Miscellany of works by Anne and Roger Ley, including Anne Ley's commonplace book

Language: English, with some Latin

Context and purpose

This manuscript is a compilation of the writings of Anna Ley and her husband, Roger. It is comprised of a number of different sections: Anna Ley's commonplace book (which is largely extracted from the popular printed Meditations by Joseph Hall); her poems; her letters; her will, funeral sermon and epitaph; two of Roger Ley's theological treatises; his elegy cycle, 'Albion in blacke or Happie England growne miserable'; his prose celebration of the Restoration; a funeral sermon on Joan Winship; and further extracts from Hall. The writing of both wife and husband emerges from conformist familial, university and London ecclesiastical literary networks. Anna Ley's verse on contemporary religious issues, and her husband's involvement in theological controversy and commemoration of Cambridge-educated divines in his elegy cycle, witness their participation in the clerical strand of university tradition.

The manuscript is in two hands-one italic (Hand A), the other predominantly secretary (Hand B). Hand B is certainly that of Roger Ley, and Hand B's use of italic script, when it occurs, differs from the letter-forms of Hand A (to compare, see fols. 92r (Hand A) and 139r (Hand B), reproduced in Millman and Wright). Given that the commonplace book and initial poetry section are in Hand A, and the letters attributed to Anna Ley and the remainder of the manuscript (authored by Roger Ley, and some of which was certainly composed after her death) are in Hand B, the supposition is that Hand A is that of Anna Ley. The titles to her poems, and a number of emendations to them, are provided by Hand B, who also numbers these poems 1 through 9, suggesting that Roger Ley may have been engaged in a retrospective (re)ordering of his wife's writings. The extent to which he may also have manipulated them is a matter worthy of consideration. The manuscript was constructed as a testament to both Anna and Roger Ley, their royalist and conformist beliefs and social circle.

The manuscript is a fair copy, with a number of corrections. The later provision of titles for the first poetry section, the transcription of the letters in Hand B, and the transcription of Roger Ley's treatises suggest that it was compiled from a number of now lost copy-texts. The earliest datable piece is Anna Ley's poem commemorating a sermon of 1623, while Roger Ley's elegy cycle was composed during the Interregnum and into the Restoration. Composition of the texts, therefore, dates from c. 1623 to 1666.