Savile, Robert

with an elaborate series of title pages, dedications, and other paratexts, in a calligraphic secretary hand with some passages in an italic hand, some pages with illustrated margins, engrossed capitals and other textual decorations, some use of rebuses, occasional marginal annotations in a smaller hand, rubrications and occasional heightening in silver, running titles, the text comprising: "The [lock] of Love to be opened withe the [key] of constancye. compiled by the moste carefull caytyfe in christendom", with a verse dedication “To the woorshypfull hys wellbelovyd Brother Master John Fitzjames" (unnumbered fol. 1v), dedicatory epistle (fols 2-6), and verse prologue (fols 7-11), then the poem itself divided into eleven books, with contemporary foliation (numbered fols 1-91); followed by “A Godly Meditatyon upon the 51 psalme entytled Miserere mei Deus, toorned into englyshe verse (approchynge neare the latyne texts of Mr Hyeronyme Savanarola, A monke, a Preracher & martyred at Corentia in Italye) 1499 by R.S.”, separate contemporary foliation (fols 1-47), then “A very earneste, truthfull and godly prayer, procedyng frome an aflycted mynde gathered owt of the moste holye Scryptures off God; by R.S.”, including an epistle to the reader (numbered fols 48-57), a series of four shorter prayers (fols 58-60), a series of acrostic poems addressed to and naming the author's friends in the West Country prefaced by a verse epistle to the reader (fols 61-74), “The fyrste choyce off A frende” with a dedicatory epistle to Edward Williams of the Inner Temple (fols 75-82), “wrytten, upon the breakyng of a glasse, in Mr Edwarde Wyll[ia]ms his Chamber” (fols 82v-84r), “Thes verses I Englished: lying sicke of an Ague: in my bedd thay being wrytten about the chamber/ in the bordure of the Hanginges” (fols 84v-85), and verse “Epilogus”, mostly written in a highly attractive secretary hands but with some passages in an italic hand, altogether 203 leaves (11, 91, and 101 fols), 8vo, dated 1579, in nineteenth century brown calf gilt, with armorial gilt centrepiece of the Dukes of Northumberland, some leaching of ink probably resulting from excess acidity

Presented by the author to John Fitzjames of Leweston, Dorset (1548-1625); thence by descent via the Strode and Thynne families to Elizabeth, née Seymour, Duchess of Northumberland (1716-1776); thence by descent

Condition is described in the main body of the catalogue, where appropriate.
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"...for why, behooffull ys to those,
that undertake to wryte in prose
Judgement profownde,
but Rythmers have more pryveledge
they maye make woordes, add or abridge
when cause is fownde..." (fol. 11v)

A beautiful and highly ornamental presentation manuscript containing ambitious, unpublished and unrecorded poems by a previously unknown author. It is a celebration of friendship that comprises a series of religious works, mostly homiletic poems and verse prayers. The poems are in a range of rhyme schemes and make use of extensive Classical analogy, whilst the third part of the 'Lock of Love' cites a long list of English authors. The author takes a conventionally functional view of poetry: "for yf by writers warnynges, well enfoormed, | the Readers harmynges, rightlye, be Reformed, | then happy pen hathe playd, an happye Parte”. The epistle to the reader recalls how the verses were written during a period of seclusion lasting some ten months, and that a friend "one day chaunced...(comyng sodenly upon me) to fynd me wrytinge in this booke, which after he had abowt the space of an howre surveyed, he willed me earnestly, to putt it in prynte, and to dedycate yt to some noble man”. The author “pronounced a perpetuall denyall” to print publication, allowing only its circulation “in paper, thus paultry penned, as nowe ye see yt”.

The author of this manuscript identifies himself as Robert Saville: this name appears, for example, on decorative columns on the first title page, topped by the Saville family arms. The presence of dedications and acrostics reveals much detail about his social connections. He can be identified with the Robert Saville who wrote to George Trench from the Inner Temple in April 1577 (British Library, Egerton MS 2429, fol. 45), and therefore with the man of the same name from Poolam in Edlington, a village on the edge of the Lincolnshire fens, who entered the Inner Temple in 1561. The Saville family was well established in Lincolnshire and Robert Saville was presumably a kinsman of Sir Robert Barkston Saville (1528-85) and his son John Saville (1556-1630). He dedicates ‘The Lock of Love’ to his “brother” John Fitzjames, presumably meaning his brother-in-law, and in fact this connection is much more significant to the manuscript than Saville’s own family. John Fitzjames (1548-1625) was a fellow Inner Templar and owned considerable estates in Leweston, Dorset. The two dozen acrostic poems to friends in this manuscript are almost all to members of interlinking gentry families in Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire, who were presumably known to Saville through his Fitzjames connection. The most familiar name amongst these is Sir John Thynne, builder of Longleat, but they also include members of the Speke, Horsey, Mallett, Colles, and Trenchard families.