Robert Gathorne-Hardy and William Proctor Williams,
[Anonymous review of Eden and of R.A. Wilmott,
C.J. Stranks,
William P. Williams,
Of the many formal writings of Jeremy Taylor — the widely acknowledged master of seventeenth-century English theological prose — only one work is known to survive in his original manuscript: his epistolary discourse print hand
adopted for a few side-headings). The manuscript is among Bishop Barlow's collections at Queen's College, Oxford, and it may indeed have been left in Oxford by Taylor himself when he left the city for good during the Civil War.
If no other authorial manuscripts of his formal works are extant, there survive, nevertheless, a considerable number of Taylor's original letters, many of these being, in effect, discourses on doctrinal matters expounded with much the same argumentative and stylistic qualities as are found in his published writings. Printed sources for some 22 of Taylor's letters are usefully recorded in Gathorne-Hardy and Williams's
At least six more letters by Taylor to John Bramhall (1593-1663), Archbishop of Armagh, are probably in existence, besides the nine important ones recorded below, for fifteen such letters, together with other materials relating to Taylor, were sold at Sotheby's, 29 April 1884 (Thomas Percy sale), lot 73, to Wallis. In addition, an unspecified letter by Taylor was bound with numerous other documents in an extra-illustrated four-volume exemplum of Izaak Walton's
The transcript of some of the letters to Lord Conway used by John Murray and his editors in 1870 is bound with the original letters — a collection formerly in the library at Ragley Hall, sold at Sotheby's, 27 October 1970, lot 375, to Pickering, and now chiefly at
A few of the letters written to Taylor by perhaps his most regular correspondent, John Evelyn, survive. In addition to those replies drafted by Evelyn on certain of Taylor's letters to him, Evelyn has preserved autograph copies of ten letters by him to Taylor, written between 9 February 1654[/5] and 9 July 1661, in one of his letterbooks (letters lxx, lxxi, lxxxv, xci, xcvi, xcix, cx, cxv, cxix, clxxvi) owned by Lord Camoys, of Stonor Park (a microfilm of this is in the Bodleian, MS Film 743). Other letters by Evelyn to Taylor are probably to be found in his other letterbooks among the Evelyn Papers now in the British Library (including Add. MS 78298, ff. 60r-v, 69r, 70v, 71v, 78v, 80r), if not among Evelyn's widely dispersed original letters. Five of Evelyn's letters to Taylor in the Camoys volume are edited in Bray, II, i, 148-51, 166-7, 171-2, 173-4, and reprinted in Wheatley, III, 203-7, 214-15, 236-9. See also E.S. De Beer,
Certain other documents bear Taylor's signature (Jerem: Dunensis
when he became a bishop in 1661) or other additions in his hand. Those known at present, again a tiny fraction of Taylor's original documentation, are given entries below (*
A few printed exempla of Taylor's works bearing presentation inscriptions or other manuscript annotations of some interest are also given entries below (
Besides these items, a notable series of exempla of printed works by Taylor is that once owned by his friend John Evelyn. Often containing Evelyn's autograph notes and markings, a number of these volumes have appeared at auction and elsewhere since the dispersal of the Evelyn Library in 1977-78. His exempla of
A printed exemplum of possibly autograph
and the volume (which lacks preliminary blank leaves) as possibly a presentation exemplum. A facsimile of page 3 appears in Hugh Ross Williamson,
From innumerable references in his letters and writings, it is clear that Taylor built up, at Portmore and elsewhere, a substantial library. Whether his books passed into official ecclesiastical or academic libraries or were dispersed, it does not seem that he was accustomed to employing any special marks of ownership or identification. Consequently no specific volumes from his library appear to be known today.
In addition to the recorded evidence on this subject, notes by John Cosin, later Bishop of Durham (1594-1672), of Bookes which Dr Taylour tooke with him
— listing some twenty-seven books or sets of books which Taylor took with him into exile on the continent in 1648 — are among Cosin's letters to Christopher Hatton in the Bodleian (MS Bodley 878, f. 20r). He also refers to Taylor, in a letter about sending books, on 10 February 1647[/8] (f. 10r-v).
A manuscript of a reply to Taylor's W.N.
or N. W.
, c.1665, is in the National Library of Ireland (MS 4107).
A reply to Taylor's
An alleged documentary source which has taxed biographers — and really defies further comment — is the so-called Jones MSS
, which, as Hugh Ross Williamson has noted (must, sooner or later, challenge a decision of authenticity from every reader of Taylor's life
:
William Todd Jones, of Homra in County Down was, according to Bishop Heber (who wrote the life of Taylor in 1822), Taylor's lineal descendant in the fifth degree and was employed at one period of his life in collecting and arranging materials for the biography of his distinguished ancestor
. Among other things he possessed a series of autograph letters to and from Taylor and a family-book in his own hand recording the principal events of his life with comments on many of the public transactions in which he himself, or those connected with him, had borne a share
.
Jones died suddenly in 1818 and the greater part of his papers have disappeared or have been presumed burnt in a fire at the London Custom House. All that was left consisted of some extracts made by Mr Jones from these documents…and some traditions respecting himself and his descendants, which have been liberally communicated
to Bishop Heber by his two sisters.
Papers relating to Taylor are among the collections of the Rev. J.F.W. Bullock for a projected
For some account of the collection of books and manuscripts relating to Taylor at DeKalb, Illinois (incorporating the Taylor collection of Robert Gathorne-Hardy), see
Various other relics of Taylor — including his chalice and patten in Dromore Cathedral, his alleged pulpit and patten in Uppingham Parish Church, and alleged prayer book and pulpit at Ballinderry — are recorded in Stranks, pp. 306-7 (Appendix D).