PART I
THE DIALOGUE
CHAPTER 1
WILLIAM FLEETWOODâS ITINERARIUM AD WINDSOR
Edited by Dennis Moore
Date and Transmission
Although the date of composition of Itinerarium ad Windsor is unknown, it was presumably not before spring 1575 when the dialogue is supposed to have taken place. The general topic of how a woman could legally rule England offers no help in dating, since it was a timely issue for most of the authorâs adult life, not only because Mary I and Elizabeth I occupied the throne but also because women figured so prominently among rival claimants and potential successors. One can speculate about the relevance of possible exigencies (such as Leicesterâs desire to marry the queen, which animates the Kenilworth entertainments of July 1575), but nothing definitively ties the writing of Itinerarium to any specific occasion. A number of Fleetwoodâs other writings include prefatory epistles with a dedicatee, date of presentation, and background about composition, but the manuscripts of Itinerarium lack such paratexts.
No contemporary manuscript is known to survive. Three copies appear in early seventeenth-century volumes of miscellaneous state papers, designated as follows:
A Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, MS Tanner 84, fols. 201râ217v
B British Library, MS Harley 168, fols. 1râ8v (incomplete)
C British Library, MS Harley 6234, fols. 10râ25v.
Such bound collections of state papers preserve a kind of scribal publication that flourished in Stuart England. In studying such writings, Peter Beal and H. R. Woudhuysen have drawn attention to a corpus of manuscripts featuring the hands of Ralph Starkey and the anonymous âFeathery Scribe,â men apparently linked in a common enterprise: perhaps a scriptorium, perhaps some other sort of commercial syndicate.1 Starkeyâs multifaceted relationship to Sir Robert Cotton gave him access to âthe most important repository of manuscriptsâ in England, many of which the scribe copied for his own collection.2 Part of what made Cottonâs collection so impressive was what C. E. Wright characterizes as an âastonishingâ quantity of original state papersânot transcriptsâfrom the reign of Henry VIII through James I.3 Starkey likewise did his best to obtain originals, acquiring so many official documents from the library of Queen Elizabethâs secretary Sir William Davison that in 1619 the Privy Council approved a raid on Starkeyâs house to recover them. Texts from Starkeyâs collection were disseminated through his own efforts as a copyist and through his collaboration with others, such as the Feathery Scribe. Examination of the volumes containing Itinerarium suggests that this scribal network may have played a significant role in the survival of Fleetwoodâs dialogue.
Bodleian MS Tanner 84, containing the A text of Itinerarium ad Windsor, belongs to a group of four volumes Woudhuysen identifies as having been produced by the Starkey-Feathery circle for a single client, Sir Robert Oxenbridge MP (d. 1638), whose crest is stamped on the front of each book. The signature W. Cant. in all four indicates the ownership of William Sancroft, nonjuring Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1693).4 Itinerarium is eleventh of 14 items by several copyists on miscellaneous topics of historic and antiquarian interest, from a list of the sheriffs of Hampshire to Sir Thomas Smithâs popular âdialogue disputing the conveniency of Queen Elizabethâs marriage.â Two items, amounting to 90 leaves, are in the hand of the Feathery Scribe.
The B text, in BL MS Harley 168, breaks off in mid-sentence about halfway through the dialogue, the remaining pages having been lost. Unfortunately, this was the only manuscript known to John Bruce, who first published Itinerarium, so Fleetwoodâs dialogue was long described as incomplete (for example, in the original Dictionary of National Biography).5 B consistently supports A when A differs from the third manuscript, and the Starkey-Feathery connection suggests that the strong resemblance between A and B may be more than a coincidence: the Harley MS is âA Collection of small Tracts, and Papers of State matters, mostly written by the Hand of Mr. Ralph Starkey.â6 In fact, of 125 items in the volume (nearly all Elizabethan), all except three are in Starkeyâs hand, Itinerarium being one of the exceptions.
The possible association of the C text with the Starkey-Feathery circle is more speculative, yet worth noting. BL MS Harley 6234 is described in the print catalogue as âA thin Book in folio, containing three treatises,â and belonged to the important collector Edward Gwynne of the Middle Temple (d. 1650).7 Itinerarium follows treatises by Sir Robert Cecil on the state (and perils) of a secretaryâs place and John Selden on the office of lord chancellor, both of which were part of the repertoire of Ralph Starkey and the Feathery Scribe. Two copies of Cecilâs discourse survive in the hand of the Feathery Scribe (both at the University of London), one copy by Starkey (BL MS Harley 354), one more in a volume containing work by Starkey and Feathery, and another in a volume with work by Feathery. Likewise, there are two copies of Seldenâs discourse by Feathery (Harvard Law Library and Yale University), and although no copy in Starkeyâs hand has been identified, the work was found among his papers according to the list in Huntington Library Ellesmere Papers EL 8175.8 Such patterns are suggestive but inconclusive, given the existence of many copies of these works.9 It may be significant that the Itinerarium text in MS Harley 6234 seems to derive from a different exemplar.
If Kevin Sharpeâs statement that Cotton had obtained Fleetwoodâs papers were true, Starkeyâs association with Cotton would account for the circulation of Itinerarium within the Sharkey-Feathery group. However, the sources Sharpe cites do not justify his sweeping claim, their testimony being limited to several Guildhall volumes (including Liber Custumarum and Liber Fleetwood) in Fleetwoodâs possession when he died, which then passed to Cotton from Francis Tate.10 When the library of Fleetwoodâs Missenden Abbey estate was sold at auction nearly two centuries later, it still contained many of his books and manuscripts.11 Fleetwood and Cotton were both members of the late Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries, as documented by Tateâs journal (where Fleetwoodâs name heads the list), and Fleetwood borrowed manuscripts from Cotton, as documented in the latterâs borrowing lists, so it would not be surprising for Itinerarium to have found its way into Cottonâs hands, but that is as far as the evidence goes.
Editorial Procedures
Scribes experienced considerable difficulty with Fleetwoodâs syntax and with various proper names and technical terms. Certain errors shared by all three manuscripts point to a common ancestor; Bâs strong tendency to support A against C suggests a branching line of transmission. The present edition is based on A, which usually seems preferable to C (the other complete text) when they disagree. The incomplete B usually agrees with A and is never preferable to it. The textual notes record all substantive variants among the three manuscripts, as well as all emendations (nine from C, nine conjectural). When not obvious, the rationale for each conjecture is explained in an endnote. Most readers can afford to bypass the textual notes, which reveal no major differences between the texts of A and C (or B, so far as it goes).
The spelling of A has been retained, save for expansion of contractions and modernization of i/j and u/v. Words have been divided or combined according to modern usage, so that aswell and shalbe become as well and shal be, my selfe and a nother become myselfe and another, and so on. Variations in spelling among the manuscripts have not been recorded, nor have differences in the style of legal citations (whe...