Sir Thomas Overbury

Verse

The Authours Epitaph (‘The span of my daies measur'd, here I rest’)

First published in A Wife now the Widdow of Sir T. Ouerbury (London, 1614). Rimbault, p. 46.

OvT 1

Copy, headed ‘Sr Thomas Overburys epitaph upon himself’.

In: An octavo verse miscellany, entitled Juvenilia Ludicra, in a single small mixed hand, 103 leaves, all now window mounted in a quarto volume, in 19th-century half morocco. Probably compiled by a Cambridge University man. c.1630s.

Inscribed in engrossed lettering (f. 1r) ‘E Libris Richard Sutclif’. Later owned by Benjamin Heywood Bright (1830-84), merchant and author. Sotheby's, 18 June 1844 (Bright sale), lot 194.

British Library, Add. MS 15227, f. 28r.

OvT 2

Copy in: A quarto miscellany of verse and prose, in a cursive predominantly secretary hand, i + 284 leaves, in contemporary calf. Compiled by Sir John Gibson (1606-65), of Welburn, near Kirkby Moorside, Yorkshire, when he was a Royalist prisoner in Durham Castle. The name Penelope Gibson on f. 174r. c.1653-60.

Bookplate of William Ward Jackson.

British Library, Add. MS 37719, f. 260v.

OvT 3

Copy in: A quarto verse miscellany, including 50 poems by Donne, in a single neat secretary hand except for ff. 70r-2r, which are in another secretary hand. Comprising folios 57r-137v in a quarto composite volume of MSS, in various hands, 173 leaves, in 19th-century leather gilt. c.1620s.

Later owned by Ralph Thoresby (1658-1725), Yorkshire antiquary and topographer. Among the collections of William Petty (1737-1805), first Marquess of Lansdowne, Lord Shelburne.

Cited in IELM, I.i (1980), as the ‘Lansdowne MS’: DnJ Δ 8). Recorded as item 133 among ‘Manuscripts in Quarto’ in the list at the end of Thoresby's Ducatus Leodensis, 2nd edition (Leeds, 1816), Appendix, p. 85.

British Library, Lansdowne MS 740, f. 81v.

OvT 4

Copy in: A duodecimo miscellany of verse and prose, predominantly in a single non-professional hand, iv + 214 pages, in contemporary calf. Inscribed (p. 211) ‘I ended this book Novr. 13th 1723’. c.1723.

Leeds University Library, Brotherton Collection, MS Lt 15, p. 54.

OvT 5

Copy, headed Sr. ‘Thomas Overbury's epitaph written by himself’.

In: A quarto verse miscellany, including seventeen poems by Donne and fifteen by Strode, the main part in a single hand, 334 pages (but pp. 3-4 extracted, and including a later index). Possibly compiled by one ‘W: H:’: i.e. probably William Holgate (1618-46), of Queens' College, Cambridge, with late 17th-century additions apparently made by other members of the Holgate family, of Saffron Walden and Great Bardfield, Essex. c.1630s [-late 17th-century].

Owned in the early 18th century by John Wale, who supplied the index on pp. 330-3. Owned before 1927 by Col. W.G. Carwardine-Probert, of Bures, Suffolk (descendant of the Holgate family).

Cited in IELM, I.i (1980), as the ‘Holgate MS’: DnJ Δ 58. Briefly discussed in W.G.P., ‘Verses by Francis Beaumont’, TLS (15 September 1921), p. 596, and in E.K. Chambers, William Shakespeare, 2 vols (Oxford, 1930), II, 222-4. Also discussed, with facsimiles on pp. 68 and 70 of pp. 181 and 13, in Michael Roy Denbo, ‘Editing a Renaissance Commonplace Book: The Holgate Miscellany’, in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, III, ed. W. Speed Hill (Tempe, AZ, 2004). pp. 65-73. For facsimile pages see DnJ 2931 and ShW 25. Complete microfilm in the Essex Record Office (T/A 98).

Pierpont Morgan Library, MA 1057, p. 170.

OvT 6

Copy in: A folio verse miscellany, containing 89 poems, including 43 by Donne, in several hands (ff. 21r-62r in a single accomplished secretary hand), 69 leaves, in paper wrappers. The text of the poems by Donne derived from the same source as the Lansdowne MS (British Library, Lansdowne MS 740) and related in part to the Haslewood-Kingsborough MS II (Huntington, HM 198, Part II). c.1620-5.

Formerly among the muniments of the Earl of Dalhousie (descendant of the Maule and Ramsay families), of Brechin Castle, on deposit in the Scottish Record Office [now National Archives of Scotland] (GD45/26/95/1). Sotheby's, 20 July 1981, lot 490.

Cited in IELM, I.i (1980), as the the ‘Dalhousie MS I’: DnJ Δ 11. Complete reduced facsimile and transcription in The First and Second Dalhousie Manuscripts: Poems and Prose by John Donne and Others: A Facsimile Edition, ed. Ernest W. Sullivan, II (Columbia, 1988). Also discussed by Ernest W. Sullivan, II in ‘Donne Manuscripts: Dalhousie I’, John Donne Journal, 3/2 (1984), 204-19; in ‘“And, having done that, Thou hast done”: Locating, Acquiring, and Studying the Dalhousie Manuscripts’, in The Donne Dalhousie Discovery: Proceedings of a Symposium on the Acquisition and Study of the John Donne and Joseph Conrad Collections at Texas Tech University, ed. Ernest W. Sullivan II and David J. Murrah (Lubbock, TX, 1987), pp. 1-10; and in ‘The Renaissance Manuscript Verse Miscellany: Private Party, Private Text’, in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, ed. W. Speed Hill (Binghamton, 1993), pp. 289-97.

Facsimiles of f. 15v in DLB, vol. 121, Seventeenth-Century British Nondramatic Poets, First Series, ed. M. Thomas Hester (Detroit, 1992), p. 13, and of f. 42r in Sotheby's sale catalogue and in Peter Beal, A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology 1450-2000 (Oxford, 2008), p. 431, Illus. 91. A complete microfilm of the MS is in the National Archives of Scotland.

Sullivan suggests that the miscellany derives from sources preserved by members of the Earl of Essex's circle, their most likely ‘conduit’ to the Dalhousie family being John Ramsay (1580-1626), Viscount Haddington and Earl of Holderness.

Texas Tech University, PR 1171 D14, f. 30r.

OvT 7

Copy in: A folio collection of verse containing 143 poems by Donne and his Paradoxes and Problems, in a single predominantly italic hand (except for two poems on f. 104r-v, added afterwards by two other italic and secretary hands), the main scribe also probably responsible for the ‘Puckering MS’ (DnJ Δ 13); this collection constituting ff. 13r-161v of a single folio volume containing also Part II, with an index on ff. 2r-11v (covering both Parts) in another hand, ii + 279 leaves in all, in old blind-stamped calf (rebacked). c.1623-5.

Old pressmark MS G. 2. 21.

Cited in IELM, I.i (1980), as the Dublin MS (Part I): DnJ Δ 14.

Trinity College, Dublin, MS 877, [Part I], f. 142v.

OvT 8

Copy, headed ‘Sr Thomas Ouerburies Epitaph’.

In: An octavo miscellany of verse and prose, closely written in probably a single secretary hand, ii + 393 pages, in old calf. c.1620.

Inscribed (p. [i]) ‘This curious Manuscript was bought by me of Mr Muskett the Bookseller. Norwich - J. P. B.’ Unidentified Dobell sale catalogue, item 182.

Harvard, MS Eng 628, pp. 317-18.

OvT 9

Copy in: the MS described under OvT 8. c.1620.

Harvard, MS Eng 628, pp. 321-2.

The Remedy of Love (‘When Love did reade the Title of my booke’)

A verse translation from Ovid's Remedia amoris. First published as The First and Last Part of The Remedy of Loue: Written by Sir Thomas Overbvry Knight (London, 1620). Rimbault, pp. 205-19.

OvT 10

Copy in: the MS described under OvT 3. c.1620s.

British Library, Lansdowne MS 740, f. 131r.

OvT 11

Copy in: A quarto verse miscellany, in one or more secretary hands, with (ff. 244r-54r) a first-line index, 254 leaves, in modern half-morocco, poems on ff. 34v and 242v dated 1637. Including 91 poems and some prose works by John Donne and fourteen poems by Thomas Carew. c.1637.

Among the collections of Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville (1776-1839), first Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, of Stowe House, near Buckingham, largely derived from the collection of the antiquary Thomas Astle (1735-1803), which in turn chiefly derived from Astle's father-in-law, the Essex historian Philip Morant (1700-70) (see DnJ Δ 15). Later owned by Bertram, fourth Earl of Ashburnham (1797-1878).

Cited in IELM, I.i (1980) and II.i (1987), as ‘Stowe MS II’: DnJ Δ 44 and ‘Stowe MS’: CwT Δ 22.

British Library, Stowe MS 962, f. 194r.

OvT 12

Copy in: the MS described under OvT 6. c.1620-5.

Texas Tech University, PR 1171 D14, ff. 58v-62r.

A Wife (‘Each woman is a brief of woman kind’)

First published, as A Wife now the Widdow of Sir T. Ouerbury, in London, 1614. Rimbault, pp. 33-45. Beecher, pp. 190-8.

OvT 13

Copy, in double columns, ascribed to ‘Sr Thomas Overbury Knight’.

In: A large folio miscellany of English and Welsh poems, in occasionally alternating black and red ink, 61 leaves, in contemporary vellum. Compiled by Richard Roberts, Justice of the Peace. c.1628.

Sold by P.J. Dobell in 1936.

Bodleian, MS Don. c. 54, ff. 4r-5r.

OvT 14

Copy, ascribed to Sir T. O.

In: A miscellany of verse and prose, in a single hand, originally in two volumes, xxiii + 158 pages, in 19th-century green morocco gilt. c.1630s.

Once owned by one C. Agard and later by F.W. Cosens (1819-89), book collector. The original second volume here bought from Colbeck Radford, sale catalogue No. 24 (1932), item 157.

Bodleian, MS Eng. poet. e. 37, p. 39 et seq.

OvT 15

Copy, in an accomplished predominantly secretary hand.

In: An independent quarto verse miscellany, including 47 poems by Donne, in two secretary hands. Constituting ff. 230r-99v in a quarto composite volume of verse and prose, in various hands, 308 leaves, in modern half green morocco gilt. c.1620-33.

Among the collections of Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford (1661-1724), and his son, Edward, second Earl of Oxford (1681-1741), and acquired in 1722 from the bookseller Nathaniel Noel (fl.1681-c.1753).

Cited in IELM I.i as the ‘Harley Noel MS’: DnJ Δ 2.

British Library, Harley MS 4064, ff. 301r-8v.

OvT 16

Copy, untitled.

In: the MS described under OvT 3. c.1620s.

This MS cited in Beecher, pp. 95n, 122, 351-2.

British Library, Lansdowne MS 740, f. 75r-9v.

OvT 17

Copy in: A quarto miscellany of English and Latin verse and prose, largely in a neat secretary hand, 91 leaves, in limp vellum. Early 17th century.

Among the papers of the Gell family, of Hopton Hall, Derbyshire, including those of the Parliamentary commander and MP Sir John Gell, first Baronet (1593-1671). Formerly D258/60/26a.

Derbyshire Record Office, D258/34/26/1, ff. [49r-53v].

OvT 18

Copy, headed ‘The election of a wife’.

In: A quarto miscellany, in English and Latin, in a single small italic hand, i + 124 unnumbered leaves (including blanks), in contemporary vellum with ties. c.1615.

Inscribed (f. [ir]) ‘This Book I bought at Chester...1734 / J. Draye’. Among the collections of Christopher Hunter (1675-1757), Durham antiquary and physician.

Durham Cathedral Library, Hunter MS 48, ff. [31v-3v].

OvT 19

Copy, headed ‘Sr Tho: Overbury's wife’.

In: An octavo miscellany of verse and prose, closely written in possibly several minute predominantly secretary hands, 291 leaves (ff. 212-16 bound out of order after f. 24), in modern calf. c.1640s.

Inscribed (f. 1r) ‘Joseph Hall’ (not the bishop). Later owned by John Payne Collier (1789-1883), literary scholar, editor and forger, who has entered in pseudo-17th-century secretary script copies of various ballads on ff. 39r-41r, 107v-79r, 181r-v, 227r-8v, 243r-6r, as well as adding foliation (1-284) before the more recent foliation (1-291, used below). Quaritch's sale catalogue ‘of English Literature’ (August-November 1884), item 22350, Collier's transcript of the MS made c.1860 being item 22352. Formerly Folger MS 2071.7.

Discussed, with facsimile examples, in Giles E. Dawson, ‘John Payne Collier's Great Forgery’, SB, 24 (1971), 1-26.

Folger, MS V.a.339, ff. 208v-10v.

OvT 20

Copy, untitled.

In: A folio volume of 143 poems by Donne, plus his Paradoxes and Problems, in a single neat hand, 270 pages (plus a three-page index), in contemporary calf. Transcribed from Trinity College, Dublin, MS 877, [Part I], pp. 13r-161v (‘Dublin MS I’: DnJ Δ 14) before the extraction from that MS of pages containing two poems by Donne but before the addition of the Hamilton elegy of 1625. c.1623-5.

Acquired in 1895 from Bernard Quaritch by Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), American professor and art historian. Formerly MS Nor 4503.

Recorded in IELM as the Norton MS: DnJ Δ 9. Briefly discussed in C.E. Norton, ‘The Text of Donne's Poems’, [Harvard] Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, 5 (1896), 1-22 (pp. 11-13). Cited as N by most modern editors and as H4 in Variorum.

Harvard, fMS Eng 966.3, pp. 226-35.

OvT 21

Extract, 66 lines headed ‘The Choice of a Wife in a poem by Sr Thomas Overbury’, here beginning ‘If I were to chuse a Woman’ and ending ‘Both may bud, grow green, & wither’.

In: A quarto verse miscellany, in two neat hands, 14 leaves (plus blanks), in modern quarter-calf cloth. A (misapplied) title-page (f. 1r) possibly in another hand: ‘Copy of Verses upon ye Government under the Protectour Cromwel -- By Edmund Waller 1650’. Late 17th century.

Inscribed (f. [ir]) ‘C F’[?].

Harvard, MS Eng 1035, ff. [13v-14v].

OvT 22

Copy, untitled, one stanza cancelled.

In: A folio verse miscellany, 148 leaves (foliated 161-206), once bound (reversed) with an independent miscellany (Huntington, HM 198, Part I), rebound with this MS (in continuous form without inversion) in 1832 (by Charles Lewis). Including 59 poems by Donne (and second copies of six poems), in probably six professional secretary hands: A (ff. 1r-25v, 82r-129r); B (ff. 26r, 42v-7v, 49r-63r, 63v-79r, 130r-48r); C (ff. 27r-36v, 41r-2v; with occasional corrections possibly in hand B); D (ff. 37r-40v); E (ff. 63r-v); and F (f. 129v). c.1620-33.

Scribbling includes the name ‘Meriall Tracy’ (on f. 148v). Later owned by Joseph Haslewood (1769-1833), bibliographer and antiquary; by Edward King (1795-1837), Viscount Kingsborough, antiquary; and by Henry Huth (1815-78), book collector (his library, lot 624). Sotheby's, 17 July 1917 (Huth sale), lot 5873.

Recorded in IELM, I.i (1980), as the ‘Haslewood-Kingsborough MS (II)’: DnJ Δ 26. Discussed in C.M. Armitage, ‘Donne's Poems in Huntington Manuscript 198: New Light on “The Funerall”’, SP, 63 (1966), 697-707.

A complete microfilm is at the University of Birmingham, Shakespeare Institute (Mic S 15). Betagraph of the watermark in f. 43 in Ted-Larry Pebworth, ‘Towards a Taxonomy of Watermarks’, in Puzzles in Paper: Concepts in Historical Watermarks, ed. Daniel W. Mosser, Michael Saffle and Ernest W. Sullivan, II (London, 2000), pp. 229-42 (p. 240).

Huntington, HM 198, Part II, ff. 39r-42r.

OvT 23

Copy, in the neat secretary hand, subscribed ‘Sr T: O:’.

In: A quarto verse miscellany, in several hands, written from both ends, including (ff. 3r-49v) 49 poems by Donne in a single neat secretary hand, also responsible for poems by others on ff. 83r, 88r-90r, 4r-11v rev., later notes and two poems by Donne in other hands on the remaining leaves, 124 leaves, in contemporary vellum. c.1620[-76].

The later material including medical notes written c.1665-76 by Sir John Wedderburn (1599-1679), royal physician.

Cited in IELM, I.i (1980), as the ‘Wedderburn MS’: DnJ Δ 55. Discussed in Alan MacColl, ‘A New Manuscript of Donne's Poems’, RES, NS 19 (1968), 293-5.

National Library of Scotland, MS 6504, ff. 4r-11r rev.

OvT 24

Copy, headed ‘Sr Tho: Overbery wyfe’.

In: A quarto verse miscellany, 180 pages, in three secretary hands, in contemporary limp vellum. Probably compiled by a member of an Inn of Court. c.1630.

Bookplate of William Horatio Crawford, of Lakelands, Cork, book collector. Formerly Rosenbach 186.

Rosenbach Museum & Library, MS 1083/15, pp. 128-37.

OvT 25

Copy, untitled.

In: the MS described under OvT 7. c.1623-5.

This MS recorded in Beecher, p. 351.

Trinity College, Dublin, MS 877, [Part I], ff. 136r-40v.

Prose

Characters

First published in A Wife now the Widdow of Sir T. Ouerbury (London, 1614). Rimbaud, pp. 47-169.

OvT 26

Extracts.

In: A quarto commonplace book of notes and extracts, closely written in a small mixed hand, from both ends, 146 leaves (including blanks), in contemporary limp vellum. Compiled possibly by one Thomas Parsons, whose name is subscribed to a letter on f. 92v. c.1630s.

Huntington, HM 1338, ff. 58r-60r.

OvT 27

Extracts, in Parkhurst's hand.

In: A folio composite volume of state letters, tracts, and verse, collected by, and mostly in the hand of, William Parkhurst (fl.1604-67), Sir Henry Wotton's secretary in Venice and later Master of the Mint, including various works in verse and prose attributed to Donne, chiefly in a scribal hand, partly in Parkhurst's hand, 373 leaves (including blanks), in old calf.

Among the papers of the Finch family of Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland. Mistakenly reported by Grierson and Logan Pearsall Smith to have been destroyed in a fire at Burley c.1908.

Cited in IELM, I.i (1980), as the ‘Burley MS’: DnJ Δ 53. Recorded in HMC, 7th Report (1879), Appendix, p. 516. A complete microfilm of the MS is at the University of Sheffield, Microfilm 737.

A neat transcript of parts of the Burley MS (including principally poems on ff. 255r-v, 278v, [279r]-288v, 342v-3r, 294r-300r, 301r-8v), made before 1908, on 35 leaves, is in the Bodleian, MS Eng. poet. c. 80.

Leicestershire Record Office, DG. 7/Lit. 2, ff. 255v-6r.

Characters: A Good Woman

First published in A Wife now the Widdow of Sir T. Ouerbury (London, 1614). Rimbaud, pp. 47-8. Beecher, pp. 200-1.

OvT 28

Copy in: the MS described under OvT 3. c.1620s.

British Library, Lansdowne MS 740, f. 81r-v.

OvT 29

Copy in: the MS described under OvT 6. c.1620-5.

Texas Tech University, PR 1171 D14, f. 30r.

OvT 30

Copy in: the MS described under OvT 7. c.1623-5.

Trinity College, Dublin, MS 877, [Part I], f. 142r-v.

Characters: A Very Woman

First published in A Wife now the Widdow of Sir T. Ouerbury (London, 1614). Rimbaud, pp. 48-50. Beecher, pp. 201-2.

OvT 31

Copy in: the MS described under OvT 3. c.1620s.

British Library, Lansdowne MS 740, f. 80r-v.

OvT 32

Copy in: the MS described under OvT 6. c.1620-5.

Texas Tech University, PR 1171 D14, f. 29r.

OvT 33

Copy in: the MS described under OvT 7. c.1623-5.

Trinity College, Dublin, MS 877, [Part I], f. 141r-v.

Characters: Her next part

First published in A Wife now the Widdow of Sir T. Ouerbury (London, 1614). Rimbaud, pp. 50-1. Beecher, pp. 202-3.

OvT 34

Copy in: the MS described under OvT 3. c.1620s.

British Library, Lansdowne MS 740, ff. 80v-1r.

OvT 35

Copy in: the MS described under OvT 6. c.1620-5.

Texas Tech University, PR 1171 D14, f. 29v.

OvT 36

Copy in: the MS described under OvT 7. c.1623-5.

Trinity College, Dublin, MS 877, [Part I], ff. 141v-2r.

Crumms fal'n from King James's Table, or his Table Talk, principally relating to Religion, Embassyes, State-Policy, &c.

A discourse beginning ‘God made one part of man of earth, the basest Element to teach him humility...’. First published in The Prince's Cabala: or Mysteries of State. Written by King James the First and some Noblemen in hiis Reign, and in Queen Elizabeth's (London, 1715). Rimbaud, pp. 253-78. Unlikely to be by Overbury (unless one of various sources for the anecdotes) since certain references in the work date from no earlier than 1622.

OvT 37

Copy, in a rounded italic hand, headed ‘Crumms fal'n from King James's Table. Or his Table Talk, principally relating to Religion, Embassyes, State=policy &c. taken by Sr: Thomas Overbury, the Originall being his own hand writing’. Late 17th century.

In: A folio composite volume of tracts, in different hands, 100 leaves, in modern calf gilt.

Edited from this MS in Rimbault.

British Library, Harley MS 7582, ff. 42r-67v.

OvT 38

An abridgement or extracts, untitled.

In: A small quarto volume of works attributed to Sir Thomas Overbury, in a single secretary hand, 42 small leaves, in quarter-calf marbled boards. c.1620s.

Inscribed (inside the front cover) ‘Ex Bibl G. Brander Armr Feb: 1790’ [i.e. Gustavus Brander (1720-87), naturalist] and (on flyleaf) ‘Bibl. T. Astle’ [i.e. Thomas Astle (1735-1803), archivist and collector of books and manuscripts].

British Library, Stowe MS 279, ff. 2r-14r.

Observations in his travailes

A tract beginning ‘All things concurred for the rising and maintenance of this State...’. First published as Sir Thomas Overbvry his Observations in his Travailes vpon the State of The Xvii. Provinces as they stood Anno Dom. 1609 (London, 1626). Rimbault, pp. 223-30. Authorship uncertain.

OvT 39

Copy, in a professional secretary hand, on 24 quarto leaves, the first leaf imperfect, in half-calf. A reader's note on the first page: ‘This M.S. is not ill writ ye observations just a little enclined to Democrasie...’. c.1620s.

Once owned by one Hugo James. Inscribed ‘Thom. Tanner. Ex dono R.V. H[ugo] James 1629’.

This MS cited in Beecher, p. 30.

Bodleian, MS Tanner 434.

OvT 40

Copy of ‘Obseruations of the State of ffrance’, ‘Observations vpon the Provinces vnited’, and ‘Obseruacons vpon the ArchDukes Countrye’, all ascribed to ‘Sr Thomas Ouerburye Knt’.

In: A folio volume of accounts of travels to countries in Europe and to Turkey, 124 leaves (plus blanks), in calf gilt. Entirely in the hand of John Hopkinson (1610-80), Yorkshire antiquary, of Lofthouse, near Leeds, and comprising Volume 14 of the Hopkinson MSS c.1660s-70s.

Signed bookplate of Frances Mary Richardson Currer (1785-1861), book collector, of Eshton Hall, West Yorkshire. Subsequently owned by her step-father Matthew Wilson.

Recorded in HMC, 3rd Report (1872), Appendix, p. 295.

Bradford Archives, 32D86/14, ff. 61v-73r.

OvT 41

Copy, in a secretary hand.

In: A folio volume of miscellaneous papers, many relating to Kent, the greater part in a single secretary hand, 228 leaves, in contemporary stamped calf. Compiled for, and chiefly relating to, Francis Fane (1582-1628), first Earl of Westmorland. Early 17th century.

Christie's, 18 July 1897.

This volume recorded in HMC, 10th Report, Appendix IV (1885), pp. 4-19.

British Library, Add. MS 34218, ff. 129r-34v.

OvT 42

Copy, in a professional secretary hand, ii + 50 quarto leaves, imperfect, partly eaten away by rodents, in contemporary vellum. Early 17th century.

Volume CCXV of the Trumbull Papers, of the Trumbull family, including chiefly William Trumbull (1576/80?-1635), diplomat and government official. Later belonging to the Marquess of Downshire, of Easthampstead Park. Formerly Berkshire Record Office Trumbull Add 26.

British Library, Add. MS 72456.

OvT 43

Copy in: An octavo volume of transcripts of state tracts and letters, iii + 227 leaves (including blanks) in all, in calf. Mainly in three hands, with later additions in c.1683-99.

Inscribed names including Anthony, Thomas and John Marshall, Jonas Ramsden, Jenkinson, Thomas Maleverer, and Lawson. Owned c.1670s-90s by the family of Sir Thomas Seyliard, third Baronet (d.1701), of Delawarre, Kent. Later note: ‘Bought this Manuscript at Montague's Book warehouse near Queen Street Lincoln's Inn Fields Tuesday Feb: 12 1739’. Later armorial bookplate apparently of the Appleyard family of either Yorkshire or Norfolk. Phillips, 20 March 1998, lot 467, to Quaritch.

British Library, Egerton MS 3876, ff. 23r-32r.

OvT 44

Copy, in an italic hand, with a title-page ‘Sr Thomas Overburie's Observations of The Low Countryes and Kingdome of France’. Early 17th century.

In: A quarto composite volume of tracts, in various hands, in modern half red crushed morocco on cloth boards gilt.

This MS cited in Steevens, p. 30.

British Library, Lansdowne MS 722, ff. 115r-25r.

OvT 45

Copy, in a professional secretary hand, i + 48 quarto leaves, in modern half crushed morocco on cloth boards gilt. c.1620.

British Library, Sloane MS 2143.

OvT 46

Copy, headed ‘Maxims and Observations respecting the state if the 17. Provinces...Anno 1619’.

In: the MS described under OvT 38. c.1620s.

British Library, Stowe MS 279, ff. 15r-42v.

OvT 47

Copy, headed ‘Sir Thomas Ouerburye his obseruations in trayuelle upon ye state of the 17 prouinces as they stood Anno Domini 1609 the treaty of peace being then on foote’. Early 17th century.

Inscribed ‘Onslow Gardyner’. From the library of the Earl of Jersey, Osterley Park. Jersey sale, London, 6 May 1885, lot 1231, to Salkeld. Then in the autograph collection of James Fraser Gluck (1852-97), New York State lawyer and library curator.

Recorded in HMC, VIII, 1, 1881, Appendix, p. 94, n. 7.

Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, Gluck Collection, [no shelfmark].

OvT 48

Copy, in the hand of Thomas Gell, MP (1595-1657), of the Inner Temple, a folio booklet of six leaves. Early 17th century.

Derbyshire Record Office, D258/12/19 (iv).

OvT 49

Copy in: A quarto volume of state tracts relating to Spain and national defence, in a single probably professional mixed hand, 152 leaves, in old half calf on marbled boards.

Bookplate of Robert Parker, FAS

Folger, MS G.a. 1, ff. 120r-47r.

OvT 50

Copy in: A quarto volume of two tracts, in a professional cursive mixed hand, viii + 18 leaves, with three octavo leaves in another hand loosely inserted, in modern half crushed morocco on marbled boards. c.1620s-30s.

Bookplate of Sir Walter Wilson Greg (1875-1959), bibliographer, with his notes dated November 1897 when at Trinity College, Cambridge. Item 288 in an unidentified sale catalogue.

Folger, MS V.a.221, ff. 2r-11r.

OvT 51

Copy, in two professional secretary hands, headed ‘Sr Thomas Overbury his Observacons vpon the state of the 17 Provinces and of France; and first vpon that of the Provinces vnited’, on fourteen quarto leaves (plus five blanks). Early 17th century.

In: A quarto composite volume of miscellaneous verse and prose, in various hands, 24 items, unfoliated, in old calf (rebacked).

Among the collections of Thomas Tenison (1636-1715), Archbishop of Canterbury.

Lambeth Palace Library, MS 841, No. 15.

OvT 53

Copy in: A large folio volume of political tracts and papers.

Scribbling including the name ‘John Gamble’.

Recorded in HMC, 3rd Report (1872), Appendix, p. 119.

Duke of Northumberland, Alnwick Castle, [no shelfmark], pp. 147-69.

OvT 54

Copy, in a secretary hand, headed ‘Observations on the United Provinces. The State of the Arch-Duke's Countrie’, 31 quarto leaves, in contemporary vellum. c.1620s.

Robert S. Pirie, New York, [Overbury Observations MS].

OvT 55

Copy, in a professional secretary hand, headed ‘Sr Thomas Overburye His observations vpon ye State of ye 7tene Provinces and of France, and first vpon yt. of the Provinces Vnited’, 75 small quarto leaves, in half-calf marbled boards. Early 17th century.

Loosely inserted is a letter about the MS by Edward Arleer of Scarborough to its owner L.A.B. Waller, of 5 Talbot Road, Tottenham, 11 August 1883. Later in the library of Charles Kay Ogden (1889-1957), psychologist, linguist, and book collector.

University College London, MS Ogden 40.

OvT 56

Copy, in a professional secretary hand, headed ‘Sr: Thomas Overburye his observacons vppon the state of the 17 Provinces And of ffrance, And first vppon that of the Vnited Provinces’, on 40 folio pages (plus blanks), in later half-calf marbled boards. c.1630.

Later i n the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt (1792-1872), book and manuscript collector: Phillipps MS 12376.

University of California at Los Angeles, 170/362.

OvT 57

Copy, in a professional secretary hand, on seven large folio leaves, disbound. c.1620.

Yale, Osborn MS fb 12.

OvT 58

Copy, in a professional secretary hand, 28 quarto pages. Early 17th century.

Bookplate of Thomas Edward Watson. Quaritch's sale catalogue English Books and Manuscripts 1540-1700 (2006), item 71.

Untraced, [Watson MS].