A Publishing History of A Discourse of Life and Death, Translated by the Countess of Pembroke

Abstract

The short meditation, A discourse of life and death was translated by Mary (Sidney) Herbert, Countess of Pembroke in 1590 from Excellent discours de la vie et de la mort by Philippe de Mornay, seigneur du Plessis-Marly. This article presents the publishing history of Herbert’s translation and how it was adapted twice in the seventeenth century. First, it is found as an incomplete manuscript by ‘T. H. Gent.’ (BL MS Sloane 1037). The manuscript has the correct licence to print, but the wrong author, and was used as setting copy in the print shop of George Eld and Miles Flesher in early 1624. All copies of that edition are now lost. In 1697 Herbert’s translation was revised again as the ‘contemplations’ of Sir John Fenwick before his execution for treason.

No one may ever see a printed copy of ‘A discourse of life and death by T. H. Gent.’ but the book was on sale in 1624. A manuscript, although incomplete (London, British Library, MS Sloane 1037, fols. 1‐28) tells us much about the lost book. Licensers approved the manuscript and the title was entered to George Eld and Miles Flesher in March 1623/4. Compositors then set from the manuscript and their marks show that the book was printed in duodecimo format.¹ By spring, it was advertised in the London edition of the Frankfurt fair catalogue. No copy survives, but the book was published and looks honest. Except T. H. Gent. is not the author. The work is Excellent discours de la vie et de la mort by Philippe de Mornay, seigneur du Plessis‐Marly, translated by Mary (Sidney) Herbert, countess of Pembroke (1561–1621).²

I will describe the Sloane manuscript of A Discourse of Life and Death and the lost edition set from it in early 1624. It was only three months after Mornay's death, three years after Herbert's, yet this edition credits neither of them.³ So the story becomes how a literary text first owned by William Ponsonby, ‘the most important publisher of the Elizabethan period’ was turned into a false, though approved book.⁴ Later still, in 1697, Herbert's translation was revised again. It became the Contemplations upon Life and Death of Sir John Fenwick, beheaded for a plot against King William III.

By following the successive versions, it is possible to see this one work in new contexts and how it was read and regarded. Mornay advises patience in life, not ambition, and ends on the benefits of eternity. Such a plain aid to mourning could be reused, and it was. In early 1624, the discourse was edited in a print shop to save paper. By the end of the century, it had been rewritten as a personal statement of a traitor and was sold, the title‐page says, ‘by most Booksellers in London and Westminster’. We see readers also in the marks they left in copies and by the texts with which A Discourse of Life and Death was bound. I will show how the work withstood losing its French author, literary translator and even whole passages. Herbert's genuine translation continued to be on sale throughout the seventeenth century alongside the two counterfeits. But I start first with the publishing history of the original, written by the protestant Mornay and translated by Herbert.

‘Done in English by the Countesse of Pembroke’

Philippe de Mornay's Excellent discours de la vie et de la mort was first printed by Jean Durand in 1576. Charlotte Arbaleste, Mornay's wife wrote that, ‘It has since been printed, first in Geneva, then in Paris and in various other places, translated into almost every language and very well received by those of both religions’.⁵ It was an international book and, as proof of its popularity, three contemporary English translations survive.⁶The Defence of Death by Edward Aggas was published immediately in 1576 and reissued the next year (STC 18136‐37). A. W. completed A Christian View of Life and Death in December 1593 (STC 18135). In between came Mary Herbert's translation with the unique title A Discourse of Life and Death.⁷ She dated her work 13 May 1590 at Wilton. Two years later, William Ponsonby entered it in the Stationers’ Register ‘to be Joyned together in one Booke’ with her translation of Antonius, A Tragoedie Written also in French by Ro. Garnier.⁸ John Windet printed the edition in quarto for Ponsonby that year, 1592 (STC 18138). The pair of translations was Herbert's first work in print, a year before her edition of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Ponsonby published A Discourse of Life and Death again in 1600, but this time it was printed by Richard Field on its own and in the smaller format of octavo (STC 18139).

After Ponsonby's death in 1604, the copyright passed to Samuel Waterson and, two months later, to bookseller Matthew Lownes.⁵⁹ He published A Discourse of Life and Death three times in consecutive years, all in duodecimo and all printed by his brother, Humphrey Lownes. The first was in 1606 (STC 18140). The sheets were then reissued with the new date of 1607 on the title‐page (STC 18141). An all‐new edition was published in 1608 (STC 18141.5).¹⁰

So, from surviving copies, it is known that Ponsonby published two editions and Matthew Lownes issued three between 1592 and 1608 (see Appendix I for a summary of the editions). Years went by and Lownes did not, so far as we know, print the title again. Except that he advertised a duodecimo edition in the London‐printed Frankfurt fair catalogue for April to October 1624. The description is clear:

Discourse of Life and Death, written in French by P. Mornay, and done into English by the Countesse of Pembroke, printed for M. Lownes in 12.¹¹

No copy of this later Lownes edition survives. We do not know whether he had the work reprinted or reissued unsold sheets. Nor can we be sure that it was published at all. But, when Lownes died, the rights to ‘Plessis life and death’ certainly passed to his son, Thomas in 1627.¹² From its first mention in the Stationers’ Register in 1592 until its last in 1643, Herbert's translation always transferred with eight titles including Sidney's Arcadia and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.¹³ It was owned consecutively, while another copy by the wrong author, T. H. Gent. was licensed and printed.

The Sloane manuscript

The manuscript, ‘A discourse of life and death by T. H. Gent.’ (MS Sloane 1037, fols. 1‐28) is written on paper and small, page size now about 140 x 92 mm. I do not know how it came into the printers’ hands in early 1624 or where it was until bought by Hans Sloane and named MS 918 in his collection.¹⁴ Sometime after 1725, when Sloane's library was re‐catalogued according to size by J. C. Scheuchzer, it was bound with three other manuscripts, named MS C. 199 and foliated in ink.¹⁵ ‘A discourse of life and death’ was fols. 51‐78 in that volume and was already missing the title‐page and, I estimate, seventeen consecutive leaves after fol. 8. By comparing the manuscript with a printed copy, I calculate about thirty‐eight per cent of the text is missing. Twenty‐eight leaves remain, so the original manuscript would have been at least forty‐five leaves, or ninety pages.

Next, when Sloane's library passed to the British Museum after 1757, the omnibus manuscript was broken into three.¹⁶ ‘A discourse of life and death’ was rebound with the unrelated manuscript immediately after it.¹⁷ In successive rebinding, the leaves have been mounted on stubs so evidence of collation has gone. They appear to be cropped as well making it impossible to estimate the original page size. Watermarks have become too partial to identify.¹⁸

Every page is ruled in a double frame in black as though the paper was prepared before the scribe started copying.¹⁹ The text‐block within the frame measures 135 × 75—80 mm. The running title is regularly ‘A Discourse of’ on each verso, and ‘Life and death’ on the recto.²⁰ There is a catchword in the lower margin of most pages.

The text is written in italic, closer to the variant called ‘Roman’ which the writing‐master Martin Billingsley described as the easiest hand, ‘vsually taught to women’.²¹ So he or she had habits like flourishes on v and w, and clubs on ascenders and descenders.²² There are striking letter forms, such as g with an angular tail and an assertive k. Adjoining letters are tied as in s to t and double ss. But there are changes in the last pages (fols. 25v‐28r), visible in some letter forms such as p. It may be the same scribe, whose quality drops in his hurry to finish, or a new hand. There is a writer in red ink as well, now faded. The first scribe would leave a space for a proper noun which was later added in red. That red ink corrects the last pages.²³ These are hints at shared responsibility for copying.

The manuscript is well written, perhaps for private consolation or as a gift to a friend, though proof such as a signed dedication has been lost. I have searched manuscripts from the Sidney family and household and by authors known to Mary Herbert, but have not been able to identify the hand.

The scribe's copy‐text

There are three arguments for believing that the scribe copied from a printed book, or a manuscript close to one. The first is that the Sloane manuscript looks like a Lownes duodecimo edition. Every page has a double frame with a running title above and catchword below. The scribe did not copy page for page, writing variously between seventeen and twenty‐four lines. But layout is no proof that the exemplar was a printed book because some authors submitted fully designed manuscripts which the compositor imitated.²⁴ A second and better clue that the manuscript descended from a duodecimo edition is one error. The scribe omitted, ‘looses it: and who’ (fol. 27r, l. 943).²⁵ It is eye‐skip of one printed line, only if he (or she) copied from a duodecimo printed book, or near‐related manuscript.

Last, because variant readings might identify the copy‐text, I collated the Sloane manuscript against one copy of every edition, but not the 1607 reissue which has only a new date on the title‐page. The editions are textually similar, and the Sloane scribe made fewer than 130 changes, but his habits at least become clear. He made mistakes, omitting the text between two uses of the word ‘pleasures’, for example.²⁶ But he was not careless either because he proof‐read and added neat interlinear corrections. He made small changes like inverting words, singular nouns for plural, different prepositions and so on, and used older forms (such as ‘farder’ for ‘further’ and ‘salftie’ for ‘safetie’).²⁷ The scribe sometimes made substitutions so wrote ‘ymortalie’ instead of ‘immediatly’, ‘heires’ for ‘eares’ and ‘worde’ for ‘world’.²⁸ These may be simple failures between remembering a phrase and writing it down. One change, though, was deliberate. The soul hatches from the ‘barcke and shell’ of the body and stretches its wings. He erased ‘wings’ and overwrote the literal ‘Armes’.²⁹

From collation, I found one feature which makes it clear that the scribe consulted an earlier Ponsonby edition, or his copy had been corrected. He preserves a reading unique to it, ‘But of all his he leaues not one without, but brings them all to rest’.³⁰ All Lownes editions have the shorter, ‘But of all his hee leaues all to rest’. No scribe could infer the original, longer reading. He had another source.³¹

We do not know what the scribe's copy‐text looked like and Herbert probably had nothing to do with its preparation, but some variant readings fit what we know about her writing habits. She often had second thoughts about word choice and made small changes. It is conjectured, for example, that she had three working copies of the Sidneian Psalms, all at different stages of revision to account for the variant readings in the surviving manuscripts.³²A Discourse of Life and Death is similarly a blend. Some changes are corruptions by the scribe, but others may have authority.³³

The Sloane manuscript also fits what we know about how Herbert's work circulated. The Sidneian Psalms were not printed in her lifetime yet thrived in manuscript, whereas the Arcadia was read in both manuscript and print, neither inferior to the other.³⁴ Herbert's work went back and forth between copying and print, so it is no surprise that the Sloane manuscript is contemporary with printed editions, perhaps even copied from one. After finding one manuscript of A Discourse of Life and Death, I expected there would be others. I searched and discovered one, though I have not been able to trace it. ‘Ph. Du Plessis Mornay's Discourse of Life and Death’ was among ‘Codices Manuscripti’ in the library sale of the Revd Thomas Crofts in 1783.³⁵

The lost edition by T. H. Gent.

I have not identified the scribe, his (or her) exact copy‐text or for whom the Sloane manuscript was intended, but additions in at least four other hands tell us exactly where it was in early 1624. The licensers, an editor in the print shop and one or more compositors were using it.³⁶³⁷

Two signatures are easy to place. They are the licensers. Thomas Worall, then rector of St Botolph without Bishopsgate signed on the last manuscript page (fol. 28v).37 He appears to have noted, ‘Let this book be printed consisti contayning 26 pages in 8°’ with the date 20 January 1623/4. George Cole, a Stationers’ Company warden signed below four weeks later on 18 February.³⁸ The manuscript was in front of them, yet it did not attract their notice for being written by Mornay, translated by Herbert or owned by Matthew Lownes. Andrew Marvell later wrote that Worall was of ‘no very tender Conscience’. He once approved a sermon, then, fearing he could be hanged for it, ‘scraped out his name again’.³⁹ In the case of the Sloane manuscript, Worall's licence led to a false printed book. His lack of curiosity about A Discourse of Life and Death should be remembered when studying other works licensed by him.⁴⁰

As hoped for when a copy is licensed, ‘A Discourse by T. H. Gent.’ was entered in the Stationers’ Register. The printers George Eld and Miles Flesher paid sixpence, the usual fee for entrance, on 12 March.⁴¹ The next man to use the manuscript worked in their print shop. He was not a compositor, but editor busy on the manuscript before it was set in type and again after proofs were pulled. In distinctive light ink he abridged the text, then later he marked printed pages within signatures and read proofs against the manuscript. Last, by his light ink and flourished capital B, he added, ‘lyfe & < cropped > By T. H. Gent.’ under the running head, ‘A discourse of’ on the first page (fol. 1r). This man made Herbert's translation invisible to researchers for four hundred years.

There are no marks on the Sloane manuscript of casting off or estimating paper requirements. With its even hand and no breaks, the manuscript would have been easy to estimate. After setting sample text, the man known by his light ink must have counted lines and made a mental calculation that there was too much manuscript for the number of sheets in the chosen fount and measure.⁴² The same man in light ink set about to shorten the text so it would fit fewer sheets.

He cut passages by putting a bracket around the first and last words, and a cross in the margin at the beginning and end of the text to be deleted.⁴³ The deletions were made before setting began on two proofs. First, the compositors marked a new printed page in signature B regularly every twenty‐ five manuscript lines, but only if the deletions are not included in the count. Certainly, they did not set those passages. Second, the deletions are well judged, as though the hand in light ink was not working urgently ahead of the press. He cut single ideas to preserve the sense of what came before and after (see Appendix II). He took out references to the barber pulling teeth and to bloodletting, perhaps for good taste. The book was at press in March 1623/4. King James I had by then ended negotiations for the marriage of his son, Prince Charles to Infanta, Maria Anna, daughter of Philip III of Spain. The broken engagement threatened war. That may be the reason he deleted a warning against enlisting ‘for seven franks pay are foremoste in an assault, for a litle bootie’ (fol. 22v, ll. 833‐34). But these are guesses. I am more sure that the passages were not removed by Worall in order for it to pass, but made in the print shop with the object of reducing the number of sheets and making the book cheaper to print.

The hand in light ink wrote ‘Bp^r’ (fol. 13r) and most even‐numbered pages from two to eighteen of printed signature B.⁴⁴ One mistake makes it likely that he added these marks while proof‐reading. He noted page six with a bracket at ‘not [ markinge’ and corrected it to the same phrase three lines below as though he had lost his place comparing manuscript with proofsheet (fol. 16r). He certainly read proofs because he once put brackets around missing words and wrote ‘out’ in the margin. The compositor must have set the word ‘state’ and skipped to the same word on the next line, omitting the text between (fol. 14v, l. 674).⁴⁵

As well as the licensers and hand in light ink, the manuscript is marked by one or more compositors to show where he had finished setting a page of type. A square bracket is at the first word (or split across a word) of every new printed page in signature B with a cross in the margin nearby.⁴⁶ But different compositors cannot be identified on such little evidence as a cross or bracket.

The format ‘26 pages in 8°’ was proposed by licenser Worall, but that was wrong. Octavo has multiples of sixteen pages in one gathering, thirty‐two for two and so on. One can infer from the marks on the manuscript that the lost edition was duodecimo. The calculations are possible because the entire copy for printed signature B survives. The hand in light ink cut four passages (or the equivalent of two manuscript pages) from that signature B. After the deletions, and given that the text finished on the penultimate page of the printed book, twenty‐eight manuscript pages were got into twenty‐three printed ones. By that ratio, the rest of the text (conjectured at sixty manuscript pages) would print as forty‐nine pages, which is too much copy for two duodecimo sheets or forty‐eight pages. The hand in light ink can be seen cutting lines, equal to about two manuscript pages, early on. He perhaps deleted even more from the now missing leaves to allow for a blank verso of the title‐page, a dedication letter or other advertisement. The printed book is likely to have been seventy‐two pages, collating 12⁰ [*]¹² A‐B¹².

T. H. Gent. and his printers

I can find no certain candidate for T. H. Gent., but it may have been Thomas Herbert. He was a distant relative of Mary's and, at the time, had been introduced to her son, William, 3rd earl of Pembroke.⁴⁷ Thomas was then at the inns of court, a route by which works reached Eld and Flesher.⁴⁸ But any attribution is unreliable.⁴⁹

Similarly uncertain is whether the printers, Eld and Flesher were ignorant of Matthew Lownes's existing right to the title or knew full well that they were cheating him. If innocent, they may have believed that a manuscript, its title‐page lost, was new copy, and the person from whom they got it looked entitled to sell it.⁵⁰ Entrance in the Stationers’ Register and that they advertised it in the London edition of the Frankfurt fair catalogue that spring suggests that they were not suspicious.⁵¹ No action such as a fine or copies confiscated is recorded in the Court Books, even though copyholder Lownes had power in the Stationers’ Company.⁵² With a licensed and entered copy, perhaps the Company could not fairly discipline Eld and Flesher. Or the incident was simply over because Eld died that summer, before 16 August.⁵³ Then Lownes quickly restored his right by advertising his own edition in the next fair catalogue for autumn 1624.

That is the honest narrative. But there are other arguments for believing that Eld and Flesher may have been deceitful. First, the last manuscript leaf is cut horizontal, neatly removing the identifying ‘At Wilton’. The title‐page could have been excised at the same time. Second, Eld had printed other works by Mornay. A 1604 edition of A Worke concerning the Trunesse of Christian Religion, translated by Sir Philip Sidney is attributed to his shop (STC 18151), and he certainly printed Mornay's Teares. For the Death of his Sonne in 1609 (STC 18153). Eld may have known the work and its literary value. Lownes had not printed the title since 1608, so Eld risked its being unrecognized or was testing how long a privilege could last. Third, Eld and Flesher had printed another man's copy before and been fined for it.⁵⁴ Finally, the hand in light ink wrote, ‘By T. H. Gent.’ so, whoever had started the misattribution, it was fixed in their print shop.

We do not know if Eld and Flesher got the manuscript by accident or deceit, but they certainly printed it fast between its registration on 12 March and the April advertisement. They entered it on the same day as ‘A mediticion vpon the passion of Christ vpon the word “Behold the man” by E. M.’, another book of which there is no copy known.⁵⁵ Perhaps the two were printed for the Easter market, although discourses on death sold well at any time.⁵⁶ Eld and Flesher advertised these two books in the same Frankfurt fair catalogue as their prestige folio, A Generall Historie of France by Jean de Serres, continued by Edward Grimeston (STC 22246).⁵⁷ A 400‐ sheet folio was a large investment in labour and paper. It could take years to see a return, whereas a three‐sheet duodecimo like A Discourse of Life and Death had low outlay and promised quick profit.⁵⁸ The advertisement for the three titles implies that Eld and Flesher aimed to sell as many copies as possible wholesale.

Sir John Fenwick

Long after T. H. Gent., another adaptation of A Discourse of Life and Death was printed in 1697.⁵⁹ It appeared with the last words of Sir John Fenwick, beheaded on Tower Hill (Wing M2800A). Executions were a publishing event and, typically, there are set pieces of news.⁶⁰ The first is a report of the trial or, in Sir John's case, parliamentary debate on the bill of attainder against him.⁶¹ A second kind is commemorative verse.⁶² There are the man's last words as well. Sir John's were in a ‘paper delivered’ to the sheriffs on the scaffold which he asked to be printed. His last words were published often, either alone or with an account of his execution day, ending with his coffin being taken to St Martin‐in‐the‐Fields for burial.⁶³ But, in one case, they were printed at the end of his Contemplations upon Life and Death. He wrote this meditation while under sentence of death, he tells us.⁶⁴ In fact, the work is often identical to Herbert's translation and always dependent on it.

The book is a well made quarto with good margins and clear type. The title‐page is text only and plainly states that the work is ‘By Sir JOHN FENWICK, Baronet’. It is a biography, opening on himself ‘under a close Confinement’. His very first words are in Latin, ‘Nosce te ipsum’ (p. 1) so the intended reader must be well educated, or keen to appear so. Yet classical digressions such as the ass which carried the image of Isis have been cut, perhaps for being too learned.⁶⁵ In the century since the first edition by Ponsonby, there are nine times more paragraphs for the ease of the reader.⁶⁶

No longer by its learned French author and literary translator, A Discourse of Life and Death has changed from a consolation piece into a news sensation. Sir John often reminds the reader of his circumstances and that he will die ‘in a very few days (not to say hours)’ (p. 19). Language is exaggerated. Herbert describes death simply as a port, but Sir John will enter the Christian ‘Portcullis of Seraphical Glory’ (p. 23). An added reference to Charles II (p. 13) puts him in the history of executed Royal supporters, as does a closing verse then believed to have been written by Thomas Wentworth, 1st earl of Strafford, before he was similarly beheaded on Tower Hill for treason (p. 28).⁶⁷

Death is certain for us all, Mornay argues, but how it will come and when are unknown. Every one of us must prepare. Sir John's Contemplations are instead about one man's end at a set hour on 28 January 1696/7. Whereas the Sloane manuscript was an exclusive single copy, this new work was intended for a crowd so big that soldiers blocked side streets the evening before on the route from Newgate to Tower Hill to contain all the people.⁶⁸ The book is unlikely to have been written by Sir John, who admitted that ‘Speaking nor Writing was never my Talent’ (p. 29), but was conceived by the publisher George Larkin to meet public interest in a condemned man.⁶⁹ He gave an old text new purpose at an execution by having it edited into biographical form, and it worked as a counterfeit. William Oldys reprinted it in The Harleian Miscellany in 1744, praising Sir John because, ‘he not only shews his great Ability in Point of Method and Invention; but has excelled those excellent Authors, Drexelius, Bellarmine, Bona, Sherlock, &c. who have written upon the same Subject’.⁷⁰

Owners of the original translation

In order to find out if Herbert's original translation continued to be read or stood still while it was twice adapted, I made search for her seventeenth‐

168 A Publishing History of A Discourse of Life and Death century readers. My four sources are surviving copies, contemporary booklists, auction catalogues, and references to the work.

One surviving copy printed in 1600 has been turned into a miscellany on the subject of death with hand‐coloured prints and emblems pasted in. There are manuscript additions on fine paper and some mottoes are handwritten in gold ink.⁷¹ The book owner has vivified the printed text and made it a luxury book of solace.⁷² Where that copy has been personalized with care and wealth, another from 1607 has no marks of being actively read. It is the last item in a volume bound with four Christian meditations by the busy writer, Joseph Hall, each printed in 1606 by Humphrey Lownes.⁷³ They make a pleasing set because all are printed uniformly in the same frame. The binding is limp vellum. The covers have a crude armorial centrestamp which I have not been able to identify within fillet frames, all gold‐ tooled. The spine is divided into five sections by gilt fillets, two types of fleuron in each. There is a remnant of one coloured cloth tie. The imprints being only a year apart, the works may have been bound soon after publication, perhaps as bookseller's stock.⁷⁴ A later owner writes ‘Anne Bagshaw her booke’ on a front flyleaf, but she marked no other page.⁷⁵

The last copy of A Discourse of Life and Death to mention, printed in 1606, is so much associated with Mornay that it has an engraving of him pasted at the front.⁷⁶ Another of his works, Six Excellent Treatises of Life and Death by an unnamed translator also published for Matthew Lownes (STC 18155) is bound at the end. The two books are intended to be read together because they are in a continuous frame and a note distinguishes

Herbert's work from the six treatises which follow.⁷⁷ The particulars of these three surviving copies of A Discourse of Life and Death show that early owners knew the author and translator, and that they read it as a work of divinity and comfort.

Other readers are visible in private library catalogues and booksellers’ inventories. In 1613 John English, fellow of St John's College, Oxford owned ‘Mornays discourse of life & death’.⁷⁸ John Foster, a York stationer who supplied clergymen of the cathedral had two copies in his inventory of 1616. That they were listed among the ‘Bookes in Twelve’ puts them most probably as a Lownes edition. They were ‘plaine’ or unbound, valued at 2s 4d.⁷⁹ Later still, before 26 April 1631, Frances Egerton, countess of Bridgewater added ‘A Discourse of life & death by Morney’ to her London library.⁸⁰ The book was owned by a scholar, a noblewoman and on sale in York several years after the last known edition of 1608. Herbert's translation was lasting.

Book auction catalogues printed after 1679 offer evidence that A Discourse of Life and Death was read later in the century. Mornay's books are listed in half of the two hundred catalogues I consulted, often in multiple copies and in more than one language. In total I have counted 260 books by him, forty‐five per cent of which were in English, thirty per cent in French and twenty‐five per cent in Latin. Five books in French were in the collection of the merchant Peter Hushar in 1685 (Wing H3810) and six in the estate auction of bookseller Charles Mearne in early 1687 (Wing M1581). Clerical and parish libraries often had three or more works by Mornay. One combined auction in 1680 of protestant ministers’ libraries, for example, had twenty‐four copies of eight different titles in English and Latin

170 A Publishing History of A Discourse of Life and Death (Wing S6031).⁸¹ Whether in an English or continental edition, Mornay appears to have been important to the well chosen library of the seventeenth century.

Books by Mornay were on sale second hand, but that is no proof that he was still being read. Except we know of one case where copies were sought after. Bryan Fairfax asked Yorkshire antiquarian, Ralph Thoresby in a letter dated 5 December 1687:

that among the books which were my late Lord Fairfax's, if you find any of Philip Mornay Seigneur du Plessis, in any language, you will be so kind as let me have them on any terms. He writ many, to which he added not his name: those will be hard to know, being small treatises.⁸²

A new English translation of Excellent discours de la vie et de la mort printed in 1699 is another sign of continuing readership.⁸³

Among the many large books written by Mornay, A Discourse of Life and Death, by contrast, is short and in small format so has a low chance of survival, yet I found seven copies in London sales, and one in Edinburgh. More may be invisible among lots marked as bundles or stitched books.⁸⁴ Two copies without date in ‘Small Twelves’ were in that combined auction of protestant ministers’ libraries already mentioned.⁸⁵ The books of ‘two eminent persons deceased’ on sale in 1684 included a copy dated 1601 (sic). That may be an unrecorded edition or a simple proofing error.⁸⁶ A 1606 copy was in a general sale of 1687 which advertised the books as ‘of good Binding and Ornamental Lettering, accommodated to the present Mode of Gentlemens Libraries’.⁸⁷ Of the 1607 edition, one copy is in the libraries auction of ‘two Persons of Great Quality’ in 1694 and another shows up in

Edinburgh in 1702.⁸⁸ The estate sale of Dr Francis Bernard, ‘Physician to S. Bartholomew’s Hospital’ in 1698 had a first edition.⁸⁹ None of these copies has a price and all are catalogued under ‘divinity’. The eighth and last copy I found, dated 1607, was indexed under Mary, countess of Pembroke among ‘Royal and Noble Authors’ in a 1771 sale, as though an antiquarian interest in her work had begun and the book was valuable for its scarcity.⁹⁰

Clergymen and ‘eminent persons’ across the country from London to Edinburgh owned Herbert's translation. Copies were important enough to be kept for a man's lifetime and sold with his estate. Others who did not own a copy may well have heard it quoted in a sermon or seen references to it in other works. In an often noted comment, Gabriel Harvey called A Discourse of Life and Death ‘a restoratiue Electuary of Gemmes’ in 1593.⁹¹ Elizabeth Richardson, baroness Cramond had a four‐page summary of it in her manuscript, ‘Instructions for my children, or any other Christian’.⁹² Minister John Moore of Leicestershire wrote in 1617, ‘This body (such as it is) is but the barke and shell of the soule, which must needes be broken, if wee will be hatched for a heauenly life’. He gives the marginal gloss, ‘Philip Mornay de morte’ but the phrasing can only be Herbert's translation.⁹³ Then Thomas Gataker in a 1620 funeral sermon argues that our wish to live and postpone going to the eternal Kingdom is unreasonable, citing ‘Mornay of Life and Death’.⁹⁴ A wider public was familiar with the work, but did not necessarily own a copy.⁹⁵

Conclusion

From one incomplete manuscript and book‐trade records it may be seen that A Discourse of Life and Death was better known in the seventeenth century than could be guessed from the five surviving editions published between 1592 and 1608. The Sloane manuscript and another in the Revd Thomas Crofts's library show that scribal copies were in circulation. We can add one edition, presumed lost, which was advertised by Matthew Lownes in 1624.

Herbert's translation had literary status because copyright always transferred with Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, but it turned up over and over again as a printed ‘divinity’ book on sale at second hand.

Meanwhile, two new books were published out of this one by T. H. Gent. and the condemned Sir John Fenwick. One print shop made editorial cuts to save paper and advertised the book within weeks of licence as though to keep costs down and make quick sales. The later edition styled the work to sell to a crowd eager for news at an execution. What started as a book of international protestantism became, in the Sloane manuscript, a rare private possession but, by the end of the century, was available to the newsreader in the street. The translation passed from one setting to another in adaptations which Herbert would never have liked, but her work withstood the two borrowings and remained a learned book. The eighteenth‐century biographer, George Ballard noted Herbert's ‘excellent natural Genius’.⁹⁶ Later still, in 1824, the bibliographer Robert Watt described A Discourse of Life and Death as ‘Written in an elegant and forcible style’.⁹⁷ Where the gentleman and baronet, who took what did not belong to them are now forgotten, Herbert's work was not allowed to die.

APPENDIX I

Summary descriptions of the editions and adaptations of A Discourse of Life and Death translated by Mary (Sidney) Herbert, countess of Pembroke, 1592.‐1697. Text in square brackets is inferred.

APPENDIX II

Passages deleted from London, British Library, MS Sloane 1037, fols. 1‐28

An asterisk indicates that the deletion is not certainly by the hand in light brown ink. Interlinear corrections by the scribe are given in angle brackets, and a new folio or page is shown by a vertical bar |. There is one contraction, which has been expanded and the letter supplied underlined.

Research for this article was undertaken while I was a Fellow at the Centre for the Book at the British Library in 1993. My thanks to the British Library and to Professor H. R. Woudhuysen, who read an early version, are overdue.

Footnotes