The Holder of this blog uses no cookies and collects no data whatsoever. He is only a guest on the Blogger platform. He has made no agreements concerning third party data collection and is not provided the opportunity to know the data collection policies of any of the standard blogging applications associated with the host platform. For information regarding the data collection policies of Facebook applications used on this blog contact Facebook. For information about the practices regarding data collection on the part of the owner of the Blogger platform contact Google Blogger.

Monday, June 18, 2018

The Brooke-Camden Feud and a Presentation Copy of the First Folio, p. 2.


Heraldry matters were taken so seriously that Brooke’s was at least once briefly put in prison for his antics.  This quieted him admirably for over ten years.  During the latter of those years, William Camden had regularly handed out the various College perks to a young protégé by the name of Augustine Vincent.  This created a poor atmosphere among Vincent’s young co-workers.  Brookes eventually saw his opportunity.

In 1619 Brooke’s A Catalogve and Succession of the Kings, Princes, Dukes, Marquesses, Earles and Viscounts of this Realm of England was published by the printer William Jaggard.  As much as anything, it was a pretense to once again attack Camden for miscellaneous errors in the Britannia.  He could now, however, add Camden’s Annales rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha (later translated into English under the title The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth).

Again I defer to Mr. Lee: “Naturally the Camden faction discovered in it abundance of discreditable  errors. The charge was amply justified, and even Brooke had to admit that his work was far from perfect. But he declined to admit that he was personally to blame. The errors were due, he hotly declared, to the incompetence of his rascally printer, Jaggard.”[1]  Just how “the Camden faction” made their findings known I’ve yet to discover.

Brooke’s reply was to republish the work, in 1622, with another printer, together with a second corrected edition of A SECOND DISCOVERIE OF ERROURS and a screed on how poorly Jaggard had done his work.  It was at about this time that Camden awarded young Augustine Vincent the Rouge Croix.  It was the first major office of the College of Heralds.  With it, the perks the young man received would clearly grow.  By way of appreciation, Vincent undertook to give Brooke so effective a public drubbing, in print, that the feud would be ended once and for all.




Catalogue of Nobility published by Ralfe Brooke, Yorke Herald would be the only work Vincent would publish in his lifetime.  It was printed by William Jaggard.  It was so thoroughly successful not because it was the say-all and do-all of analysis among the combatants but because the Vincent’s letter to Brooke publically shamed the latter man for his behavior.  Vincent also provided Jaggard the opportunity to gain his own revenge by assisting the printer to write his own letter, for inclusion in the volume, to further shame the old reprobate.

It is here that Sidney Lee goes seriously off track, however: “Incidentally they had jointly avenged Brooke's presumptuous criticism of the great dramatist's right to the arms that the Heralds' College, at the instance of Vincent's friend Camden, had granted him long before.”  The Stratford man, William Shaksper, was not in any degree a subject of or participant in the feud.  He was not mentioned or inferred in any way even once.  His part in Brooke, Camden and Dethick’s lives began and ended as an entirely separate and vanishingly small detail of a separate matter in 1602.  Neither Vincent nor Jaggard are in the least likely to have been aware of the Shaksper matter at all.

The implication of Lee’s final conclusion is entirely unfounded: “Nothing was more natural and more appropriate than that Jaggard should present his friend and fellow-victor in the recent strife with a very early copy of the volume that was to set the fame of Shakespeare on an everlasting foundation. 'Augusta Vincenti' ('proud things to the conqueror')—the legend stamped on the cover of this copy of the First Folio—assumes a new and singularly pertinent significance when it is associated with the fact that this copy was the gift made by the printer Jaggard, in the exultation of his victory over Brooke, to Vincent, his companion-in-arms.”

Vincent had defended Jaggard and his business.  The loss of reputation the printer might have faced, in respect of Brooke’s attack, had been turned into a gain.  The event occurred at the time that Jaggard had already been hard at work assembling the First Folio of the plays of Shakespeare.  The printer gave his champion a gift for his success in the lists: a specially bound volume of the book he was then publishing (one of the finest he would ever produce).  If he’d been publishing a fine volume of Horace at the time, Vincent would have received a specially bound volume of Horace with his legend on the cover instead.


Page:  Previous -1- -2-



[1] Ibid.

  • Edward de Vere's Memorial For His Son, Who Died at Birth May 1583.  July 5, 2017.  "The brief Viscount Bulbeck being the son of the renowned poet and playwright Edward de Vere, we might have hoped to have the text of the father’s own memorial poem.  As far as traditional literary history is concerned, no such poem has yet been discovered."
  • Crocodiles, Prester John and where the Earle of Oxenford wasn't.  January 10, 2018.  “From Cairo he is taken next as part of a 500,000 man military force to conquer the land of Prester John.  That wondrous mythical medieval king also has giant sluices at his control and drowns 60,000 Turks.”
  • Leonard Digges and the Shakespeare First Folio.  November 30, 2017.  "Upon receiving his baccalaureate, in 1606, Leonard briefly chose to reside in London. After that he went on an extended tour of the Continent which ended around the year that Shaksper died."
  • Enter John Lyly.  October 18, 2016.  "From time to time, Shakespeare Authorship aficionados query after the name “John Lyly”.  This happens surprisingly little given the outsized role the place-seeker, novelist and playwright played in the lives of the playwright William Shakespeare and Edward de Vere."
  • Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.



No comments: