Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/191

 12 8. II. SKPT. 2, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Pickering, soon after his accession to the title. Pickering, in demanding payment of an overdue account, used language that nettled the young baronet, who, drawing his sword, caused the apothecary to draw hastily back, in doing which he fell off the walk and broke his leg, and shortly after died. Sir Richard was tried for murder, was brought in guilty (of manslaughter only, I think), imprisoned, and pardoned by the King in 1693. Wotton (' Baronetage ') says he died in London in obscurity. It was probably he to whose estate the relict, Mary, administered in 1699 (admons.. P.C.C., March 31, 1699), as the widow of " Richard Mansell," late of St. Saviour's, Southwark.

AP THOMAS.

CAPT. COX'S ' BOOK OF FORTUNE,' 1575.

MBS. STOPES, in her recently published book on ' Shakespeare's Industry,' has reprinted two of her articles which originally appeared in The Athenaeum in 1900: one under the title ' The English Book of Fortune owned by Capt. Cox in 1575 ' (May 19), the other on ' The Italian and English Books of Fortune ' (Aug. 25). I purpose to deal with her first article only on the present occasion.

Robert Laneham, in his well-known letter describing the festivities at Kenilworth in 1575, mentions among the books owned by Capt. Cox ' The Booke of Fortune,' of which evidently no copy has survived, but Mrs. Stopes has made an attempt to identify it.

First of all, we have an entry in the Registers of the Stationers' Company on Feb. 6, 1560, recording the receipt of the small sum of eightpence from William Powell for his licence for printing a ' Booke of Fortune ' in folio. The name of the author is not given. No copy of this is extant.

Next, we have the record of a licence granted, also in 1560, to Purfoote for a book entitled " Fortune a play to knowe each one hyr condiciouns and gentle maners, as well of women as of men." This title clearly proves, as Mrs. Stopes surmises, that the book was some kind of a game, and not a theatrical piece. In support of this I may refer to what appears to be a similar Hungarian book, entitled ' Fortuna,' first published in 1594, and republished times out of number till 1868. This was also a " book of fortune."

At an earlier date we have ' The Boke of the fa}Te Gentylwoman that is to say

Lady Fortune,' the only extant copy of which is in the Lambeth Palace Library. It was described fully by Mrs. Slopes, and her description is fairly accurate, judging by the facsimile reproduced in the First Series of Henry- Huth's ' Fugitive Tracts,' 1875. Laneham, no doubt, would have given the first title of the little tract, and we may, therefore, dismiss it from our investigation. It may or may not have been the book owned by Capt. Cox ; if it was, all that sur- vived of it is the Preface containing

" certain meters in english written by master [later Sir] Thomas More in hys youth for the boke of Fortune and [sic] caused them to be printed in the begynning of that boke." Sir Thomas More's ' Works,' 1557.

According to the late Dr. Furnivall, the editor of Laneham's letter for the Ballad Society (1871), it is a tract (without date) probably made up by Wyer, the printer (1527 to 1542). The preface concludes " Thus endeth the Preface to the book of Fortune " ; about the further contents and construction, of it we know nothing.

Mrs. Stopes next describes the fragment of a book formerly in the possession of the late Mr. Davies, the antiquary of Walling- ford. This fragment, alas ! also disappeared after its owner's death, and no other copy is known to exist. In his lifetime she was allowed to show it to Dr. Garnett of the British Museum, and having made copious extracts from it she has now published these in her book, more fully than in her original communication, and they certainly form most amusing reading. To judge by her description, the fragment undoubtedly formed part and parcel of a book of fortune; but as the beginning and end were missing when she saw it, it is difficult to guess how she was able to identify it with either the volume mentioned in Lowndes as ' The Book of Fortune,' 1672, folio, or with that other given in R. Cla veil's Catalogue as having been " printed [also in 1672] for Thomas Williams, Hosier Lane.". Mrs. Stopes goes further than this, and considers it more than possible that the fragment she saw represented the remains of a copy of the very ' Book of Fortune ' licensed to Powell in 1560, handled with delight by Laneham and Capt. Cox in 1575, and revised and improved up to date in 1672. Why ? There have been several publications of this kind, as we have seen, and I know of at least one other book in English which seems to have equal claims to be identified with a later edition of the volume mentioned in Laneham's letter. A complete copy of this