Blair Worden - A Book of Friendship

JOHN MORRILL

Abbott used an idiosyncratic and unexplained hybrid, 15 the first task in relation to the rediscovered version in Dublin is to determine whether it helps us to prefer any one of the already-known versions. In 1787 the King’s Inn, the nearest Ireland has to an Inn of Court for training and supporting barristers in Ireland, purchased the library of Christopher Robinson, an Anglo-Irish judge and unionist politician. The sales catalogue contains 2,746 items (about 4,000 volumes) including a small number of manuscripts. 16 Most of those manuscripts were sold to Sir John Gilbert in the late nineteenth century, 17 but a few were left behind. Amongst those still in King’s Inn are volumes of extracts from the Journals of the English House of Commons and House of Lords, mostly from the period from 1653 to 1687. 18 One of these volumes, consisting of 719 pages written in a trained clerk’s hand, 19 is drawn almost entirely from the Commons Journals covering the period from 4 July 1653 to the dissolution of the restored Long Parliament on 16 March 1660. The contents present accurate copies of what is in the printed journals (themselves deemed by the History of Parliament Trust to be an accurate transcript of the manuscript journals). 20 Two of Cromwell’s speeches are included. One of them is indeed in the Commons Journal – the speech made on 20th January 1658 at the opening of the second session of the second Protectoral Parliament and it follows exactly the version in the Journal with its omissions and alterations. 21 But the other speech, a version of Cromwell’s speech to the Nominated Assembly on 4th July 1653, is not in the Journals. As we will see, it has marked similarities to the 1654 Spittlehouse version of the speech, but with significant variants that suggest 15 Ed.W.C.Abbott, The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (Cambridge MA, 4 vols., 1937-47), 3:52-66. 16 The printed catalogue of the sale is entitled Catalogue of printed books, being the library of the late Christopher Robinson (1787). 83pp. I am grateful to Renata NiUigin, librarian at King’s Inn for providing me with photocopies of this catalogue. The transcripts from the Lords and the Commons are items 1471 and 1472. 17 I am grateful to Renata NiUigin for confirming this. The entry on Robinson in the Dictionary of Irish Biography slightly inaccurately states that ‘the MSS were eventually acquired by Sir John Gilbert and are now in Dublin City Library.’ The volumes considered here are the exception. 18 The up-to-date call number of the transcripts for the years 1653-60 is Kings Inn MS, N3/2/3/1. 19 I have consulted those I think most likely to recognise a parliamentary clerk’s hand and the consensus is that the MS is indeed in the hands of a trained parliamentary clerk and dates from the later seventeenth century. 20 The closure of the parliamentary archives at present prevents me checking for myself. 21 It is to be found at KI, N3/2/3/1, pp. 216-29. It follows the version in JHC 7:579-80 without several phrases and altered words that are in the version BL Harl.Ms 6801, fos.282r-287r. The version in LWSOC, 3:460-6, indicates all the differences between the Bodleian and JHC versions.

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