TheA Cavendish Christening Entertainment survives only in British Library Harleian MS 4955, fols. 48r-52v (JnB 574). The text is part of the familial memorial volume scribed by John Rolleston for William Cavendish, Earl of Mansfield (later Earl, then Duke, of Newcastle). It was first transcribed by William Gifford in The Monthly Magazine (1816) and was incorporated into the footnotes of his 1816 edition. In both Gifford’s collected edition and Cunningham’s later recension, the text is riddled with errors and unexplained lacunae (see collation for 92, 195-221, 214-17). Gifford also adds lines at the end, starting ‘Fresh as the day, and new as are the hours’, which may belong to another entertainment, perhaps for Charles I (see ‘A Song of Welcome’, Print Edition, 6.656). Some of these differences between the Monthly Magazine text and the 1816 multi-volume edition reflect bowdlerisation on the grounds of impropriety (e.g. the omission of 189-211). Nonetheless, many of Gifford’s suggestions about the divisions of the speeches and his emendation at 178 have been followed.

The Manuscript

Harleian MS 4955 (the Newcastle MS) has been studied extensively by Hilton Kelliher, who dates its compilation to between November 1630 and c. 1634 (Kelliher, 1993, 144). With the exception of one inserted bifolium, the volume consists of one paper stock and almost certainly represents fair copies of material received as separates. Cavendish used John Rolleston, later steward at Welbeck, as his secretary for such copying. As Kelliher has demonstrated, the copying of separates or drafts into fair copies, often in a bound volume, was standard Cavendish practice. Many of the surviving separates in the various Cavendish collections are marked ‘Intr’ (for ‘Intrata’) and there are later references to a ‘Booke’ and ‘Maske booke’ into which Cavendish’s own masques were to be copied. (Cf., for example, Nottingham University MS PwV25, Newcastle’s poems, fols. 4, 6, 7, 13, and 30. Fol. 55v reads ‘Poetry ye last that were entered into my Lo: Booke’.)

Harleian MS 4955 contains an important collection of poems and entertainments by Jonson in three groups (fols. 1-55v, 173-181v, 192-204); a Donne collection (fols. 88-144v); three collections of poems by Richard Andrews (fols. 57-87v, 145-172 and 189-190v); and two more miscellaneous groups of poems largely in praise of Jonson (fols. 182-188v and 205-207v). (See also the discussion of this manuscript in Colin Burrow’s Textual Essay on the Poems.) Many of the poems are about members of the Cavendish family, their household, houses or estates, and nearby locations. As a collection the volume functions not simply as a repository for texts by William Cavendish’s famous connections but as a family memorial, and one of its central features is the epitaph for Catherine Ogle and its accompanying drawing (fol. 55; Print Edition, 6.315-6). The family – that is, the Cavendishes in all their branches – are celebrated, and the two main branches – the Derbyshire Cavendishes, Earls of Devonshire, and Nottinghamshire Cavendishes, Earls of Newcastle – are combined. The volume, dating from the early 1630s, reflects William Cavendish’s awareness of the improvement in his status and places him as the Devonshire Cavendishes’ equal, but the volume also associates the family with its properties and estates and, crucially, with the region.

Another approach to Harleian MS 4955, therefore, is to regard it as a regional and topographical volume. One of its major features is the local nature of its texts, notably the journey poem by Richard Andrews that celebrates the Peak District and the two families’ connections to the area (fols. 162v-171v). This poem, which describes a journey undertaken to see the ‘wonders’ of the Peak in August 1627, is addressed to the Earl of Devonshire, and contains dedicatory verses by ‘H.O’, possibly Henry Ogle, which comments on the late author’s constancy to the ‘Cauendishes / Deuon and Mansfield’ and his poetic honouring of the Ogles and Bruces. The poem brings together the different Cavendish families metaphorically and literally, as it visits Buxton ‘chiefly for Viscount Mansfields sake’ and concludes with a return to Chatsworth. It combines the poetic mining of the region by Jonson (whose earlier trip to the Devil’s Arse is both mentioned and echoed in the style of the poem: see Life Record 73) and the actual mineral extraction undertaken by the Devonshire Cavendishes, and may form one half of a parallel pair of poems produced by learned figures associated with the two branches of the family (Martinich, 1998, 440). Dr Andrews was physician poet associated with the Nottinghamshire family, and a companion piece was written by Thomas Hobbes, who acted as tutor to the Devonshire Cavendishes and also had close links with Welbeck and its scientific circle (Raylor, 2001, and Sarasohn, 1999). His De Mirabilibus Pecci (c. 1628, published 1683) almost certainly describes the same 1627 journey.

Kelliher establishes that Harleian MS 4955 is in one hand, which develops from a ‘clumsy and sprawling’ early hand, through ‘experimentation’ in the Donne and Andrews texts, to an accomplished calligraphic hand in the final Jonson entertainments. In particular, Rolleston used an elaborate and heavy script, with large initial letters with multiple flourishes, for headings, titles, speech-headings, and marginalia, although the effect is also partially decorative. (The opening leaf to The King and Queen’s Entertainment at Bolsover, fol. 199, shows the elaborate decorated initials, especially ‘T’ in ‘The Song’ and the contrast between the heavier inked headings and the more delicate italic used for the text.) Kelliher also suggests that the use of the heavy ‘gothic’ script noted by many commentators on this MS may be a ‘conscious archaising’ (Kelliher, 1993, 145), the calligraphic equivalent of the neo-chivalric embellishments of Bolsover Little Castle.