University of Virginia Library

JOHN MANNINGHAM'S DIARY AND A LOST
WHIT-SUNDAY SERMON BY LANCELOT ANDREWES

by
P. J. Klemp

While studying law at the Middle Temple, John Manningham (c. 15751622)
kept a diary that documented many events in London's court,
theater, and pulpit for some sixteen months at the close of the Elizabethan
age. He is well known as the main source of our information about Queen
Elizabeth's final hours, a performance of Twelfth Night, and "Shakespeare's
clever vanquishing of Burbage in their rival pursuit of a woman of easy
virtue."[1] He also took notes from some twelve texts that he read as printed
books or as manuscripts, including two Paradoxes by John Donne and two
others possibly by him but which we know of only through the Diary. Less
well known but equally valuable because they help us reconstruct specifics
about the pulpit in 1602-03, the Diary's records of more than fifty sermons
that Manningham attended provide many quotations or paraphrases as well
as details about when, where, and on what scriptural passages clergy preached.
Although Manningham often returned to hear certain preachers, he left a
record of hearing Lancelot Andrewes only once. But his account of that discourse
on Whit-Sunday 1602 "At Westminster [by] Dr. Androes, Deane of
that Churche" (fol. 21b) is especially significant, for it offers the only extant
evidence of that sermon, one that has not been noted by any editor of Manningham
or Andrewes or by any other student of preaching in early modern
England.

To determine the extent to which Manningham's record faithfully
reflects Andrewes's actual sermon, I will examine a characteristic practice
throughout Andrewes's work, the echoing of his own earlier writings, and
consider both the presence and the implications of that phenomenon in the
present case. I will then look at Manningham's techniques for making Diary
entries and the reliability of his note-taking in order to assess how his procedures
might have affected his report.

1. Andrewes's Lost Whit-Sunday Sermon

On 23 May 1602, when Lancelot Andrewes preached at Westminster on
John 16:7, John Manningham was in the audience. This Whit-Sunday sermon

was delivered by a preacher who was at least as prominent as two others
who receive considerable attention in the Diary, John Spenser, rector of St.
Sepulchre's, Newgate, and John King, one of the Queen's chaplains and rector
of St. Andrew, Holborn. Beginning in the 1580s, Andrewes had delivered
hundreds of sermons, many at court, and hundreds of lectures.[2] In mid-1602,
he was, as Manningham noted, Dean of Westminster, someone who had
preached before the Queen on many occasions and who would deliver her
funeral sermon less than a year later.[3] Andrewes's fortunes, which were to soar
under King James, were already on the rise, so it is not surprising that Manningham
took extensive notes—about 1,500 words covering six pages in his
Diary (fols. 21b-24)—on a Pentecost sermon delivered by a highly regarded
preacher.

Contemporary listeners and modern scholars have long acknowledged
that Andrewes quotes, paraphrases, and alludes to his own sermons. The
contemporary court gossip John Chamberlain recognized the connection between
Andrewes's 1621 Easter sermon and the one he preached the previous
year,[4] and modern scholars refer to the echoes and repetitions that occur between
canonical texts in XCVI Sermons (1629), recollections that are almost
certainly based on the preacher's direct examination of a manuscript while
preparing a new one.[5] However, by neglecting to look beyond XCVI Sermons—that
is, by consistently overlooking manuscripts and posthumously
printed texts attributed to Andrewes—scholars have underestimated the extent
to which he echoes his own writing and failed to recognize some of the
uses of this evidence when dealing with important textual questions, including
those of authenticity or authorship. Attributed to Andrewes on the title

page and in the Preface, ΑΠΟΣΟΑΣΜΑΤΙΑ SACRA; Or, A Collection of Posthumous
and Orphan Lectures (1657) contains over one hundred lectures on
every verse in Genesis 1-4 and a few other scriptural passages, all delivered
at St. Paul's and St. Giles from 1590 to 1592 and 1598 to 1600. A number of
the Orphan Lectures include quotations and paraphrases from other pieces
in the volume, material that is sometimes echoed or repeated from a lecture
delivered only a few days earlier.[6] Similarly in XCVI Sermons, the Orphan
Lectures, and attributed lectures and sermons whose manuscripts are located
in the Emmanuel College Library and Lambeth Palace Library—texts separated
by a few years or even a full decade—clear echoes and repetitions appear
in Andrewes's discussions of the "congruities" between a church and a
sheep-fold, the journey of the Magi, the pain expressed in Lamentations 1:12,
and the debate of the Four Daughters of God in Psalm 85:10-11.[7] As these
examples illustrate, it would not be difficult to make a case for the authenticity
of the various manuscripts and Orphan Lectures by developing an argument
based on a suitably large number of parallels between the canonical
XCVI Sermons and texts that are candidates for being accepted as authentic.
Because Andrewes's practice of self-echoing is somewhat more extensive than
previously thought, there are more opportunities to use this evidence to resolve
questions of authorship or to determine the reliability of notes taken
on a sermon.

Although no printed version of Andrewes's 1602 Whit-Sunday sermon
exists for purposes of comparison with Manningham's notes, one can begin to
assess his account by examining various ideas, images, and words in a later
Whit-Sunday sermon Andrewes preached, specifically one before King James
at Windsor on 12 May 1611 that subsequently was printed in XCVI Sermons.
Doing so in turn requires some sense of what that printed form represents.
Contemporary evidence suggests a close similarity between the texts as they
appeared in Andrewes's manuscripts, spoken words, and printed works. In
the Epistle Dedicatorie to XCVI Sermons, editors William Laud and John

Buckeridge explain not only that they follow King James I's mandate to print
all of Andrewes's works that were complete but also that the full sermon
notes which they are publishing are nearly identical to what his congregation
actually heard:

John Sparrow's general description of preaching in Stuart England indicates
that Andrewes's habits of composing, memorizing, and preaching were by no
means unusual. The "approved method of preaching" in the first half of the
seventeenth century "was to speak a sermon with as little dependence on
manuscript as possible. Yet a sermon was not given ex tempore: the preacher
when he entered the pulpit would have it in his head, and he might have
copied it out in full."[9] In fact, so conscientious was Andrewes about creating
a finished, polished manuscript that he could follow when speaking from the
pulpit that on four occasions when he was too ill to preach, the texts were
already fully prepared and, after his death, given to the printer so they could
appear in XCVI Sermons in a final form identical to that of the other sermons
in the volume.[10] Manuscript evidence from Andrewes's 1620 Easter sermon
further demonstrates that what appeared in print in the 1629 collection
is nearly identical to the manuscripts from which he preached and, as Andrewes's
preeminent modern editor has explained and as I have argued elsewhere,
to the words he spoke from the pulpit.[11] In the case of the 1611 WhitSunday
sermon, no apparent textual irregularities or unusual historical cirsumstances
cast doubt on the conclusion that the posthumously printed text
in XCVI Sermons accurately reflects what he preached and thus can serve as
a reliable basis for comparison with his sermon nine years earlier.

Themes and wording in the published Whit-Sunday sermon of 1611 indicate
that Andrewes was there revisiting the sermon Manningham heard in
1602. In 1611, Andrewes chooses an appropriate passage for the day, John 16:7,
in which Christ calms his disciples by explaining that he departs so a "Comforter"
may come, the same passage Manningham heard him explicate on 23

May 1602. Connecting Whit-Sunday, 1602, and the scriptural passage, according
to Manningham's notes, Andrewes states:

When the 1611 sermon was printed in 1629, the text presents the same point
in similar words:

Referring to 2 Timothy 4:10 in both sermons, Andrewes shows the relationship
between Demas's defection from Paul and Christ's leaving his disciples:

That Christ makes the effort to explain his departure calls for praise in both
sermons:

In 1602, Andrewes uses a lengthy observation to demonstrate the necessity
for Christ's departure, an argument that he echoes in 1611:

Near the end of the Diary's entry on this sermon, Andrewes uses striking
imagery to present the application of his various points:

These passages demonstrate Andrewes's ability to rework images and phrases
to suit different emphases, the 1602 sermon focusing on the recipients of the
Holy Ghost's power and how that power reveals itself, the 1611 sermon on
the types or manifestations of the Holy Ghost. Quoted at length because they
contain echoes and repetitions that are clear and numerous, these passages
constitute some of the most compelling evidence that I have located from
the point where Manningham's and Andrewes's lives intersect. As is the case
with all of the pairs of quotations I have presented, and as I will now argue
is typical of the Diary's notes from various kinds of sources, the similarities
between these passages about the Holy Ghost illustrate Manningham's skill
at taking notes—in this case, while the preacher speaks—probably with some
compression and summarizing. I will now turn to other evidence about his
habits of transcription to assess further the nature of Manningham's notes on
the 1602 Whit-Sunday sermon.

2. Manningham's Note-Taking Techniques

John Manningham's Diary, preserved as British Library MS Harleian
5353, covers the period from January 1602 to April 1603, its entries usually,
but not always, appearing in chronological order.[13] Just as their contents

range in subject matter from notable historical events to scandalous gossip
and in source material from passages in printed texts and manuscripts Manningham
read to transcripts, paraphrases, and summaries of parts of over
fifty sermons he heard, so there is also a wide range in the quantity of notes
he took when reading and listening. He copies a few sentences from Jacques
Cappel's De Etymologiis Juris Civilis (1576; fol. 75), for example, but he
uses hundreds of words to paraphrase "Some Partes out of" John Hayward's
An Answer to the First Part of a Certaine Conference Concerning Svccession
(1603; fols. 128b-132b). Similarly, he gives widely varying amounts of attention
to different preachers, some of whom appear in brief but revealing
sketches of their physical appearance, and their sermons, a few even receiving
concise rhetorical analyses.[14] Although Manningham rarely inserts editorial
comments about the sermons' doctrines or themes—he pauses once to remark
that he heard "a strong continued invective against the Papistes and Jesuites"
(fol. 79b)—his summaries, paraphrases, and sometimes extensive transcripts
of various sermons' words allow us to experience what Robert Parker Sorlien,
the Diary's modern editor, calls their "oral quality: the distinctive tones
and idiom of the preacher, together with something of the flavor of his
personality."[15]

In his study of English Pulpit Oratory, W. Fraser Mitchell offers one
hypothesis about how Manningham compiled these notes in the Diary: "Its
records of sermons are clearly written from memory day by day, and probably
owe nothing to note-taking at the moment. . . ."[16] However, Manningham's
purposes for making entries on sermons that he heard (insofar as we can infer
those purposes), the extreme variations in their length, and the various kinds
of fidelity to their sources—some are one sentence long, while others extend
to many hundreds of words; some faithfully represent a preacher's thoughts
while significantly deviating from his wording, and some follow both thoughts
and words more closely—cast doubt on Mitchell's explanation. If we take
into account the full range of notes contained in Manningham's Diary (taken
from printed, manuscript, and oral sources, including not just sermons but
also court gossip), Manningham seems to regard his manuscript both as a
commonplace book that stores sententious phrases and brief summaries and
as a notebook that records extensive statements and historical events.

Accounting more carefully for the wide variety of notes contained in the
Diary, Sorlien also rejects Mitchell's idea that these transcripts of sermons
typically rely on Manningham's memory. Sorlien believes that the range in

the length, style, and specificity of these notes is the result of using different
transcribing techniques when the various preachers spoke:

Although Manningham's means of and purpose for taking notes affect the
accuracy of the Diary's records of sermons—and what we mean by accuracy—
there is no evidence to suggest that he complicated matters by introducing the
intermediate step of writing in shorthand.[18] Sorlien makes a far more convincing
case when he argues that the diverse kinds of notes may be the result
of another variable that is unrelated to writing in shorthand, the stature of a
given preacher:

I will argue that almost all of Manningham's note-taking from printed books,
manuscript texts, and spoken sermons occurs while he reads or hears a
source. These notes may be long, his words roughly corresponding to the
source's phrasing, imagery, citations, rhetorical flourishes, and so forth, or
short, offering compressed yet remarkably precise and perceptive assertions of
the source's main points. However, on one occasion when Manningham attempts
to capture not just some of the phrasing or central ideas but also
the poetic form of an epigram by John Donne, the nature of the deviations
from the source—indeed, from the entire history of the text's transmission—
strongly suggests that he is relying on his memory. An examination of the
transcripts he makes from printed books and manuscripts that are directly
before him provides a foundation for understanding the notes he takes in
church when a preacher delivers an oral text.

3. Manningham's Reliability as a Note-Taker

When a preacher delivers a sermon during a church service, members of
the congregation experience an oral phenomenon whose pace and subject
matter they do not control. Note-takers in this setting cannot ask the preacher

to slow down, repeat or skip material, discuss a different scriptural passage, or
alter his exegetical stance; once they have decided whether to attend a church
service, the note-takers' other choices include whether to stay, where to sit, and
whether to pay attention, choices that affect listening comprehension and
hence the auditors' notes. That certain aspects of a spoken sermon are beyond
the auditor's control is evident from one of Manningham's experiences:

Assessing the quality of note-taking abilities is anything but straightforward
in the context of a church service because a preacher may speak extempore,
using no written text with which we can compare the auditor's notes, he may
revise his oral remarks when he later writes them down, or he may preach
from a written text and then revise it before circulation or publication.[20]
Compared to auditors, readers have more choice in the texts they digest and
more influence over the pace at which they receive information and take
notes. And if a reader's printed or manuscript sources are extant, we are in
a good position to judge the notes' accuracy, a word used here in the sense of
reproducing an argument's rhetorical touches, phrasing, and development
(organization, use of evidence, logic, and so forth). With different variables
surrounding the oral text and the printed or manuscript one, the more controlled
reading environment therefore allows us to assess Manningham's accomplishments
as a note-taker when he works directly—relying on only the
momentary use of memory as he immediately transcribes material from a
source into his Diary—from printed texts and manuscripts. Furthermore, we
can readily compare some of his entries with the printed texts on which they
are based and, when he takes notes on manuscripts or spoken sermons that are
later printed, as is occasionally the case, we can also examine the relationship
between the source and the notes.[21]

(a) Printed Sources

We can confidently consult the same editions of most of the eight printed
books from which Manningham transcribes directly and usually extensively[22]

A comparison of his notes with six of those sources reveals that his transcripts,
like his notes on manuscripts range from exact quotations to summaries and
loose paraphrases.[23] Manningham clearly works directly from his sources, presenting
remarkably accurate passages, some extensive and some in Latin, when
he gives excerpts from two of these printed texts. The Diary's excerpts from
Samuel Rowlands's Tis Merrie When Gossips Meete (1602) include about
twenty lines of witty poetry, most containing the source's exact words:

(fol. 45)[24]

From Thomas Stapleton's Orationes Academicæ, Miscellaneæ Triginta Qvatvor
(1600), Manningham confidently reproduces complete passages wordfor-word:

For reasons that are by no means clear—it would be difficult to locate two
texts as divergent in theme, form, language, purpose, and audience as Tis
Merrie When Gossips Meete and Orationes Academicæ—in these entries
Manningham wished to keep a full and precise record of his sources.

When Manningham takes notes from three other printed texts, his apparently
different purposes lead to different results, as the need for selective
notes about key points calls for abandoning word-for-word transcripts in favor
of clear, concise summaries. Outlining what William Watson calls arguments
for "tolleration for religion" in A Decacordon of Ten Qvodlibeticall Qvestions
(1602), Manningham takes reliable, if selective, notes:

When Manningham turns to John Hayward's An Answer to the First Part of
a Certaine Conference Concerning Svccession (1603), his précis mixes close
paraphrases and exact quotations:

Taking notes on Thomas Floyd's The Picture of a Perfit Common Wealth
(1600), Manningham presents brief excerpts that significantly condense his
source and freely deviate from its wording while remaining true to its sense:

Similar to the excerpt from Hayward, this passage's length, compression, and
wording suggest that Manningham's goal is to capture not a developed argument
but a sententious simile.

Two excerpts from William Warner's Albions England (1602 edition;
fols. 54 and 60) give a clear idea of Manningham's different note-taking techniques
even when he directly transcribes the same kind of material, rhymed
couplets written in fourteeners. In these entries, his purpose is transparent—
the Diary becomes a commonplace book for antifeminist themes—but the
notes he produces take two different forms. In one entry, Manningham writes
a précis, transforming Warner's verse to prose and altering the syntax, yet still
capturing the significant word-play:

In another excerpt, he retains this source's poetic form and syntax while introducing
three substantive variations (which I have italicized) that suggest
not misremembering over a period of time but rather minor carelessness
("doth" for "will" and "runnes" for "fals") and eye-skip that causes "Riuer"
in the first line to reappear in place of "Currant" in approximately the same
location in the second line:

These examples from Watson, Hayward, Floyd, and Warner contain none of
the characteristics of notes that rely on medium- or long-term memory, such
as misremembered words or phrases, muddied syntax, sentences or phrases
blurred into one another, reorganized material, and ellipses where key information
should appear. Instead, the respect that Manningham accords the
substance of his printed sources when he paraphrases or summarizes them, as
well as the fidelity with which he reproduces the printed words of such authors
as Rowlands and Stapleton, indicates that these excerpts from printed
sources were probably written while reading and with different purposes in
mind.

(b) Manuscript Sources

In a few instances, the transcripts in Manningham's Diary are based on
manuscript sources. These notes are significant in part because they sometimes
offer tantalizing glimpses of his access to lines of manuscript traditions
that are no longer extant. That they have vanished makes it difficult to assess
Manningham's handling of them, obliging us to be cautious when judging
these particular notes. One text that existed only in manuscript when Manningham
copied directly from it in 1602 is Sir John Davies's The Lottery (fol.
95-95b). Because Davies had been at the Middle Temple about a decade before
the diarist, Manningham's ability to gain access to this document, like
those containing works by Donne, points to a circle of friends associated with
the legal profession who shared manuscripts that were indirectly transmitted

from authorial sources. Extant in Francis Davison's 1608 edition of A Poetical
Rhapsodie and in a manuscript in the Conway Papers, Davies's Lottery is
made up of introductory matter in verse and prose followed by a series of
couplets, each of which accompanied one of the "lots," small gifts distributed
during an entertainment given by the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton,
when Queen Elizabeth visited Harefield House in the summer of 1602.[31] Many
of the sixteen couplets that Manningham copies reproduce readings found in
A Poetical Rhapsodie or the Conway Papers Manuscript or both. When the
printed text and that manuscript present different readings, however, Manningham
never agrees with A Poetical Rhapsodie; he sides with the Conway
Papers Manuscript on about six occasions; on another handful of occasions,
the Diary provides independent readings that agree with neither text and
probably represent minor errors.[32] One example will suffice to illustrate the
relationship among these texts:

Because Manningham reproduces both his source's wording and its iambic
pentameter couplet form throughout an extensive excerpt, the transcript
avoids the characteristic signs of relying on medium- or long-term memory.
Rather, it appears that he was consulting his source when he made an accurate
transcript of a lost manuscript that is closely related to the one contained
in the Conway Papers rather than the one that Francis Davison used as the
source for A Poetical Rhapsodie.

Manningham takes more extensive notes on the manuscript of another
text with a murky textual history, The Legend of Mary, Queen of Scots, attributed
to Thomas Wenman (fols. 91b-94b). The poem's nineteenth-century
editor, Jon Fry, writes that the manuscript is dated 1601 but provides no information

about its location.[34] Since I have been unable to trace this manuscript
and I can therefore compare Manningham's notes only with Fry's
nineteenth-century edition, it is difficult to measure their accuracy. Not only
do the two texts' numerous substantive variants indicate that Manningham's
source is a different manuscript but they are also generally unhelpful in determining
which, if either, might be accurate and which in error. The following
quotations are from the Diary; italics identify the substantive differences
with Fry's edition, whose readings appear in brackets. In terms of syntax,
diction, and meter, some of Manningham's excerpts are clumsy:

(fol. 91b)

But other excerpts are somewhat superior and may more faithfully represent
the source:

(fol. 91b)[35]

While these excerpts from the Diary do not appear to be based on memory,
they may suggest either that Manningham smoothed out material that he
found awkward (a practice he does not engage in elsewhere) or more likely
that he copied directly from his source and followed it with care.

Manningham's Diary contains material from John Donne's Paradoxes,
yet another text with a confused history of transmission, beginning when it
was written in the 1590s and continuing beyond its first publication in his
Juvenilia in 1633. Many manuscripts of the Paradoxes were circulated, particularly
in the early seventeenth century,[36] making it difficult to determine
where the one that Manningham consulted is located in the various lines of
transmission. As a result, we must exercise caution when gauging the accuracy
of his transcript. Manningham and Donne had many mutual friends who
probably exchanged manuscripts,[37] and most of the readings in Manningham's
transcript of Paradoxes 2 and 10 (fol. 101-101b) are supported by their
appearance in other manuscripts of these texts, as well as in the 1633 printed
edition.[38] In the following entry from the Diary, I have used italics to identify

the substantive variants with Donne's Juvenilia, whose readings appear
in brackets:

As Helen Peter's extensive collation indicates, few of these variants are
unique to Manningham's Diary; instead, most appear in one or more manuscripts.
The close connections among various manuscripts provide corroborating
evidence that, without relying on his memory, for no tell-tale signs point
to this means of transmission, Manningham's direct copying produces a faithful
transcript from a manuscript carrying some contemporary authority because
it circulated among mutual friends after being transmitted, however
indirectly, from an authorial source (even if some of the manuscript's readings
were later judged inferior by printers and editors). This conclusion is
reinforced on the same pages that contain Paradoxes 2 and 10 by the appearance
of two other Paradoxes that were not included in the Juvenilia—"Hee
that weepeth is most wise" and "To keepe sheepe the best lyfe"—but that have
received serious consideration as authentic compositions by Donne.[40] Although
the uncertain nature of the transmission of these manuscripts means
that my conclusions are necessarily tentative, a comparison of the Diary with
three manuscript sources that Manningham consults—Davies's Lottery, Wenman's
Legend of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Donne's Paradoxes—suggests that
he had access to texts that carried some authority and made extensive, generally
reliable transcripts by copying directly from them.

Manningham's transcript of another manuscript text by Donne attempts
to reproduce its iambic pentameter couplet form. The results, which stand
in sharp contrast to the transcript of William Warner's couplet beginning "A
Womans love is river-like," do not follow the source with care or present a
condensed version that might be termed a précis. Rather, this entry reveals
numerous misrememberings and clumsy approximations that point to the use
of memory after a lapse of some time. After reading the manuscript of one of
Donne's Epigrams, Manningham writes the following title, attribution, and
couplet:

(fol. 118)

Besides beginning with an alexandrine, Manningham's version presents other
clear differences from anything contained in this epigram's manuscript tradition,
whose extant documents include only one substantive variation—the
title (other early manuscripts have no title or refer to the poem by such titles
as "A beggar," "On a Beggar," or "On a Cripple")—from the 1633 printed
text:

Referring to Manningham's entry as "obviously from memory," W. Milgate,
the editor of Donne's Satires, Epigrams and Verse Letters, observes that
"Those who find epigrams memorable often have faulty memories, and many
variations in the manuscripts can be ascribed to this cause."[42] That Manningham's
entry begins with a title that weakly attempts to summarize the couplet
while merely restating it and identifying a setting ("on the ground") suggests
that his memory is at work, providing an approximation to fulfill the expectation
that a title should precede the couplet. Further evidence of memorial
intervention appears in the misremembering of some key verbs, as "stand"
and "move" are transformed into "sitt" and "stand," and switched to the
couplet's opening line. This conclusion about the role of Manningham's
memory may be strengthened by the fact that the Diary's version is entirely
in the third person, so it lacks the dramatic first-person opening and subsequent
shift to the third person that appear in the printed text and all other
manuscript versions. Yet Manningham's reproducing of the couplet's rhyme
and word-play indicates that this manuscript is connected in some way to an
authoritative line of transmission. However, the substantive differences between
the epigram contained in the Diary and the one contained in all extant
manuscripts[43] demonstrate that Manningham, rather than writing a summary
or transcribing the complete couplet directly from a manuscript (even an inferior
one), uses his memory to attempt to reproduce the poem's form and to
convey a loose sense of its contents, focusing on the final word's pun.

(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.