Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/578

 570 LETTERS OF TIPTOFT AND NEVILLE October Letters of John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, and Archbishop Neville to the University of Oxford The letters printed here are taken from a register, which belonged to Archbishop Warham, in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.^ Less correct transcripts of the two letters of Archbishop Neville are inserted on the front fly-leaf of a copy of Charles Maneken's Epistolares formulae (Louvain, 1476) in the John Rylands Library, Manchester.^ None of the letters are entered in Register F in the university archives which was edited by Mr. Anstey in 1898 for the Oxford Historical Society, which, however, seems to contain the answer to no. i and the letter to which no. iii is the answer. The year of Tiptoft's letter from Padua is given as 1468 in the margin (in a later hand), which could only be old style, for the earl was in L-eland in January 1468. But, though 1469 is a blank year in his biography, there are serious objections to the supposition that he spent it in Italy. The terms of the letter point rather to 1460, when he is known to have been living at Padua .^ His allusion to the political troubles in England and the uncertainty of his return thither is only intelligible at the earlier date. The recommendation to study Latin as an aid to diplomatic employment perhaps contains a reference to his own appointments as ' Orator et nuncius specialis ' to Pope Calixtus III in 1457 and to the council of Mantua in 1459. These indications of earlier date than that assigned in the manuscript are confirmed by the existence in Register F of a letter dated 1 April 1460. which, though without address, is clearly to Tiptoft, and almost certainly the answer of the university to that here printed. It refers to ' tua in nos nuperrima largitas ', mentions ' tua Patavia ', and seems to quote from the letter in the passage ' quod non solum apud Italos quos omnis eloquentie principes ais ', &c.* The error in the date may perhaps be traced to approximation to those of Neville's letters. The archbishop's first letter is dated in the margin, apparently by the scribe who entered it, ' ano do mini 1469*^ '. His second has not the year supplied, but it must be either 1470 or 1471, for after the latter year he was never again at Westminster in November until 1475, which seems too late. Th^ letter in which the university begged his help in recovering the books which Tiptoft had given, the value of ' 423, nos. 42, 43, 44, ff. 65-8. '' Press-mark 17276. I am indebted to M. Fawtier for aid in deciphering these transcripts and to Mr. Strickland Gibson of the Bodleian Library for the loan of rotographs of the Corpus register. ' Leland, Commeniarii de Scri'ptorihus Britannicia (1709), IL 478 ; Diet, of Nat, Biog. IvL 413. •
 * Epittolae Academicae Oxon., ed. Anstey, no. 239 (ii. 364).