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Miscellany compiled by Anna Cromwell Williams : Miscellany 1656
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- Summary
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The manuscript was compiled ca. 1656-1660; Williams provides these dates on the titlepage (fol. 3r), dating her name, Anna Cromwell, 1656, and noting that she is Now Anna Williams 1660.
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- English
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- Marlborough, Wiltshire : Adam Matthew Digital, 2008
- Physical Details
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- 1 online resource
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- AMDigital Reference:MS Harleian 2311
- This miscellany is comprised of religious meditations in both poetry and prose, prayers, transcribed poetry, sermons, sermon notes, and catechisms. A titlepage occurs on fol. 3r: "A Book of Several ['private' cancelled] devotions collected from good men by the worst of sinners", signed "Anna Cromwell 1656". Below this title, the preoccupation with devotion is further emphasised by the lines "To make prayer sweet unto god five things belongeth | Knowledge of him, zeal towards him love to him, fear of his wrath, and hope of his love". The page is then signed again "Now Anna Williams 1660". (The family changed their name to Cromwell in the sixteenth century and reverted to Williams at the Restoration.)The constituent texts of this manuscript are loosely grouped together according to genre. There are three substantial groups of prayers, all associated with specific occasions or persons, as is evident from the titles. Some of these occasions recur as titles, and the wordings of these prayers are consistently repeated (see prayers on "lying down", items 71, 76, 79, 81 (fols. 146v, 184v, 185r, 185v), and on waking, items 4 and 55 (fols. 4r, 127)). In particular, the formulaic phrase "Lord bless my uprising and my Down lying, bless my going out and my coming in from this time forth and for ever more, amen", is repeatedly employed (items 56, 67, 70, 78; fols. 128v, 141v, 144v, 185r), and the frequent incorporation of the Lord's prayer into the prayers compiled is equally notable (items 9, 10, 41, 54, 55, 66, and 71; fols. 8v, 15v, 55v, 127r, 128r, 141r, 148r). The first of these groups of prayers opens the compilation and is followed by a group of twenty-one diverse poems. These are primarily on religious themes with, for example, one poem on the maintenance of the Sabbath immediately followed by a poem commemorating her husband's translation of the maypole festival due to its occurrence on a Sunday. This group is succeeded by a series of religious meditations in prose, in which the topic of salvation and the distinction of the elect are explored. One of these prose meditations-entitled "A description of the unity in trinity; and of the trinity in unity, as it is revealed unto us in holy scripture"--has sections which are directly transcribed from a sermon transcribed later in the manuscript, suggesting the interrelations of the texts compiled. Two consecutive sections, entitled "Holy ejaculations and meditations" and "Sermon notes", respectively, abandon the continuous prose style in favour of a commonplace-book style gathering of observations on religious issues such as providence. Another two, entitled "Pious meditations ..." and "Comfortable counsels ...", take the form of letters offering spiritual advice, and are signed "your Ghostly Father" and "your trusty Friend and most faithfull servant in Christ"(items 36 and 37, fols. 43v, 48r). A number of meditations follow, encompassing topics such as moderation and the sacrament of communion. Three sermons are then transcribed: Mr. Hunt's concerned with the creed; and Mr. Robins ' in favour of episcopacy, preferring the preacher's interpretation of scripture over the individual's, against the covenant, John Calvin and the Scottish presbytery, Thomas Cotton and independency. A detailed outline of his antipathy towards the covenant may be found in Mr. Robins' second sermon. There follows a group of four catechisms on points of religion and the sacrament of communion, and then the second large group of prayers. The latter is notable for its concern with particular individuals; namely the compiler's husband, mother, relatives, friends, servants, the royal family, and the clergy. Included in this group are two prayers on being childless. Another sermon, preached by Simon Gunton, which prepares the congregation for communion, follows and has the marginal note "this sermon was preached upon Christmas Day 1658 to the best of my remembrance by my Honoured Friend mr Simon Gunton", suggesting that the sermons as transcribed in the manuscript derive from memory rather than from any written copy. The clearest instance of the deliberate grouping of texts by the compiler is the series of spiritual complaints transcribed from Robert Mossom's The Preacher's Tripartite (1657), most of which are titled "The souls conflict" in the manuscript. These anguished meditations on the capacity of the individual soul to live up to godly expectations are numbered in the left-hand margins from 1 through to 9, and concluded with "The prayer at the end". The latter is glossed by a note at the bottom of the page referring the reader to its source and distinguishing between author and compiler. In keeping with the compiler's royalist conformism, Mossom also wrote in defence of the sequestered clergy Robert MossomAn apology in the behalf of the sequestered clergy London1660. Following the last group of prayers, the final five entries in the manuscript are in another hand of neater italic than the autograph. The first of these is entered on the page opposite the final autograph contibution (fol. 186r), but bland pages occur from this point on in the manuscript. This pattern of transcription practice is not to be found earlier in the manuscript, reinforcing the sense of a distinct set of entries.
- Reproduction of: Miscellany compiled by Anna Cromwell Williams, 1656.
- British Library