University of Virginia Library

(c) Oral Sources

In early modern England, as in our own age, people often display different
levels of skill when taking notes from material that they read and material
that they hear, but when Manningham transcribes from oral sermon sources
the results are analogous to the Diary's entries based on his direct copying of
printed texts and manuscripts. At Paul's Cross in 1602, he takes extensive

notes on two sermons that were printed some years later: Robert Wakeman's
on Jonah 3:4-5 (20 June 1602) was published as Ionahs Sermon, and Ninivehs
Repentance in 1606 (fols. 27b-28), and John Spenser's on Isaiah 5:4 (10 October
1602) appeared as A Learned and Graciovs Sermon Preached at Paules
Crosse in 1615 (fols. 40-43). The Diary contains excerpts from only the first
half of Wakeman's printed sermon, just as it includes nothing from the final
section of Spenser's. Although this gap is difficult to explain—did Manningham
leave the church before the sermons ended, find the second half of each
sermon less than noteworthy, or suffer homiletic fatigue (Wakeman's sermon
extends to some 102 printed pages, Spenser's to 50)?—the entries he wrote lack
any sign of relying on memory over a significant amount of time:

Because Manningham records sentences that do not appear when Spenser's
sermon is printed posthumously more than a decade after it was delivered,
it is clear that someone—probably the preacher, given the substantive nature
of the changes—revised the sermon during that interval.[45] When writing a
summary of Spenser's sermon, Manningham reveals "a keen grasp" of the
sermon's "fundamental points,"[46] in the view of his modern editor, as he
sometimes reproduces the preacher's wording and sometimes alters it:

Grasping Spenser's main response to objections to the reformed faith and
conveying it in his horticultural terms, Manningham reveals what Sorlien
calls "an ear for the preacher's imagery" as he presents this "remarkably accurate
paraphrase and précis."[48] Although the notes on both Wakeman's
and Spenser's sermons are selective and compressed, they provide closer paraphrases
than one would expect to find if Manningham used his memory
after some time passed.

To cite a representative example of radical compression of an oral
source until little more than its essence remains, when Manningham writes
about a sermon in March 1603 he does not identify the date, the preacher,
or the text he chose to preach on, but he does provide the location—"AT
A SPITTLE SERMON"—and a concise summary of the main point, while
capturing its play on words: "Yf our synnes come out with a newe addicion,
Godes punishmentes will come out with a newe edition" (fol. 109). Similarly,
he presents a reliable one-sentence summary of a sermon on 31 October
1602: "At Paules Dr. Dove made a sermon against the excessive pride and
vanitie of women in apparraile, &c., which vice he said was in their husbandes
power to correct" (fol. 54b).[49] The nature of Manningham's single
sentences from these sermons—short excerpts that summarize key observations
while reproducing only a little of the sources' exact wording—points
to his purposeful recording of a pun and rhyme as rhetorical flourishes or of
a concise moral lesson, all written down while the preachers spoke.

With its focus on John Manningham's techniques and reliability as a
note-taker, this examination of his various entries from printed texts, manuscripts,
and oral sermon sources allows us to be somewhat more confident
when considering the nature and significance of the Diary's entry on Lancelot
Andrewes's 1602 Whit-Sunday sermon. Drawn to another preacher of
some stature, just as he was drawn to John Spenser and John King, and willing
to devote many pages of his Diary to Andrewes's sermon, Manningham
took notes directly—that is, while the preacher spoke. As in all other entries
in the Diary, there are no signs of his recopying shorthand notes, and as in
all other entries except the one on John Donne's epigram "Of a beggar that
lay on the ground," there are no signs of his relying on medium- or longterm
memory. Manningham captures Andrewes's characteristic rhetorical
flourishes, such as his alliteration ("The Holy Ghost is not given to all in
the same measure, nor the same manner" [fol. 24]), and especially his imagery,

balanced syntax, and repetition ("Wee knowe that bread is the strength
of mans hart, yet sometymes it may be expedient to fast: our bloud is the
treasury of our lyfe, yet sometymes it is expedient to loose it; our eyesight is
deare and precious unto us, yet sometymes it is expedient to sitt in a darke
roome" [fol. 23]). The evidence I have gathered from oral sermon sources as
well as printed and manuscript texts further indicates that Manningham's
notes on Andrewes's sermon do not constitute a word-for-word or complete
record. Rather, while Manningham captures some of his sources' exact wording,
as in his notes on Samuel Rowlands's Tis Merrie When Gossips Meete
and Thomas Stapleton's Orationes Academicæ, he also freely shifts his notetaking
technique and writes paraphrases and summaries, as in many of his
entries on printed prose tracts, such as those by William Watson, John Hayward,
and Thomas Floyd, and on many manuscripts, though his notes on
Andrewes's sermon do not appear to contain any instances of radical compression.
We are fortunate not only that Manningham and his little book
were present when Andrewes preached on Whit-Sunday in 1602, but also
that Andrewes consulted his own sermons and lectures so often. A number
of printed and manuscript texts that have been identified as possibly being
by him might find their attributions strengthened because his echoes and repetitions
make apparent the connections with canonical texts, as is the case
with the Orphan Lectures and various manuscripts. Just as only one source—
John Manningham's Diary—contains evidence about two of Donne's Paradoxes
that are not extant, so only the Diary provides the necessary information
to connect the 1602 sermon to a later Whit-Sunday sermon by Andrewes.
In each instance, the diarist's intervention is a fluke of history. The evidence
is overwhelming that Manningham, precisely as he did when taking notes as
Wakeman and Spenser preached, leaves a fairly full, reasonably reliable, and
in this instance unique account of the event.