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A Shorte Rule of Good Life: A Handbook for the English Mission
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
Abstract
None of Robert Southwell's writing illustrates as do the texts of A Shorte Rule of Good Life the conditions under which he wrote and the manner in which his work was transmitted by manuscript copy and printed book. Until recent years it was known only in rare printed copies representing a series of editions issued in rapid succession following Southwell's execution in 1595. The first, issued from Henry Garnet's second secret press in 1596 or 1597, was probably edited by Garnet himself. The volume also contained the first printing of Southwell's Epistle to his Father. There can be little doubt that ‘The Preface to the Reader’ preceding the Rule, though unsigned, was written by Garnet himself when the grief of loss was still raw. This was followed by two more editions from secret presses in England and further editions from Douai and St. Omer. The first commercial printing in London was that of Richard Field for William Barret in 1620, when the text was crudely adapted for English readers with Puritan sympathies in a volume that gathered together verse and prose already established in popularity, although the author was still identified merely as ‘R. S’.
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1 The editions are listed as follows: Garnet's first edition (1596–97?), STC 22968.5, ARCR 721; second edition (from a secret press, 1597?), STC 22969, ARCR 722; third edition (from a secret press, 1602–05?), STC 22969.3, ARCR 723; fourth edition (Douai, Charles Boscard, 1603–10), STC 22969.5, ARCR 724; fifth edition (St. Omer, Charles Boscard for John Heigham, 1622), STC 22970, ARCR 725.
2 STC 22965. With the variant title Short Rules of Good Life the work was printed in this first collection of Southwell's poetry and prose, Saint Peters Complainte, Mary Magdal. teares with other workes, with the initials R. S. This edition was reprinted in 1630 by John Haviland (STC 22966), who printed another edition in 1634–36 (STC 22968). No other substantial editions of Southwell's work were printed until the nineteenth century.
3 The first four of these manuscripts are listed in Index of English Literary Manuscripts, vol. 1, Part 2, compiled by Peter, Beal (London and New York, 1980).Google Scholar I am also indebted to Professor Beal for the identification of the Throckmorton manuscript, and to the late David Rogers for his introduction to the late Lord Kenyon's manuscript before it came to the Bodleian Library.
4 Quotations cited in this essay are from C unless otherwise indicated.
5 The manuscript is important because it contains a unique copy of Southwell's letter addressed to Sir Robert Cecil while he was imprisoned in the Tower, dated April 6, 1593. It includes also a copy of Epistle unto his Father, a work associated with the printing of the Rule. All three items were printed in Two Letters and Short Rules of a Good Life, ed. Nancy, Pollard Brown, for the Folger Shakespeare Library (University Press of Virginia, 1973).Google Scholar
6 Two versions of The Life of… Lady Anne Late Countesse of Arundell and Surrey are contained in late seventeenth-century manuscript copies at Arundel Castle; it is possible that both derive from a Latin original. One version, in quarto, is bound with a parallel Life of the Earl, and was printed by Henry G. Fitzalan Howard, Duke of Norfolk, in 1857. The other, a separate volume in octavo, probably of a slightly earlier date, gives more information regarding the relationship between the Countess and Southwell, including a chapter omitted from the quarto text. This chapter was first printed by C. A. Newdigate from a transcript made by Tierney, M. A., ‘A New Chapter in the Life of Robert Southwell, S.J’. in The Month 157 (March 1931), pp. 246–54.Google Scholar Quotations from the Life of the Countess are from the octavo manuscript.
7 John Gerard: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, translated by Philip, Caraman (London, etc., 1951), p. 26.Google Scholar
8 Spiritual Exercises and Devotions of Blessed Robert Southwell, S.J., edited by J.-M. de Buck, S.J., and translated by Hallett, P. E. (London, 1931).Google Scholar
9 In this context ‘conversation’ refers to one's spiritual being. (See O.E.D. 1.)
10 Obsolete and dialect words in these stanzas may need some clarification: 1.8 ‘overpercke’ is apparently for ‘overperch’ which is recorded in 1592 in O.E.D. with the meaning of ‘surmount’ or ‘fly over’. Here it appears to mean ‘be set above’. 1.21 ‘collerye’, a remedy for eyes, is recorded in O.E.D. as ‘collyre’. 1.25 ‘treate’, ointment (O.E.D. 7) 1.32 ‘durnes’, doorposts.
11 Paul, Stamper, Historic Parks and Gardens of Shropshire (Shropshire Books, the publishing Division of Shropshire County Council's Information and Community Services Department, n. d.) p. 9 and plates 5 and 6, p. 12.Google Scholar