The Puritan Ownership of a Cistercian Missal from Kirkstall Abbey

In 1901 Leeds Central Library Purchased a Cistercian missal printed in 1516, no doubt because of its manifest local associations, to be discussed below.¹ The book in question is the Missale ad usum Cistercieñ printed in Paris by Jean Adam and Jean Kerbriand (alias Huguelin) for Jehan Petit, whose device is prominent on the title-page. Printed in red and black in double columns, it has 204 leaves with the following collation: A⁸ (unfoliated), a–o⁸ p¹ (foliated j-cxvj), A–K⁸ (paginated j-clxj [an error for cljx] on rectos only).² The local associations of the Leeds copy relate to both its pre- and post-Dissolution ownership.

The principal explicit indication of its pre-Dissolution provenance is an eighteenth-century inscription on the inside front cover, which begins: ‘This Book is very scarce. It was probably amongst other things preserved by Mr. Will. Cooke of Beeston when Kirkstall Abbey was dissolved in 1540 [sic].’ Further evidence in support of this probability is presented below. The 1516 missal evidently circulated widely amongst Cistercian houses in Europe.³ Recently two other copies have been identified as having belonged to religious houses in the north of England.⁴ The Leeds copy would make a tenth item (and the second printed book) known to have once belonged to Kirkstall abbey.⁵

Evidence of its pre-Dissolution use can be found at two main places in the volume. Within the kalendar, saints’ names have been inserted in the hand of a single, accomplished scribe, the quality of the hand suggesting that the book was prized, as does the care taken to use the correct colour for the grading of the feasts.⁶ Among the insertions are the translation of St Edmund of Abingdon on 9 June, and, using red ink, the feast of St Augustine on 26 May, the translation of St Richard of Chichester on 16 June, and, notably, ‘translatio sancti Thome martiris’ on 7 July, the date of the translation of Thomas Becket's relics. The inclusion of these saints within the Leeds missal leaves no doubt that the book was in use in an English house.

Indications of a pre-Dissolution, northern English ownership are somewhat less conclusive, but very suggestive. Thus St William, patron saint of York, has also been inserted in the kalendar, again in red ink, on his feast day, 8 June, the scribe according him the high honour of twelve lections and two masses. William is found inserted within the kalendar of other Cistercian books and manuscripts, including one of the other copies of the 1516 missal once owned by a northern English house;⁷ but he occurs also in liturgical books from other areas of England. Secondly, on p. 62 within the sanctorale there is a printing error common to all copies of the 1516 missal: a column of type has been omitted, leaving the left side of the page virtually blank. In the Leeds copy, making full use of the space, the scribe has transcribed the mass of St Gregory's trental in neat, rubricated, highly abbreviated Latin. Richard Pfaff has noted that there are variations within the text of the trental that reveal whether it was written for Sarum, Hereford or York use, the most significant concerning the beginning of the collect.⁸ This text in the present case begins ‘Deus qui es noster redempcio’, the version used in the earliest Sarum missals and in the use of York. Later Sarum missals and Hereford have, by way of contrast, text beginning ‘Deus summa spes nostrae redemptionis’.

In 1535 Henry VIII's break with Rome was accompanied by a proclamation which included an instruction that any mention of the ‘Bishop of Rome’ was ‘utterly to be abolished, eradicated, and erased out’. In the Leeds missal most, but not all, references to the Pope have indeed been erased, by means of a gentle stroke of the pen, perhaps suggesting a reluctant compliance with the law. It is notable, however, that references to Thomas Becket have not been ‘erased and put out of all the books’, as ordered by Henry VIII in November 1538.

Despite this, the missal's post-Dissolution history points strongly to ownership by members of the local puritan community. The eighteenth- century inscription on the inside front cover, quoted earlier, continues, with reference to William Cooke: ‘He was Father of Robert Cooke and Alexander Cooke who were both Vicars of Leedes, of whom see Thoresby's Vicaria Leodiensis and my MS. Hist. Register.’ Little is known about William Cooke other than that he was from a farming family from Beeston, near Leeds, originally bearing the surname Gayle.⁹ Robert Cooke (1550–1615), the elder of the two sons named, was baptised in Beeston chapel on 23 July 1550. After attending Leeds Free Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford, he was instituted vicar of St Peter's, Leeds, on 18 December 1590. Ralph Thoresby says of him that the Reformation went on very slowly in Leeds, till ‘the deservedly famous Mr. Robert Cooke revived a deep sense of true religion and piety’.¹⁰

Alexander Cooke (1564–1632), the younger son, is central to the present study, in that his ownership of the missal is substantiated by the presence of his signature, ‘Alex Cooke’, in the top right-hand corner of the title-page.¹¹ He was baptised in Leeds on 3 September 1564, and, like his brother, educated at Leeds Grammar School before being admitted to Brasenose College aged seventeen. Here he took his first degree on 25 June 1585. Elected to a Percy Fellowship in 1587 at the (generally speaking) reformist University College, Oxford, he graduated MA in 1588 and also at about that time took holy orders, graduating BD in 1596 and becoming a celebrated preacher within the neighbourhood of Oxford. In 1601 he was instituted to the royal living of the prestigious parish of Louth in Lincolnshire, but in October 1604 was deprived of this position due to his puritanical practices and for refusing to wear the surplice. This led to Cooke returning to Leeds where he assisted his brother Robert as curate at St Peter's for some ten years. Robert Cooke died on 1 January 1614/15, and the younger Cooke was appointed to succeed him on 30 May 1615.¹²

Alexander Cooke was a zealous puritan preacher and polemicist, irascible, highly intelligent, well-read, and a rigorous champion of the puritan cause. There was a marked increase in presentments during his tenure, mainly for moral offences such as working or playing games on Sundays.¹³

He was a prolific writer of anti-Catholic tracts, and it is clear that his substantial library—valued by him in his will at £100—contained many Catholic books and manuscripts that he used to help him with his attacks.¹⁴ Evidence of this comes from the pen of Cooke himself. For instance, in Worke, More Worke, and a little More Worke for a Masse-Priest (1628) we find him writing in his favoured style, a Protestant arguing with a Catholic priest. In this tract he begins the majority of paragraphs with such words as ‘Sir Priest, I reade in your books…’, and in one case begins with, ‘I have a booke of yours …,’ which he refers to as 'Horae B. Virg. Secundum usum Sarum. Ano 1526’. In this context, the presence in his library of the 1516 Cistercian missal is not surprising.

The historian Thomas Dunham Whitaker (1759–1821) wrote at some length about the brothers Robert and Alexander Cooke in his Loidis and Elmete (1816), providing information relevant to the later ownership of the Leeds missal:

The library of these two learned brothers was about a century after in the possession of Mr. Robinson, minister of St. John's and founder of Trinity Church; the reason of which probably was, that having been left on the decease of Alexander Cooke in the vicarage house, it had been purchased by Mr. Henry Robinson the elder, who succeeded him in the vicarage. Several both of the printed books and MSS. (saith my informant, Thomas Wilson,) had belonged to Kirkstall Abbey, and were purchased after the Dissolution by the Cooke family. At the death of the last owner in 1731 [sic], they were purchased by Mr. Swale, a bookseller in Leeds.

Thomas Wilson FSA (c.1702–1761), Whitaker's ‘informant’, is a key figure in the present investigation. He was a Leeds schoolmaster who was also an antiquary and a prolific transcriber of deeds, charters, and documents of all kinds. In addition he wrote the parish registers for St Peter's, Leeds, from 1735–49, prior to becoming master of the Leeds Charity School from 1750 until his death in 1761.¹⁵ Many of Wilson's books and manuscripts remain in Leeds, including a heavily annotated copy of Ralph Thoresby's Ducatus Leodiensis (1715) held by Leeds Central Library. The later Leeds historian James Wardell (1812–1873) added a note to a front flyleaf of this volume, dated 20 April 1872, which reads ‘This Book belonged to Mr. Thomas Wilson late Master of the Charity School in Leeds, and the notes are with few exceptions in his hand writing’. Comparison with the inscription on the inside front cover of the Leeds missal affirm that this was undoubtedly written by the same hand, showing that the missal was at one point in Wilson's ownership.

Wilson's inscription in the missal refers to ‘my MS. Hist. Register’, which equates to ‘The English Historian and Antiquary's Register’ listed by R. V. Taylor in 1867 as one of Wilson's manuscript works donated to the Leeds (subscription) Library by Wilson's son, Joseph Wilson, during the period I774–77.¹⁶ This Register, however, contains only short biographical accounts of Robert and Alexander Cooke, and so Whitaker did not obtain his information regarding their library from this source. He must instead have consulted another Wilson manuscript (also held in the Leeds Library), namely ‘The West Riding of the County of York. A Collection of the Coats of Arms and Pedigrees of the Nobility and Gentry’, where Wilson provides detailed notes about Henry Robinson (1646–1736), ‘minister of St. John's and founder of Trinity Church’, the son of the Henry Robinson who had succeeded Alexander Cooke as Vicar of Leeds:

He had a large library of books chiefly divinity which mostly were formerly the famous Cookes Vicars Leedes. Sold to Mr Swale Bookseller. Also many MSS wrote by the said Cookes.… Several of the MSS. and printed books belonged to Kirkstall Abbey which at its Dissolution in 1541 [sic] were purchased by Mr Cookes' [sic].

Wilson adds the information that ‘I was very intimate with him [sc. Henry Robinson] the last seven years of his life’, and their close relationship is confirmed by documents held at the West Yorkshire Archives (as part of the Thomas Wilson papers), described by Wilson as ‘Papers writ by Mr [John] Harrison's own hand and other worthy gentlemen in the Parish of Leeds, which were part of the collection of the late Mr Ralph Thoresby and others given to me by my worthy friend the Rev Mr Henry Robinson’ (one of many references in these papers to his friendship with Robinson). Further confirmation of their friendship can be found in Robinson's will of 23 July 1731, where Wilson is one of three witnesses. In the circumstances it is inconceivable that the latter did not have first-hand knowledge of the contents of Robinson's library and it is highly likely that Robinson told him how his father, also Henry (1598–1663), had acquired the Cooke brothers’ library and that it contained printed books and manuscripts from Kirkstall abbey. It must have been in Robinson's library that Wilson first laid eyes on the Leeds Cistercian missal.

Despite the reference to Robinson's library having been purchased by ‘Mr Swale bookseller’, it would appear that Wilson acquired the 1516 missal and that it remained in his hands until his death in 1761.¹⁷ The subsequent owner of the missal was the Reverend John Watson (1725–1783), the historian of Halifax, whose armorial bookplate is also on the inside front cover, below Wilson's inscription.¹⁸ It is likely that Watson acquired the book c.1762–63 at a time when he was transcribing one of Wilson's other manuscript works, his ‘Chartularium Kirkstallense: Transcriptions of Papall, Royal and Private Grants to Kirkstall Abbey’, written c. 1738.¹⁹

This work of Thomas Wilson provides us with a final piece of intriguing information concerning other books that the Cooke family may have preserved from Kirkstall. Listing the printed books and manuscripts that he had consulted whilst completing the ‘Chartularium’, Wilson notes first that Alexander Cooke had a copy of the ‘Fundacio de Abbathia de Kirkestall’ that had been borrowed in 1619 by the antiquary Roger Dodsworth (1585–1654), and Dodsworth indeed begins his transcription of the ‘Fundacio’ with the note, ‘according to a copy that I had of Mr Cookes vicar of Leedes. 6 Sept: 1619’.²⁰ However, Wilson then goes on to say that Cooke:

also had the Chartulary the Register the Coucher and Obit Books in four large Folios on Vellum, which after came to the hands of Bishop Stillingfleet at whose Death 1710 [sic] were reposited in the Harleian Library and should be now 1758 in the British Museum.

Unfortunately there is now no trace of these volumes in the British Library, but Wilson's certainty about these Kirkstall books surely confirms that they were once in Cooke's possession and survived into the eighteenth century.²¹

It is fortunate, in contrast, that the Leeds Missal was (as it appears) carefully preserved by the Robinsons after the death of Alexander Cooke, leading in turn to its subsequent safe-keeping by Thomas Wilson, John Watson and William Stradling, until its eventual acquisition by Leeds Central Library.

I should like to express my gratitude to Dr Oliver Pickering, Honorary Fellow, School of English, Leeds University, for his invaluable help and advice. Also to Dr Michael Carter, Senior Properties Historian at English Heritage, and Michael Kuczynski, Professor of English, Tulane University, New Orleans, for their comments on an earlier draft of this note. It is my pleasure to record my thanks to Rhian Isaac, Leeds Central Collections manager, for her encouragement and support during the preparation of the article.

Footnotes