Smythe, Certain discourses...concerning... divers sorts of weapons, London, 1590, with authorial revisions

SMYTHE, SIR JOHN 

Certain Discourses... concerning the formes and effects of divers sorts of weapons, and other verie important matters Militarie. London: Richard Jones, 1590 

FIRST EDITION, 4to (191 x 129mm.), woodcut headpieces and initials, WITH THE AUTHOR'S AUTOGRAPH REVISIONS AND CORRECTIONS TO AT LEAST 26 PAGES, including additional marginal commentary, revisions to the text, and corrections, modern calf gilt by F. Bedford, spine gilt in compartments, gilt edges, two leaves of notes by Lord Cottesloe loosely inserted, paper loss to A3 not affecting text, washed

AN AUTHORIALLY REVISED COPY OF "THE MOST ORIGINAL, PRACTICAL, SERIOUS AND CULTIVATED WORK ON MILITARY SCIENCE YET WRITTEN BY AN ENGLISHMAN" (Certain Discourses Military, ed. J.R. Hale, p.xxxv). Sir John Smythe (1533-1607) gained his military experience as a volunteer in France, the Low Countries and Hungary. Well-read and fluent in Spanish, he was appointed Elizabeth I’s special Ambassador to Spain on the 18 November 1576. After his ambassadorship, Smythe re-entered the political arena as a critic of the English involvement in the Eighty Years' War in the Low Countries.

In 1590 Smythe published Certain Discourses, a fervid plea for the retention of the longbow as the weapon of choice for the English soldier. Citing both modern and ancient sources, Smythe recalls great victories won by the bow and associates its use with true manliness and English military potency. The book initiated a controversy on the relative strengths of bow and handgun, but it also contained vehement criticisms of the “new disciplinated men of war” who commanded English forces in the Low Countries. According to Smythe the book sold some 1200 copies but on 14 May 1590, some two weeks after publication, the Queen commanded its suppression out of concern that it would "breed much question and quarrel". Smythe spent the months that followed unsuccessfully petitioning Lord Treasurer Burghley (his occasional patron) to have this suppression reversed. 

The present copy of Certain Discourses was annotated by Smythe in the second half of 1590, after the book's suppression and before its author despaired of seeing it available for sale. He described his revisions in a letter to Burghley of 23 November, in which he requested that "my book may again be new printed, with the amendment of the errata committed by the printer, as also with certain quotations and additions - only military - that I have set down for the perfecting and beautifying of the same, without any further meddlings with any other matter" (quoted Hale, p.lxiv). It is a reflection of Smythe's intransigent nature that when revising the text he made no attempt to remove the passages that had caused offence. Smythe made similar (but not identical) revisions to at least two other copies of the book (Huntington Library 69496 and the Douce copy at the Bodleian). The Huntington copy, which has revisions in the same hand as the current copy, proclaims that it is “newly corrected and amended with quotations and additions by the author”. A scribal manuscript with autograph revisions also survives (Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.a.268).

LITERATURE:

Cockle 46; ESTC S117657; STC 22883

PROVENANCE:

Herbert Hanbury Smith-Carrington, armorial bookplate