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:
In the after noone Mr. Marbury at the Temple: text, 21. Isay. 5 v. &c. But I may not write what he said, for I could not heare him; he pronunces in manner of a common discourse. Wee may streache our eares to catch a word nowe and then, but he will not be at the paynes to strayne his voyce, that wee might gaine one sentence.
(fol. 54b)
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]
