I do not know that in such a cemetery of small and great, the servant and his master, a more dismal corner exists than that which is reserved for the stillborn. They are a great host, and they are mostly of the family of Theology. Of one such product of fruitless travail I have to speak. It has rested undisturbed in the library of Jesus College for over 300 years, and in all that time, perhaps, no human being, except the official who transcribed its title in the catalogue, has ever had occasion to recall its existence. Its author was one Matthew Makepeace, S.T.P., a Fellow of the College in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Its elaborate title is: “Speculum Archimagiae, sive Straguli Babyloniaci Direptio, necnon Offuciarum et Praestigiarum Romano-papisticarum Apocalypsis liberrima”: from which I conclude that the Pope received some hard knocks in it, and that the Babylonian lady of the Book of Revelation was left in pitiful disarray by the learned doctor’s assault. The title-page informs us that the book was printed at London by Melchisedeck Bradwell, for John Bill, in the year 1604: furthermore, that it had been “perused and approved by publike authoritie.” That it was ever perused I do not believe. Only in the most cursory way I have perused it myself, and I do not think that any other man has done as much. To our patient ancestors a book was a book, let it be ever so dull. They glossed it, annotated it, added their approving or inimical comments. But nobody has been at the pains to add his marginal notes to the text of Matthew Makepeace. Its cover is unworn, its pages as clean as on the day when it first saw light. This only: on a loose scrap of paper, contained between its pages, I have discovered a name written in Greek characters and a short Greek quotation.
Let me get done with this dull book as fast as I can. It is, of course, written in Latin, and its style does not suggest that the author had a facile Latinity. The extensive list of authors cited indicates that he had read widely, but digested little of what he read, in Patristic and Rabbinical literature. The purpose of the book is to discredit the claim of the Roman Church to the possession of supernatural gifts. The subjects dealt with are naturally the Roman sacraments and hagiology. The learned author arrives at the conclusion, on grounds which I have not had the patience to investigate, that the human exercise of miraculous powers ceased at the precise date, A.D. 430.
Of the writer, Doctor Makepeace, I can find little more information than is supplied in the History of Jesus College, written by John Sherman in the reign of Charles II. This work, composed in the fulsome Latin which was esteemed elegant in the seventeenth century, gives brief biographical notes of each of the Fellows from the date of the foundation of the College. There are various manuscript versions of the History, some ampler than others, and if you wish to read the original Latin, of which I subjoin a translation, you must search out the single copy which contains the full note of his life and work. It may be rendered:
“Matthew Makepeace, S.T.P., of the county of Northumberland, succeeded to a fellowship in 1565: a most learned investigator of theological matters (rei theologicae indagator), especially of the writings of the Fathers: a chastiser of the Pope (Papomastix): he illuminated by his knowledge the College and the University, most fearlessly attacking the unclean practices of the Babylonian harlot. He had one much-loved pupil, Marmaduke Dacre, first-born son of the lord baron Dacre, of the county of Cumberland. The same having disappeared from the College in a fashion as yet unknown (modo adhuc inscibili) the old man, seized with a phrenetic malady, gradually declined (contabuit), often asserting that he was that same pupil whom he had lost. Dying at the age of sixty years, he was buried in the chapel, September 8th, 1604.”
To the information given by Sherman I can only add the evidence of a blue flagstone—unhappily removed in the course of chapel restoration, in 1863—which lay in the floor of the south transept. Its simple inscription was: “Matthaeus Makepeace, S.T.P., decessit, 1604.”
With the evidence as to the date of the death of Dr. Makepeace, furnished by Sherman and the old gravestone, it is difficult to reconcile a curious entry in the register of burials in All Saints’ Parish Churchyard. The entry is dated April 13, 1654, and it runs:—
“Matthew Makepeace, an oldman yᵗ lodged with yᵉ widow Pearson in Jesus Lane, of yᵉ age of about three score years and ten. He was burried in Poorman’s Corner, by yᵉ parish.”
The date, the age of the deceased, the place of burial, the fact that this Makepeace was evidently a pauper and a stranger to Cambridge, all would seem to make it certain that he could not be the same man who is mentioned by Sherman. Nevertheless, I have my doubts, and the story which I have to unfold will explain the reason.
A Corner of the Library.