiebatur, quia tamen et multum iam temporis effluxerat, et nihil hoc in genere pro rei dignitate a nobis praestari posse iudicabanus, et iustam potius de praecellentissimi iuvenis vita ac morte historiam NOTE 12 quotidie expectabamus, res tota differebatur. Sed cum nemo eorum qui optime possent argumentum suppeditaret, et Fabius ille noster in sententia perstaret, nosque admonere non desisteret, tandem quasi cunctando restituit rem me vero rogavit, vel potius rogando coegit, ut faecialem quasi operam academiae nostrae praestarem, istisque fortissimi nepotis tui exequiis rite peragendis disponendisque praeessem, tuaeque excellentiae ante oculos funerea solennitate deducerem. Quod quidem munus ut in me susciperem, cum spectatissimi viri authoritas, academiaeque charitas, tum imprimis defuncti herois desiderium, publicumque erga te officium, utriusque in me promerita, impulerunt. Nam et pro mediocri, NOTE 15 quae mihi cum illo fuit, gratia, et non solum pro veteri illa summaque benevolentia, qua duos avunculos meos Cordelos NOTE 16 excellentia tua semper complexa est, sed etiam pro singulari illo tuo in me beneficio, quo adhuc collegii nostri alumnus sum, non incommode eam mihi occasionem oblatam esse putavi, in qua utrique, si non referre gratiam, saltem aliquam videar velle retulisse.
[“And so, as we were staring at each other in mute sorrow, at length that most accomplished and fine man, your chaplain Master James, NOTE 11 offered himself as a leader and chief mover in doing this duty. And although his plan was received with the greatest approbation by common consent, both because of the considerable time that had now passed and because we thought ourselves incapable of producing anything of the kind suitable for the dignity of the occasion, and were daily expecting an account of this most excellent man’s life and death NOTE 12 to appear, the project was postponed entirely. But since none of those who could best do so produced any account, and our Fabius NOTE 13 remained fixed of purpose, not ceasing to admonish us, finally, as it were, “by delaying he retrieved the situation.” And indeed he asked me, or rather compelled me by his urgings, that I supervise this, so speak, ambassadorial effort NOTE 14 of the University, that I take in hand the management of these memorial observances for your most brave nephew and bring them to completion, and that with lugubrious solemnity I bring them before your eyes. I was persuaded to undertake this task, in the first place, by the influence of that most worthy gentleman, and by my affection for the University, and also most particularly by my regret for the dead hero, by my duty towards you as a member of the academic community, and by the favors you have both shown for me. For I thought that an occasion, scarcely inopportune, had been offered me for seeming, if not exactly to repay, at least to repay in part the both of you for the modest NOTE 15 favor he had shown me, and not only for the long-standing and lavish benevolence with which your Excellency has always treated my two uncles, the Cordells, NOTE 16 but also for your notable kindness to me, thanks to which I am to this day a son of our College.
18. These concluding remarks seem surprisingly personal in the context of a public letter and what exactly Gager is saying is far from clear. It would appear that he may be hinting at some special relationship between himself and Leicester. Could this be based on the fact that Gager’s service as an intermediary between Barnes and the University and commitment to supply the press with plenty of politicized copy had been stipulated as a feature of the bargain struck when the Earl had consented to act as the University’s advocate at London on behalf of its authorization?
19. Be this as it may, Gager was obviously ideally situated to collaborate with Barnes on launching the new press as a viable enterprise. At its very outset, this two-man team was confronted by an urgent problem. The press could not settle down and begin to function as an outlet for normal academic publications until it had managed to gain the confidence of the London authorities. The volumes it issued during its first years of operation, therefore, had to be selected with an eye towards achieving this end rather than out of the usual considerations of academic interest and merit.
20. It is impossible to understand the early years of Barnes’ press without seeing how they played out against the background of events of national significance. 1585, the first year of his operations, was also the year in which England sent an expeditionary force to the Lowlands in support of the Protestant Dutch Republic’s revolt against the Catholic regime of Philip II, thus plunging it into the Spanish War. Mention has already been made of the governmental “white paper” issued in that year, entitled A True and Plaine Declaration of the Horrible Treasons Practiced by William Parry (as close as in those days was possible to being an official state publication and which distinctly anticipated the similar account giving the governmental version of the arrest and trial of the Gunpowder Plotters, the 1606 A True and Perfect Relation of the Proceedings at the several Arraignments of the Late Most Barbarous Traitors, regarding both its contents and in its instrumentality in shaping the contents of subsequent literary treatments of the subject) and how the fictitious narrative of that document, which represented the would-be assassin Dr. William Parry M. P. as an agent of Rome rather than the troubled malcontent he actually was, was adopted by several Oxford authors. At least one similar volume was published at London as a 1585 official Church of England document, An order of praier and thankes-giuing, for the preseruation of the Queenes Maiesties life and salfetie [sic]: to be vsed of the preachers and ministers of the dioces of Winchester. With a short extract of William Parries voluntarie confession, vvritten by G. C. Barnes’ Oxford volumes were obviously aimed at England’s educated elite, the Latin-reading professionals upon whom the Tudor regime with its central government and its state church were obliged to depend for maintaining their good order. Such professionals were, if not the social class that ran things, at least the class that kept them running, and Latin-English bilingualism was the distinctive mark of their class. Shaping its thoughts and feelings was therefore a matter of great importance, and Latin poetry was the appropriate vehicle for delivering the desired messages to its membership. Decreeing that this narrative be preached from the pulpit was a means of spreading it further down the social scale, and even the proverbial “man on the street” was exposed to it thanks to such contemporary single-sheet broadsides as Popish Plots and Treasons: Thankful Remembrance of Gods’ Mercie by G. C. and The Last words of William Parry a lawyer, who suffered for endeavouring to depose the Queen’s Highness and bring in Q. Mary and her young son James. One way or another, everybody was covered.
21. To someone aware of Tudor propagandistic use of literature, this multi-pronged technique for shaping popular opinion has a familiar ring. It distinctly recalls the public entertainment provided in connection with the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533. Her marriage to Henry was highly unpopular with the people of London, and the object of the exercise was to win them over. At various stations along her progress to the Abbey elegant Latin poetry by John Leland was posted for the benefit of the educated, vernacular doggerel by Nicholas Udall for those who were less so, and visual displays of tableaux and pageantry designed by Hans Holbein the Younger for consumption even by the illiterate. Thus the entire population was addressed, each segment in its own way.
22. To Barnes and Gager the outbreak of war just as they were launching their enterprise must have seemed heaven-sent, for it afforded them the opportunity of showing how their press could serve the national interest by participating in this effort and implementing Leicester’s program for politicizing literature all the more aggressively.
23. And in the following years they gave him plenty more of the same. Let us consider in more detail the volumes issued by Barnes for the remainder of that crucial first decade. For the bulk of them can be classified as examples of pro-government propaganda, often (as was only to be expected in wartime) with a pronounced anti-Catholic bias.
25. This is probably a fair assessment of Case’s motivation, but it is painted with too broad a brush to supply any especial illumination as to his specific intentions. It is notorious that the Ethics are very plastic, and that generations of commentators have found in them elements congenial to their own outlooks and those of their times. NOTE 17 In the case of the Speculum, taken together with its sequel, Case’s commentary on the Politics, the Sphaera Civitatis, the interpretational bias is specifically Anglican. In this context, it needs to be realized that, for all their differences, the ultimate goal of the Anglicans and Puritans alike was exactly the same: the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth. NOTE 18 The Anglican formula for achieving this, however, was radically different, being based on the existence of a highly articulated and stoutly maintained hierarchical social order: the sovereign was God’s vicar on earth, and below the sovereign came the sovereign’s lieutenants in their various ranks (whom Case lumped together under the general heading “magistrates”), and the father within the context of the individual family. NOTE 19 Nowhere during Elizabeth’s reign, perhaps, was this vision spelled out clearly than in a volume of Certayne sermons or homilies issued by the government in 1560 (it was actually a reprint of one issued under Edward VI, and Bishop John Jewel was responsible for most of the second series of sermons it contained), with instructions that these were “to be declared and read by all parsones, vicars and curates, every Sonday and holy daye in theyr Churches, and by her Graces advyse perused and oversene, for the better understandying of the simple people,” printed cum privilegio and having the virtual status of a state document. The homily in question is entitled An exhortation concerning good order and obedience, to rulers and magistrates. It is too long for full quotation here, but the beginning serves to give the flavor of the thing:Almightye God hath created and appoynted all thinges, in heaven, earth and waters, in a mooste excellente and perfecte order. In heaven, he hath appoynted distincte or severall orders and states of Archaungelies and Aungelles. In earth he hath assigned and appoynted kynges, prynces, with other governoures under them, all in good and necessarye order. The water above is kepte and raygneth downe in due time and season. The sunne, moone, sterres, raynebowe, thundre, lightnyinge, cloudes, and all byrdes of the ayre, do kepe theyr order. The earth, trees, sedes, plantes, herbes, corne, grasse, and all maner of beastes, kepe themselves in theyr order. All the partes of the whole yeare, as winter sommer, monethes, nyghtes and dayes, contynue in theyr ordre. All kyndes of fyshes in the sea, ryvers, and waters, with all fountaynes, sprynges, yea, the seas themselves, keepe thyr comelye course and order. And manne hym selfe also hath all his partes, both within and wythoute, as soule, hearte, mynde, memorye, understandyinge, reason, speache, with all and synguler corporall members of his bodye, in a profitable, necessarye, and pleasaunte order. Everye degre of people in theyr vocation, callying, and office hath appointed to them theyr duety and ordre. Some are in highe degree, some in lowe, some kynges and prynces, some inferiors and subiectes, priestes, and laye menne, maysters and servauntes, fathers and chyldren, husbandes and wives, riche and poore, and every one have nede of other: so that in all thynges is to be lauded and praysed the goodly order of God, wythoute the whiche, no house, no citie, no common wealth can continue and indure or laste. For where there is no ryght ordre, there reigneth all abuse, carnal libertie, enormitie, synne and Babilonical confsyion. Take away kinges, princes, rulers, magistrates, iudges, and such estates of Gods order, no man shall ryde or go by the hygh way unrobbed, no man shall slepe in his owne house or bed unkylled, no man shal kepe his wyfe, children and possessions in quietnes: all thinges shalbe common, and there must nedes folowe all myschief and utter destruction both of soules, bodies, goodes and common wealthes.
27. The gratulatory epigrams that preface the volume make it abundantly clear that its appearance was regarded as an Occasion: epigrams are contributed by the Vice Chancellor of the University, eight heads of colleges, two professors, and two former proctors, as well as canons, prebends, and other ecclesiastical dignitaries (some of these men are counted twice here, since they held multiple titles). Surely the selection of the first book and its author was a matter of no little sensitivity: the pronounced Anglican bias of the book and its author, as well of course as its morally edifying nature, learning and general high quality, made it an eminently suitable choice. At the same time, the warmth with which it endorsed in all this front-of-the-book material collectively serves to deliver the desired message that the values espoused by Case enjoy the enthusiastic support of the University
28. This first of all volumes displays an aggressively large version of the University seal on its title page, as do many subsequent ones. A very few feature a more modest version of the same seal, and a third kind carry no seal at all, and in those the seal is replaced by a decorative graphic element bearing no emblematic significance. Did Barnes adhere to some system in deciding when to use the large seal? A few examples might suggest that he did. In 1586 he issued two anthologies of memorial poetry mourning Sidney’s recent death. One was compiled exclusively by inmates of New College, and the other a quasi-official collection at least purporting to represent the sentiments of the entire University. The University volume has the seal on its title page, the New College one does not, and one might be tempted to think this was Barnes’ way of distinguishing official offerings from private ones. But a somewhat later memorial to issue from Barnes’ press was the 1596 Funebria nobilissimi ac praestantissimi equitis, D. Henrici Untoni, ad Gallos bis legati regij, ibique nuper fato functi, charissimae memoriae ac desiderio edited by Robert Wright and compiled to mourn the recent death of a distinguished diplomat and alumnus of Oriel College. In this one, the title expressly states it speaks on behalf of the entire University, and yet its title page lacks the seal. Or again, to take another example, Barnes issued several legal treatises by Alberico Gentili, the Regius Professor Law, and one might easily conclude that anything written by a Regius Professor enjoyed some kind of official status. But, although most of Gentili’s books are indeed prefaced by the seal, at least one (his 1593 Ad tit. C. de maleficis et math. et ceter. similibus) is not. It might therefore seem dangerous to conclude that the printer’s use or non-use of the seal serves as any reliable index of the status or purpose of any given volume. Such was the conclusion of Jason Peacy (p. 53) and one can only agree. On the other hand, we may be free to wonder whether this principle does hold good for the books put out during these first crucial years. For the with the single exception of George Peele’s Pareus, all the volumes issued in this time-frame do indeed bear the large seal, perhaps employed to impart a certain extra air of officialdom and were meant to convey the idea that the University collectively endorsed their contents. Indeed, this may be the reason which inspired Barnes to adopt such a flamboyant version of the seal. And the seal may have been applied to Gager’s 1592 play volumes with a certain relish, since they were largely issued to defend the Oxford’s honor against John Rainold’s attack on academic dramatics, a conspicuous feature of school and university culture at the time both in England and on the Continent. Again, the implied message might well seem to be one of official University endorsement.29. There immediately followed a spate of explicitly political poetry volumes spanning the years 1585 -1587 and constituting the bulk of Barnes’ output for 1586, inspired by a pair of intended attempts on the life of Elizabeth. In February of 1585 the Welshman Dr. William Parry M. P., son of Harry ap David of Northop, Flintshire, was put on trial for planning to kill the Queen while she was riding in a park and, probably in hopes of receiving a royal pardon, pled guilty. Although he subsequently recanted his confession, he was executed on March 2. The true facts of the case are far from clear. In the course of his checkered career Parry had variously acted as a government spy in Italy, collaborated and engaged in secret correspondence with papal agents (notably the Italian Cardinal Como, the Vatican Secretary of State), and denounced a plot to kill Elizabeth, launch a Scottish invasion, and place Mary Queen of Scots on the English throne. A wastrel who had squandered his fortune, Parry was an intellectually gifted but weak and vacillating personality, and the suspicion lingers that he was mentally unbalanced. In the context of international tension and impending war, the Parry episode created a sensation, albeit a manufactured one. It was employed to feed a public hysteria created by the eruption of the new war, supercharged feelings carefully shaped and nurtured by the government, which issued a kind of “white paper” on the subject of Parry’s crime, arrest and trial, as already noted, which portrayed Parry as an agent of Rome. This led to three short and rather pamphlet-like products of Barnes’ printery, all poetry volumes: William Gager’s Gager’s In Guil. Parry proditorem odae et epigrammata, George Peele’s Pareus, the Anglia Querens evidently written by Henry Dennys, and also Lawrence Humphrey’s Guilielmus Parreus proditor, sive contra giganteam proditionem...novum et verum prognosticon.
anthologiies
30. Gager thundered against Parry in highly pitched odes imitative of Horace’s Roman ones. Peele went considerably farther by concocting a highly effective verse narrative that took its cue from Book IV of Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, no doubt as he had read it in Scipio Gentili’s Latin translation printed at London in 1584. Peele invented a highly effective narrative formula, appropriated by a number of subsequent writers. The source of this formula can be located in the infernal council at the beginning of Canto Four. There, doubtless with Dante in mind, Tasso was responsible for creating a hybrid Pluto-Satan, described in Edward Fairfax’ 1600 translation as The ancient foe to man and mortal seed. This Pluto, an inveterate enemy of Christianity, is distraught by the French presence in Palestine and convokes a council of his followers. But he himself hatches no scheme for their ruination: he only intervenes when he is summoned by the Syrian wizard Hidroart, who seeks his counsel. Peele modified Tasso’s dramatic situation to suit local English requirements, by converting Pluto into an enemy of Protestantism. The tale he tells invites a kind of Manichean world-view, with a sharp division of the forces of Catholic darkness and Protestant light locked in a perpetual struggle. At the same time, he attributes to Satan a fertility of invention and a dynamism absent from his Italian model: this new Satan-Pluto devises his own scheme for England’s subjugation and, through the agency of his lieutenant Deception, actively recruits human agents to execute his plan. The ploy of having Pluto or one of his henchmen appear to someone in a dream has no basis in Tasso. Its inspiration comes from quite a different source. In Book VII of the Aeneid, Aeneas’ great enemy Juno commands the Fury Allecto to fly to Italy and fill the hearts of Turnus and his mother Amata with hatred of the Trojans, and Allecto appears to the sleeping Turnus to rouse him to action: hence the war between the Trojan immigrants and the native forces of Italy. Peele adapted this narrative move to the present situation. In so doing, he introduced into English literature a new kind of Satan who would eventually come to full flower in Milton’s Paradise Lost: an intellectual schemer, shrewdly manipulative with his use of rhetoric, a kind of Machiavelli writ large.
32. 1586 witnessed more of the same. This time the target of Gager’s equally fulminating Horatian odes was no longer the single would-be assassin William Parry, but rather the far more serious threat posed by Anthony Babington and the other English Catholics who sought to eliminate Elizabeth, free Mary Queen of , and set her on the throne. This produced another pamphlet-sized volume, In Catilinarias proditiones ac proditores domesticos odae 6. As measured by book sales, this collection appears to have been the most successful thing ever to come from Gager’s pen (and possibly from Barnes’ press), since it enjoyed two reprintings. The first of these carries the notice that it can be purchased Sub signo capitis Tygurini (something like “At the Sign of the Head of the Man from Zurich” or maybe “At the Switzer’s Head”) in St. Paul’s Cemetery, London, and the second added three new odes and was issued with the revised title In Catilinarias proditiones ac proditores domesticos odae 9, and “H. D.” published his poetry volume entitled Anglia querens also dealing with William Parry. Other than that, this year only produced three other volumes, Thomas Brasbridge’s study of Cicero’s De Officiis and, for some unfathomable reason, two volumes of poetry (one on a religious theme) by the long-dead John Shepreve.
33. In 1587 Barnes put out an anonymous treatise entitled De legato et absoluto principe perduellionis reo presenting a case constructed by some Oxford civilian justifying the legality of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. That year his far more important publications were the result of an historical accident, Sir Philip Sidney’s death from the result of an injury suffered during the Battle of Zutphen in in the previous year. Although Sidney was not an Oxford graduate – he was a Christ Church student beginning in 1568 but in 1571 his parents took him out of the University and sent him abroad to rescue him from a visitation of the plague currently assaulting the University so badly that it was temporarily obliged to close its doors – he kept up his ties with the University, where he enjoyed a degree of prestige, admiration and imitation amounting almost to veneration. His premature death therefore elicited genuine feelings of shock and sorrow, which moved the inmates of New College to produce, seemingly quite spontaneously, a collection of Latin poetry in his honor published by Barnes under the title Peplus illustrissimi viri D. Philippi Sidnaei supremis honoribus dicatus. The appearance of this volume in turn inspired both Universities to issue official such anthologies, the Cambridge one edited by Alexander Neville, a recent graduate in the process of making name for himself as a literary figure, Academiae Cantabrigiensis lachrymae tumulo...P. Sidneii sacratae and its Oxford counterpart, Exequiae illustrissimi equitis, D. Philippi Sidnaei, gratissimae memoriae ac nomini impensae, edited by Gager (to whose embarrassment the Cambridge one had appeared first, and in an introductory preface he was obliged to excuse the delay). Although the Oxford anthology purports to be issued on behalf of all Oxford, it is striking that virtually all its contributors were members of two colleges, St John’s and Gager’s own Christ Church, at that time the University’s two centers of literary and also dramatic activity.
34. These two anthologies performed a palpable national service. Nations at war often find it expedient to create official national heroes, and Sidney was quickly established as the preeminent one for the Spanish War. His death and ensuing idealized portrayal as a national paladin created something of a national poetry-writing contest in which a wide variety of literary men combined to create a veritable mountain of memorial verse. The degree to which the collectively idealized portrait which emerged bore any distinct resemblance to the real Sidney need not concern us here. Suffice it to say that these two anthologies appear to have borne considerable responsibility for setting the tone for the entire exercise, and in the process provided both Universities with a highly useful vehicle for proclaiming their own institutional loyalty.
The year 1588 saw the appearance of four new books, two by John Case. One, his Sphaera Civitatis (a commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, It repeats even more explicit terms the message of his earlier commentary on the Ethics, placing a decidedly Tudor spin on its subject-matter. Indeed, there are points where it makes the Politics seem a work written by an Anglican bishop rather than a Greek philosopher.
35. Sphaera Civitatis especially merits being identified as a political treatise for two reasons. In the first place, in it Case has a habit of discussing points made by Aristotle as if he were really thinking of contemporary issues. When, for example, he discusses the possibility that some human beings are servile by nature, one cannot quite shake off the impression that he may actually have in mind the situation of the present-day Irish. NOTE 22 In the dedicatory epistle (addressed to Sir Christopher Hatton, Oxford’s then-Chancellor) he wrote:Ipsum authorem, nomen philosophi, auctoris hoc opus lumen patriae et miraculum sapientiae in hac aetate dominus Thesaurarius mihi commendavit: doctus author, doctus opus, sapiens iudex utriusque. Quid multis?
[“The Lord Treasurer commended the author, the Philosopher’s name, and this work of that author as a light for our nation and a miracle of wisdom in this age: a learned author, a learned work, a wise judge of them both. Why say more?”]
Likewise, in an introductory address To the Reader prefacing his 1615 Annales rerum gestarum Angliae et Hiberniae regnante Elizabetha, William Camden recalled:
Ante annos octodecim, Guilielmus Cecilius baro Burghleius, summus Angliae thesaurius, mihi ne cogitanti quidem, primum sua, deinde regia tabularia aperuit, atque inde primordia regni Elizabethae filo historico contexere iussit. Nescio quo consilio, nisi dum ille prosperae reginae famae consuleret, ut industriae etiam meae hoc in genere praeludium videret.
[“Above eighteene yeeres since William Cecyll, Baron of Burghley, Lord high Treasurer of England (when full little I thought of it), set open unto me first his owne, and then the Queenes Roles, Memorials, Records and thereout willed me to compile in an Historicall stile the first beginnings of the Raigne of Queene Elizabeth, with what intent I know not unlesse while he had a desire to eternize the memory of that renowned Queene, he would first see an introduction thereinto, by my paines of this kind.” [ tr. Philemon Holland]
36. It is tempting to assume that Burleigh made these suggestions as part of a coordinated effort, at a time when it was reasonable to assume that Elizabeth’s life was near it end, and that his aim was to see her reign monumentalized in a pair of volumes, the one recording the res gestae of the English people under her rule and the other to set forth the political ideals whereby she had governed.
37. Be this as it may, the essence of Sphaera Civitatis has already been indicated: it delivers at a higher pitch the same message as Case’s 1585 Speculum. He imposes on Aristotle his own vision of an ideal society is one in which the various classes of society are bound together by ties of upward-devoted loyalty and obedience to a wise, benevolent sovereign. The whole thing is summarized at the very beginning of the book with this remarkable image:
38. Here we have a diagram representing what a modern reader will no doubt regard as a strange version (or rather perversion) of the traditional Greek geocentric vision of the universe, with the earth at the center, the moon and planets each set on its appropriate one of a set of nested spheres, and the fixed stars providing the outermost shell enclosing the moveable spheres below. Only standing outside the whole thing, constantly supplying the energy that makes it go round in its steady courses, in place of the expected primum mobile we find Elizabeth. In addition to its traditional astronomical symbol each of the moveable spheres is assigned a label specifying one of her virtues: ubertas rerum (which seems to refer to her bountifulness and at the same time indicates the economic prosperity England is enjoying under her rule), Eloquence, Mercy, Religion, Fortitude, Prudence, and Majesty. The outermost sphere lists the principal stars of her government’s firmament, i. e. the principal instruments of her government: the Star Chamber, proceres and heroes (evidently the higher and lower degrees of nobility), and Privy Council. She herself rises out of an outermost ring giving her official title ELISABETHA DEI GRATIA ANGLIAE, FRANCIAE ET HIBERANIAE REGINA FIDEI DEFENSATRIX “ELIZABTHA, QUEEN BY GRACE OF GOD OF ENGLAND, IRELAND AND FRANCE, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH”].
39. For the benefit of the reader too obtuse to decipher the meaning of this diagram, in a special poem immediately following Richard Latewar explains it:Quam bene coelesti civilis machina formae
Congruat, et quam sit paribus distincta figuris,œ
Unica pro multis respublica nostra loquetur.œ
Aspicis alterno circumgyrantia cursu
Sidera, et aequali causas quae pondere librat
IUSTITIAM, nostri centrum invariabile mundi?
Aspicis emensos septem spatia ampla planetas,
Quorum quisque suo studiose praesidet orbi?
UBERTAS RERUM luna, et FACUNDIA regni
Mercurius, Venus esse potest CLEMENTIA regis.
Par soli PIETAS mediis diffunditur astris.
VIS ANIMI iustis Mavortem spirat in armis.
Nata Iovem simulat PRUDENTIA provida patrem,
Saturnumque gravi MAIESTAS plena timore.
Hae sunt quae nostras collustrant lampades oras
Praecipuae, verum his octavum apponere sphaeram
Luminibus fixis, claris, variisque micantem
Iam libet, utque olim stellatum dicere coelum.
Coelum stellatum CAMERA est STELLATA Britannis,
Consiliis munita piis, procerumque frequenti
Nobilium stipata manu, qui munia regni
Ardua procurant, et magna negotia versant.
Omnibus impendet globus is, qui MOBILE PRIMUM
Nomen, et amplexu nexus qui continet omnes.
Tu, VIRGO, REGINA potens, tu MOBILE PRIMUM,
ELISABETHA, rapis tecum molimina gentis.
Inde reluctantes animos mentesque rebelles
Debilitas, motuque trahis suprema DIURNO.
Hic ordo, sic conspirat status ORBIS ET URBIS.
Haec tamen hoc tantum discrimine distat ab illo, 30
Quod non perpetuo firmari possit ut ille,
Ergo diu SPHAERAE SUMMA MOTRICE ferantur,
Ergo diu SPHAERAS ET MOTRIX SUMMA gubernet.[“How well civic machinery accords with heaven’s form, and how it is distinguished by like figures, our republic, unique, will declare on behalf of many. Do you see the stars, wheeling around in their alternating course, and Justice, who weighs causes in her balanced pans, the unchangeable center of our universe?
“Do you see the seven planets measuring their huge tracts, the each of which diligently presides over its sphere? The moon is Prosperity, and Mercury the realm’s Eloquence, and Venus can be the royal Mercy. Piety, the sun’s equal, is diffused through the midst of the stars. In just armor, Strength of Mind breathes the spirit of Mars. Foresightful Prudence imitates her father Jove, and Majesty, filled with grave awe, copies Saturn.
“These are the chief lanterns that illuminate our shores, but now I want to add to these an eighth sphere, glittering with fixed, bright, varied lights. For us Britons the Star Chamber is a starry heaven, defended by pious counsels, protected by a bevy of noble Peers, who manage the arduous offices of the realm and set great affairs revolving.
“That sphere overhangs all of them which is called the Prime Mover, and contains them all in its embrace. You, virgin, puissant Queen, you are our Prime Mover, Elizabeth, you sweep along with yourself the strivings of our people. Hence you disarm contentious minds and rebellious thoughts, and attract the greatest things with your diurnal motion.
“This is the scheme: thus the conditions of sphere and commonwealth harmonize. But in this single way the one differs from the other, that the one cannot be confirmed forever, as is the other. So long may our spheres be borne by our supreme Mover, long let our supreme Mover govern our spheres."]40. This vision of an orderly and well-regulated society obviously has nothing in the world to do with Aristotle’s thinking about the qualities of a healthy politeia, and a modern reader might jump to the conclusion that Case is guilty of hijacking the Politics to impose the radically different thinking of an Anglican royalist, an act of rather brutal violence against the ancient philosopher. This may be a little unfair, witness Thomas Watson’s Latin translation of Sophocles’ Antigone printed at London in 1581. In his day it was not considered an act of disrespect and desecration for someone to contribute extra material for an item of the classical dramatic repertoire, as is shown by the extra scenes added to a couple of plays in the 1581 volume Seneca his tenne tragedies, translated into Englysh edited by Alexander Neville and the additional ones supplied by Gager for an Oxford performance of Seneca’s Phaedra. Watson appended to his version of Antigone a set of Pomps (i. e. masques) and Themes to be performed at its end. In a modern undergraduate classroom one hears interminable debates among the students about the rights and wrongs involved in the clash between Antigone and Cleon, but there is one view that is never voiced: that Creon is wholly in the right and Antigone entirely in the wrong, but this is precisely the conclusion to which Watson steers his audience. But in the context of a society which believed in the absolute and God-given right of monarchy this must have seemed a natural and quite satisfactory reading of the play and in all probability one would be guilty of anachronistic thinking in accusing Watson of deliberately twisting Sophocles. In the same way, Case’s reading of Aristotle undoubtedly seemed natural and quite acceptable to the large majority of his readers, who shared his contemporary set of values when he sought to set forth on paper the political ideals of the age.
41. At first sight Case’s second 1588 contribution, Apologia musices tam vocalis quam instrumentalis et mixtae, might seem quite apolitical, but such is scarcely the true case. The purpose of this little treatise was to defend the contrapuntal polyphonic music favored by the Church of England against Puritans who despised Anglican church music just as much as they hated Anglican ritual, and for the same reason: that in their eyes it was nothing more than papist frippery in urgent need of abolition. Hence any attack on the state religion was perforce an attack against the state itself, and in defending the one Case was simultaneously defending the other.
1585 - 5
1586 - 6
1587 - 5
1588 - 4
1589 - 0
1590 - 4
1591- 1
1592 - 11
1592 - 6
1594 - 3
1595 - 3
Most conspicuously, in 1589 he published nothing at all. What at first sight seems to be a strange and puzzling hiatus is rendered explicable with reference to two events that occurred in 1588: the defeat of the Armada and the death of the Earl of Leicester. The failure of the Armada established that, even if England had not yet exactly won the war, it was not going to lose it, which probably led to an abatement of the sense of urgency which had previously permeated Barnes’ political publications. The death of Leicester meant that the press was now freed from any further obligation to advance the program for employing literature to promote his own political and doctrinal views. Now whatever bargain had been made back in 1584 was no longer binding. In this context, it may not be coincidental that after the press resumed publication in 1590 there is no reason for thinking that Gager had any further hand in its management. Then too, with the passage of time it is likely that the press had successfully completed what probably amounted to an initial probationary period. The authorities now were convinced that the press at Oxford could be trusted to conduct its operations risk-free. There was no need to continue proving the same point over and over: Barnes was now at liberty to conduct business as he saw fit, and whatever supervision he required could safely be entrusted to a Delegacy of the University’s choice.
43. It would therefore appear that the press temporarily suspended its publication program to facilitate a period of reappraisal and perhaps also of internal reorganization. For when this year of inactivity had passed and he resumed putting out books in 1590, Barnes’ publications took an entirely new and radically different direction. His heavy reliance on volumes with markedly politicized contents ceases and henceforth his productions are on a considerably more diversified range of subjects and much more the kind of fare one would normally expect from an academic press. Indeed, had the press continued in the way it had started, England’s victory over the Armada and Leicester’s death would have provided first-rate opportunities for turning out more anthologies of politicized poetry, and the fact that Barnes did not take advantage of them is eloquent evidence for changed conditions. This particular silence continued, punctuated only by another Oxford poetry anthology marking the Queen’s death 1603. A government-sponsored tide of indignant revulsion produced by the Gunpowder Plot yielded a copious response from literary men throughout the nation, Cambridge’s John Milton included, but the literary response at Oxford was limited to the single volume Nonae Novembris aeternitati consecratae in memoriam admirandae ilius liberationis principis et populi Anglicani a proditione sulphurea evidently by Thomas Cooper, issued by Barnes in 1627.
44. In its proper place NOTE 23 I have recounted the details of the debate between John Rainold’s attack on academic drama and Gager’s defense, which evolved into a pamphleteering war that went on for years thereafter, and so shall make short work of it here. Rainolds’ attack was a typical Puritan one alleging the immorality of any form of theatrical activity and urging its discontinuation in the Universities. This of course was an assault not only on a prominent feature of contemporary academic life, but also on prevalent pedagogical theory of the time. NOTE 24 This consisted of two parts: first, that participation in performances was improving for student actors because it developed skills which would subsequently prove useful when they would be functioning as rhetoricians and helped build self-confidence, and more generally (and hence more importantly) for the spectators (i. e. for the academic community as a whole) because plays could be used as what in modern criticism is beginning to be called “exemplary drama,” plays that present models of good behavior for imitation and bad conduct for avoidance, and therefore when properly handled have the capacity to be morally improving. This latter view was more compelling because the first one specified a benefit enjoyed only by the perfomers, whereas this one addressed the question of how dramatics were a Good Thing for the entire academic community. It was enthusiastically endorsed in a rather lengthy passage in the blueprint for an ideal Christian society advanced by the prominent Reformer Martin Bucer (a German refugee who ended his life as Cambridge Regius Professor of Divinity) entitled De Ludis in Book II of his De Regno Christi written towards the end of the reign of Edward VI but not printed until 1557 (when it appeared at Basel, , doubtless because some of Bucer’s views were not entirely congenial to Anglicanism), at which time one imagines it was eagerly devoured by young English intellectuals with Protestant leanings including Sir Philip Sidney. As such, Rainold’s argument presented an obvious parallel to the Puritan attack on Anglican church music that had already elicited a response from John Case. This time too, Case was the first to respond, in a section of Sphaera Civitatis (V.viii.23) in which he first articulated Rainolds’ main talking-points and then refuted them seriatim. In connection with the dramatic performances of 1592, Gager tacked onto the end of his expanded version of Seneca’s Phaedra an afterpiece in which Momus (the ancient god of captious criticism) made these same points and then an unnamed respondent exactly repeated Case’s refutations. Momus was the first example of a familiar feature of seventeenth century university comedy, the unfriendly lampoon of Puritans. Rainolds was of course enraged by being held up to ridicule and responded with an open letter which subsequently got printed at Middelburg in 1599, and Gager replied in turn with an open letter of his own, never printed prior to the twentieth century. Rainold’s letter contained an attack on Gager’s lost comedy Rivales which Gager felt obliged to answer, so that their exchange of manifestos was not without an element of personal animosity. But that came later, the Momus respondent wasf unctioning entirely as a spokesman for the University as a whole.
45. Now, the 1592 dramatic offerings performed at Christ Church look remarkably shabby in comparison with other such occasions insofar as (with the exception of Momus and a masque by John Sanford of Magdalene College) they were old plays by Gager and Leonard Hutten, and a performance o4f Seneca’s Phaedra as enlarged by Gager, since the occasion of their performance was a royal visitation, which would normally call for the creation of fresh material. The reason was that 1592 witnessed a terrible plague and London and a royal visit to Oxford was hastily arranged as a face-saving means of removing Elizabeth from the danger in a hurry. Hence the Momus incident took place in her presence and after its performance she roundly rebuked Rainolds for his temerity. It is likely that he had offended not only Case but also a number of other senior men within the University, and that Gager was selected to speak on behalf of them all because he has just taken his D. C. L. degree and was on the point of going down from Oxford, and hence was free to offend Rainolds, an enemy the members of the Oxford faculty could ill afford to make. The aspect of this controversy which concerns us here is the way it was reflected in Barnes’ publications for 1592, in which the dramatic literature associated with the queen’s visit (both the plays and Sandford’s masque) is represented. No doubt part of the reason was a conviction that such an important occasion required commemoration, but it also had the effect of placing the entire squabble on the public record, represented entirely from a pro-drama point of view. More than this, it gave a number of the leading lights of the University (such as Case) the opportunity to contribute gratulatory epigrams to the front of the volumes in question, thereby in effect endorsing the position articulated by Gager.
46. This understanding of the institutional importance of the Gager-Rainolds controversy gives us at least partial insight into the abnormally large number of volumes issued by Barnes in 1592. It in fact looks suspiciously large: was the printing of the books in question subsidized by the University?
47. At this point we may discontinue consideration of individual volumes printed by Barnes, insofar as (with the exception of these 1592 books) his operation had now been firmly committed to its new course of printing routine academic fare. Nevertheless, the need for the University to profess its loyalty never quite disappeared and care was taken that at least some publications continued to serve as instruments for proclaiming Oxford’s fealty to church and crown. Or at least to the crown, since the religious part was adequately covered by the fact that all of Barnes’ books on religious subjects were of an orthodox nature embodying (or at least not conflicting with) Anglicanism: most were written by Church of England clergymen and quite a few were prefaced by dedicatory epistles addressed to bishops.
48. And so the volumes subsequently issued by Barnes, his successors as Printer to the University, and ultimately the Oxford University Press, were not devoid of features designed to render them agreeable to those in power. There were at least two ways by which such an effort became enshrined by tradition.
49. The 1587 Sidney anthologies were the first of a long series of similar Oxford and Cambridge ones that appeared down to the end of the seventeenth century, NOTE 25 usually inspired by some event affecting the sovereign or another member of the royal family, or some other figure of national prominence. The difference between the original ones and those that followed was that the feelings expressed in the Sidney ones were palpably genuine, whereas the ones allegedly moving their successors were not. These volumes can be collectively described as being as remarkably frigid and they make for dreary reading. Indeed, the single consideration that recommends them to a modern reader is that occasionally they contain minor efforts by writers who achieved greater stature by their efforts elsewhere (Robert Burton, for example, was an indefatigable contributor to Oxford anthologies). For the most part, the creation of such volumes served as little more than an occasion for University men to showcase their prowess at Latin verse composition by performing such poetic stunts as anagrammatic pieces and so-called “pattern poems” or “shape-poems” where the physical layout of the poem on paper resembled an altar, an axe, an egg, a wing, and so forth (in imitation of certain items in the Greek Anthology). Contributors able to versify in such more advanced languages as Greek and Hebrew were not behindhand in showing off their abilities. To a modern reader, these University anthologies might seem arid exercises in complete futility fit to be read only by modern scholars as part of their salaried duties, but in truth they did perform an identifiable purpose.
50. Peasy (p. 56) indicated one reason why these university anthologies were so common: he suggested that the publication of the original Sidney ones was university-subsidized, and such subsidies must have been highly welcome to the cash-strapped presses. Possibly this idea deserves to be generalized and applied to all subsequent anthologies, in which case it would be understandable why academic presses were so agreeable to their production (especially as it is difficult to imagine that such twaddle sold very many copies). The Universities, of course, would have stumped up the money because they served as periodic reminders of the Universities’ steadfast loyalty.
51. Another and much commoner way in which a large majority of University-published volumes performed the useful institutional function of staying on good terms with those in power was that many of them are prefaced by their authors’ dedicatory epistles addressed to some grandee of the realm. Some kind of distinction needs to be made between such dedications and a second very common kind of dedicatory epistle found in contemporary books, ones penned by esurient recent graduates in the hope of enlisting someone’s support in giving him financial aid or providing them with employment, or by men who had recently escaped this anxious condition and felt it advisable to issue a public expression of their gratitude. To them, inclusion of such an epistle was a matter of considerable importance. In order to create an educated class sufficiently large to staff the Tudors’ centralized state government and national church, and otherwise ensure the smooth operation of society, a succession of Tudors had founded new colleges and schools and sponsored a number of schemes and devices for increasing the number of young men who passed through England’s educational system, and there appears to be reason for thinking that this effort had succeeded rather too well. The result was a situation that anticipated that prevailing in the present-day United States, United Kingdom, and a number of other modern lands, in which educational systems annually turn out significantly more graduates than their national economies can possibly absorb, with the result that a university degree can sometimes prove to be little more than a ticket to the breadline (or at least the driver’s seat of a taxicab). Hence many young were obliged to devote themselves heart and soul to patron-hunting, and in this quest the publication of an elegant slim volume of Latin verse prefaced by a dedicatory epistle was a valuable instrument. Such addresses were written to celebrate and cement an existing relation of patronage or at least in the hope of establishing one, and such a relationship was by nature symbiotic: the beneficiary received the desired support while the patron garnered prestige and the satisfaction of seeing literature published in accordance with his wishes. For both parties to the transaction, this arrangement rather self-consciously replicated the author-patron relationships of the ancient Greek and Romans (it was commonplace for an author inspired by this particular motivation to call his patron a modern Maecenas in remembrance of the great patron of Vergil and Horace in the age of Augustus, as in fact Joseph Barnes does in his one quoted above.) Sometimes, it must be added, such epistles are replaced by ones addressed to other influential men in power: a senior administrator of one’s University or (in the case of a clergyman author) a bishop.
52. But between an academic author and the addressee of his dedicatory epistle no such relationship existed. The author neither obtained nor aspired to obtain any personal advantage thanks to his effort. Indeed, within his institution he could even be some such well-established senior man as the occupant of a professorial chair, so another motive for their inclusion must be discovered. It would appear that such documents, regarded collectively, amounted to a routinized ritual exercise whereby learning proclaimed its fealty to power, most likely to prevent the latter from being in any way discomfited by the existence of the former.
APPENDIX: BOOKS PUBLISHED BY JOSEPH BARNES DURING HIS FIRST DECADE OF OPERATIONS
NOTE: Texts offered on the Early English Books Online website can only be accessed by readers possessing either an institutional or personal subscription.
1. AUTHOR University of Oxford.
TITLE In adventum illustrissimi Lecestrensis comitis ad Collegium Lincolniense..
SUBJECT Poetry.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Single sheet containing one eight-line epigram, has large seal.
STC2 7286.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_val_fmt=&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:12241.
REMARKS The first publication to issue from Barnes’ press.2. AUTHOR John Case.
TITLE Speculum moralium quaestionum.
SUBJECT Philosophy.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, has seal. Dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Leicester, address Ad Lectorem, epistle to Leicester written by Barnes himself, liminary epigrams by Lawrence Humphrey and numerous others.
STC2 4759.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:7996:13
REMARKS Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics. The first book issued by the press. Modern critical edition here.3. AUTHOR William Gager.
TITLE In Guil. Parry proditorem odae et epigrammata.
SUBJECT Poetry.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Prefatory address Ad Lectorem.
STC2 19340
EEBO https://search.proquest.com/eebo/docview/2248505766/fulltextPDF/E042FBFF4BB46CAPQ/1?accountid=14509
REMARKS Poetry on Dr. William Parry’s plot against Elizabeth. No author’s name on the title page but the close similarity to Gager’s odes on the Babington Plot leaves no room for doubt about authorship. Modern critical edition here.4. AUTHOR “L. H.” (Lawrence Humphrey).
TITLE Guilielmus Parreus proditor, sive contra giganteam proditionem ... novum et verum prognosticon.
SUBJECT Poetry.
REMARKS No extant copy (see nr. 25 below). Modern critical edition here.5. AUTHOR George Peele.
TITLE Pareus.
SUBJECT Poetry.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Prefatory address Ad Lectorem.
STC2 19340. 5
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:22698:2.
REMARKS Verse narrative of Dr. William Parry’s plot against Elizabeth. Attributed to Peele by C. F. Tucker Brooke, “A Latin Poem by George Peele (?),” Huntington Library Quarterly 3 (1939 - 40) 48f. This attribution was endorsed by Leicester Bradner, Musae Anglicanae: A History of Anglo-Latin Poetry (New York, 1940, repr. New York, 1966) 65. Modern critical edition here.6. AUTHOR probably John Case.
TITLE The Praise of Musicke
SUBJECT Music
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal, preface “to the reader“ by Joseph Barnes
STC2 20184
EEBO https://search.proquest.com/eebo/docview/2240887545
REMARKS Defense of Anglican church music against Puritan criticism.7. AUTHOR H. D. (probably Henry Dennys).
TITLE Anglia Querens
SUBJECT Poetry.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Prefaced by a shape poem and a dedicatory epistle to George Summaster, President of Broadgates Hall.
STC2 6167
EEBO http://eebo.chadwyck.com/search/full_rec?SOURCE=pgimages.cfg&ACTION=ByID&ID=V177527
REMARKS More poetry on the subject of Dr. William Parry. Modern edition here.8a and b. AUTHOR William Gager.
TITLE In Catilinarias proditiones ac proditores domesticos odae 6.
SUBJECT Poetry.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, large seal. Dedication to William James, Dean of Christ Church, no further front matter.
STC2 4837 and 4867.5.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:177831.
REMARKS Set of six Horatian odes on the subject of the Babington Plot. Reissued later in the year, then replaced by the following item. One of these volumes (presumably the second) carries an extra notice that it can be bought Sub signo capitis Tygurini in St. Paul’s Cemetery, London).9. AUTHOR William Gager.
TITLE In Catilinarias proditiones ac proditores domesticos odae 9.
SUBJECT Poetry.
PHYSICAL DETAILS As above.
STC2 4838.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:176601:2
REMARKS A second reprinting of no. 7 with three more odes added and the title altered accordingly. Modern critical edition here .10. AUTHOR John Shepreve [d. 1542], posthumously edited by George Etherege.
TITLE Hippolitus Ovidianae Phaedrae respondens.
SUBJECT Poetry.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, large seal. Wrongly hand-dated 1584 by an early owner on the title page of the EEBO copy, no front matter.
STC2 2240.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:15190.
11. AUTHOR John Shepreve (d. 1542).
TITLE Summa et synopsis Novi Testamenti.
SUBJECT Poetry.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Address Admonitio ad studiosos by Lawrence Humphrey.
STC2 22405.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:15192.REMARKS Brief verse summaries of various Books of the Bible.
12. AUTHOR Anonymous.
TITLE De legato et absoluto principe perduellionis reo.
SUBJECT Law, politics.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, large seal.
STC2 15387.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:7120.
REMARKS Justification of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots.13. AUTHOR William Gager (editor).
TITLE Exequiae illustrissimi equitis, D. Philippi Sidnaei, gratissimae memoriae ac nomini impensae.
SUBJECT Poetry (memorial anthology).
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, large seal. Prefaced by Gager’s dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Leicester in his capacity as Chancellor of the University
STC2 222551.
PURL http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:17953. Modern edition here .
14. AUTHOR New College.
TITLE Peplus illustrissimi viri D. Philippi Sidnaei supremis honoribus dicatus.
SUBJECT Poetry (memorial anthology).
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, no seal. Prefaced by a dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Pembroke and an epigram Ad Lectores.
STC2 22552.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:17954.
15. AUTHOR John Rainolds.
TITLE Orationes duae
SUBJECT Classical scholarship.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Preceded by an epistle Ad Academicis Oxoniensibus.
STC2 20612.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:20441.16. AUTHOR John Sprint
TITLE Ad illustrissimos comites Warwicensem et Leicestrenem oratio gratulatoria Bristolliae habita.
SUBJECT Rhetoric.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, no seal. Prefaced by a Nota by Brian Twine dated 1519 (sic).
STC2 23107.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:11301:2.
1588
17. AUTHOR John Case.
TITLE Sphaera civitatis.
SUBJECT Philosophy.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, large seal. Initial epigram by Richard Latewar, dedicatory epistle to Sir Christopher Hatton, a member of the Privy Council, address Ad Christianum lectorem, further liminary epigrams by Lawrence Humphrey, Mathew Gwinne. William Gager and others.
STC2 4761.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:8000:15.
REMARKS Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics. Modern critical edition here .18. AUTHOR John Case.
TITLE Apologia musices tam vocalis quam instrumentalis et mixtae.
SUBJECT Music
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Dedicatory epistle to Sir William Hatton, nephew of Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord Chancellor.
STC2 107578.
REMARKS Defense of Anglican church music against Puritan criticism.
EEBO
http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:7994 .
REMARKS Defense of Anglican church music against Puritan criticism. Modern critical edition here.19. AUTHOR St. John Chrysostom.
TITLE Homiliae sex.
SUBJECT Religion
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Dedicatory epistle to Sir Thomas Bromley, Lord Chancellor of England.
STC2 14635.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:7801.
REMARKS Greek text, edited by John Harmer.20. AUTHOR Anonymous.
TITLE Hermaica gymnasmata.
SUBJECT Education.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. No front matter.
STC2 13206.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:9024:2.
REMARKS List of school exercises.1590
21. AUTHOR Roger Bacon [d. 1294]).
TITLE De retardatione accidentium senectutis.
SUBJECT Medicine.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Dedicatory epistle to Sir. Christopher Hatton written by John Williams, followed by an unsigned address Ad Lectorem and a Latin epigram, presumably also the work of Williams).
STC2 1181.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:19525:4.
REMARKS Also contains Urso of Salerno’s De primarum qualitatum arcanis et effectibus and John William’s Tractatus philosophicus.22. AUTHOR Alberico Gentili.
TITLE De iniustitia bellica Romanorum actio.
SUBJECT Law, history.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, large seal. Dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Essex.
STC2 11734.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:15327 .
REMARKS Discussion of the lawfulness of Roman imperialism, possibly with an implied or explicit critique of the Roman Catholic Church?
23. AUTHOR Josephus.
TITLE Flavij Iosephi de Maccaboes; seu de rationis imperio liber, manuscripti codicis ope, longe quam antehac et emendatior et auctior, cum Latina interpretatione ac notis Ioannis Luidi.
SUBJECT History.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Dedicatory epistle to Roger Gifford, royal physician.
STC2 14814.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:8397.
REMARKS Edited and annotated by John Lloyd.24. AUTHOR Francis Trigge.
TITLE Noctes sacrae seu lucubrationes in primam partem Apocalypseos.
SUBJECT Religion (commentary on Revelaton).
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, large seal. Dedicatory epistle to William Wickham, Bishop of Lincoln.
STC2 24279.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:470:2.1591
25. AUTHOR Francis Trigge.
TITLE Analysis capitis vicesimi quarti evangelii secundum Matthaeum.
SUBJECT Religion (commentary on Matthew xxiv).
PURL http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:470:2.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, large seal. Dedicatory epistle to William James, Dean of Christ Church.
STC2 14275.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:3180:3.26. An anthology containing reprints of nrs. 4, 5, 6, 8 and Theodorus Beza’s xxx (first printed at Geneva in 1591, thus providing a terminus post quem for the present volume), and also Lawarence Humphrey’s Guilielmus Parreus Proditor, which presumably was originally issued as another in the series of poeyic pamphlets issued in 1585/6 of which no copy survives. The present volume is owned by The Fellows’ Library of Winchester College ( (for which see here ).
STC2 13960.5. (wrongly identifying this as the original 1585/86 edition).
1592
27. AUTHOR Barlaam Calabri (d. 1348).
TITLE De papae principia.
SUBJECT Religion ,
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, no seal. Dedicatory epistle to Thomas Sackville Baron Buckhurst, Chancellor of the University.
STC2 1430.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:12847:2.
REMARKS Edited and translated into Latin by John Lloyd. Barlaam was an early opponent of papal supremacy, hence his interest to contemporary Protestant.28. AUTHOR Joseph Barnes (editor).
TITLE Speeches delivered to Her Maiestie this last progresse, at the Right Honorable the Lady Rvssels, at Bissam, the Right Honorable the Lord Chandos at Dudley, at the Right Honorable the Lord Norris at Ricorte.
SUBJECT Rhetoric.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, small seal. Short address To the Reader by “I. B.” (i. e. Joseph Barnes)
STC2 27600.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:5770,
29. AUTHOR Théodore de Béze.
TITLE Cato censorius Christianus.
SUBJECT Poetry.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Unavailable.
STC2 S90468.
REMARKS Reprint of the French edition printed at Geneva in the previous year by Jean de Tournes (available here).30 and b. AUTHOR Thomas Brasbridge.
TITLE Quaestiones in Officia M. T. Ciceronis
SUBJECT Philosophy.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Dedicatory epistle to Lawrence Humphrey, President of Magdalene College
STC2 3552.3.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:25158:3.
REMARKS Reprinted later in the same year.31. AUTHOR John Dove (?), editor.
TITLE Oxoniensium stenagmos, sivé, Carmina ab Oxoniensibus conscripta in obitum illustrissimi herois,D. Christophori Hattoni militis, summi totius Angliae necnon Academiae Oxoniensis cancellarii.
SUBJECT Poetry (memorial anthology).
PHYSICAL DETAILS Unrecorded.
STC2 10197.5.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:26388.
REMARKS The first item is a dedicatory epigram addressed to Thomas Sackville Baron Buckhurst, Hatton’s successor as Chancellor of the University signed by John Dove. This creates the presumption that Dove was the editor of this volume. Contains contributions by John Case, Matthew Gwinne, and numerous others.32. AUTHOR William Gager.
TITLE Meleager tragoedia nova (also contains Panniculus Hippolyto Senecae tragoediae assutus).
SUBJECT Drama.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, small seal. Dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Essex. Liminary epigrams by Richard Eedes, Alberico Gentili (in Italian), and “I. C.” (John Case), address Ad lectorem.
STC2 11515.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:17655.
REMARKS REMARKS Contains a.) the text of a play revived for the royal visitation of this year, and 2.) extra scenes for Seneca’s Phaedra. Modern editions 1.) here and 2.) here.33. AUTHOR William Gager.
TITLE Ulysses Redux tragoedia nova (also contains Panniculus Hippolyto Senecae tragoediae assutus).
SUBJECT Drama.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, large seal. Dedicatory epistle to Mary Countess of Pembroke.. Liminary epigrams by Thomas Holland (Regius Professor of Divinity), Alberico Gentili (in Italian)., Matthew Gwinne, Richard Latewar, Richard Eedes, Matthew Gwinne,, and others, Gager’s epigram Ad Zoilum, and address ad Criticum,
STC2 11516
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:5975
REMARKS Contains 1.) the text of Ulysses Redux and other items revived for the royal visitation of this year; 2.) the Prologue (only) of Gager’s lost 1582 comedy Rivales; 3.) the Prologue and Epilogue to Leonard Hutton’s comedy Bellum Grammaticae; c.) the Prologue and Epilogue (only) to his extra scenes for Seneca’s Phaedra, 4.) his afterpiece Momus with an Epilogus Responsivus, Modern ediitons 1.) here , 2. here , 3. here , and 4. here .34. AUTHOR Lycophron.
TITLE Lycophronis Chalcidensis Alexandra. In usum Academiæ Oxoniensis.
SUBJECT Philosophy
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, , no seal, no front matter.
STC2 17002.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:9381.
REMARKS Reproduction of an unadorned Greek text.35. AUTHOR John Sanford.
TITLE Apollinis et Musarum Εὐκτικὰ Εἰδύλλιa.
SUBJECT Text of a masque performed during the royal visit of 1592, subsequently fleshed out for publication with extra poetry.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, seal replaced by a large formal portrait of Elizabeth. Dedicatory epistle to Nicholas. Bond, Vice Chancellor of the University.
STC2 21733.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:2748 (modern critical edition at http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/sanford/).
36. AUTHOR William Thorne.
TITLE Tullius, seu rhetor in tria stromata divisus.
SUBJECT Rhetoric textbook.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Prefaced by a woodcut of (presumably) the author’s coat of arms followed by a short epigram partially in Greek and partially in Latin, and a dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Pembroke, an address To the Reader, and liminary epigrams by John Case, Thomas Savile, John Sanford and others.
STC2 S106869.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:176773.
37.. AUTHOR Miles Windsor
TITLE Europaei orbis academiae celebriores et aliquando florentes.
SUBJECT Education.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Folio, a map with no seal or front matter.
STC2 S95889.
REMARKS. Modified reprint of, a like-titled map showing the locations of Europe’s major universities, by Thomas Pie printed at London by Thomas Vautrollier in 1586), itself based on like-titled maps previously published in Germany by Wolfgang Jobst and Jodocus Hondius
1593
38. AUTHOR Aristophanes.
TITLE Equites.
SUBJECT Drama.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, title page illustrated with a woodcut showing the Wheel of Fortune with the motto omnia subiacent vicissitudini. No front matter.
STC2 108325.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:8763.
REMARKS Reproduction of an unadorned Greek text. A close match to n9. 32 printed in the preceding year, so quite likely the work of the same anonymous editor.39. AUTHOR Alberico Gentili.
TITLE Ad tit. C. de maleficis et math. et ceter. Similibus.
SUBJECT Law.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, no seal. Dedicatory epistle to Tobie Matthew, formerly Dean of Christ Church and currently Bishop of Durham.
STC2 1732.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:15327.
40. AUTHOR Henry Parry.
TITLE Victoria Christiana, concio
SUBJECT Text of a sermon.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, no seal. Dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Essex, address Ad lectorem academicum.
STC2 2015.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:8768.
41. AUTHOR Griffith Powell.
TITLE Analysis analyticorum posteriorum sive librorum Aristotelis de demonstratione
SUBJECT Philosophy.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, no seal. Dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Essex, address Ad lectorem academicum.
STC2 20157.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:8768.
42. AUTHOR Matthew Gwinne.
TITLE Epicedium in obitum illustrissimi herois Henrici comitis Derbiensis.
SUBJECT Poetry on the death of the Earl of Derby.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Quarto, large seal. Dedicatory epistle to the current Earl of Derby.
STC2 11500
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:17641.
43. AUTHOR Thomas Sparke.
TITLE A sermon preached at Whaddon in Buckinghamshyre the 22. of Nouember 1593. at the buriall of the Right Honorable, Arthur Lorde Grey of Wilton, Knight of the most Honorable order of the Garter.
SUBJECT Text of a sermon.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Dedicatory epistle to the Countess of Bedford and Lord Grey’s son and daughter.
STC2 23024.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:2583.1594
44. AUTHOR “R. L.”
TITLE Apologia innocentiae et integritatis R. L. sacrae theologiae baccalaurei.
SUBJECT Religion.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal or front matter.
STC2 15109.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:7105,
45. AUTHOR Henry Parry.
TITLE Victoria Christiana
SUBJECT Text of a sermon preached to the University in 1591.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Dedicatory epistle to William Herbert, son of the Earl of Pembroke.
STC2 19336.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:10861:9.
REMARKS Text of a sermon preached to the University in 1591.
46. AUTHOR Thomas Sparke.
TITLE A sermon preached at Cheanies the 14. of September, 1585, at the buriall of the right honorable the earle of Bedforde.
SUBJECT Text of a sermon.
PHYSICAL DETAILS Octavo, no seal. Dedicatory epistle to his patron Arthur Lord Grey, a local squire. Printed (extraordinarily for Barnes, whose volumes are normally physically elegant and attractive) mostly but not entirely in blackletter.
STC2 23023.
EEBO http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:15250:2.