Notes and Queries/Series 7/Volume 5/Number 112/Correction of Mistake in Douce on ‘Dance of Death’
Correction of Mistake in Douce on ‘Dance of Death.’—Mr. Douce, in his ‘Dissertation on “The Dance of Death,”’ London, W. Pickering, 1833, 8vo., at p. 147, has fallen into a slight mistake by a too hasty reading of the writer to whom he refers as his authority. Having to allude to “A Booke of Prayers, collected out of the Ancient Writers, &c., Printed by J. Daye, 1569, 4to.,” and afterwards in 1578, 1581, 1590, and 1609 [read 1608], he adds, “It is more frequently mentioned under the title of ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book,’ a most unsuitable title, when it is recollected how sharply this haughty dame rebuked the Dean of Christchurch for presenting a Common Prayer to her which had been purposely ornamented with cuts by him.” The reference is to Strype, ‘Annals,’ i. 272, or in the Oxford edition of 1824, vol. i. pt. i. p. 408. Strype’s language may easily account for and excuse the error, for he says, “The 5th, being Low-Sunday, Sampson, Dean of Christ-church, Oxon., preached at Paul’s Cross; where he declared the three former Spital sermons in Easter week, as he had done, I think, twice before: being appointed thereunto in regard of his excellent elocution and memory. The aforesaid dean, so often noted before for his frequent preaching before the Queen, preached on the festival of the Circumcision, being new-year’s day at St. Paul’s, whither the Queen resorted. Here a remarkable passage happened,” &c. As Sampson had been named in the previous paragraph, it is not to be wondered at that Mr. Douce took the words “the aforesaid dean” to refer to him. They do, however, refer to Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Paul’s, as we learn from Strype himself, in his ‘Life of Archbishop Parker,’ i. 193. “By these frequent inculcations of the Archbishop and some of his fellow Bishops, and by their discreet behaviour towards the Queen, she was at length brought off from the fancy of images; and, which is very remarkable, she showed herself not long after very highly disgusted at the very sight of some ornamental pictures set before the Epistles and Gospels in a Book of Common Prayer, which on New Year’s Day, anno 1561/2 Nowel, the Dean of St. Paul’s, had laid before her when she came on that day to hear a sermon, preached by the same Dean, intending to present her the book for a new-year’s gift: which is mentioned at large elsewhere.” Strype’s language in the ‘Annals’ is undoubtedly vague, and likely to mislead at first sight. The whole story is correctly stated by Archdeacon Churton, in his ‘Life of Dean Nowell,’ written, where I am now writing, at Middleton Cheney, and published at Oxford in 1809, see pp. 70–73. Douce was not aware of his mistake, as it is repeated in a long MS. note on the fly-leaf of his copy of the 1590 edition of the ‘Book of Prayers’ now in the Bodleian Library. The dialogue between the Queen and the Dean is (illegible text) reading, but is too long for ‘N. & Q.’ W. E. Buckley.