Sir Edward Dering's Milton

Abstract

Between May 1630, when he posted an original of the Magna Carta to Sir Robert Cotton (I have closed King John in a box and sent him away),1 and February 1642, when he lost his seat in the Long Parliament and thereafter his fortune by committing to print his own book of speeches, Sir Edward Dering, Bart., 15991644, amassed a great collection of books, manuscripts, and legal documents. This collection has been dispersed.2 A hint of its original value remains in the Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.b. 297, a catalog of Dering's books compiled circa 1635-1642, which consists of eighteen leaves, not in order, listing hundreds of volumes, most of them on religious subjects. This manuscript, autograph in part, gives the date, place of publication, cost, location by classis and volume number, and, usually, the size of each volume. Dering and his scribe were conservative catalogers, generally including only information that could be obtained by perusing the item. I should like to concentrate on an exception to this policy. On folio 17v, call number 49.21 (i.e., vol. 21 in classis 49) refers to fourteen quarto pamphlets bound together, for which Dering paid seven shillings. The first item in this volume, whose contents Dering's scribe has entered in the catalog, is De emendatione Ecclesiae [libellus], by Petrus de Aliaco, Cardinaliso Cameracensis [Valentin Curio, Basle, 1525], undated in the catalog. The last title in the volume, an edition of Abraham Ortell's Deorum dearumque capita e veteribus numismatibus, dated Antwerp, 1612, is the only nontheological item, except insofar as it provides accounts of divinities represented on coins. Twelve of the pamphlets deal with current affairs in the church of Archbishop Laud, whom Dering vigorously opposed. The place and date of publication of eleven of these, including Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnnuus, are correctly given as London, 1641. The remaining item, the seventh pamphlet in the volume, is identified as Milton: the plott discovered. London 1640. Mrs. Laetitia Yeandle, Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger, first showed me this item; and the Columbia edition of works, which lists The Plot Discovered among the prose works erroneously ascribed to Milton, led me to a letter in the London TLS, dated October 24, 1936, and headed Milton's Library.3 In this letter, Mr. Kenneth W. Cameron announced his discovery of eleven tracts bound in one volume in the rare book room of the General Theological Seminary, Chelsea Square, New York City. Claiming to have found an unrecorded Milton