https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7011-8045
Abstract
A number of seventeenth-century books-almost exclusively Restoration playbooks-bear the ownership inscription ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on their title pages (and often a second signature on a subsequent page). This article provides an overview of the books known to have been in Agberowe’s collection and supplies a brief biographical sketch, revealing some impressive literary connections to Butler, Milton, and Marvell. Recovery of Agberowe’s life and library has intrinsic interest in terms of his colourful biography and his literary tastes, which, it is suggested, may have developed in relation to his employment throughout the 1660s and via the family of his wife, Theophila Cornewall. Perhaps more significant, though, is that the recovery of Agberowe’s story provides a new example of a seventeenth-century book-collector who seems to have been interested primarily in acquiring playbooks.
IN HIS A ROLL OF HONOUR (a list of some 17,000 book-collectors from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries), W. Carew Hazlitt listed an ‘Edward Agberowe’ but did not provide any details about him or his books.1 This article provides an overview of all the books from Agberowe’s dispersed collection that can be located today, and supplies the first biographical sketch of Agberowe, revealing some impressive literary connections. A number of seventeenth-century books—almost exclusively Restoration playbooks—bear the ownership inscription ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on their titlepages (and often a second signature on a subsequent page). Recovery of Agberowe’s life and library has intrinsic interest in terms of his colourful biography and his literary tastes, which I suggest may have developed in relation to his employment throughout the 1660s and via the family of his wife, Theophila Cornewall. Perhaps more significant, though, is that the recovery of Agberowe’s story provides us with a new example of a seventeenth-century book-collector whose primary interest seems to have been playbooks.
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First, the census: I have identified twenty books bearing Agberowe’s signature. The following list is divided into two sections: plays (17) and nonplays (3), each of which is arranged chronologically by date of publication.
Plays:
1) Henry Chettle, The Tragedy of Hoffman, or A Reuenge for a Father. As it hath bin divers times acted with great applause, at the Phenix in Druery-lane. London, Printed by I. N. for Hugh Perry, and are to bee sold at his shop, at the signe of the Harrow in Brittaines-burse. 1631.
Location: Folger Shakespeare Library (STC 5125 copy 1)
Provenance: (i) signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on B1r; (ii) Thomas Jefferson McKee (1840–1899) (sold in 1901, item no. 2256).
ESTC S107798.
2) John Webster, Appius and Virginia. A Tragedy. By John Webster, London, Printed for Rich. Marriot, in S. Dunstans Church-Yard Fleet-street, 1654.
Location: Folger Shakespeare Library (W1216)
Provenance: (i) signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on sig. B1r; (ii) bookplate of John Kershaw (motto ‘perseverando’); (iii) bought by ‘Smith’ (Alfred Russell Smith?) at the Kershaw auction by Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge 1877 (item 1505) for 5s 6d;2 (iv) sold by Henry Sotheran & Co (item #1232) for £1 5s, 1901.
ESTC R212579.
3) Abraham Cowley, Cutter of Coleman-Street. A Comedy. The Scene London, in the year 1658. Written by Abraham Cowley. London, printed for Henry Herringman at the Sign of the Anchor in the Lower walk in the New-Exchange. Anno Dom. 1663.
Location: NYPL *KC 1663 (Cowley, A. Cutter of Coleman-street).
Provenance: (i) signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ (twice); (ii) bookplate of John Kershaw; (iii) bought by ‘Mowatt’ at the Kershaw auction by Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge 1877 (item #315) for 5s; (iv) sold by Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge 12 May 1920 auction (item #336) to ‘Dobell’ for £6 10s;3 (v) the bookseller Percy John Dobell (1871–1956) is probably the Dobell named in the sales record as the purchaser; (vi) pencil annotation ‘Peck 31 Oct 1935’ in the gutter verso of titlepage probably the date of NYPL acquisition.
ESTC R21561.
4) William Davenant, The Siege of Rhodes: The First and Second Part; As they were lately Represented at His Highness the Duke of York’s Theatre in Lincolns-Inn Fields. The first Part being lately enlarg’d. Written by Sir William D’avenant. London, Printed for Henry Herringman, and are to be sold at his Shop, at the Sign of the Anchor, on the Lower-walk in the New-Exchange. 1663.
Location: Harry Ransom Center (Wrenn Library Collection Wh D272 663s WRE).
<https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/9e1640/alma991019592479706011>
Provenance: (i) washed signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage; (ii) possibly Lefferts lot no. 343; (iii) T J Wise (1859–1937); (iv) John Henry Wrenn (1841–1911) in 1904.
ESTC R226448.
5) John Caryll, The English Princess, or, The Death of Richard the III. A Tragedy. Written in the year 1666, and Acted at his Highness the Duke of York’s Theatre. Licensed, May 22. 1667. Roger L’Estrange. London, Printed for Thomas Dring, and are to be sold at his Shop at the Sign of the George in Fleetstreet, neer St. Dunstans-Church, 1667.
Location: Folger Shakespeare Library (C744)
Provenance: (i) signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage and sig. A3r.
ESTC R222560.
6) William Davenant, The Man’s the Master: A Comedy. Written by Sir William D’Avenant, Knight. In the Savoy. Printed for Henry Herringman at the Blew-Anchor, in the Lower-Walk of the New-Exchange. 1669.
Location: Beinecke Library, Yale (Ih D272 669M)
Provenance: signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage.
ESTC R6415.
7) John Dryden and William Davenant, The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island. A Comedy. As it is now Acted at his Highness the Duke of York’s Theatre. London, Printed by J. M. for Henry Herringman at the Blew Anchor in the Lower-walk of the New-Exchange. M DC LXX.
Location: Folger Shakespeare Library (S2944 copy 2)
Provenance: (i) signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage and B1r; (ii) bookplate of Marshall C. Lefferts (1848–1928); (iii) 1902 Folger purchase from Bangs & Co. cat. (‘The Lefferts Books / April 21[–]24, 1902,’ lot no. 1212)
ESTC R17310.
8) Aphra Behn, The Amorous Prince, or, The Curious Husband. A Comedy, As it is Acted at his Royal Highness, the Duke of York’s Theatre. Written by Mrs A. Behn. London, Printed by J. M. for Thomas Dring, at the White Lyon, next Chancery-Lane-End, in Fleet-street. 1671.
Location: Sissinghurst Castle & Garden, National Trust (NT 3029553)
Provenance: (i) titlepage and p.1 inscribed ‘Ed: Agberowe’; (ii) possible former shelfmark, in pencil on pastedown: L.6.3; (iii) pastedown inscribed: ‘V.N. from Charles Johnson July 29 1927’ (i.e. Vita [Sackville-West] Nicolson, 1892–1962).
ESTC R14102.
9) Edward Howard, The Womens Conquest: A Tragi-Comedy. As it was Acted by his Highness the Duke of York’s Servants. Written by the Honourable E. H. [London: printed by J. M. for H. Herringman, at the Sign of the Blue Anchor in the Lower Walk of the New Exchange, 1671.]
Location: private collection of Dr David McInnis
<https://www.librarything.com/work/27028054/details/205460806>
Provenance: (i) signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage and sig. B1r; (ii) offered for sale for 18s by W. M. Voynich (item 820) (date uncertain but before 1930); (iii) bookplate of the Library of the University of Michigan (withdrawn), and ink stamp date ‘NOV 15, 1921’ to Epilogue, sig. M4v (apparently Michigan’s also); (iv) offered for sale by John King Used & Rare Books (Detroit, MI) (sold September 2021).
ESTC R2298.
10) James Howard, All Mistaken, or the Mad Couple. A Comedy, Acted by His Majestyes Servants, at the Theatre Royal, Written, by the Honorable James Howard, Esq; London, Printed by H. Brugis, for James Magnes in Russel-street, near the Piazza in Covent-garden, 1672.
Location: Folger Shakespeare Library (H2979)
Provenance: (i) signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage and sig. B1r; (ii) bookplate of Marshall C. Lefferts (1848–1928); (iii) purchased by the Folger in 1902 (lot no. 773 in the Lefferts books sale).
ESTC R2295.
11) William Wycherley, Love in a Wood, or, St James’s Park. A Comedy, As it is Acted at the Theatre Royal, by his Majesties Servants. Written by Mr Wycherley. London, Printed by J. M. for H. Herringman, at the Sign of the Blew Anchor, in the Lower-Walk of the New Exchange. 1672.
Location: Harry Ransom Center (Pforzheimer Library PFORZ 1100 PFZ)
<https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/9e1640/alma991020752159706011>
Provenance: (i) signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage; (ii) Marshall C. Lefferts (1848–1928), lot no. 1450 in the 1902 sale; (iii) Winston H. Hagen 1859–1918, lot no. 1421 in the 1918 sale; (iv) Carl Howard Pforzheimer (1879–1957).
ESTC R7945.
12) Samuel Pordage, Herod and Mariamne. A Tragedy. Acted at the Duke’s Theatre. London, Printed for William Cademan, at the Popes-Head in the Lower Walk of the New Exchange in the Strand, 1673.
Location: private collection of Dr Tom Cantrell
Provenance: (i) signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage and sig. B1r; (ii) offered for sale by Bookfolly (Chichester, UK) on eBay (sold September 2022).
ESTC R19069.
13) John Dancer, Agrippa King of Alba: or, The False Tiberinus. As it was several times Acted with great Applause before his Grace the Duke of Ormond then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. From the French of Monsieur Quinault. London: printed by J. C. for Nich. Cox, neer Castle-Yard in Holbourn. 1675.
Location: Kislak Center for Special Collections, U Penn FC65 Qu422 Eg675d
<https://franklin.library.upenn.edu/catalog/FRANKLIN_9950019913503681>
Provenance: signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage and sig. B1r.
ESTC R3936.
14) William Wycherley, The Country-Wife, A Comedy, Acted at the Theatre Royal. Written by Mr. Wycherley. London, Printed for Thomas Dring, at the Harrow, at the corner of Chancery-Lane in Fleet-street, 1675.
Location: Brotherton Library, Leeds (BC Lt/WYC)
<https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collectionsexplore/284171>
Provenance: (i) signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage and sig. B1r; (ii) likely purchased by the Brotherton from Peter Murray Hill (Rare Books) Ltd of London in 1971.
ESTC R21398.
15) Aphra Behn, Abdelazer, or The Moor’s Revenge. A Tragedy. As it is Acted at his Royal Highness the Duke’s Theatre. Written by Mrs. A. Behn. London, Printed for J. Magnes and R. Bentley, in Russel-Street in Covent-Garden, near the Piazza’s, 1677.
Location: Sissinghurst Castle & Garden, National Trust (NT 3190063)
Provenance: (i) titlepage inscribed ‘Ed: Agberowe’; (ii) loosely inserted (p. 53): cutting from sale catalogue entry, lot 3649, price £1 1s; (iii) possible former shelfmark, in pencil on pastedown: L.6.3; (iv) pastedown inscribed: ‘V.N. from Charles Johnson July 29 1927’ (i.e. Vita [Sackville-West] Nicolson, 1892–1962).
ESTC R18143.
16) John Dryden, The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man: An Opera. Written in Heroique Verse, And Dedicated to Her Royal Highness, the Dutchess. By John Dryden, Servant to His Majesty. London: Printed by T. N. for H. Herringman, at the Anchor in the Lower Walk of the New Exchange. 1677.
Location: Folger Shakespeare Library (D2372)
Provenance: washed signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’4 on sig. B1r
ESTC R4242.
17) Edward Ravenscroft, The Wrangling Lovers: or, the Invisible Mistress. A Comedy. As it is now Acted at the Dukes-Theatre. London, Printed for William Crook at the Sign of the Green Dragon without Temple-Bar. 1677.
Location: Beinecke Library, Yale (Ij R197 677Wb)
Provenance: washed signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage.
ESTC R17860.
Other books:
18) André Favyn, The Theater of Honour and Knight-hood. Or A Compendious Chronicle and Historie of the whole Christian World. Containing The Originall of all Monarchies, Kingdomes, and Estates, with their Emperours, Kings, Princes, and Governours; Their Beginnings, Continuance, and Successions, to this present Time. The First Institution of Armes, Emblazons, Kings, Heralds, and Pursuivants of Armes: With all the Ancient and Moderne Military Orders of Knight-hood in every Kingdome. Of Duelloes or single Combates, with their Originall, Lawes, and Obseruations. Likewise of Ioustes, Tourneyes, and Tournaments, and Orders belonging to them. Lastly of Funerall Pompe, for Emperours, Kings, Princes, and meaner Persons, with all the Rites and Ceremonies fitting for them. Written in French, by Andrew Favine, Parisian: and Advocate in the High Court of Parliament. M.DC.XX. London, Printed by William Iaggard, dwelling in Barbican, and are there to be sold. 1623.
Location: Houghton Library, Harvard (f STC 10717)
Provenance: (i) signature of ‘Ed. Agberowe’; (ii) bookplate of Rev. H. T. Ellacombe (1790–1885), motto ‘Nullis Fraus Tuta Latebris’, designed by Burnell;5 (iii) Bibliotheca Lindesiana (Earl of Crawford and Balcarres) by 1910; (iv) monogram book-label featuring entwined decorative initials ‘FLJ’ (coloured blue, yellow and red, respectively, the central L perhaps more prominent and thus the surname?); (v) Harvard College Library from the bequest of Susan Greene Dexter (1840–1924) (undated bookplate).
ESTC S121368.
19) Thomas Godwin, Romanæ historiæ anthologia recognita et aucta. An English exposition of the Roman antiquities: Wherein many Roman and English-offices are parallel’d, and divers obscure Phrases explain’d. For the use of Abingdon School. Newly Revised and Enlarged by the Author. London, Printed by J. C. for Peter Parker, and are to be sold at his Shop in Popes-Head-Ally, next to Lombard-street. 1671.
Location: Beinecke Library, Yale (Gt21 4k)
Provenance: signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage.
ESTC R136.
20) Samuel Butler, Hudibras. The Third and last Part. Written by the Author of the First and Second Parts. London, Printed for Simon Miller, at the Sign of the Star at the West End of St. Pauls. 1678.
Location: Durham University Library (Palace Green Library: Special Collections, SB 1146)
Provenance: (i) signature of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on titlepage and sig. A2r.
ESTC R4531.
The ornate signature inscribed in each of these books (see fig. 1 above) is unmistakeable in its distinctiveness, but care needs to be taken if relying on catalogue records alone. The signature is in a neat italic hand, but incorporates the reversed ‘e’ miniscule more common to secretary hand; this has led some cataloguers to mis-transcribe the name as ‘Agbironi’. Senate House Library has a copy of Francis Bacon’s Sylva sylvarum, or a Naturall Historie (1635) with the signature of ‘Edward Agborow’; however, comparison of digital images confirms that this is not ‘Ed: Agberowe’.6 Likewise, although the Beinecke Library at Yale has a Davenant play, a Ravenscroft play, and Godwin’s Romanæ historiæ from Agberowe’s collection, their copy of Cicero’s Familiar Epistles (1620) bears the ownership inscription of a different ‘Edw: Agborow’ again.7 None of Agberowe’s books identified to date have a bookplate belonging to him, though bookplates were becoming established amongst ‘persons of Quality’ in this period.8 Disappointingly, none of Agberowe’s books contain any marginalia. The Brotherton’s Wycherley quarto has a contemporary correction of the Epilogue’s speaker’s name from Mr. Hart to Mrs. Knep, but the handwriting does not match Agberowe’s.
Ownership inscription of ‘Ed: Agberowe’ in the Sissinghurst Castle & Garden’s copy of Aphra Behn’s Abdelazer (1677), NT 3190063. © National Trust Images/John Hammond. Reproduced by permission.
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A surprising amount of biographical information pertaining to Agberowe can be assembled, revealing intriguing literary connections, a military background, royalist loyalty, and connections to Ludlow, Shropshire and the Welsh Marches.
There is cause to suspect that a unique reference to a Captain Agborow’s involvement in the lead-up to the Battle of St Fagans (May 1648), during the Second English Civil War, pertains to our book-collector. When Colonel Thomas Horton, supported by a detachment from the New Model Army, was deployed against a Royalist insurrection in the south of Wales, he first moved against Major General Rowland Laugharne’s troops. In a letter from Horton to Laugharne dated 5 May 1648 (days before the battle), Horton complains that:
Capt. Agborows Troop, called yours; who notwithstanding the mutual Engagement betwixt the Co ̅missioners of this county, my self, and the Captain, That his Troop should not depart this County, where they should lie secure until Disbanded; yet Captain Agborow, having received Four hundred pounds in order to Disbanding, gave private Orders (as I can clearly prove) to his Lieutenant, to march (upon my advance) to joyn with Col: Powel; which Orders the Lieutenant did observe, refusing to return into this County, to receive the rest of his Disbanding money, though thereunto desired by the Commissioners.9
In other words, Captain Agborow, who ought to have disbanded his troops upon receipt of £400, instead defected to the Royalist cause and marched against Horton’s Parliamentarian army. The letter does not record what happened to Agborow, and this seems to be the only account in which the captain is named.
Upon the Restoration of the monarchy, an ‘Edward Agberowe’, tantalizingly referred to once in the subsequent documentation as ‘Capt. Edw. Agberow’ (strengthening the likelihood that he was the aforementioned Civil War ‘Captain Agborow’) was appointed Pricker of the Stilliard on 27 September 1660, with an annual fee or income of £52.10 (The Stilliard, or Steelyard, was the ‘place on the north bank of the Thames above London Bridge where the Merchants of the Hanse had their establishment’, and a ‘pricker’, according to the OED, was a ‘mounted attendant’.) Evidently the Pricker role was not an arduous one: numerous warrants from the Treasurer to the Customs Cashier throughout the 1670s authorise back-payment of substantial periods of wages or fees to Agberowe for this role, indicating that his livelihood did not depend on timely payment.11 The Pricker role was either supplementary to Agberowe’s main income or flexible enough that Agberowe could moonlight in another occupation and even absent himself from London altogether for a period of years.
In 1661, whilst still in London, Agberowe was writing to Royalist commander Sir John Owen of Clenennau (1600–1666) and the rest of the Deputy-Lieutenants of the County of Caernarvon about military matters. The signature in his letter, held at the National Library of Wales, matches the titlepage inscriptions in the books exactly. Agberowe seems to have been serving as an agent for the new militia regiment being raised by Owen in Caernarvonshire, offering ‘an account of the money left over of the proportion sent up for the arms’, including expenditure on ‘trophees’, ‘halberts’, ‘coullers’ and ‘Drums’, which he estimates ‘for each company in yr Regiment will amount to nine pounds’. Agberowe asks ‘how many companies yr Regiment consists of & what ffancies you designe for yr Regiment as most agreeable to yr coate of Armes’, offering the ‘speedy dispatch of as many as ye money will hold out for’.12
These business dealings may explain an apparent oddity in Agberowe’s library: the copy of Favyn’s The theater of honour and knight-hood, which is an outlier in his collection given its early date (1623) and non-literary subject matter. A manuscript note (not Agberowe’s hand) on the front free-endpaper quotes Thomas Moule’s nineteenth-century description of Favyn’s text as ‘[t]he most valuable treatise we have in English upon the foreign orders of Knighthood’.13 With its numerous plates depicting coats of arms, standards, and so forth, and its explication of the history of heraldry, it may have been of considerable professional interest to a man who had been coordinating the purchase of the ‘most agreeable’ ‘ffancies’ for the Welsh militia’s ‘coate of Armes’. The volume was printed by William Jaggard concurrently with the Shakespeare First Folio, and is significantly more prestigious than the other known books in Agberowe’s collection: Adam Hooks describes it as ‘a far more sophisticated production than the First Folio’.14 Perhaps Agberowe acquired the book much later than its date of publication: William London was still selling the book at his shop in Newcastle in 1657 and a number of auctions held in the late seventeenth century (e.g. of Robert Greville, 4th Baron Brooke, in 1678) offered opportunities for copies of Favyn’s book to change hands.15
By 1663, Agberowe had relocated to Ludlow, Shropshire: on 7 September, he again wrote to Owen, but did so from Ludlow Castle, asking on behalf of the Lord President of the Marches of Wales for ‘a list of ye officers in yr Regiment’ and ‘in what Hundreds ye respective Captaynes bear their com~and, so that Com~issions may be sent you’.16 The Lord President was Richard Vaughan, Earl of Carbery, who had been appointed to the role after the Restoration, with the poet Samuel Butler as his secretary and steward at Ludlow Castle.17 As Penry Williams explains, the Lord President’s military duties meant that he was ‘responsible in all the shires of his commission, for the militia, which was the only source of men for home defence and foreign wars’.18 A postscript to this letter confirms that Agberowe was accompanying Carbery personally, including to his mansion and estate in Carmarthenshire: Agberowe notes that at the ‘latter end of this weeke my Lord removes to Goldengrove, where yr letter shall find yr servant’. Three years later, Agberowe was evidently still serving the Earl of Carbery: on 24 November 1666, Charles II wrote to Carbery, instructing him to disarm ‘all Popish recusants within his lieutenancy … [that] refuse the oaths [of Supremacy and Allegiance]’. A surviving copy of the letter, in Richard Herbert’s letterbook, is verified: ‘Copia vera: Ed. Agborowe’.19
Ludlow Castle, where Agberowe was stationed between 1663 and 1666, was no stranger to dramatic entertainment, its Great Hall having been the venue for the performance of John Milton’s masque, Comus, for the Earl of Bridgewater’s household in 1634. The 1st Countess of Bridgewater, Lady Frances Egerton, was an early modern book-collector of note (the Bridgewater House Library, now mostly at the Huntington, is ‘the oldest large family collection in England to survive intact into modern times’),20 and her family was a great patron of the theatre. Her father was the eponymous patron of the Lord Strange’s Men, her mother and sister patronised Milton and the playwright John Marston, and her children danced in Comus.21 Indeed, Milton’s masque commemorated the installation of her husband, John Egerton (1st Earl of Bridgewater), as the Lord President of the Marches. And as D. Lleufer Thomas has observed, when Carbery succeeded Egerton in this role of Lord President at the Restoration (with Agberowe serving him), he associated the office with ‘a generous patronage of literature’ and sought to make Ludlow ‘so far as possible, a congenial meeting place for learned men from the Universities’.22
Perhaps Agberowe’s interest in plays and literature developed whilst stationed at the castle, where he almost certainly met Carbery’s third wife, Lady Alice Vaughan (née Egerton), from whom he could have heard a detailed account of her central role in Comus as the singing Lady. There, Agberowe may also have met Carbery’s secretary and steward, Samuel Butler, who is thought to have begun work on Hudibras, a Royalist satire of the Civil War, around that time. If so, the least-surprising inclusion in Agberowe’s library would be his personal copy of part 3 of Hudibras, the earlier parts of which he may have observed Butler begin to compose. What is surprising is that it’s only the third part of Hudibras, written in 1677 and published in 1678, that I have been able to locate so far: it would be reasonable to expect that Agberowe owned part 1 (1663) and part 2 (1664) also. Perhaps he did, and his signature has been washed from those books, as it has from the Harry Ransom Center’s copy of Wycherley’s Love in a Wood, or the Folger Shakespeare Library’s copy of Dryden’s State of Innocence. It may even be the case that a presentation copy for Captain Agberowe exists, comparable to the one held by Harvard’s Houghton Library, which bears the inscription, ‘For my honord friend Captaine John Grant from his true, & faithfull Servant Sa: Butler’.23
At some point, Agberowe returned to London and transitioned from his role at the Stilliard to a role as King’s waiter, London port.24 Although he was formally sworn into the office in June 1678, the date of his unofficial commencement in that new role was the subject of dispute.25 Numerous petitions from Agberowe throughout the 1670s testify that he had been performing the duties of that role for quite some time (commencement dates as disparate as 1666 and 1678 are alleged), with ‘want of business in his office’ at the Stilliard cited as the explanation for assuming the new role.26 His fellow waiters objected to Agberowe’s appointment, as the limit of men allowed by patent to serve in this capacity had been reached. On 31 May 1678, a royal warrant was issued ‘for a great seal for the erection of a new office of a waiter in London port in addition to the present number of [King’s] waiters in said port and for the grant of the same to Edward Agberow for life and with the like fees, profits, etc., as any other of the King’s waiters in said port’, but only on the condition that Agberowe surrender ‘the instrument dated 1660, Sept. 27, whereby the late Treasurer Southampton constituted him pricker of the stilyard in London port for life’.27 Given these disputes with his co-workers, it may be the case that Agberowe’s unorthodox appointment to the King’s waiter role was a reward for political loyalty and military service during the war.
Meanwhile, on 24 September 1673, Agberowe had evidently left London for Ludlow once again, where he was married to Theophila Cornewall (1644–1731); the licence is recorded in the Shropshire parish records for Ludlow.28 According to the most substantial history of the Cornewall family, Theophila ‘married — Agborough of Ludlow’; a formulation also found in Agberowe’s will, suggesting he was residing in Ludlow at the end of his life (whereas in appointing Agberowe to the Pricker role, Treasurer Southampton’s letters patent specified that Agberowe was ‘of London, gent.’).29 It’s possible that Edward Agberowe is the ‘Edward Agborowe’ who was baptised on 1 May 1627 at St Mary’s, Kidderminster (20 miles away from Ludlow).30 Agberowe’s unusual surname, a variant of ‘Aggborough’ (‘Oak-hill’, from ac, beorg), is synonymous with an early site in the Parish of Kidderminster.31 Wherever he was born, it’s quite possible that Agberowe may have met Theophila whilst employed at Ludlow Castle: one of the Cornewall family homes, Barnaby House, in Mill Street, Ludlow, is a short walk from the castle.
Theophila’s father, Humphrey Cornewall (1616–1688), was a Royalist captain who served in the Civil War (c. 1645 to 1646), and was elected Member of Parliament for Leominster in 1661 and Mayor of Ludlow in 1685.32 Her mother, Theophila Skynner, was the eldest daughter of William Skynner and Bridget Coke (daughter of Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke).33 Her mother’s brother, Cyriac Skinner (1627–1700), was the friend and amanuensis of John Milton, and an aunt, Bridget Skynner, famously drowned with Andrew Marvell’s father in 1641.34 Theophila Cornewall is the generally agreed subject of Andrew Marvell’s poem, ‘The Picture of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers’ (c. 1652), written when Theophila would have been living at a family residence in north Lincolnshire.35 Perhaps Agberowe’s interest in the arts developed in response to coming into the orbit of the Cornewall family with their literary connections.
Agberowe died just six and a half years after his marriage, and was buried on 27 March 1680, according to a Treasury warrant to the Customs Cashier, in which document the widow—intriguingly referred to as ‘Elizabeth’ not ‘Theophila’ (Theophila did have a sister named Elizabeth)36—was to be paid £26, being Agberowe’s previous six months’ salary.37 The warrant notes that ‘Ralph Fenton, rector of Ludlow, and John Sharrett, churchwarden there’ had certified Agberowe’s death (this record thus confirms that the Captain Agberowe who had worked in London is the same man who was married and buried in Ludlow). The date of burial and his rank as captain is corroborated by the Ludlow parish records: ‘1680, Mar. 27. Captaine Edward Agberow’.38 Agberowe’s will (created 13 August 1677) was proved on 22 May 1680; he nominated his wife Theophila Agberowe as the ‘true and only Executrix’ of his estate, in the presence of ‘Bridgett Cornewall’, ‘Edward Adams’, and ‘Humph: Cornewall’, but did not itemise his worldly possessions.39 (Presumably he did not leave her impoverished, however, for when Theophila’s father Humphrey Cornewall died, he perceived a need only to leave her five pounds—‘as a token of my love’—to buy her a ring, whereas he left his unmarried daughters Bridgett, Whitney, and Carolina three hundred pounds each.)40 It appears the couple did not have any children.
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What of the books themselves, and Agberowe’s priorities in collecting them? Giles Mandelbrote, characterising post-Restoration London as a ‘burgeoning consumer society’, notes that for those with disposable income, ‘the exercise of personal choice in forming a library was a means of defining individuality and expressing aspirations’.41 Although it would be imprudent to read too much into Agberowe’s taste in books from so limited a sample as has been assembled to date, drama seems to constitute the bulk of his collection. Evidently, he did not regard plays as mere ephemera: his habit of often signing his name not merely on the titlepage (which might be torn out), but on the first page of the play proper, suggests that he valued his playbooks. It should also be acknowledged that plays were inherently a royalist genre of writing, their public performance having been banned since August 1642.42 This may have held significance for a Captain who fought in the Civil War. Cowley’s The Cutter of Coleman Street is particularly relevant in this regard, having been written by a Royalist during the Interregnum (1658) and including ‘satire against Cavalier pretenders’.43
The plays are split fairly evenly between tragedies (or histories) and comedies (or romances). Chettle’s bloodthirsty revenge tragedy, Hoffman (1631, but written in 1603), initially seems like an outlier in date and kind, but has affinities with Behn’s Abdelazer, which is a close reworking of Lust’s Dominion (printed 1657 but written by Thomas Dekker, William Haughton and John Day much earlier in 1600 under the name, ‘The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy’). It should also be noted that Chettle’s play is actually a first edition, like all the other plays in Agberowe’s collection,44 and that it was advertised by Francis Kirkman in 1661 and again in 1671 as still being for sale, meaning Agberowe could have purchased it at a period of many decades’ remove from original publication.45 Likewise, John Webster’s classical tragedy, Appius and Virginia (set in Rome in 449 BC) seems like it might be a later reprint, given the 1654 date of publication, but it is actually also a first edition like the Chettle play. And like Hoffman, Webster’s Appius and Virginia was still advertised by Kirkman as being for sale in 1661 and 1671, meaning Agberowe may have purchased it decades after publication.46 Unlike Hoffman, Webster’s play was also still being performed on stage, and was reissued with a cancel title page in 1679 advertising the Restoration performance auspices of the Duke’s company.47 It is conceivable that Agberowe may have learned about the play as late as 1679 and sought out a first edition (likely still available from Kirkman) to purchase.
The presence of multiple plays by Behn, Davenant, Dryden and Wycherley might be taken as an index of literary taste (though perhaps Etherege, Shadwell, and even Robert Howard are conspicuously absent so far? And early Otway or Lee?), but the presence of such playwrights as Samuel Pordage, James Howard, Edward Howard, John Caryll or John Dancer might raise eyebrows today.48 Dancer’s Agrippa, King of Alba (a translation of the French by Philippe Quinault) is an interesting play to find in Agberowe’s collection, in that it premiered in Smock Alley, Dublin, and does not appear to have been performed in London. A romantic fiction set in Latium, perhaps it caught Agberowe’s attention for the same reason that attracted him to the Roman history of Webster’s Appius and Virginia (and for that matter, Godwin’s Romanæ historiæ). It should also be noted (pace Paulina Kewes’ astute observations about the enhanced ‘cultural standing of playwrights’ in the Restoration and their marketability as dramatic poets in print) that authorship, eclectic as it is in the present sample, may not have interested Agberowe so much as company affiliation: ten of his seventeen playbooks are associated with the Duke’s company (that number increases to eleven if he bought Webster’s play in response to the revival by the Duke’s).49 By contrast, only three of Agberowe’s playbooks advertise the auspices of the King’s company.
Personal interest probably also helped shape Agberowe’s collection. It seems only natural that Agberowe should take an interest in Dryden’s unacted stage adaptation of Paradise Lost, given that Theophila Cornewall’s uncle was Milton’s amanuensis and that Lady Alice Egerton, the wife of Agberowe’s former employer, had performed in Milton’s Comus. Likewise, one might imagine that Agberowe eagerly sought out the third and final instalment of Hudibras, the poem that Butler had likely been working on at Ludlow Castle around the time of Agberowe’s own employment there.
A curious non-playbook inclusion in Agberowe’s library is Godwin’s Romanæ historiæ (1671), an edition of a school text first published in 1614. Thomas Godwin was headmaster of Abingdon School, Oxfordshire from 1608 until 1625, and his book was a phenomenal success, appearing in dozens of editions between 1614 and 1696.50 It may be helpful to think of it as being in some ways analogous to Lily’s Grammar: a go-to authority on its subject matter for generations of readers. As to why Agberowe should acquire a copy as an adult (he had no children, and at any rate he inscribed his own name in the book, not that of a child), perhaps the answer is simply that he was curious about Roman culture. There’s no evidence as to when Agberowe bought the book but it’s possible his interest in the Romans was piqued by Webster’s Appius and Virginia when it was revived on stage or when he acquired his copy of the first quarto edition of that play.51 It may also have appealed to Agberowe inasmuch as Godwin’s successor as headmaster, Anthony Huish, was staunchly royalist during the Civil War at a time when the town of Abingdon was parliamentarian.
Although it is possible that Agberowe acquired some of his books earlier, it seems more likely that he began collecting playbooks in earnest in the 1660s and especially the 1670s: thirteen of his known books (eleven of them plays) can only have been acquired in the 1670s. (None of the known Agberowe books is published later than 1678, which is consistent with his death in 1680.) Was Agberowe also attending performances of these plays whilst in London? Because Agberowe did not date his books as he acquired them, we cannot be sure that he bought them at the time of publication, but it is striking that he owned two plays (The Cutter of Coleman Street and The Siege of Rhodes) that were printed in 1663; none that were printed whilst he was away at Ludlow Castle (September 1663—November 1666); then a number of plays published between 1667 and 1673 when he was again working in London. The present evidence at least permits the possibility that Agberowe was buying new plays in London and not making purchases whilst away in Ludlow. Another gap, between 1673 (Pordage’s Herod and Mariamne) and 1675 (Dancer’s Agrippa and Wycherley’s Country-Wife) happens to coincide with Agberowe getting married in Ludlow in 1673. This is of course all conjectural, and should further Agberowe books turn up, they may well date to these ostensible periods of inactivity in London bookbuying.
*
Frustratingly little can be said about the dispersal of Agberowe’s books after his death. He does not refer to them in his will, but he left everything he owned to his wife (the ‘only Executrix’ of his estate). Theophila Agberowe was buried in the church at Eye, Herefordshire on 9 July 1731, but there is no record of her will, if she had one.52 There is a strong chance that Theophila, if she retained Edward’s books, in turn left them to her sister Bridget Cornewall (who was close enough to the couple to witness Edward’s will being created). In her own will, prepared on 11 June 1734, Bridget expressed a desire ‘to be buried in ye parish Church of Eye as near as it conveniently may be to my Dear Sister Agberrow wthout any funeral pomp, in ye same manner as my said Dear Sister was buried’.53 She initially left 240 pounds to ‘Cassandra, Dorothy & Richard Phelps the son & daughters of ye Revd Mr George Phelps Minister of All Saints in ye City of Hereford’, and appointed George Phelps the executor of her last will and testament, ‘giving him all ye rest & residue of my real & personal estate in trust nevertheless for ye children before mentioned’. However, in a codicil dated 25 April 1735, she proceeded to add: ‘I give my arras hangings at Moreton & my Escritore [writing table] to my niece Theophila Phelps also my sister Agberrow’s, mr Skinner’s & mr Cornwallis’s pictures together wth arras hangings in yr parlour at Hereford to ye said Theophila Phelps’. Here we have explicit evidence that Bridget Cornewall inherited at least some of Theophila Agberowe’s property (her pictures), and that she in turn left these to Theophila Phelps, whom she describes as her niece. Theophila Phelps died in June 1799 according to a monumental inscription in the cathedral church of Hereford.54 Did Edward Agberowe’s books pass to his wife, Theophila, and thence to her sister Bridget Cornewall, before being inherited, alongside pictures, by Theophila Phelps? If so, where did they go after 1799?
A final tantalising clue: the will of Theophila Phelps of Hereford, spinster, was proved with a codicil on 24 July 1790.55 In it, she left items to her ‘dear Sister Cassandra Leigh, widow’, her ‘dear Sister Dorothy Phelps Spinster’ as well as to Ariana and Catherine Leigh (presumably Cassandra’s daughters), and her ‘brother George Phelps’. She gave Ariana Leigh ‘my Gold Watch my Rings and my Pictures’. Are these the same pictures of Agberowe provenance? Ariana Leigh (d. 15 December 1826) in turn left all her ‘household Goods and ffurniture … pictures prints Books’ and more to Louis Hayes Petit (1774–1849), but when Petit appeared personally on 10 January 1827 in relation to the proving of the will, he was notably accompanied by ‘Samuel Sotheby of Wellington Street Strand Bookseller’.56 As none of Agberowe’s known books are listed in the Catalogue of the Extensive & Valuable Library of the Late L. H. Petit (1869), it seems possible that they were acquired by Sotheby if Ariana Leigh possessed them at the time of her death. A Sotheby auction catalogue of 27 March 1827, though pertaining primarily to the property of Sir Thomas Freeman Heathcote, notably includes ‘some exceedingly rare volumes selected from a collector’s library’. Item #647 from Day 3 of the sale, ‘Old Plays, by Ravenscroft, Durfey, Porter, Dryden, &c.’ catches the eye immediately (it was purchased by the prominent nineteenth-century bookseller Joseph Lilly for 5s 6d), but there is no way of confirming from the catalogue alone that any of these belonged to Agberowe: it is a group entry for thirty plays and the only date offered (‘1684, etc.’) post-dates Agberowe.57 Of course, Sotheby could have combined books from various sources for that part of the sale (the catalogue fails to distinguish between books owned by Heathcote and books owned by the anonymous collector), but it is also notable that none of Agberowe’s non-dramatic volumes is listed in the catalogue.
The next ownership marks in any of the identified Agberowe books are the bookplates of nineteenth-century collectors: the Rev. H. T. Ellacombe (1790–1885), Thomas Jefferson McKee (1840–99), John Kershaw (d. c. 1877), and Marshall C. Lefferts (1848–1928). Such lacunae in provenance are common: as David Pearson observes of tracking ownership, ‘the typical pattern is one of having names from the seventeenth century and the nineteenth, or the eighteenth and the twentieth, with gaps in between and no clue as to where they were’.58 Investigation of where and when these collectors acquired their Agberowe books, and whether they could be connected to Lilly, Sotheby, or the hypothetical Theophila Agberowe/Bridget Cornewall/Theophila Phelps/Ariana Leigh provenance, would be a promising avenue for further inquiry.
The following census, undertaken remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, simply would not have been possible without the incredibly generous assistance of the following library staff, to whom I am extremely grateful for their time and expertise: Tim Pye at the National Trust for providing details of provenance for the Sissinghurst copy of Abdelazer and checking Sotheby’s sale catalogue details for me at the British Library; Rebecca Higgins, Laura Hilton-Smith, and the archivist team at the Leeds University Library for providing information about the Brotherton’s Wycherley from their accession registers; Meaghan Brown for informing me about the Folger’s copy of Hoffman, which was not associated with Agberowe in the Folger’s Hamnet catalogue at the time of writing; Aaron Pratt at the Harry Ransom Center for information about their books’ provenance and for checking other possible Agberowe books; John Pollack and Eric Dillalogue at the Kislak Center for digitising Agberowe’s copy of Agrippa and providing information about it; Natalia Sciarini at the Beinecke Library and Danielle M. Westerhof at the Palace Green Library for providing digital images of Agberowe’s signatures in their collections. Cledan Davies patiently assisted with provision of digitisations of Agberowe’s letters at the National Library of Wales. Nicola Crews at the Library of Birmingham, Jon Morrison at Senate House Library, Abbie Weinberg at the Folger, Anette Hagan at the National Library of Scotland, Sarah Wearne at Abingdon School, Amanda Ingram at Pembroke College, Oxford, Monica Varner at the Library of Congress, Kyle R. Triplett at the NYPL, Zoe Hill at the Houghton, Meghan R. Constantinou and Scott Ellwood at the Grolier Club, Lorna Standen at the Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre, and Julie Bayliss and Paula Wilkinson at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust all kindly responded to my inquiries with helpful advice. I would also like to thank Hannah August, Erin Blake, Claire Bourne, Claire Bowditch, Tom Cantrell, Gabi Edelstein, Tracey Hill, Elaine Hobby, Ollie Jones, Emma Koch, Zachary Lesser, Tara Lyons, Lucy Munro, Wilfrid Prest, Anthony Tedeschi, and Misha Teramura for their assistance. Open access costs have been covered under a Read and Publish agreement between the University of Melbourne and Oxford University Press, facilitated by the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL).
Footnotes
W. Carew Hazlitt, A Roll of Honour: A Calendar of the Names of Over 17,000 Men and Women who Throughout the British Isles and in Our Early Colonies Have Collected Mss. and Printed Books from the XIVth to the XIXth Century (New York: Burt Franklin, 1908; rpt. 1971), p. 2.
See A Catalogue of The Library of John Kershaw, esq. of Park House, Willesden Lane … which will be sold by Messrs Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge … Monday, the 9th of July, 1877, and five following days (London: Dryden Press, 1877); the Grolier Club’s copy is annotated in a contemporary hand with the names of purchasers and the sums paid.
See Book Auction Records 17.1, ed. by Frank Karslake (London: Henry Stevens, Son & Stiles, 1920), p. 375.
As identified by Claire M. L. Bourne: <https://twitter.com/roaringgirle/status/598480708651372544?s=20>
N.b. the Bibliotheca Lindesiana catalogue of 1910 (James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford and 9th Earl of Balcarres, Catalogue of the Printed Books preserved at Haigh Hall, Wigan, 4 vols [Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1910], II, col. 3312), refers to Ellacombe’s bookplates (plural)— possibly one of these has been removed and subsequently replaced.
Senate House Library, University of London, Senate House Library Special Collections, classmark [D.-L.L.] (XVII) Bc [Bacon - Sylva Sylvarum - English - 1635] fol.
Beinecke Library, Yale, call number Gnc60 mcg620; this signature is a plausible match for the signature of Edward Agborow, Vicar of Stoneleigh (d. 1691) as found in Shakespeare Birthplace Trust DR18/5/476 (‘Receipted bill to Lord Leigh from Edward Agborow for £5 6s 8d in respect of tithes at Stoneleigh Park sermons’, 10 April 1678).
Giles Mandelbrote, ‘Personal Owners of Books’, in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, Volume 2: 1640–1850, ed. by Giles Mandelbrote and K. A. Manley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 185, citing correspondence between an engraver, David Loggan, and his customer, Sir Thomas Isham, in 1676.
Thomas Horton, ‘For Major General Laughorn’ (5 May 1648) in A Declaration by Major General Laughorn, and the rest of the forces joyned with him in Wales (London, 1648), p. 6.
‘Entry Book: September 1660’, Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 1, 1660–1667, ed. by William A. Shaw (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1904), p. 68, via British History Online (www.british-history.ac.uk). Throughout these records he is usually referred to simply by his surname, but on 9 May 1679, he is explicitly named as ‘Capt. Edw. Agberow’—see ‘Entry Book: May 1679, 1– 10’, Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 6, 1679–1680, ed. by William A. Shaw (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1913), p. 53, via British History Online.
‘Entry Book: July 1675, 11–20’, Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 4, 1672–1675, ed. by William A. Shaw (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1909), p. 783, via British History Online; ‘Entry Book: March 1677, 16–31’, Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 5, 1676–1679, ed. by William A. Shaw (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1911), p. 575, via British History Online; ‘Entry Book: July 1678, 1–10’, Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 5, 1676–1679, p. 1038, via British History Online.
‘Ed(ward) Agberowe, at London, to Sir John Owen and the rest of the Deputy-Lieutenants of the County of Caernarvon, 1661’, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Clenennau letters and papers 704 (n.b. the catalogue records this as 702); see also the catalogue summary: <https://archives.library.wales/index.php/ed-ward-agberowe-at-london-to-sir-john-owen-and-rest-of-deputy-lieutenants-of-county-of-caernarvon>. On the raising of the militia with Owen as their colonel, see Norman Tucker, ‘Civil War Aftermath in Caernarvonshire’, Cylchgrawn Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru: The National Library of Wales Journal, 13 (1964), 235–55 (p. 248).
See Thomas Moule, Bibliotheca Heraldica (London: for the author, 1822), p. 96.
‘#32 Andre Favyn, The Theater of Honour (1623)’ in Shakespeare in Print–Shakespeare’s Printer (Iowa City: University of Iowa Libraries, 2016) <https://shakespeare.lib.uiowa.edu/item/the-theater-of-honour/>.
William London, A Catalogue of the Most Bendible Books in England orderly and alphabetically digested under the heads of divinity, history, physick and chyrurgery, law, arithmetick, geometry, astrology … all to be sold by the author at his shop in New-Castle (London, 1657), sig. Y4r; Nathaniel Ranew, Catalogus librorum ex bibliotheca nobilis cujusdam Angli [i.e. Baron Brooke] … by Nathaniel Ranew Bookseller at the sign of the Kings-Armes in Pauls-Church yard, 1678, item #139 in ‘Miscellany English Folio’ on p. 60.
‘Ed(ward) Agberowe, at Ludlow Castle, to Sir John Owen in Merionethshire or Caernarvonshire, 1663, 7th September’, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Clenennau letters and papers 720 (n.b. the catalogue records this as 719); see also the catalogue summary: <https://archives.library.wales/index.php/ed-ward-agberowe-at-ludlow-castle-to-sir-john-owen-in-merionethshire-or-caernarvonshire>.
Sir James Frederick Rees, ‘VAUGHAN family, of Golden Grove, Carmarthenshire’ (1959), Dictionary of Welsh Biography (biography.wales).
Penry Williams, The Council in the Marches of Wales Under Elizabeth I (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1958), p. 113.
‘340. The King to the Earl of Carbery, Lieutenant of Northwales and Southwales’, Herbert Correspondence: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Letters of the Herberts of Chirbury, Powis Castle and Dolguog, Formerly at Powis Castle in Montgomeryshire, ed. by W. J. Smith [= Board of Celtic Studies, University of Wales History and Law Series, 21] (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1963), p. 194.
Stephen Tabor, ‘The Bridgewater Library’ in Pre-Nineteenth-Century British Book Collectors and Bibliographers, ed. by William Baker and Kenneth Womack [= Dictionary of Literary Biography, 213] (Detroit: Gale Group, 1999), pp. 40–50 (p. 40).
See Lawrence Manley and Sally-Beth MacLean, Lord Strange’s Men and their Plays (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 327.
D. Lleufer Thomas, ‘Further Notes on the Court of the Marches’, Y Cymmrodor, 13 (1900), 97– 163 (p. 110).
Houghton Library (Harvard), Harry Elkins Widener Collection HEW 7.9.6.
A landwaiter or landing-waiter was ‘a customs officer whose duty is to superintend the landing of goods and to examine them’ (OED).
As per a warrant from Treasurer Danby to Sir John Shaw, Collector Inwards London port, dated 21 June 1678, which refers to Agberowe’s patent of appointment on the 14th (‘Entry Book: June 1678, 16–30’, Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 5, 1676–1679, p. 1030, via British History Online.
‘Appendix III’, Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 5, 1676–1679, p. 1359, via British History Online; ‘Entry Book: February 1678’, Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 5, 1676–1679, p. 909, via British History Online.
‘Entry Book: May 1678, 16–31’ Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 5, 1676–1679, p. 1012, via British History Online.
Shropshire Parish Registers: Hereford Diocese, XIII, ed. by W. G. D. Fletcher (Shrewsbury: The Shropshire Parish Register Society, 1912), p. 446.
Cecil G. S. Foljambe, 4th Earl of Liverpool, and Compton Reade, The House of Cornewall (Hereford: Jakeman & Carver, High Town, 1908), p. 91; ‘Entry Book: September 1660’, Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 1, 1660–1667, ed. by William A. Shaw (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1904), p. 68, via British History Online.
The Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service kindly conducted a search, and supplied a digitisation of the baptism record.
See the entry in the Survey of English Place Names project (https://epns.nottingham.ac.uk), s.n. ‘Aggborough’.
Edward Rowlands, ‘Cornewall, Humphrey (1616–1688), of Berrington, Herefs. Barneby House, Ludlow, Salop’, in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1660–1690, 3 vols, ed. by Basil Duke Henning (London: Secker & Warburg, 1983), I, 132, via History of Parliament Online (www.historyofparliamentonline.org).
Liverpool and Reade, The House of Cornewall, p. 87.
See Cedric C. Brown, Friendship and Its Discourses in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 97.
See H. M. Margoliouth, ‘Andrew Marvell: Some Biographical Points’, Modern Language Review, 17 (1922), 351–61 (especially p. 359), and Elsie Duncan-Jones, ‘Marvell, Benlowes, and the Divine Casimire: A Note’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 20 (1957), 183–84.
See Brown, Friendship, p. 99.
‘Entry Book: December 1680, 11–20’, Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 6, 1679–1680, pp. 764– 65, via British History Online.
Shropshire Parish Registers: Hereford Diocese, XIII, p. 505.
Will of Edward Agberowe of Ludlow, Shropshire, 13 August 1677 (proved 22 May 1680): The National Archives, PRO, PROB 11/362/594.
Will of Humphrey Cornewall of Ludlow, The National Archives, PRO, PROB 11/392/217.
Mandelbrote, ‘Personal Owners of Books’, p. 184.
See, e.g., Lois Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature, 1641–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 74.
Robert Coltrane, ‘Cowley’s Revisions in Cutter of Coleman Street’, Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700, 13 (1989), 68–75 (p. 69).
Agberowe’s copy of Davenant’s Siege of Rhodes is one of three issues of the first edition of the two parts together (it was preceded by part 1 in 1656 and 1659).
A True, perfect, and exact Catalogue of all the Comedies, Tragedies, Tragi-Comedies, Pastorals, Masques and Interludes, that were ever yet printed and published, till this present year 1661. all which you may either buy or sell at the several shops of Nath. Brook at the Angel in Cornhil, Francis Kirkman at the John Fletchers Head, on the Back-side of St. Clements, Tho. Johnson at the Golden Key in St. Pauls Churchyard, and Henry Marsh at the Princes Arms in Chancery-lane near Fleetstreet. 1661 (London, 1661), sig. A3v; A True, Perfect, and Exact Catalogue of all the comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, pastorals, masques and interludes, that were ever yet printed and published, till this present year 1671 all which you may either buy or sell, at the shop of Francis Kirkman, in Thames-Street, over against the Custom House, London (London: Printed for Francis Kirkman, 1671), sig. A3v.
A True, Perfect, and Exact Catalogue (1661), sig. A1r; A True, Perfect, and Exact Catalogue (1671), sig. A1r.
Appius and Virginia. Acted at the Dukes theater under the name of The Roman virgin or Unjust judge, a tragedy. By John Webster. London: printed, and are to be sold by most booksellers, 1679.
Given he owned a copy of one Edward Howard play, there is a temptation to fantasise that he may also have owned a copy of Howard’s The Usurper (1668), which would have provided him with the uncanny experience of seeing Cromwell (against whose forces he had fought personally in the Civil War) depicted in the character of Damocles.
Paulina Kewes, Authorship and Appropriation: Writing for the Stage in England, 1660–1710 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 12.
The current Archivist at Abingdon School, Sarah Wearne, advises that their records for seventeenth-century pupils are very incomplete, but that Agberowe’s name does not appear among the names recorded (email correspondence, 30 September 2021).
A copy of Godwin’s Romanæ Historiæ published in 1661, currently for sale by Unsworth’s Antiquarian Booksellers, bears the titlepage ownership inscription, ‘Henry Darby his book Jan 24th 1679’; if the 1661 copy could still be purchased in 1679 (the year, incidentally, that Webster’s play was reissued with the cancel titlepage), presumably so too might the 1671 copy that Agberowe owned.
Joseph Jackson Howard, Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 2nd series, 5 vols (London: Mitchell Hughes and Clark, 1886), V, 216.
Herefordshire Archive Service, AA20/Cornewall/12-5-173.
Francis T. Havergal, Monumental Inscriptions in the Cathedral Church of Hereford (London: Marshall & Co., 1881), p. 53.
The National Archives, PRO, PROB 11/1194/169.
Will of Ariana Leigh, Spinster of Saint Owens Street Hereford, Herefordshire: The National Archives, PRO, PROB 11/1720/181 (proved 13 January 1827).
Catalogue of a Fine Collection of Books & Books of Prints … to which is added, some exceedingly rare volumes selected from a collector’s library (27 March 1827), British Library, shelfmark S. C. Sotheby’s, 1827, vol. 152, p. 25.
David Pearson, ‘What Can we Learn by Tracking Multiple Copies of Books?’, in Books On The Move: Tracking Copies Through Collections and the Book Trade, ed. by Robin Myers, Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2007), p. 26.
