Recently Recovered "Lost" Tudor Plays with some others

by Unknown

Mace, see Mass.

Macro Plays and Manuscripts (The). These derive their name from a former owner, Cox Macro, an eighteenth century antiquary, physician, and cleric. From the Dictionary of National Biography it appears he was born in 1683, and died in 1767. He was the eldest son of Thos. Macro, grocer and alderman, and five times Mayor of Bury-St.-Edmunds. Thos. Macro married Susan, only daughter of Rev. John Cox, rector of Risby (near Bury-St.-Edmunds). The son received his name from his mother's surname. His name was made the subject of a punning motto for the family—"Cocks may crow." Educated at Bury Grammar School, he matriculated at Jesus College, Cambridge, but migrated to Christ's. In 1703 he entered at Leyden University, where he studied under Boerhave. In 1710 he proceeded to LL.B. degree at Cambridge, and to D.D. in 1717. He was chaplain to George II., but his possession of a large fortune rendered him independent of preferment. Macro was reputed to be master of most modern languages, and his house at Little Haugh contained a large collection of artistic treasures. Macro died 2nd Feb. 1767, and was buried at Norton, near Bury. A catalogue of Macro's treasures was compiled in 1766. Among them were many letters from Protestant martyrs, which came to him through Bishop Cox; the great register of Bury Abbey; a ledger-book of Glastonbury Abbey; and the original MS. of Spenser's View of the State of Ireland. Many of his MSS. had previously been the property of Sir Henry Spelman, others formed part of the library of Bury Abbey. The Macro property ultimately came to John Patteson, M.P. for Norwich, who disposed of the old masters (pictures) in 1819, and sold the books and MSS. for no more than £150 (it is said) to Richard Beatniffe, a Norwich bookseller, who resold them at a large profit. They were sold for Beatniffe by Christie in 1820, and realised £700, 41 lots going to Dawson Turner, and the rest to Hudson Gurney. The latter are now in the possession of J. H. Gurney, of Keswick Hall, near Norwich, and are described in the Historical MSS. Commission's 12th Report. Macro's correspondence with literary men and artists forms the additional MSS. at the British Museum, 32556-7. The Rev. Joseph Hunter edited for the Camden Society in 1840 a volume of Ecclesiastical Documents, containing 21 charters from Macro's library; and from a MS. formerly in his possession was printed, in 1837, for the Abbotsford Club, a morality called Mind, Will, and Understanding. So far generally the D.N.B.: the manuscript of the plays alone concern the present volume. I have not seen the volume myself, though I hope one day to have the satisfaction of reproducing it in facsimile. I have therefore to acknowledge my indebtedness for the précis which follows to Mr. A. W. Pollard's exhaustive account as given in the introduction to the Early English Text Society's Macro Plays (Extra Series, xci.). Boiled down, the facts are these, so far as they relate to the two Macro Plays included in the present volume, Mankind and Respublica. Mankind now forms part of a volume which in the eighteenth century contained other plays and treatises in manuscript, with which we need not now concern ourselves, except to remark the strange juxtaposition of old moralities, a Juvenal, a treatise on alchemy, etc. When sold at auction in 1820 the collection was broken up, and three plays, Mankind, Wisdom, and The Castle of Perseverance, bound afresh in one volume. Other points of interest are given by Mr. Pollard, but which I pass by as not germane to the present purpose. The manuscript of Mankind and Wisdom are contemporaneous; and were, says Mr. Pollard, in the same ownership before the end of the fifteenth century. This is in all likelihood a fact; but that the ownership was a purely personal one is not so clear as appears at first sight, or for the reasons stated by Mr. Pollard. It is now necessary for me to quote Mr. Pollard's own words in order to make my suggestions quite clear. He says: "It is ... possible that both this play and ... [Wisdom] were written in different parts of a miscellany-book belonging to Monk Hyngham, though the fact that his doggerel inscription of ownership is written after each of them inclines one at first to think that they were separate units among his possessions. As it occurs at the end of this play [Mankind], the inscription ... has been partly erased and partly cut through, the lower part of the leaf being supplied with modern paper. Enough, however, of the inscription remains to make it fairly certain that it reads like that at the end of the next play: O liber si quis cui constas forte queretur Hyngham que monacho dices super omnia, consto. This apparently is to be translated (I owe the suggestion to Dr. Warner): 'O book, if any one by chance asks to whom do you belong, you are to say I belong to Hyngham, above everything which a monk can own.' Who Monk Hyngham was we do not know. He may have belonged to Bury-St.-Edmunds, whence some of the Macro manuscripts are said to have come." Thus far also Mr. Pollard.

Now, I am inclined to think the deductions hitherto drawn from the foregoing facts are not altogether of the soundest. In the first place, Is the inscription rightly translated? Secondly, Does "Hyngham" refer to a person or a place? In answer to the first question, I offer an alternative reading for consideration; in reply to the second, I offer evidence that a place is meant. If I am right in my contentions fresh light is thereby thrown upon several problems, at present unsolved, in respect to these Macro plays. To take the points in order. The inscription as given by Mr. Pollard in his introductory remarks on page xxx, varies somewhat from the text as given on pages 34 and 73: que is quem and consto is given as consta. My own text ([40],d) follows the latter, which for the sake of the ensuing argument I quote again, with contractions, etc., duly indicated:

O liber, si quis cui constas forte queretur,
Hyngham, quem monacho dices, super omnia consta.

Now if for quem we read quod and for consta we substitute consta[t], we get on surer ground. The original hardly conveys the idea that constas occurs twice, though there is evidently a play on "constas," "constat"; at least that is a possible reading. In this instance, too, the verb constare seems to be used in the sense of value, and one hardly sees where Dr. Warner's belong comes in. If quod and constat are accepted, the translation would be something like this:

"O book, if haply anyone should ask to what [place] you are precious, tell them Hyngham, which [quod] to a monk is precious beyond all [places]."

That is, the book is precious to Hyngham; Hyngham is precious beyond all places to the monks.

This brings me to the next point. Assuming this translation to be correct (and I invite discussion), it seems pretty clear that the ownership of the manuscripts of Mankind and Wisdom was not to a Monk Hyngham, but to a monk or monks of Hyngham. Facts again seem to confirm alike this new view and also the Eastern Counties tradition. Hyngham, Hingham, or Ingham, as a surname, is not common in the district; on the contrary, it is uncommonly rare. It belongs more to the north, especially to Lancashire and Yorkshire. Its occurrence now-a-days in Leeds, Bradford, Liverpool, and Manchester, may be regarded as fifty or sixty to two, or at most three, for other large towns all over the country; whilst in the Eastern Counties it is simply not to be found. This is especially and particularly the case as regards Lincoln, Grimsby, Boston, Stamford, Norwich, Yarmouth, Ipswich, Bury-St.-Edmunds, Cambridge, Colchester, Chelmsford, etc. The facts are at least significant.

On the other hand, taking Hyngham (or Ingham) as a place-name, we go, as the kiddies say, from "cold" to "hot" at once. There are three places of this name, all comparatively close to one another. There is Ingham near Bury-St.-Edmunds, Ingham near Lincoln, and Ingham 16 miles N.E. from Norwich. I have been unable at present to trace any ecclesiastical connection with the two Inghams first named. But at Ingham near Norwich, Sir Miles de Stapleton, of Bedale, in Yorkshire, in the fourteenth century founded a chantry in the church of Ingham, with a warden and two priests, in honour of the Holy Trinity. This foundation afterwards became a priory of friars of the order of the Holy Trinity, otherwise known as "Trinitarians" or "Mathurines." At the dissolution there were seven friars, and a revenue estimated at £63 per annum. "Yngham Trynyte" is twice mentioned in Bale's Three Laws [Works, E.E.D.S. 34 and 63]. In Carlisle's Topographical Dictionary of England (1808), Ingham is spoken of as being in the fourteenth century "a college or priory of the order of the Holy Trinity." This is as far as I have at present gone, but I shall not have sought and written in vain if my remarks lead to further research in connection with these Macro plays. The new light certainly tends to confirm Mr. Pollard's dates; but how far it affects his argument founded on the collation of the manuscript, I do not know, and writing, as I do, far away from the great centres of antiquarian literary research and reference, my inquiries have been perforce of the slightest.