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.

Notes