Items
Details
Title
Book of prayers and meditations [manuscript], ca. 1640.
Created/published
England?, circa 1640.
Description
1 volume ; 11 x 8 cm
Associated name
Welby, John, -1662, author.
Note
This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.
Genre/form
Manuscripts (documents)
Prayer books.
Prayer books.
Place of creation/publication
Great Britain -- England.
Item Details
Call number
V.a.687
Folger-specific note
From dealer's description: "This is a beautifully and very lovingly produced devotional manuscript pocketbook. Inscribed “John Welby” to the front paste-down, the style of the binding, the handwriting, and the spelling all indicate that this manuscript was written in the middle of the 17th century. This suggests that the owner and probably compiler was John Welby (d. 1662), matriculated at Emmanuel College; B.A. from Christ's College, Cambridge, 1624-5; M.A. 1628. He was ordained 1628 and later that same year became deacon at Peterborough, and subsequently priest. He appears to have moved to Lincolnshire at a later date and died there in 1662. In this manuscript, John Welby has transcribed sections from Lewis Bayly’s (d. 1631) ‘Practice of Pietie’, which was first published in 1612, and went into numerous editions throughout the 17th- and 18th century. Welby might easily have possessed this popular book in his library, so writing sections must have been a way of more fully absorbing and internalizing the meaning of the text; it is a creative act of worship in itself. He has singled out certain prayers and meditations and meticulously entered them into his pocketbook. These include, “A Prayer for the Morning”, “Meditations to stirre us up to morning Prayer”, “Meditations, directing a Christian; how he may walke, all the day with God, like Enoch”, “Meditations for the Evening”, and others. The book is ruled throughout in pencil and the text has been very beautifully executed in a fine mixed hand with elaborate flourishes throughout. But curiously, Welby has transcribed some sections in a neat upright italic hand; this inscrutable change of style defies obvious interpretation. He has had the book finely bound in morocco with gilt ruled borders and corner pieces. After all this lavish attention, it seems this pocketbook never was carried around, and it has survived in almost its original state." Ordered from Dean Byass, D9181, 2018-02-22, "Armory Athenaeum" catalog, item 7528. Adopted by Leander and Stephanie McCormick-Goodhart in loving memory of Elizabeth Jane Lorenz Starr, Acquisitions Night 2019
Folger accession
270154