442
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. ix. JUNE e, 1914.
Lambeth Palace (Rev. Claude Jenkins),
who replied (8 December last) :
" I have had a long hunt for the MS. It is not here, but among the Parker MSS. in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, No. 12. There is a long description of it in M. R. James' Catalogue of the Corpus MSS., part i., though he does not men- tion your facts about Jewel. I should not accept Le Bas's description without verification. The amusing thing is that if Parker had no right to it, and ergo Corpus, neither really had Salisbury, for it belonged to Worcester Priory."
This was a decidedly satisfactory first move in my role as literary detective. My second was to consult the Librarian of Salisbury Cathedral (Canon C. Wordsworth), from whose letter of 9 December I extract the following :
" I am sorry to say that the only MS. of ' De Cura Pastorali ' which we now have in our Cathe- dral Library at Salisbury is what Le Bas and Strype would have called a quarto rather than a folio. It has been ascribed by Sir (then Mr.) E. Maunde Thompson to the twelfth century, and contains the LXVII. capitula in Latin only, as well as St. Gregory's ' I)e Juramentis Episcoporum,' and some things of St. Augustine and Isidore with other items, and was presumably at Kermerville in Normandy in 1211. So I am afraid I must answer your first question thus : The MS. which Bishop Jewel sent to Archbishop Parker has, so far as I know, never been restored to Salisbury. As to your other query, ' What has become of it ? ' I can only throw out suggestive hints : 1. Corpus Christi Coll. Cam., Parker MS. 12 vellum, 16i in. high, eleventh century, in a very large bold black hand ; glossators of twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one of them connected by Dr. M. R. James (after Wolfgang Keller) with Worcester Priory. It formerly had bound up with it an Irish letter printed in 1571 in Irish character, now framed and glazed. (See ' C.C.C.C. MSS. Catalogue,' by Dr. James, i. 32, 3, 1912. ) 2. Cambridge University Library MS. 1737, early eleventh century .... I have been turning over a notebook which I filled many years ago, and I now conclude that the MS. for which you should inquire is No. 2. It was doubtless from the printed ' Catalogue ' of that collection, vol. iii. 372, that I made the memor- andum ' Once Bishop Jewel's.' Let me say how
delighted I am to hear of your discovery of the books at Magd. Coll., Oxon. Only last year I used to discuss with my predecessor in the Library, the late Mr. Arthur Russell Maiden, F S.A., when he was helping me to look for traces of Bishop Gheast's books or handwriting, ' What became of Jewel's books ? Are there any here ? Why did not he or his executors add them to what he called " our poor library of Sarisbury " ? ' (' Jewel's Works,' ed. J. Ayre, Parker Soc., 1850, iv. 1273.)"
The question of ownership, hinted at by Mr. Jenkins and also alluded to by Canon Wordsworth, would probably be decided by the present proprietors of the MS. on the plea that " possession is nine points of the law," but it would be gratifying a laudable curiosity to know how it changed hands
from Worcester to Cambridge. Mr. Jenkins
in a subsequent communication still sees a-
humorous situation " in the matter :
" Parker, an Archbishop, has a MS. stolen, originally from Worcester Priory ; Jewel, a Bishop, has another (also alleged to have been stolen), I believe from Worcester, and gives it to Parker from ' my poor library of Sarisbury ' ; Parker gives the one to the University of Cam- bridge and the other to Corpus ! I am afraid a bibliophile's conscience is a curious one."
Mr. Jenkins has since added the following (31 March):
" I have spent some time in endeavouring to follow up the question of Parker's depredations, for really I do not know what else they can be called. Whatever appearance of legality may be given to- his possession of the books from Salisbury and Hereford and elsewhere, it can clearly never have been intended that they should become his personal property. Yet not only does he seem to have given some to the University Library at Cambridge and many more to Corpus, but it appears to me quite clear that he allowed others to become the property of his sons. In going
through the list of 'books belonging to Sir John
Parker at Beakesborne, which is contained in
Lambeth MS. 737, I could not help being struck
by the importance of the Anglo-Saxon MSS.
which it contains. Some of these he notes as
intended for his sons Matthew and Richard ;.
against another, a copy of the ' Gospels written in
ancient characters,' he notes that he gave it to-
Lord Burghley. One of them is ' Homilia
Saxonice 10 UB tomus,' and if, as I believe, that
MS. is now in the Library of Trinity College r
Cambridge, I fancy it may be only a fancy
that we have got a step nearer to the course of
' transmission ' of the Salisbury MS., also to
Trinity, assuming that the one which Trinity-
possesses now is really the one referred to in
Jewel's letter. But I am handicapped by the
fact that this Library seems to contain the
Catalogue of MSS. of nearly every college in
Cambridge, so far as they have been published,,
except Trinity. Librarians of ancient libraries-
can seldom afford to throw stones, but at least
one may be allowed a regret that what Strype calls-
' Parker's fatherly care for Benet College '
should have made him show himself such a step-
father to his poor Church of Canterbury as to allow
the possibility of such a treasure as the ' Annales
Saxon. Ecclie. Cant.' and
(MSS. C.C.C. Camb. No.
Leges Aluredi regis
173), noted in MS.
Lambeth No. 723, to pass away from it. And
the fact that the Dean of Canterbury seems to
have been partly responsible seems to me only
to make it worse. The Lambeth MSS. are not
generally known at least they are seldom-
quoted."
Jewel's conscience, however, is easily ab- solved from the charge of laxity by Canon Wordsworth's suggestion in a letter to me of 20 January :
" I suppose we must conclude that the Bishop of Sherborne took possession of the book when, about a century after King Alfred's times, the canons- became monks ; and that subsequently Herman brought it to OldSarum and Richard Poore-
