who was afterwards exposed to dishonour by Shakspere, with a trifling variation of his name, and a considerable distortion of his character. But it may be presumed that Worcester was indebted not so much to his bounty as to his protection; for if we may judge of Worcester’s patrimony from the few notices he has given us of his father’s property in Bristol, it is not likely that his own means would have been inadequate to the small expense of a collegiate course in those simple times; and we may therefore believe, that the connection which subsisted between Worcester and Fastolf, was merely a compliance with the general custom of the age, when youths of gentlemanly birth and competent fortune sought the patronage and entered the household of wealthy and powerful men. But, however this might have been, it is certain that he afterwards lived with Sir John at Caister, in Norfolk, where he acted as the knight’s secretary and confidential friend, and subsequently as one of his executors.
At Oxford Worcester prosecuted his studies with great diligence and success; and we are informed that he became eminent for his knowledge of history, medicine, and astronomy. On these subjects he is said to have written many books: yet it is likely that they were rather extracts and memorandums, than original and formal compositions. Besides these, he executed some translations from the classics; and we learn from his Itinerary, that on the tenth of August 1473, he presented the Bishop of Winchester with a translation of Cicero on Old Age. He tells us, however, that this gift was not sufficient to conciliate the good prelate’s regard; but he seems to insinuate, that the failure was owing less to the faults of the performance, than to the intervention of an enemy. Yet, whatever he might have suffered from the malice of his neighbours, it is possible, that the offering itself was considered of small value; and it might have been the less esteemed, if it be true, that the same treatise had been already rendered into English by John Tiptoft, the accomplished and unfortunate Earl of Worcester.
But it is on very slender evidence that this nobleman is said to have translated Cicero on Old Age. He had left in manuscript a translation of Cicero on Friendship; and when Caxton printed it, many years after his death, with an anonymous version of the essay on Old Age, in the same volume, he was at once supposed to have been the
author of both; but the translation, thus published without a name, was professedly executed in honour of Sir John Fastolf, the friend and patron of William of Worcester; and as it is well known that many of his dependant’s literary performances were undertaken expressly for his sake, and, as at the same time William of Worcester might have been easily confounded with the Earl of Worcester, there is considerable probability that William, and not the Earl, was the author of the translation in question, and consequently William could not have suffered on a comparison with him in the manner suggested. Nor is it sufficient objection to this inference, that the productions of a writer, whose style has been chosen as an example of the barbarous taste of the age in which he lived, were not likely to be imputed to one whose extraordinary attainments had won the admiration of the polished and fastidious scholars of Italy; for whatever might have been the Earl’s superiority in classical knowledge, it does not appear that he had cultivated his native tongue with greater care than his contemporaries; and William of Worcester might not have fallen below him in the rude and unsettled English of that time.
Of William’s writings, of whatever kind, very little is now extant; and though for a few things the credit which he deserved has been given to others, it has been reasonably conjectured, that he has enjoyed in return the merit of some performances of which he was not the author; but however he might have laboured in the promotion of learning, he loved the acquisition of it so well, that he was accustomed to say, he found more pleasure in his books than some men derived from their estates; and to the attainments which he had made at the University, he added, by the help of one Giles, a Lombard, some acquaintance with French and Poetry.
Yet study was insufficient to satisfy him without observation: τὸ εἰδέναι δίττον ἔλεγεν εἶναι· τὸ μὲν ἐπιστήμῃ, τὸ δὲ τῇ πείρᾳ. He consequently sought to enlarge his knowledge by travelling; and he has been considered worthy of respect as the earliest topographer of England, “Primum Angliæ perlustratorem ne flocci facias;” but however this may be, he is certainly the first traveller who has left us any memorials of a journey into Cornwall; and the interest and value which his observations derive from this
circumstance, have made them worthy of a place in the present Appendix.
The book, in which these notices are found, is entitled Itinerarium, sive Liber Rerum Memorabilium Willelmi Botoner dict. de Worcester. It had existed in manuscript only, till the year 1778, when it was published at Cambridge, from the original autograph in the Library of Corpus Christi College, by James Nasmith, formerly a Fellow of that Society. Besides this, indeed, there is another manuscript of the journal in the same library, but it is only a copy of the former, made by the procurement of Archbishop Parker; and as it is very incorrect, it is of no value in itself, and could have been of little use to the editor.
This Itinerary seems to have been a memorandum book, which the author kept with him on his journeys, not only into this county, but to other parts of this kingdom; and accordingly we find it stored with desultory notices of separate facts, and distant places, and abounding with trifling and unconnected observations, which seem to have been associated on the same page, only as the book was accidentally opened, and recorded rather from some present impulse, than with any settled and ultimate design. Nothing can be more rude than the style, or more worthless than many of the statements; and whatever might have been the writer’s real intention, it is very certain that his remarks, in the condition which they have actually come down to us, could not have been meant for publication. It might have been his purpose, when leisure and opportunity should serve, to arrange and expand the hasty and unconnected notes thus made by the way; but the brevity of the greater number would have insufficiently secured him against perplexities and mistakes; and as he might have erred occasionally through the acknowledged failure of his memory, or the unconscious influence of his imagination, it is possible that a careful and regular composition subsequently made, might have been less useful, than even the confused and scanty memorandums we possess.
Worcester came into Cornwall in the year 1478. Mr. Whitaker says, that it was in 1440. How he could have committed such a mistake, it is difficult to conceive, as the date is expressly recorded in the Itinerary itself. Mr. Polwhele, indeed, appears to have erred likewise; for,