[Thirlby, Thomas]

Original manuscript of a secretary to Thirlby, Bishop of Ely, of a detailed travel journal of the ambassadorial expedition, departing from Calais on 27 February 1555, travelling through France and northern Italy, arriving in Rome on 5 June, their stay in the city, and then the return journey departing Rome 20 June and travelling over the Alps via Innsbruck and returning to England through Germany and the Low Countries, reaching London on 25 August, recording places, sights, marvels, miracles, and events, in a single mid-sixteenth-century secretary hand with italic for emphasis, corrections throughout, 57 pages, plus blanks, folio (c.310 x 205 mm), 1555, fol. 5 misplaced (should be reversed and follow fol. 1), repairs to fols. 1 and 5, occasional fraying and staining. Nineteenth-century green morocco gilt, gilt edges.

Thomas Thorpe, Catalogue of ... Manuscripts, 1836, no. 832 — Sir Thomas Phillipps, MS 9013 — Sotheby's, 26 June 1967, lot 754. acquisition: Purchased at the foregoing sale through Bernard Quaritch

“...The Pope sate in the Conclave (or consistorie) where he was chosen, in a greate hie chayer, having a very riche coape upon him, and a myter of a wonderfull pryce upon his heade. The place where he sate was rayled in, that the people might not come in to troble the orator. The Cardynales sate upon benches within the Rayles, rownde about the Popes holynes, the Byshoppes underneath them, and the Popes servant laye upon the grownde. After my L. my Master the Byshoppe of Ely had ended his oration made to the Pope, then all the Englishhe men ... come whith the Rayles to kysse the Popes holynes foote...”

The manuscript of an insightful and entertaining mid-sixteenth-century travel journal. The anonymous writer was part of the entourage of the Bishop of Ely on a diplomatic journey that was principally undertaken to obtain papal ratification of the terms of the English reunion with Rome. The journey was not undertaken in undue haste, and the writer records sights ranging from a unicorn horn in Rheims to the newly built Château d'Écouen, including a meeting with King Henri II at Fontainebleau and observing a marriage ceremony in Milan. The writer evidently had reformist sympathies – he writes, for example, about the “foolishe superstitious Ceremonie devised upon a supposed ringe of our Ladye”  in Perugia – and is particularly curious about ceremonies and superstitions, as in his haunting account of entering a church in the village of St André in Savoy: “I spied a yonge childe lying deade upon a boorde before the Image of our Ladie.”

This journal was published (with omissions) by the Second Earl of Hardwicke in Miscellaneous State Papers, 1501-1726 (1778), vol. 1, pp.62-102, from a copy of the manuscript in British Library, Harleian MS 252. For a letter of introduction, signed by Mary I and Philip of Spain, for Thirlby and other of the Queen's ambassadors, see lot 556.