Lady Anne Twysden's Prayerbook

Language: English

Context and purpose

This manuscript is one of two copies made of Lady Anne Twysden's prayers and scriptural meditations. Twysden herself composed at least one book of devotions, known as the Jennings-Bramley manuscript, containing her own prayer compositions, scriptural passages, accounts of the devout deaths of her father, mother, and brother Sir Heneage, and a prayer composed by the latter. Her eldest son, Sir Roger Twysden, ordered a copy to be made of this manuscript, with some omissions and additions, inserting headnotes in his own hand, before her death. One of these headnotes is dated 10 November 1638 (Lady Anne died on 14 October 1638 ). According to Ward, The Family of Twysden and Twisden, p. 145, fn. 1, the Jennings-Bramley manuscript "passed from Mrs. Lambert Larking to Colonel A. W. Jennings Bramley". Kemble cites from it in his 1849 edition of Roger Twysden's Certaine considerations upon the government of England. Its current whereabouts are unknown. That her compilation of devotions served an active part in her spiritual life is attested by her son John, who relates that, on her deathbed, "being asked by my brother Roger if he should repeat certain places of Scripture which her selfe had gathered into a certain book she said she knew all in that book as well as could be by heart and often thought of the places in it" ( British Library Add. MS 34176 fol. 64v.)