The fate of this Life of Wolsey has been indeed singularly unfortunate; after remaining in manuscript nearly a century, it was first printed in 1641, for party purposes, but in such a garbled form as to be hardly recognized for the same work, abridgment and interpolation having been used with an unsparing hand. Its author too had been robbed of his literary honours, which were bestowed upon his younger and more fortunate brother Sir William Cavendish, until the year 1814, when his cause was ably advocated in a Dissertation by the Rev. Joseph Hunter, F.A.S. author of the History of Hallamshire. I am indebted to the kind intervention of my friend J. H. Markland, Esq. for the privilege of reprinting that Dissertation, which the reader will find at the commencement of the volume, and will, I doubt not, be gratified in the perusal. It affords the best example of clear argumentative solution of a literary paradox from circumstantial evidence with which I am acquainted, at the same time it is so skilfully interwoven with curious matter bearing upon the question, as not only to divest it of the sterile character with which disquisitions of the same kind from less able hands have been marked, but to render it very interesting. I owe Mr. Hunter my best acknowledgements for the ready manner in which the favour was conferred, and I look to have the thanks of those, who are yet unacquainted with it, for uniting this tract with the work of George Cavendish, from which it should never again be disjoined. For all that relates to the Life of Wolsey and its author, therefore, I shall beg leave to refer to this source of information; and it will only remain for me to give an account of the present edition.
Having purchased two valuable ancient manuscript copies of the work, one of them from among the duplicates of the late Duke of Norfolk’s library[2], I conceived that the text might be very much improved by collation of these and the several manuscripts in private and public libraries. Upon naming the design to my friend Mr. Douce, he mentioned to me a very curious copy in the possession of Mr. Lloyd, which contained some verses apparently by the same author, and which from this circumstance might have some claim to be considered the author’s original autograph. Upon application to that gentleman, he, with a liberality which calls for my warmest thanks, immediately placed the manuscript in my hands. I at once saw that its pretensions were undoubted, and that it contained not only a more valuable text of the Life, but a series of poems, evidently in the hand writing of the author, with occasional corrections and interlineations, and thus attested:—“per le Auctor G. C.” in numerous places. On the first blank leaf is written in the same hand with the body of the manuscript, “Vincit qui patitur qd G. C. Maxima vindicta paciencia;” and then “Cavendysh de Cavendysh in Com. Suff. gent.” and beneath, “I began this booke the 4. day of Novembr.” On the reverse of the same leaf is another Latin sentence and the motto of Cavendish, Cavendo tutus. On a succeeding blank leaf is the name of a former possessor, C. Rossington[3], under which is written in another hand, “i. e. Clement Rossington of Dronfield, Gent. whose son Mr. James Rossington gave me this MS.” It is remarkable that it should have passed into the possession of a person in Derbyshire. Those who have made Sir William Cavendish the author would have seized upon this circumstance with avidity as lending colour to their assertion, and would probably have argued that the initials G. C. by which George Cavendish has attested it as his production in so many places, were intended to designate Gulielmus Cavendish. Mr. Hunter has, however, settled the question beyond the possibility of dispute; it is sufficient to remark here that Sir William Cavendish died in 1557, and that this manuscript affords unequivocal evidence that the writer survived Queen Mary, who died at the close of 1558. Unfortunately the first leaf of the text of the Life is wanting. At the end of the Author’s Address to his Book, with which the poems conclude, is the date of the completion of the manuscript, which will be found on the plate of fac-similes:
Finie et compilé le xxiiij jour de Junij.
Ao. Regnor. Philippi Rex & Regine Marie iiijto. & vto.
Per le Auctor G. C.
Novus Rex, nova lex, Nova sola Regina, probz. pene ruina.
This invaluable acquisition made me at once change my plan, and proceed earnestly to the work of transcription; feeling convinced that all other manuscripts were, in comparison, of little authority, I determined to follow this, as most entitled to confidence. Upon comparing it with my own manuscript copies and the text of Dr. Wordsworth, I found that it supplied the chasm which, for some unknown reason, is found in all the manuscripts that have come under my notice. The suppressed passages contain the description of a boar hunt, and an account of the libels written against Wolsey by the French[4]; the imperfection is generally indicated by a blank space being left, which in Mr. Douce’s MS. is accompanied by a note saying, “in this vacante place there wanteth copy.” It was at first my intention to give various readings, but upon closer comparison I found this would have been impracticable, because the text, as it appears in Dr. Wordsworth’s edition and in the common manuscript copies, has been almost entirely rewritten; changes in the structure of the phrase and verbal discrepancies occur in almost every line. Under such circumstances I was obliged to content myself with indicating the most important variations, I mean such as in any way affected the meaning of the text. I have however availed myself of my own manuscript copies, or of Dr. Wordsworth’s edition, to supply an occasional word or phrase which seemed necessary to the sense of a passage, but have always carefully distinguished these additions, by enclosing them in brackets.
It is not easy to account for the extraordinary difference in the language of the original autograph copy and the later manuscripts, by any other means than a supposition that the copyist thought he could improve the style of Cavendish, which is indeed sometimes involved and obscure, but many of the discrepancies have clearly arisen from the difficulty of reading his hand-writing, and the substitutions most frequently occur where the original manuscript is the most illegible. It is scarcely probable that Cavendish wrote another copy, for he was already, as he himself says, old, and probably did not survive the date of the completion of this MS. above a year. There are no additions of the least importance in the more recent copies; the few which occur have been carefully noted.
Of the Poems, to which I have given the title of Metrical Visions, no other copy is known to exist. They have little or no merit as verses, being deficient in all the essential points of invention, expression and rhythm, and it is to be regretted that Cavendish, who knew so well how to interest us by his artless narration of facts in prose, should have invoked the muse in vain. He seems to have been sensible of his deficiency, and says very truly