Blair Worden - A Book of Friendship

BLAIR WORDEN - A BOOK OF FRIENDSHIP

It is agreed that the full-length versions are not derived from a common source but from different sets of shorthand notes prepared by different auditors. One, which has tended to be favoured by scholars, came via John Milton through three kindred spirits to the London Society of Antiquaries in the 1740s where it remains. 6 The owner from 1731 to 1745 (John Nickolls) claimed that Milton got it from Cromwell himself. 7 Since the bundle he received and passed on also included letters from gathered congregations commending ‘saints’ for inclusion in the Nominated Assembly, it is more likely that Milton received the material from Cromwell’s fairly autonomous press office so that Milton could write up the events of April 1653 for an international audience. 8 It has always seemed to me, as to others, to have more of an official seal on it than the other version, the one we will call the Spittlehouse version. 9 This appeared in October 1654 from the same printer as a pamphlet by the Fifth Monarchist John Spittlehouse. He saw Cromwell’s speeches to the Protectorate Parliament in September 1654 as a complete betrayal of the chiliastic promise of his speech on 4 July 1653. 10 It shows some signs of being tidied up syntactically but also of being a rather careless transcription (as we will see). It is with this second version that we will be more engaged. The third version has a clearer origin. It is in the papers of William Lenthall and claims to be ‘notes taken of the speech of his Excellency’. 11 Although only just over one third as long, it is a very clear summary of the longer versions with, as the editors of the new Cromwell edition put it, ‘a remarkable degree of similarity … in terms of precise phrasing,’ and they conclude that it was prepared from yet another different shorthand original. 12 Given that Carlyle used the Milton version as the base of his edition, 13 Stainer used the Spittlehouse version, 14 and 6 Society of Antiquaries, SAL/MS/138, no.128, fos.275r-300v. Printed in LWSOC , 2:664-86. 7 Original Letters and Papers of State Addressed to Oliver Cromwell … found in the political collections of … John Milton (1743), preface. 8 Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate , p.400 suggests that what became Milton’s Defensio Secunda (1654) may just have started out not as a defence of the Protectorate but of the dissolution of the Rump and the establishment of the Nominated Assembly. 9 The Lord General Cromwel’s Speech delivered in the Council Chamber, upon the 4 of July 1653 (London, 1654: Wing/C7169. Printed and annotated in LWSOC , 2:687-705. 10 J.Spittlehouse, An Answer to One Part of the Lord Protector’s Speech (London, for L.Chapman, 1654. Wing S5003. The two pamphlets have a common printer and are clearly a pair, see LWSOC , 2:687. See Bernard Capp, ‘John Spittlehouse (bap,1622, d. in or after 1657)’ in ODNB. 11 Bodl. MS Tanner 52, fos 20r-24v. Printed in LWSOC , 2:706-13. Lenthall, as Speaker of the Long Parliament was of course not in the Nominated Parliament, and he would have received this in a private capacity. 12 LWSOC , 2:706. 13 The Letters and Speeches with elucidations by Thomas Carlyle of Oliver Cromwell; edited in three volumes, with notes, supplements and enlarged index by S.C. Lomas; with an introduction by C.H.Firth (3 vols., London, 1904), 2:270-301. 14 Ed. Charles L. Stainer, The Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (London, 1901), pp.86-118.

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