MS 17 & William Laud
MS 17: Thorney Computus (Cambridgeshire, c.1110)
William Laud (1573-1645), the son of a wealthy Reading tailor, attended London’s Merchant Taylors’ School. Founded in 1561 by Thomas White and others, this school admits boys only to this day. He joined St John’s in 1589 and was elected fellow in 1593. From 1611 to 1621 Laud served as the College’s president. His ecclesiastical and political rise culminated under the patronage of King Charles I (1600-1649) when he became archbishop of Canterbury in 1633.
The story usually told about Laud is a rather un-favourable one, which ends with imprisonment in the Tower of London in 1640 and then on the executioner’s block on 10 January 1645. Our story takes place a good 20 years earlier.
After Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), Portrait of William Laud (1573-1645) [Oil on canvas]. St John’s College, Oxford.
The Thorney Computus
The Thorney Computus displayed in the exhibition is St John’s most celebrated manuscript and the Byrhtferth Diagram on folio 7v is the most published illustration from the College’s historic collections. A computus (from Latin computare ‘to calculate’) is a collection of texts used for calculating the moveable Easter feast, which is determined by the cycle of the moon. Many medieval monastic libraries had such manuscripts in their collections. The significance of the Thorney Computus lies in its ‘unique […] dimensions, its thoughtful arrangement, and its exquisite decoration’; ‘its importance for the cultural and intellectual history of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England’ was discovered as early as the 16th century (Wallis 2007a).
Provenance
The ownership history of MS 17, outlined in Wallis (2007c), is a long and fascinating one. The manuscript was even owned by another Oxford institution when it was given to Bodley’s Library in 1439 or 1444 among the volumes donated by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (1390-1447), brother of King Henry V. It is unknown how the book left Oxford the first time, but it had had at least two other owners before the London Merchant Taylor Hugh Wicksteed presented it to St John’s College some time before 1610. It is a credit to William Laud that St John’s College did not end up being just another fleeting footnote in the manuscript’s provenance history.
A Deliberate Misunderstanding?
At some point during Laud’s presidency, another fellow of the College, William Paddy (1554–1634), Royal Physician to James I and a great benefactor of the Library and the College, asked for permission to borrow the Thorney Computus on behalf of Robert Cotton (1570/71-1631), an antiquarian and arguably England’s most elebrated early modern book collector. The permission must have been granted, possibly by Laud himself, as Paddy did what all librarians dread their readers will do: he gave the volume to his friend. Robert Cotton immediately marked it as his possession by adding the loan to the catalogue of his own library.
After Cornelius Johnson (Cornelius Janssen van Ceulen) (17th-19th century, based on a work of 1629), Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, 1st Bt [Oil on canvas]. © National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 534)
Begging for a Return
The lending of the Thorney Computus must have ruffled some feathers, as Laud evidently came under some pressure in this matter. Two years after his presidency ended in 1621, Laud wrote a letter to Cotton on 22 November 1623 (now in the British Library), imploring him to return the manuscript.
‘Sir, if it please you to think me worth the having, you have now an opportunity to bind me to you; and if it please you to let me have this book [described by Laud as ‘an ancient volume of Bede’ earlier in the letter] to send back to the College, and to take off that which troubles my own mind, and gives some unadvised men too much occasion to be bold with me, you shall in lieu of it have my continual service; if anything of worth in the like kind come to my hands […] I will freely give it in recompence [sic].’
(Bliss 1857, pp. 242-3)
Robert Cotton had a reputation for procuring books by questionable methods. Fortunately for St John’s, Laud’s plea did persuade him to return the manuscript. Well, most of it anyway. He had removed five folios containing the annals of Thorney Abbey. These have remained part of the Cotton Library to this day and are now in the British Library, where they can be found as folios 80-84 of Cotton MS Nero C. VII.
Since then, the Thorney Computus has remained largely undisturbed at St John’s College, its link to the Thorney annals in the Cotton Library forgotten. Over 300 years later, the renowned Oxford manuscript scholar N. R. Ker made the connection between the now separate manuscripts in 1938. The Calendar & The Cloister (https://digital.library. mcgill.ca/ms-17) has digitally reunited the Cotton fragments with St John’s manuscript.
Byrhtferth’s Diagram
Byrhtferth, monk of Ramsey Abbey, set forth this diagram of the harmony of the months and the elements.
(Translation by Wallis 2007b)
These are the solar months (so called because they follow the Sun’s course) which have 31 days: January, March, May, July, August, October, December. These have 30 (that is, days according to the Sun’s course): April, June, September and November. But February deviates from them all.
This diagram contains the twelve signs and also the two equinoxes and the twice-two seasons of the year, within which are inscribed the names of the four elements and the designations of the twelve winds, and also the four ages of man. The twice-two letter of the name of Adam, the first-created man, are also added.
It shows which months have a moon of 30 [days] and which a moon of 29.
Byrhtferth (fl. c.986-c.1016) was a Benedictine monk at Ramsey Abbey (Cambridgeshire) as well as a scholar and teacher. He was the author of an influential Latin computus produced between 988 and 996. Today he is regarded as ‘one of the most learned and prolific authors of the late Anglo-Saxon period’ (Lapidge 2004).