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Early Anglo-Saxon Studies and Legal Scholarship in the Renaissance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

R. J. Schoeck
R. J. Schoeck*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Extract

I begin with the acceptance of Laurence Nowell as the father of Anglo-Saxon studies in Renaissance England. His claim was recognized by his contemporary Camden, who bestowed upon him the title of ‘the first restorer of the Saxon language’, and the scholarship of Robin Flower and Albert H. Marckwardt has reminded us of the propriety, indeed the legality, of that claim. My purpose in this paper is to trace Anglo-Saxon studies among the legal scholars who came after Nowell and estabhshed a continuous tradition to carry forward Nowell's pioneer work. I want to comment on this tradition and to suggest reasons for it and some of the implications of it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 5 , 1958 , pp. 102 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1958

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References

1 Flower, Robin, ‘Laurence Nowell and the Discovery of England in Tudor Times’, Proceedings of the British Academy XXI (1935), 47–73 Google Scholar; Laurence Nowell's Vocabularium Saxonicum, ed. Albeit H. Marckwardt (Ann Arbor, 1952).

2 See Arneke, H., Kirchengeschichte und Rechtsgeschichte in England (Halle, 1937)Google Scholar, and Adams, Eleanor, Old English Scholarship in England from 1566-1800 (New Haven, 1917, Yale Studies in English LV) pp. 36–38 Google Scholar.

3 Some of Cotton's contributions to the society are reprinted in Hearne's Curious Discourses (London, 1773), and give testimony to ‘his consummate knowledge in history and antiquities’ by reason of which ‘during this whole reign he was consulted as an oracle by the privy counsellors and greatest men in the kingdom, upon every difficult point relating to the constitution’ (II, 428).

As Prof. Linda Van Norden has made clear in her splendid study of the chronology of the College of Antiquaries, Cotton was about twenty years younger than Camden and took his degree from Cambridge early in 1586 (‘Sir Henry Spelman on the Chronology of the Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, Huntington Library Quarterly XIII, 1949-1950, 158).

4 Flower, loc. cit.

5 Marckwardt, , op. cit., p. 7 Google Scholar.

6 Adams, , op. cit., p. 39 Google Scholar.

7 I have briefly commented on these points in a short review in Scrinium V (1954), 5.

8 Prof. Van Norden has studied the society in her unpublished dissertation, The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries (U.C.L. A., 1946), and the problem of its chronology has been discussed in the article cited above in note 3.

9 Support for this statement is to be found in my paper on ‘The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and Men of Law’, N & Q, n.s. I (1954), 417-421—see supplementary note, ibid., p. 544.

10 ‘William Camden and the Britannia’, Reckitt Archaeological Lecture, Proceedings of the British Academy XXXVII (1951), 201.

11 Ibid., p. 202.

12 Foster, J., The Register of Admissions to Gray's Inn, 1521-1889 (1889), p. 81.Google Scholar

13 Flower, , loc. cit., p. 52 Google Scholar.

14 Printed by John Day and encouraged by Parker—see Adams, , op. cit., p. 28 Google Scholar.

15 Marckwardt, , op. cit., p. 14 Google Scholar.

16 This honorary benchership was clearly granted because of the Archaionomia of 1568 and the Perambulation of Kent of 1576, for the Eirenarcha (or office of the justices of peace) was afterwards, 1581. See The Records of the Honorable Society of Lincoln's Inn—The Black Books (1897), I, 412. A further honor was bestowed upon Lambarde in 1597 by his appointment as bencher because he was ‘of great reading, learning and experience’ (ibid., 11, 51; the footnote observes that he was appointed master of chancery in June 1592 and had just one month previously been made keeper of the records in the Rolls Chapel).

17 “The Authenticity of Certain Texts in Lambard's Archaionomia 1568', MLR XVIII (1923), 98 ff., rptd. in Studies in the History of Old English Literature (1953). Although Sisam's claim that Lambarde's texts of 1 Athelstan and Athelstan's Charitable Ordinance were translations into Anglo-Saxon (Elizabethan) from the Latin of Quadripartitus was contested by Liebermann, Sisam's fuller analysis of the textual problem in MLR xx seems to demonstrate that claim (though apparently Sisam's ‘contentions have not been universally accepted’).

After the delivery of his British Academy lecture, Flower found, among the Somner MSS. in the Canterbury Chapter Library, ‘Nowell's transcript of the Laws of Canute from Harley MS. 55, prepared for the press by Lambarde’ (op. cit., p. 68, n. 17).

18 Holdsworth, , History of English Law, IV, 117 Google Scholar. Prof. Jones, R. F. supports this statement, but from a different approach and with different logic (The Triumph of the English Language, Stanford, 1953, p. 270 Google Scholar), and argues that ‘the Saxon craze and the demand for the study of the Saxon language began with’ Camden's Remaines and Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence: my thesis in this paper is that it began earlier, with Camden's and Verstegan's work doubtless reinforcing or accelerating the Saxon craze. Cf. my review in Scrinium v (1954), 208.

19 Arthurian Legend in the Seventeenth Century (1932), p. 53. Cf. Jones's argument, cited in the preceding footnote.

20 Op. cit., IV, 117.

21 Collected Papers, 1, 490.

22 See my ‘Rhetoric and Law in 16th-century England', SPL (1953), 110-127.

23 Op. cit., I, 451.

24 Holdsworth, V, 403. See Van Norden, op. cit.

25 Op. cit., V, 403.

26 Ibid.

27 This section is largely condensed from Holdsworth, v, 404-405.

28 Ibid. See the edition of his Journals by Wallace Notestein (New Haven, 1933).

29 Holdsworth's excellent summary of his eminence as a legal historian (v, 407-412) is largely drawn from the studies of Hazeltine in the Harvard Law Review XXIV (1910) and XXIV (1911).

30 Still the standard survey is Wigfall Green, A., The Inns of Court and Early English Drama (New Haven, 1931)Google Scholar, but the whole vast area needs further study. There is an interesting summary discussion by Chroust, A.-H., ‘The Beginning, Flourishing and Decline of the Inns of Court …’ in the Vanderbilt Law Review X (1956), 79–123 Google Scholar. See my comments in ‘Early Tudor Drama and the Inns of Courc', ASTR Newsletter (Nov. 1957), pp. [1-5].

31 See O'Sullivan, Richard, Q.c, Edmund Plowden, 1518-1585 (Autumn Reading, Middle Temple Hall, 12 Nov. 1952)Google Scholar.

32 Adams, , op. cit., p. 57 Google Scholar.

33 See Steeves, H. R., Learned Societies and English Literary Scholarship (Columbia U. P., 1913). P. 35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar