Blair Worden - A Book of Friendship

BLAIR WORDEN - A BOOK OF FRIENDSHIP

This is one of only three places where there are significant omissions from one of the versions and the only one where K includes a phrase not in S. Conversely

S25

if there were neither promise, for this not prophesy, your coveting the best things endeavouring after the best things

K66 if there were Neither prudence not prophecy of this our coveting the best things

The five missing words here could be carelessness, but the omission of 21 words in K looks much more like an exhausted stenographer taking a short break. Is each a copy of a lost original or are they drawn from separate versions? If the latter, then the King’s Inn MS, with its very likely provenance in a copy kept in the Clerk of the Parliament’s office becomes the ‘best’ version we have. If the former, then we cannot tell which is the more accurate version, although the representative samples above make me lean towards preferring the King’s Inn MS. The differences are not major, but neither are they insignificant. Did Cromwell say, as Spittlehouse has it, that he claimed to speak ‘in the name of my fellow officers ’ or as the King’s Inn MS has it ‘in the name of my fellow soldiers ’ (S26, K70); or, as the former has it, that he told the members that they should ‘know you are called, ’ rather than that they should ‘ know your call ’ (S23, K61), or that what he had said to them were ‘ most vain imaginings’ or ‘ not vain imaginings’ (S11, K27); or that the Rump on the morning of 20 April 1653 were proceeding ‘with all eagerness ’ or with ‘with all earnestness ’. (S17, K42)?

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