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.