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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 November 2011
John Fenn was born to modest circumstances, enough to pay for school and university and, with other inheritance, to support him as a small country squire. Brought up by his widowed mother in habits of thrift and industry, he shared her views on the importance of education to a ‘Situation in Life’. He was conscious of intellectual curiosity from an early age and developed a strong bent for antiquities, probably encouraged by acquaintance as a schoolboy with Thomas Martin, a senior antiquary and a collector who had recently acquired the ‘Paston Letters’. At Cambridge Fenn worked hard and made friends of similar tastes but rather better connections, especially John Frere, whose sister he married. Established at East Dereham, his zeal expanded into civic duties, bringing him eventually to the High Sheriffalty of Norfolk. It mattered to him as much to become a Fellow of the ‘Antiquarian Society’, and his industry persisted in miscellaneous antiquarian pursuits. He came by the Paston Letters as rewards for cataloguing their new owner's collections. Brother antiquaries and Horace Walpole encouraged him to publish; a good connection arranged for dedication to the King. The consequent knighthood gratified both sides of Fenn's nature but the original manuscripts intended for his sovereign went astray into the library of his patron.
1 Norfolk Record Office (= N.R.O.): Norfolk and Norwich Subscription Library (= N.N.S.L.) MS.
2 =E.T.O.S.D. (private collection). Portions of this work, possibly in another version, were quoted by William Frere in his Advertisement to the fifth (and posthumous) volume of Fenn's Original Letters (= O.L.)
3 Fenn's Journals for 1786–92 and 1794 (private collection) (= F.J.).
4 Now known as Houghton St. Giles. There was a vault built for William Fenn (ob. 1702, a.s. 50) but his epitaph names no forefathers. Ref.: H. and Frere, A. H., Pedigree of the Family of Frere (London, 1899)Google Scholar, appendix III.
5 ‘At this time (1739) Mr Fenn's father & mother lived in the House adjoining to the Bishop's Register Office in the Upper Close, now belonging to & inhabited by Richard Rust Esqr’ (c. 1782). N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., opp. p. 1.
6 For his executors see the will of John Fenn, Surgeon: N.R.O., Norwich Consistory Court (=N.C.C.) Wills 1741 (118 Jarvis).
7 According to her son, she was the daughter and heir of Jacob Emerson Esq. of Gressenhall and Beetly (H. and A. H. Frere, loc. cit.), to whom he attributed arms used by Emersons of Lincolnshire and Burnham Thorpe.
8 Edgefield lies 2½ miles south of Holt. The manor of Edgefield Bacons and adjoining property had been left to John Fenn senior in 1711 by the most respectable of his uncles, the Revd. Edward Fenn, curate of Great Snoring. It was Edward Cooper Esq., the last of the Coopers of Edgefield and maternal uncle of Edward Fenn, who left him this patrimony. Blomefield, Francis and Parkin, Charles, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk (= Blomefield) (Lynn, 1775)Google Scholar, folio, vol. v, p. 919.
9 Possibly they both died of the smallpox, for F. wrote that ‘The Small Pox having been fatal to many of his Family, he had some difficulty to obtain his Mother's Consent to his being inoculated’ at the age of 17 (N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 4). The epitaph of the Revd. Edward Fenn at Great Snoring showed that he and two of his brothers, one of them perhaps John's grandfather, had died of the same disease. Blomefield, v, p. 822.
10 ‘The first thing of which I can form any recollection is, that, when I was about two years old, the manservant used to take me in his arms, & carrying me to the side of the room, where a little sugar Figure hung, danced me towards it, & then retreated with me as I endeavoured to catch it. This pleased me, I laughed & made signs to have the exercise repeated.’ E.T.O.S.D., p. 2.
11 She died in 1743, leaving F. her ‘Bureau and Wrought Bed’, and making him her heir on his majority. N.R.O.: N.C.C. Wills 1743–45, pp. 45–6.
12 E.T.O.S.D., p. 8.
13 Ibid., pp. 9–10.
14 Ibid., p. 1.
15 Ibid., p. 10. When he was between ten and eleven years old he ‘accidentally found in a Closet’ various volumes of the Spectator and the ‘2dvolume of the Tatler, these I seized upon with great eagerness & kept them in my own possession reading them over & over again’. Proof of the impression made on him by the Tatler, no. 104, appears on p. vii of his Preface to vol. 3 of O.L.
16 To judge from some fragments of her letters which survive, e.g. in N.R.O.: Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society (= N.N.A.S.) C3/2(10).
17 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 1.
18 E.T.O.S.D., p. 11.
19 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., pp. 4–5.
20 She had been a ‘lady of the family of Vesey’ (E.T.O.S.D., opp. p. 15), possibly Anne, the widow of William Vesy and daughter of Christopher Crowe of Billney, who died 10th August 1729, aged 63 (Farrer, Edmund, Church Heraldry of Norfolk (Norwich, 1887), 11, p. 107.)Google Scholar
21 E.T.O.S.D., opp. p. 15.
22 Ibid., p. 16.
23 If he was responsible for rewriting the account of Edgefield as published in Blomefield, v, pp. 916–19 etc. (see below, n. 84).
24 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., opp. p. 28.
25 In the account of Edgefield (Blomefield v, p. 919) probably rewritten by F., there is a copy of a black-letter inscription in the church with an undated pre-Reformation injunction to pray for the souls of an apparently non-armigerous Peter Fenn and Alice his wife. Among F.'s MS. collections (N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(7)) there are (i) a document of 16th January 1593 referring to ‘William Fenne of Lynne’ who described himself as ‘yoman’; (ii) an acquittance of 24th October 1642 by ‘John Fenn of Culford’ (Suffolk) ‘Gent’, sealed with the differenced arms given by Guillim and quoted in the text; (iii) a letter of 14th September 1687 from ‘Sam! Fenn of Yarmouth Esq.r’ to the earl of Yarmouth, sealed with the arms allowed to F. in 1771.
26 And continued to be so as late as 13th June 1792, when the only Shakespeare performed by the Norwich Players during sixteen nights at East Dereham was The Merchant of Venice, ‘By Desire of Sir John & Lady Fenn’ (N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2 (2)).
27 E.T.O.S.D., p. 8. It was William Howell's Medulla Historiae Anglicanae, perhaps the 6th edition of 1712.
28 E.T.O.S.D., p. 15.
29 Ibid., p. 14.
30 Ibid., p. 13.
31 This was John Law (1745–1810), eventually bishop of Elphin, the eldest surviving son of Edmund Law (1703–87), eventually bishop of Carlisle. According to D.N.B., John Law went to Charterhouse. His father Edmund, however, who became Master of Peterhouse in November 1754 (not 1756, as in D.N.B.) was the brother-in-law of the Revd. Humphrey Christian, then Master of Botesdale Grammar School, where John may have had some early schooling and met F., six years his senior. F. records that Christian pressed him to enter Peterhouse instead of Caius (N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 3).
32 Ibid., p. 12.
33 Thomas Martin (1697–1771) was born at Thetford Free School House in the Preacher's Chamber of St. Mary's, where his father William, later rector of Great Livermere, was then ‘Curate and Preacher’ (Fenn, John, ‘Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Martin, Gent., F.A.S.’, printed in Norfolk Archaeology, XV (1904), 235Google Scholar (= Fenn's ‘Martin’)). As a schoolboy ‘for a considerable time he was the only scholar; he attended, however, constantly every morning, stayed the usual hours, and at night locked the door, of which he was entrusted with the key, and returned home, sometimes not seeing the master for several days. …’ The master was the Revd. John Tyrell, rector of Santon Downham three miles away. F. also records a Mr. John Tyrell (or Thorold) who was Martin's first father-in-law and who ‘kept the S* Christopher a public house by the bridge (at Thetford) on the Suffolk side…’, but he gives no connection: N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(10).
34 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., pp. 28–9.
35 Given to Martin by ‘Mrs [blank] Herbert a Maiden Gentlewoman, who dy'd at Capt Wrights of Kilverston in Norf. Año 17—.’ (N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2 (11)). Discussed and illustrated in F.'s letters of 13th and 22nd February and 3rd March 1784 to Cullum (N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4)).
36 The Revd. Francis Blomefield (1705–52), rector of Fersfield and Brockdish, historian of Norfolk.
37 N.R.O.: Rye 32 (Blomefield's Entry Book), fo. 33
38 Davis, Norman (ed.), Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1971—) (= Davis), vol. 1, p. xxvi.Google Scholar
39 The record in Martin's hand: N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(10); the volumes: N.R.O.: Bradfer-Lawrence Collection.
40 Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London (= M.S.A.L.), vol. xvii, p. 181, dated 30th November 1780.
41 British Library (B.L.), Add. MSS. 27, 452, fo.32(11).
42 In his acquisition of the Paston papers and other MSS. from Blomefield's collections Martin might have claimed that he was carrying out the intentions Blomefield had announced in the 1736 Introduction to his ‘Essay’, regarding ‘my own Collections, which at present I design to join to’ [Mr. Le Neve's]. Blomefield, I, Introduction p. (2).
43 This was the Revd. Bartholomew Edwards (1732–1820), son of Bartholomew Edwards (1703–75) of Swaffham. The latter appears in the will of F.'s grandmother, Mrs. Ann Fenn (née Brett), dated 17th January 1743, as an executor and trustee of her estate on behalf of her grandson. The will also contains a bequest to Martha Edwards, the executor's daughter, and makes her the first reversioner of F.'s inheritance. N.R.O.: N.C.C. Wills 1743–5, pp. 45–6.
44 Martin's mother Elizabeth was the daughter of Thomas Burrough of Bury St. Edmund's and the aunt of Sir James (1691–1764).
45 John Norris (1738–62) was the only son and heir of Anthony Norris of Barton Turf, Esq. (1711–86), one of Norfolk's leading gentleman historians.
46 John Frere's great-aunt, Susan Frere (1672–1730), married William Edwards of Wisbech (1661–1724) and became the grandmother of Bartholomew Edwards (1732–1820). H. and A. H. Frere, op. cit. (n. 4), p. 6.
47 See Frere, B. S.: A Record of the Family of Frere of Suffolk and Norfolk (privately printed, 1982).Google Scholar
48 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., pp. 3–4.
49 The Senior Wrangler in 1762 was William Paley (1743–1805), the author of Evidences of Christianity (1794).
50 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 6.
51 O.L., vol. v (London, 1823), pp. xx–xxi.Google Scholar
52 N.R.O.:N.N.S.L. MS., p. 18.
53 Ibid., p. 10.
54 This was presented to the young king George III on 13th April, 1763, by a ‘Learned Body’ from the university of Cambridge on the occasion of the Peace of Paris. A Learned Body from Oxford had outmarched them by a week: Annual Register, 1763.
55 Fenn's ‘Martin’, p. 241.
56 In the order of F.'s list (N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., pp. 12–16) these were: (i) ‘Edward King Esq.r of Clare-hall, F.R. & A S.’ (1735–1807); (ii) ‘The Rev.d S.r John Cullum Bart, [who succeeded to the title in 1774] of Catharine hall & of Hardwick House near Bury F.R. & A S.’ (1735–85); ‘John Wilson Esq.r of Peter House’ (1741–93), the Senior Wrangler of F.'s year; (iv) ‘Dillingham Brampton Gurdon Dillingham Esq.r a Fellow Commoner of Clare Hall, F.A.S. & of Letton in Norfolk’ (1740–1820); (v) ‘Jacob Preston Esq.r F.R. & A.S. a Fellow Commoner of Caius—of Beeston St. Lawrence & Lieutenant Colonel of the Eastern Battalion of Norfolk Militia’ (1740–87); (vi) ‘The Rev.d Henry Parish of Trinity College’ (1737–71); (vii) ‘George Chamberlayne Esq.r a Fellow of King's College’ (1738–85); (viii) ‘Edward Chamberlayne Esq. F.A.S. a Fellow of Kings College, in 1762 a Clerk of the Treasury, & in 1782 Joint Secretary to the first Lord, the Marquis of Rockingham’ (1741–82); (ix) ‘The Rev.d Thomas Chamberlayne; the youngest Brother to the beforementioned Gentlemen, Fellow of King's College—Rector of Great Cressingham & a Fellow of Eton’ (1743–1801).
57 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 6.
58 Ibid., p. 10.
59 Who came of the the family of Hatley, wellestablished in Elizabethan times.
60 Mrs. Ann Fenn (see nn. 11 and 43 above). Most of her landed property was in the neighbourhood of East Dereham.
61 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 5.
62 Ibid., opp. p. 4.
63 Ibid., p. 18.
64 Ibid., p. 11 and opp.
65 Ibid., pp. 10–11.
66 Ibid., p. 43 and opp.
67 F. commented in 1782 (Ibid., p. 44) ‘that that Parent, who, without any just cause, deprives a dutiful Daughter of such a proportion of his Fortune, as a younger Child has a right to expect, even without a Promise, sows the seeds of Discontent, & most probably disunites those Branches of his remaining Family, which hitherto the ties of Blood, & fraternal affection had made happy in each other.’ The writer has found no signs of any lasting rift however between F. and his brother-in-law John Frere, the principal beneficiary of his father's will.
68 Loc. cit. F.'s respect and affection for his aunt by marriage are shown in a letter he wrote to her in the afternoon of 23rd May 1787, the day of his accolade: ‘… Nelly [i.e. his wife Ellenor] knows nothing of this event nor cannot till Friday. I thought it my duty to give you the earliest information & am with the sincerest respect & gratitude your dutiful Nephew …’ (private collection).
69 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 43.
70 Ibid., p. 18.
71 He had purchased the estate in 1766 (private correspondence).
72 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(11).
73 “N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., opp. p. 11.
74 Letter of 25th April 1762, from Martin to Ducarel. Nichols, John, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (=Nichols, Anecdotes) (London, 1815), vol. IX, p. 421.Google Scholar
75 Fenn's ‘Martin’, p. 235 n. For the Dandys of Combs and other branches see Steer, F. W., ‘The Dandy Pedigree’ in Proc. Suffolk Inst. Arch, XXVII, pt. 3 (1958), 133–53.Google Scholar
76 N.R.O.: MS. 207 15(4).
77 For whatever reason, Finningham is constantly spelled Fenningham by F.
78 N.R.O. loc.cit.
79 N.R.O.: MS. 207 15(7).
80 Dandy impaling Shelton and Reeve, according to F.
81 Quarles impaling Dandy, according to F.
82 F.'s plumes, both borrowed and inherited, have long vanished from Hill House and the library window seems to have been altered. In 1864 G. A. Carthew recorded two more windows there, possibly ‘the Parlour & Chamber Bow Window’ which F. installed in 1777 (N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., opp. p. 11), one of which included eight more coats of Dandy matches. The other, Carthew said, ‘was filled with ecclesiastical pilferings’, which he did not describe (The East Anglian, II (1864), 141–2).Google ScholarThe implications are perhaps unjust. In letters examined by the writer F. seems scrupulous whether in his thanks and preparations for the salvage of a fractured window of King Charles the Martyr from the rector of Roydon (N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4)), or in the purchase from a glazier of Ipswich of ‘five pieces of painted Glass in a stair case window’ at half a crown each, ‘his’ (the glazier's) ‘own price’ (N.R.O.: N.N.A.S.C3/2(2)).
83 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 21.
84 His surviving correspondence with Whittingham shows that the manuscripts for the hundreds of Holt, Mitford and North Greenhow all passed through his hands (N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4)). Internal evidence suggests that he may have rewritten the accounts of Edgefield in Holt, East Dereham in Mitford, Houghton and perhaps Great Snoring in North Greenhow. He also drew up the ‘Pedigree of the L' Estrange Family’ for the parish of Hunstanton (N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 21).
85 The Revd. J. Granger (1723–76), vicar of Shiplake, Oxon.
86 Granger, James, A Biographical History of England, 5th edn. (London, 1824), vol. 1, p. xv.Google Scholar
87 Ibid., p. 21 n. 3.
88 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4), F. to Cullum 26th May 1782.
89 Ibid., Cullum to F. 16th August 1782.
90 Ibid., draft for ‘T h e Picture Gallery’ or (running title) ‘Proposals for rendering old Portraits more generally useful’ in Gentleman's Magazine, LIII (January 1783), 394.Google Scholar
91 The Times of 14th July 1933: letter of 8th July from H. L. Bradfer-Lawrence of Norfolk Record Society, quoting Parish to Townshend of 22nd May 1769.
92 John Smith, Master of Caius; William Richardson, Master of Emmanuel; Richard Farmer, Master-to-be of Emmanuel (1775); Henry Baker, F.R.S.; Matthew Duane, trustee of the British Museum. F. does not record in his Memoirs that the Revd. Dr. R. Eyre, later one of the Society's auditors, also subscribed to his Testimonial. M.S.A.L. 29th November 1770.
93 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4). F.'s copy of his Certificate of 29th November 1770.
94 M.S.A.L. 7th March 1771. John Frere was present.
95 Fenn's ‘Martin’, p. 250; N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(11).
96 N.R.O.: Ibid.
97 N.R.O.:N.N.A.S. C3/2(4).
98 ‘Whilst Mr Payne was examining his library and picking out such books as he thought proper, Mr Martin would never come near him, though often in a morning early, whilst every one else was in bed, he would get up, go down into his library, take away and hide up such old curious books as he most valued. Many of these were found after his death hidden in various parts of his house.’ Fenn's ‘Martin’, p. 245.
99 N.R.O.:N.N.A.S. C3/2(4).
100 ‘… All Books printed & manuscript, bound & unbound, on paper, vellum &c blank books, all Pamphlets, Sermons printed & manuscript, Magazines, Catalogues &c, all Prints, books of Prints, Drawings, Maps &c/Heraldical papers & parchments of all kinds, Pedigrees, Grants of Arms, Patents &c all Deeds, Records, Charters, collections for Counties &c on paper, parchment &c all pictures or paintings on glass, wood, canvas/vellum or paper &c all Swords, Guns, Shields, Spears, Pikes, bows arrows & other arms &c all Seals Matrixes, Impressions on wax &c All Coins, Shells, Fossils, Urns, Brasses, Coats of arms, Copper or other plates &cc all blank parchments & vellum &cc Indian Ink &cc All Boxes, Chests of Drawers, Escritoires, Cabinets, Desks, Trunks &cc in which the papers &cc are, book shelves cases &cc’ (erased from draft: ‘& all other Curiosities whatsoever’): Ibid.
101 M.S.A.L. 2nd May 1771.
102 Fenn's ‘Martin’, p. 253.
103 O.L., 1, p. xx n.2.
104 Which F. exhibited to the Society on 3rd February 1774.
105 Writer's italics.
106 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(11).
107 According to F.'s calculations, Worth had made no more than £70 profit from his sales of his own and Martin's collections: Fenn's ‘Martin’, p. 253.
108 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4).
109 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(11). In the same parcel of papers there is an unbound quarto notebook entitled ‘A Catalogue of M.r Worth's Papers—Prints &c &c 1775’ (writer's italics) with rough entries by F. In an account of a ‘Chest of 50 Drawers’ he enters on p. 6 the contents of Drawer 15 as ‘Papers & Rolls relative to the Paston Family. …’ On p. 12 he records ‘On the Top of the Chest of 24 Drawers’ various ‘Bundles’, including ‘5 of Papers & Letters relative to the Paston Family’.
110 M.S.A.L. xvii, 181: 30th November 1780.
111 O.L., 1, p. xx.
112 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(11).
113 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4).
114 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(11). Printed and partly priced catalogue of ‘the entire Collection of Pictures, Prints, Coins, &c &c of the late Mr Martin, F.A.S. Which will be Sold by Auction, at the King's Head, at Diss, Norfolk On Thursday the 29th, Friday the 30th, Saturday the 31st, of October, and Monday the 1 of November 1772.’
115 Presumably John Anstis, Garter King of Arms (1669–1744).
116 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(11).
117 W. S. Lewis et al. (eds.), Horace Walpole's Correspondence (= Yale Walpole), vol. xvi, p. 231.
118 Ibid., vol. I, p. 330. Walpole had resigned from the Society in 1772 after a membership of nearly twenty years and his reflection on Fenn was made while he was still in the height of his displeasure with certain Fellows because of their strictures upon his ‘Historic Doubts’. The sneer—which might well have rebounded upon himself—did not extend into his estimate of F.'s character. He continued to receive and correspond with F., and later with his wife, until the year before F.'s death (Yale Walpole, vol. xvi, p. 248), and was a principal encourager of the publication of the Paston Letters (Ibid., vol. XLII, p. 100). In return F. exercised his palaeography to strengthen Walpole's disbelief in Chatterton's Rowley (Ibid., vol. xvi, pp. 241–4).
119 Brigg Price Fountaine.
120 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 39.
121 Ibid., p. 38.
122 Ibid., pp. 50–1. F. borrowed the title from Pepys's collection of 1687.
123 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 50. When he was already committed to the preparation of the first two volumes of O.L.
124 Davis (see n. 38), no. 450.
125 N.R.O.: Colman Library 109.
126 Davis, 1, p. xxxii.
127 N.R.O.: Rye 32, fo. 33.
128 Ibid., fo. 31. Writer's italics.
129 see n. 109 above.
130 O.L., III (i).
131 For example he describes the docket on Davis, no. 128 (O.L., III, p. 63 n.) as ‘in a modern hand’. The annotations on Davis, nos. 151 and 383 (O.L., III, pp. 41 n. and 280 n.) he describes as ‘in an ancient hand’.
132 Gough, Richard, British Topography, 2nd edn. (London, 1780), II, p. 3.Google Scholar F.'s letters to G. of 18th March and 31st August 1777, printed by Nichols, John in Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century (= Nichols, Illustrations) (London, 1825), v, pp. 167–8Google Scholar, show that F.'s ‘rescue’ was of ‘The remains of Le Neve's original papers relative to the County of Norfolk.…’ They were bought by F. towards the end of 1776 ‘amongst many other things at no particular price, the whole being a lumping (a Norfolk term … it means the whole together) bargain’. They were apparently the papers in Fenn's ‘Martin’, pp. 254–5.
133 N.R.O.: Coleman Library 109. King to F. of 21st May 1780.
134 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 46.
135 N.R.O.: Colman Library 109. Frere to F. of 12th June 1782.
136 Bodleian MS., Gough Gen. Top. 32, encl. 63: F. to G. of 8th May 1782.
137 Ibid.
138 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4), F. to Cullum of 26th May 1782.
139 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 19.
140 Ibid., p. 41.
141 Loc. cit.
142 Ibid., opp. p. 11.
143 Ibid., p. 49.
144 Ibid., p. 36.
145 Ibid., p. 34.
146 F.J.
147 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 48.
148 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4): F. to Cullum of 16th March 1783.
149 Ibid., F. to Philip Yonge, Bishop of Norwich of 24th November 1782.
150 Yale Walpole, vol. XLII, pp. 191–2.
151 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 50.
152 Ibid., p. 48.
153 Ibid., pp. 56–7.
154 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4): F. to Cullum of 7th July 1785.
155 Ibid., Cullum to F. of 16th August 1782.
156 N.R.O.: Colman Library 109, Frere to F. of 12th June 1782.
157 Ibid., Frere to F. of 12th October 1782.
158 Nichols, Anecdotes, VIII, p. 58.
159 For example, D.N.B.
160 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p.52.
161 Bodleian MS., Gough Gen. 28: King to Gough (MS. circular) of 12th June 1784. F.'s copy of the same circular is in N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4).
162 N.R.O.: Colman Library 109, Frere to F. of 16th December 1785. The President's forbearance toward Frere and his friend may have been due in part to a special service performed by F. in 1784. De Ferrars had been renowned, even in his youth, by what Horace Walpole called a ‘passion for ancestry’ (Yale Walpole, vol. 11, p. 135), and when he chose the title of Leicester for his promotion of 1784 he was not only snubbing the Cokes of Holkham who had held that title from 1744 to 1759; he was asserting his claims to inheritance from the first line of earls to use that territoriality, the twelfth-century Beaumonts. There had been comment in the Gentleman's Magazine and F. had written to Leicester to correct it in his favour (N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4), F. to Leicester of 5th August 1784). At the same time he retailed a story he had heard that the earl's grandfather had protested in 1744 against the Cokes’ assumption of a title belonging to his wife's family (she was Elizabeth Compton née Shirley, suo jure Baroness Ferrers). Leicester was delighted to hear about this demonstration of family pride; he undertook to seek confirmation of the story by an aunt, so that it could be published in the newspapers (Ibid., L. to F. of 9th August 1784).
163 In a letter from F. to Gough, written as late as 27th September 1793, he says: ‘I hear Mr King re-visits the Antiquarian Society. I am glad of it. Do his “Ancient Castles” go on or has he buried them in his own ruins? I hope not; it was both an instructive & amusing work; I wish much for its continuance’ (Nichols, Illustrations, v, pp. 167–80, no. 20).
164 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., p. 18.
165 D.N.B., sub art. Tomline, Sir George Pretyman.
166 N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(4), Frere to F. of 21st February 1784.
167 N.R.O.: Colman Library 109, Frere to F. of 26th May 1785.
168 Ibid., Frere to Ellenor Fenn of 6th July I785
169 Ibid., undated holograph note by F. The ‘proper binding’ caused much discussion. Nichols, the King's Bookseller, said that it should be in marble covers so that the King could have it rebound in his own way ‘& uniformly with his other books of the same nature’ (Ibid., Frere to F. of 25th October 1786). Mr. King said it should be fittingly bound beforehand. He had presented a book himself, but, wrote Frere, ‘his book was (what the King complains of) mortal fine …’ (Ibid., Frere to F. of 12th January 1787). The quiet voice of John Smith, Pitt's Private Secretary, concluded that ‘Red Morocco gilt, or any other Colour, will, I am inform'd, be perfectly proper, & I hear it is likewise unusual to present in Marble Paper …’ (Ibid., Smith to Frere of 18th January 1787).
170 F. J.: 12th June 1786.
171 N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., enclosure.
172 F.J.: 29th January 1787.
173 O.L., 1, pp. 32–7.
174 Barrett, Charlotte (ed.), Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay (London, 1842), IV, p. 323.Google Scholar
175 O.L., 1, p. 37 n.
176 Beresford, John (ed.), The Diary of a Country Parson (Oxford, 1926), II, pp. 311–12.Google Scholar Parson Woodforde and Nancy had enjoyed a fine dinner in company with ‘Mr and Mrs Fenn of Dereham’ at Weston House on 13th October 1783. Their hosts, the Custances, were well acquainted with the Fenns. Mrs. Sarah Norris, the wife of Anthony Norris of Barton Turf, was John Custance's paternal aunt.
177 The originals of these certificates are preserved in N.R.O.: Colman Library 109.
178 ‘Papers on the Authenticity of the Paston Letters’ (=Sal/Paston), Archaeologia, XL (1866), 9.Google Scholar
179 Merivale, Herman, ‘Are the Paston Letters authentic?’, Fortnightly Review, no. 8 (1st September 1865), p. 149.Google Scholar
180 Sal/Paston. One of the questions which the Antiquaries’ Committee found ‘quite inexplicable’ in their comparison of the text of O.L., V, with the original MSS. was the apparent addition of several separate words and one whole passage to a letter of 5th November 1471, from Margaret Paston to her son John III then in London. Perhaps it was fortunate for F.'s reputation in 1866 that the committee did not have the printer's copy (now in a private collection) to consult, since it shows that all these additions were made in his hand to a transcript in the hand of William Dalton, his amanuensis. The problem was solved in 1874 when Gairdner, James (The Paston Letters, New Complete Library Edition (London, 1906), 1 (18))Google Scholar established from the discoveries at Roydon Hall that there were two versions of this letter, the draft and the copy which was sent (Davis, no. 209).
181 Davis, 1, p. xxix. They are now B.L., Add. MSS. 43488–91.
182 Pretyman's promotion to the bishopric of Lincoln seems to have been announced on 20th February (Annual Register, xxx).
183 According to F.: ‘When the Bishop of Lincoln first informed Mr Fenn of His Majesty's intention of conferring the honour of Knighthood upon him, he said, “Sir, you must not take this in the light that conferring of this honour has been considered in for some years; it is His Majesty's Determination not to confer it in future but as a testimony of real merit in the person, whom he advances to this Dignity”.’ N.R.O.: N.N.S.L. MS., opp, p. 59.
184 N.R.O.: Colman Library 109, Pretyman to F. of 18th April 1787.
185 N.R.O.: Colman Library 110, F. to Barnard of 10th May 1787.
186 Ibid., Barnard to F. of 12th May 1787.
187 Ibid., F. to Pitt of 19th May 1787.
188 F.J.: 19th May 1787.
189 Sal/Paston, p. 12.
190 N.R.O.: Colman Library 110, undated holograph note by F.
191 Letter from A. H. Frere in The Times of 9th March 1931.
192 The Public Advertiser(?) of 23rd May 1787.
193 It contained some 85 textual corrections. The only printed acknowledgement of these by F. was to George Steevens, one of whose readings, as Professor Davis has pointed out (Davis, 1, p. xxv fn. 1), was a mistake which has been immortalized by quotation in the Oxford English Dictionary. There are several amendments of remarkable skill which originated from F.'s nephew, John Hookham Frere (1769–1846), then a schoolboy at Eton.
194 D.N.B., loc. cit. (n. 165)
195 N.R.0.:N.N.S.L. MS., enclosure.
196 On a separate sheet he set out an itemized account with historical explanations. N.R.O.: N.N.A.S. C3/2(6).*
197 Fenn's ‘Martin’, p. 241.
198 O.L., v, pp. 383–4 n.
199 Ibid., p. xxvi.
200 N.R.O.: Colman Library 165, Preface of 23 rd February 1792.
201 N.R.O.: Colman Library 166, Notes.