The Manuscripts of Sir Henry Mainwaring's Sea-Mans Dictionary

In the early 1620s, the naval commander and newly appointed Lieutenant of Dover Castle Sir Henry Mainwaring (or Manwayring, 1586/7-1653) compiled a detailed dictionary of nautical terms titled A Brief Abstract, Exposition and Demonstration of all Parts & Things belonging to a Ship, and the Practique of Nauigation. He presented several manuscript copies to his personal patrons and to high-ranking naval officials; the dictionary only found its way into print in 1644, as The Sea-mans Dictionary: or, an Exposition and Demonstration of all the Parts and Things belonging to a Shippe (London, G. M. for John Bellamy). In his preface, Mainwaring expressed his concern that 'very few Gentlemen (though they be called Sea-men) doe fully and wholy understand what belongs to their Profession: having onely some Scrambling Termes & Names belonging to some parts of a Ship'.¹ The rise in 'gentleman commanders' - men appointed to naval positions due to their influence at court rather than any practical experience of seamanship—had long been an irritation to professional seamen.² The Sea-mans Dictionary provided novices with definitions for around six hundred naval words and phrases, listed alphabetically, with an index of terms.

The scribe employed by Mainwaring to copy his dictionary was Ralph (or Raph) Crane (fl. 1589-1632).³ Eight surviving manuscripts of the Parts and Things belonging to a Ship, including five produced as presentation copies, were transcribed by Crane.⁴ A further twelve copies are extant, attesting to the dictionary's wide manuscript circulation during the twenty years before its print publication.⁵ The survival of a considerable number of manuscript copies, many of which have been reproduced or paraphrased from others, suggests that the dictionary was a popular work and that its exposition of naval terms was of widespread value. This article will examine these twenty surviving manuscripts, indicate their relationships, and comment on the scribal circulation of the dictionary.

I

Mainwaring dedicated and presented manuscripts to at least five people: his employer, Edward, Baron Zouche, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports (manuscript sold at Sotheby's, 2015, current location unknown); to the Lord High Admiral, the Marquess of Buckingham (manuscript sold at Christie's, 1974, current location unknown, MS 9 in the Navy Records Society edition); to the Secretary of State, Sir Robert Naunton (Lambeth Palace Sion College MS L.40.2/E48); to the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot (Lambeth Palace MS 91, MS 6 in the Navy Records Society edition); and to Sir John Egerton, first Earl of Bridgewater (Sutherland Collection, Mertoun House, Roxburghshire). These copies, all transcribed by Crane, share the same type of watermark, have similar luxury presentation bindings with silk ties, and all but one have the same title-page border with illustrations of navigational instruments.⁶ Crane also made three further copies, which were not explicitly produced on Mainwaring's behalf. One of these, National Maritime Museum Caird Library MS LEC/9 (MS 8 in the Navy Records Society edition), which is likely to have belonged to Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland, conforms to the uniform style of Mainwaring's presentation manuscripts, with the same fleur-de-lis watermark and lavish title-page border.⁷ By contrast, the other two undedicated Crane copies - one now in the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth House, probably originally owned by Sir William Cavendish, second Earl of Devonshire (1590-1628), and one now held by the University of Illinois and once owned by the diplomat William Trumbull (1576/80-1635) - contain a different, pillar watermark, and a variant style of title-page decoration which is more characteristic of Crane. The title pages of both manuscripts explicitly identify Crane as the scribe.⁸

Five manuscripts of the dictionary survive which are not associated with Mainwaring or Crane's initial circulation of the text, but which retain the dictionary's original title. BL Sloane MS 207 (MS 2 in the Navy Records Society edition) is a transcription of the copy presented to Zouche, and reproduces Mainwaring's dedication to him.⁹ This manuscript was owned by Henry Mervyn (1583-1646), Admiral of the Narrow Seas. BL Harley MS 6268 (MS 4 in the Navy Records Society edition) is titled An Abstract and exposition of all things pertaininge to the practique of Navigation, bears Sir Robert Harley's (1579-1656) arms, and was written by at least three scribes. Another undated copy of the dictionary, in a single hand, survives in the State Papers (MS 5 in the Navy Records Society edition), while a further copy in at least two hands is now a loose bundle of folios held in the National Library of Wales.¹⁰ Owned by Edward Herbert, first Baron Herbert of Cherbury, it may have formed part of his collection of material associated with the Duke of Buckingham's 1627 siege of Rhé.¹¹ Lastly, BL Add. MS 48165 (Yelverton MS 177, MS 11 in the Navy Records Society edition) is the first of two manuscripts of the dictionary that once belonged to Henry Yelverton (1566-1630). Though it shares a binding style and watermark with the other Yelverton manuscript, Add. MS 48157 (Yelverton MS 169, MS 10 in the Navy Records Society edition), the copies are written in different hands.¹²

A separate group of manuscripts gives the dictionary a different title. Lambeth Palace MS 268 (MS 7 in the Navy Records Society edition) is headed Nomenclator Navalis or an exact Collecion and exposition of all words and tearmes of Arte belonginge to the Partes, quallities, Condicions, proportions, Rigging, ffittinge, manageinge, and saileinge of Shipps with other Necessaries to be knowne in the Practique of Navigation; Alsoe includeinge soe much of the Arte of Gunnery as Concernes the use of Ordenance at Sea. It is in a single professional hand and contains neither a dedication nor a title page. This manuscript belonged to George Carew (1555-1629), earl of Totnes, whose arms it sports, and survives in its original binding. Four more copies also use the Latinate title. BL Add. MS 21571 (MS 3 in the Navy Records Society edition) is elaborately written in a distinctive rounded hand, in black, red, and gold ink. It is the only copy produced in a pocket-friendly octavo format, and retains significant water damage, possibly acquired during its direct consultation at sea. One of the few dated versions, its index concludes with a paraph containing a note of the year, 1625. It has no dedication, but its binding is stamped with the Earl of Denbigh's arms. BL Harley MS 2301 (MS 1 in the Navy Records Society edition) is in the hands of two scribes, one of whom also appears to have copied Add. MS 21571. They swap stints between the dictionary entries for J and K, halfway through L, and during P, but the watermark remains the same throughout the manuscript. The second Yelverton manuscript, BL Add MS 48157, is written in a single, unique hand, contains no dedication, is dated 3 September 1633, and retains its contemporary vellum binding and blue silk ties. The latest of the Nomencclator Navalis versions, BL Add. MS 76660 is an 1820s copy in a single hand. Though its paper, script, and dedication to William Fielding, Earl of Denbigh (1796-1865) from an unknown 'HN' are all of the nineteenth century, it is interesting that the manuscript is bound in a seventeenth-century style, with panelled calf and gold tooling.

Finally, two more manuscripts of the dictionary, now both in the Caird Library of the National Maritime Museum, contain significantly altered versions of the dictionary. An undated copy written in two hands, MS SMP/3 reproduces selected rearranged entries, while a greatly abbreviated 4-page version of the dictionary survives as part of MS AND/25. The index of MS SMP/3 is laid out in the same style as in Crane's manuscripts, with central headings and ruled-off sections. The scribes responsible for the copy did not attempt to reproduce one another's handwriting; rather, one scribe repeatedly identifies his own dictionary entries with a trefoil paraph. MS AND/25 is bound with two unattributed hand-coloured prints of ships, sections of which have been labelled alphabetically. The labels correspond to the brief index of the abbreviated dictionary, suggesting that the roughly copied manuscript was once used for the personal study of ships' terms and parts, rather than for presentation or a gift.¹³

II

By recovering these witnesses of the Parts and Things belonging to a Ship and placing them alongside one another, their textual and material affinities emerge. Some scribal similarities highlight links between otherwise diverse copies: the copyist of BL Add. MS 21571 took care to produce a highly decorative portable copy, but at another time wrote more workmanlike portions of BL Harley MS 2301, a larger, plainer version, as one of a group of hands. The manicules present in BL Harley MS 6268 and BL Sloane MS 207 appear in identical locations. The textual content of these two manuscripts is also very similar, suggesting that despite their different owners, scribes, and bindings one was produced using the other, or both were copied from the same source.

Figure 1 indicates the textual relationships among the surviving manuscripts. Dashed lines denote a slight, but noteworthy, degree of influence or similarity

Fig 1.

Textual relationships among the surviving manuscripts of Mainwaring's Parts and Things Belonging to a Ship.

between witnesses that appear otherwise unrelated. This data has been gathered through a textual comparison of the witnesses, in combination with a consideration of material similarities and factors such as dating and provenance. All the manuscripts' dictionary entries were collated, including their order.¹⁴ The comparison does not include the lost copy dedicated to Buckingham, but it does include the copy dedicated to Zouche, using the microfilm reproduction in the British Library.¹⁵ It also includes the 1644 printed edition, which follows a similar textual pattern to Crane's manuscripts. The results provide an account of the transmission and alteration of the Parts and Things belonging to a Ship following its initial presentation, based on the textual and material nature of its surviving witnesses.

Two textual traditions emerge: the early Parts and Things belonging to a Ship text (labelled in roman type), and the modified Nomenclator Navalis text (labelled in italics). The Parts and Things belonging to a Ship tradition derives from Crane's early cluster of similar copies which share textual characteristics common to all other copies, suggesting that at least some of these were repeatedly recopied texts. These manuscripts are the Sutherland Collection copy, National Maritime Museum Caird Library MS LEC/9, the Devonshire Collection copy, National Library of Wales Herbert of Cherbury MS E4/2, and SP 16/127. The three Crane copies (the Sutherland Collection copy, Caird MS LEC/9, and the Devonshire Collection copy) are textually identical, except that Caird MS LEC/9 lacks the entry 'wast' ('betweene the maine-mast and the fore-castle'), and the Devonshire collection copy enters 'harpings' ('the breadth of [the ship] at the bowe') in a different location. Similarly, SP 16/127 introduces the new entry 'girdling' ('to double plancke […] aboue the water lyne'), and National Library of Wales Herbert of Cherbury MS E4/2 relocates 'the runner' ('a roape which […] doth belong to the Garnet'). Because of these variations, it cannot be assumed that these copies were directly copied from one another, but it is clear that they formed, or are related to copies that formed, an early group of witnesses. None of these manuscripts contains a date, but several can be estimated: Herbert of Cherbury's interest in Buckingham's naval expeditions appears to have begun in the late 1620s and early 1630s, and the State Papers copy is docketed as entering the Office in 1628. Caird MS LEC/9 in particular contains a text found in a number of other copies.

Crane's Lambeth Palace MS 91 (MS 6 in the Navy Records Society edition) and Lambeth Palace Sion College MS L.40.2/E48 share all the dictionary entries found in Caird MS LEC/9, of which four have been relocated (sprit-sail-top-mast; shore; halliards; quarter-deck). It is probable that Crane produced Lambeth Palace MS 91 and Lambeth Palace Sion College MS L.40.2/E48 together. Although the manuscripts are not dated, Robert Naunton, described in the Lambeth Palace Sion College MS L.40.2/E48 dedication as 'one of his Majesties most honorable priuy Counsell', was suspended from the Privy Council from January 1621 until January 1625, so the manuscript's production must have pre-dated his disgrace or post-dated his return.¹⁶ Caird MS LEC/9 is also very similar to the transcription of Mainwaring's dedicated copy to Zouche, BL Sloane MS 207. BL Sloane MS 207 shares all of Caird MS LEC/9's entries, but relocates eight of them ('shore'; 'former'; 'further'; 'furthering lines'; 'hale or over-hale'; 'sheer hookes'; 'taught'; 'chase'). Most similar to the lost Zouche copy and BL Sloane MS 207, however, is BL Harley MS 6268. Only one entry becomes displaced during the copying of BL Harley MS 6268 ('passarado' - 'any roape where with we hale-downe the sheate-blocks'), and the presence of shared manicules indicates that BL Harley MS 6268 could feasibly have been copied directly from the lost Zouche copy or from BL Sloane MS 207. Again undated, this chain of manuscripts is likely to have been produced in the late 1620s.

The early presentation manuscripts are equally similar to BL Add. MS 48165 as they are to to BL Sloane MS 207, with BL Add. MS 48165 also relocating eight entries ('standing ropes'; 'holesome'; 'way of the ship'; 'draught'; 'dregg'; 'drift-sail'; 'keenke'; 'sprit-sail-top-mast'). Lastly, also resembling Caird MS LEC/9, the 1644 printed Sea-mans Dictionary moves four of Caird MS LEC/9's dictionary entries ('cocks'; 'sheere-hookes'; 'fish'; 'sheevers'), divides 'calm and be-calming' into two entries, and omits 'boate' (used 'to carry-forth and waigh the sheateanchor'). The printed text continued to provide a basis for the later editions of 1666, 1667, and 1670.¹⁷ That a copy so like the early dedicated manuscripts was available in 1644 is a testament to the persistence of this version of the Parts and Things belonging to a Ship, which appears to have generated copies for over twenty years, including more than half of the surviving manuscripts of the work.

Within the Parts and Things belonging to a Ship title tradition, variations between witnesses primarily arose from the relocation of entries, rather than from the introduction of new definitions or the omission of previous ones. By contrast, textual variations in the Nomenclator Navalis manuscripts are characterised by the adaptation of text through the addition or exclusion of content, rather than its reordering or retitling. The Nomenclator Navalis tradition emerged when a Parts and Things belonging to a Ship text, which was similar to Caird MS LEC/9, was copied with a new title and a number of new entries. BL Harley MS 2301 is an early version of the resulting manuscript tradition, recognisable by the changed title, and a greater variation of entries. BL Harley MS 2301 contains four terms absent from the Parts and Things belonging to a Ship group ('dredge'; 'cunting'; 'garland'; 'running-rope'), omits Caird MS LEC/9's 'sillender' (the 'hollow concaue of a peece of ordnans'), relocates 'breaming' ('when a boate […] is brought a-ground to be trimed'), and separates 'buoy' ('a peece of wood […] which floates right over the anchor') from 'buoyant' ('when any thing is apt to ffloate'). Although BL Harley MS 2301 is undated, further Nomenclator Navalis copies derived from this version were produced at relatively early dates, suggesting an immediate contemporary desire to augment or alter the dictionary for further use.¹⁸

The greatest number of seventeenth-century additions to the text occurred between the Caird MS LEC/9 group and BL Harley MS 2301, but small variations also arose between other Nomenclator Navalis copies. Lambeth Palace MS 268 alters the text of BL Harley MS 2301 by exchanging 'hale or overhale' ('pulling a roape') for 'hale or hailing' ('calling to [a ship]'), while BL Add. MS 48157 adheres to BL Harley MS 2301's text, only omitting 'floane' ('when any of the sheates are not haled-home') from the list of terms. This unique omission, as well as BL Add. MS 48157's 1633 dating, suggests that it was produced separately, and at a later time than the chain of Nomenclator Navalis texts represented by the manuscripts BL Harley MS 2301, Lambeth Palace MS 268 and BL Add. MS 21571, a manuscript which contains all the alterations of BL Harley MS 2301 and Lambeth Palace MS 268, but also adds the term 'bay' ('when two pointes or head lands lie soe farr of […] that there ys made […] a hollownesse'). The final manuscript in this chain of texts is the nineteenth-century copy BL Add MS 76660. This version embodies all the alterations of BL Harley MS 2301, Lambeth Palace MS 268 and BL Add. MS 21571, but omits many entries ('wast'; 'carvel work'; 'case'; 'caskets'; 'crow trees'; 'lee'; 'skegge'; 'stern sheets'; 'the strap'; 'wash a ship') and shortens 'entring ropes' ('the roapes which hang by the side of the ship') to 'entring'. It is notable that this final Nomenclator Navalis copy in the chain, despite being produced around two centuries later, omits obsolete terms, but does not noticeably update or contribute to the remaining information.

One remaining manuscript occupies an unusual position with respect to this model of transmission. Crane's 1626 undedicated manuscript University of Illinois MS 0211 resembles an adapted version of BL Add. MS 48165, sharing the earlier manuscript's unique locations of 'keenke' ('a litle turne […] in a cabell') and 'sprit-sail-top-mast' ('mde top-mast') and adding the new entry 'jocant' ('vide buoyant'). However, its first 38 folios, constituting the majority of A to C, do not follow BL Add. MS 48165, and instead resemble BL Harley MS 2301, Lambeth Palace MS 268 and BL Add. MS 21571 of the Nomenclator Navalis tradition.

III

Several conclusions can be drawn from the model of transmission offered here. Most of the surviving manuscripts were produced during the 1620s and early 1630s. The appearance of these copies was rapid; all but one of the contemporary Nomenclator Navalis manuscripts were produced within two years of Mainwaring's first presentation copies. The key versions of the text are found in two manuscripts: Caird MS LEC/9 and BL Harley MS 2301. Caird MS LEC/9 represents the text of an early, similar cluster of manuscripts which became a source for twelve further manuscripts and the 1644 printed text. The text found in one of these manuscripts, BL Harley MS 2301 went on to influence the entire Nomenclator Navalis tradition. There are several points at which surviving manuscripts could feasibly have been copied from one another: BL Harley MS 6268 copies the manicule locations of BL Sloane MS 207, while Crane's Lambeth Palace MS 91 and Lambeth Palace Sion College MS L.40.2/E48 are indistinguishable, both textually and in their presentation. BL Sloane MS 207 was copied from the manuscript of the text given to Zouche, since it retains the presentation copy's dedicatory address. University of Illinois MS 0211 resembles both the BL Harley MS 2301 Nomenclator Navalis tradition and the BL Add. MS 48165 Parts and Things belonging to a Ship text, while the Lambeth Palace Sion College MS L.40.2/E48-Lambeth Palace MS 91 and BL Sloane MS 207-BL Harley MS 6268 pairs share an otherwise unique relocation of 'shore'. Despite their variant producers, owners, and physical properties, the texts contained in the extant manuscripts are strikingly interlinked, often drawing upon one or more other copies of the dictionary.

Most notably, the reproduction of this text almost always involved the relocation of dictionary entries and often included the addition or omission of content. Although the popularity of the dictionary testifies to the need for a book explaining nautical terms to 'gentlemen commanders', its ownership amongst already experienced naval figures indicates that it also represented the combined knowledge of the naval and military figures among whom it circulated, including Mervyn, Carew, Denbigh, and Northumberland. The manuscript circulation of the text helped to produce a living collection of nautical definitions which reflected and informed current usage.

Table 1.

Copies of Sir Henry Mainwaring's Parts and Things belonging to a Ship