The Significations of the Seventh House

“It signifies Marriage, open Enemies, Lawsuits, Controversies, Contracts, Warres, Bargaines, Fugitives, Thefts, &c. Because the Demands which do naturally appertain to the seventh house, require more consideration, and are more difficult to judge then of any other house, I have been forced to be more large in delivering the opinions of the Ancients, as well as of some modern Practisers…”

William Lilly’s Christian Astrology of 1647 is my text, and his instructions for an astrologer to determine important things about a proposed marriage, such as:

Who shall be Master of the two…

How they shall agree after Marriage…

Whether a Man or his Wife shall dye first, and the time when

This being 17^th century England, we are soon getting to the main issue (I have expanded Lilly’s use of the common astrological signs):

“Whether she be a Maid, or Chaste, of whome the quere is.

Look if the Lord of the Ascendant [Venus] and the [Moon] be found in fixed Signs, good Planets beholding them, then say, she is a Maid, and chaste: But if in place of Fortunes there be Infortunes, say she is neither a Virgin, nor chaste; especially if [Mars] be there, and he in the house of [Venus] without Reception: Also, if [Moon] and [Sun] behold themselves and [Mars], she is no Maid; but if the Significators be in moveable Signs, Infortunes beholding them, say then she desireth a man very much, and that she refrains and restrains her concupiscence very much, and casts off her Suitors; yet it is not good to trust always to this judgment, because the nature of women is changeable.

Whether a Woman be honest to her Husband.

The Lord of the Ascendant, the [Moon] or [Venus] in fixed signs, in aspect of the Fortunes, she is chaste; these being in aspect of the Infortunes, not chaste, chiefly with [Mars]; [Sun] or [Moon] beholding [Mars], she is meretrix; [Sun] and [Moon] in no aspect, nor [Mars] with them, she is suspected a privy harlot, or rather privately wanton; but not yet come to the act.”

At this point, Lilly reminds those readers learning from him how to determine these delicate things that they will be playing with fire:

“I must charge all Sons of Art, to be sparing in delivering judgment upon these queries, rather to be silent; for as men, we may err; and so by delivering an unlucky judgment, be authors of much mischief.”

Nevertheless, he continues inexorably on, through all the permutations of temptation, resistance, inclination to frailty, extenuations of circumstance:

“Of a woman, whether she be corrupt, or hath a Lover besides her husband or Sweet-heart

Behold the Ascendant and his Lord, and the [Moon], and see if they be both in angles or fixed Signs, then say the Maid is a Virgin, and they lye of her, or what is reported is false: if the Lord of the Ascendant and [Moon] be in fixed Signs, and the angles be moveable Signs, she was tempted, but gave no credit or admittance to the Tempter. If the [Moon] be joined to [Saturn] [Jupiter] [Mars] [Sun] corporally by aspect, so that there is between them but five degrees or less, she is tempted of some one who hath the effigies of that Planet to whom she is joined; but if the [Moon] be joined to [Venus] or [Mercury], she is tempted by some woman for a man, but she makes no reckoning of the old or young Bawds words: but laughs her to scorn …

If then the [Moon] be with [the dragon’s tail], she hath formerly offended, and is still guilty, nor will she amend hereafter

The [Moon] in the last face of [Gemini], the woman seems to be corrupt, if the Ascendant be a moveable Sign, or common, or if the Lord of the Ascendant or [Moon] be in moveable or common Signs she is no Virgin; the Lord of the Ascendant combust in a moveable or common Sign, the woman hath been tempted and made a harlot by violence, or she was unwillingly drawn to lewdness.”

The astrologer’s client might want to know just where the actual or contemplated lover is: Lilly gives the rules that determine his actual distance:

“If [Mars] be with the Lord of the seventh, or with [Moon], or in one Sign in [conjunction], or with [the dragon’s tail], the woman hath a Sweet-heart in contract, not far from her house; and if they be in one degree, then he is in the house, and one of the familiars of the man that asks the question.”

He even seems to produce the signs in the sky that indicate if the woman is actually lesbian in her inclinations:

“The Lord of the seventh joined to [Venus] with Reception, with or without any aspect, or else by a [trine] or [sextile], or[square] without Reception, the Woman cares not for men, but hath friendship with women.”

And the final outcome of all this celestially vexed mating:

“Whether the Child conceived is the Son of him who is reputed is Father

Behold the Lord of the Ascendant and the [Moon], who signifie the Interrogant; then observe the Sign of the eleventh and his Lrd, these signifie the issue in Conception; if these Significators behold one another by [trine] or [sextile], with Reception or not, the Conception is legitimate

But if none of these things be, but that [Saturn] [Mars] or [Venus] behold the fifth house, or Lord thereof, there may be just suspicion that the Child is conceived in adultery, and the Mother was stuprated.”

The double standard is in its perfect form here. Lilly just cannot imagine an astrologer being consulted by a woman client about her prospective partner’s chastity. Women having so many more potential faults than men, the system seems set up to find and confirm them.

‘Christian astrology modestly treated'? The man had a nerve. Lilly thought, of course, that his art let him interpret the purposes of the largest elements in God’s creation (which always had meaning in relation to His prime creation, man): the whole sky was a divinely ordained system of influences. Lilly will always claim that his astrological predictions or readings do not entail any necessity, that repentance, or self-restraint, or resistance are always possible to the free human will. But once you read him in the full flow of confident exposition, he looks like the willing prisoner of his own system, seduced by its intricacies into describing an astral predetermination. A latently Calvinist God lurks behind all this, and maybe that’s what made Lilly think he was expounding something ‘Christian’ - rather than the arbitrary and prejudiced gim-crack assembled from all sorts of traditions, which you could charge with being mechanistic if it wasn’t so susceptible to delivering what suited the operator’s own opinions.

http://www.astrologycom.com/glosst.html

http://www.renaissanceastrology.com/index.html

The early modern dormouse

Nicolas Culpeper made me think about early modern small domestic animals again. He is reflecting on the way repugnance for snakes proves God’s curse on the serpent:

“For men though they keep beasts for their profit, and birds for their pleasure, and dormice for their ease, as to make themselves sleep, or the like: yet a man when he meets with an Adder, gives him no quarter, but is sure to die for it…”

One of the small creatures (number 9, if you can see it) in the illustration from Comenius (above) is supposed to be a dormouse, but labeled as troubling the house, rather than usefully somniferous.

Edward Topsell’s The historie of foure-footed beastes (1607) has a profusion of medical uses for dormice, but unaccountably, none of them are to do with sleep disorders:

The medicines of the Dormouse.

Dormyse being taken in meat, doe much profit against the Bulimon [word not in OED]; The powder of Dormyse mixed with oil, doth heal those which are scalded with any hot licker. A live Dormouse doth presently take away all warts being bound thereupon. Dormyse, and field-mice being burnt, and their dust mingled with honey, will profit those which desire the clearness of the eyes, if they doe take thereof some small quantitie every morning. The powder of a Dormouse, or field mouse rubbed upon the eyes helpeth the aforesaid disease. A Dormouse being flayed, roasted and anointed with oil, and salt, being given in meat, is an excellent cure for those that are short winded. The same also doth very effectually heal those that spit out filthy matter or corruption. Powder of Dormice, or field-mice, or young worms, being mixed with oil doth heal those that have kibes on their heels, or chilblains on their hands. The fatte of a Dormouse, the fatte of a hen, and the marrow of an Ox melted together, and being hot, infused into the ears, doth very much profit both the pains and deafeness thereof.

The fatte of Dormice being boiled, as also of field-mice, are delivered to be most profitable for the eschewing of the palsie. That fat of a Dormouse is also very excellent for those which are troubled with a palsie or shaking of the joints. The skin and inward parts of a Dormouse being taken forth, and boiled with honey in a new vessel, and afterwards poured into an other vessel, will very effectually heal all diseases which are incident to the ears, being anointed thereupon. The skin of a Dormouse or a silk worm being pulled off, and the inward parts thereof being boiled in a new brasen vessel with honey, from the quantitie of 27. ounces even to three, and so kept, that when there is need of a certain bathing vessel, the medicine being made warm and powred into the ears, doth help all pains, deafness, or inflammation of the ears. The fat of a Dormouse is commended to be very medicinable for the aforenamed diseases. The same is profitable for all pains, aches, or griefs in the belly. The urine of a Dormouse is an excellent remedy against the palsie, And thus much shall suffice concerning the medicinal virtues of the Dormouse.

Thomas Lupton in his A thousand notable things, of sundry sortes Wherof some are wonderfull, some straunge, some pleasant, diuers necessary, a great sort profitable and many very precious (1579) goes the more obvious route: the dormouse obviously promotes what it is notably good at itself, sleeping: “The soles of the feete annoynted with the fatte of a Dormouse, doth procure sleepe. As Actius doth saye.”

John Swan notes that the dormouse has, despite its drowsy image, been taken as having a very positive spiritual symbolism: “the Dormouse is a beast which endeth his old age every winter, and when summer cometh, reviveth again: which some have therefore made an emblem of the resurrection. They are exceeding sleepie, and fatted with it. Their hair is short, and in colour variable, only their bellie is always white: and for mine own part, I ever thought them to be no bigger then an ordinary mouse, but in Gesner and Topsell they are said to be greater in quantitie then a squirrel”. Speculum mundi· Or A glasse representing the face of the world shewing both that it did begin, and must also end (1635)

Jean Baptiste van Helmont believed that dormice and rabbits could mate and produce young (no surprise when he also believed he had evidence a man and a pig could produce ‘a sodomitical monster’). He thought transgenic animals were all: “more like the Mother than the Father. So of a sheep the mother, and a He goat the Father, a Lamb comes forth, which besides Wool and tail, hath his other parts like a sheep. So a Mule, his Father being an Ass, and his Mother a Mare. And so a Horse of a Bull and a Mare. Lastly, in seven Coneys, from their Father a Dormouse, and their mother a Coney, nothing besides their tail was like unto the latter

Robert Mandevill modestly disagreed with him: “And as for those Creatures whose producers are of two different sorts, as a Mule bred of an Ass and a Horse, and another Creature bred of a Cony and a Dormouse; all which your Author thinks do take more after their mother then their father, more after the breeder then the begetter; I will not eagerly affirm the contrary, although it seems to me more probable: But this I can say, that I have observed by experience, that Fauns and Foals have taken more after the Male then after the Female; for amongst many several colour’d Deer, I have seen but one milk white Doe; and she never brought forth a white Faun, when as I have seen a white Buck beget white and speckled Fauns of black and several coloured Does. (Timothies taske: or a Christian sea-card guiding through the coastes of a peaceable conscience to a peace constant, and a crowne immortall, 1619).

The Duchess of Newcastle was clearly very interested in this debate about whether inter-species offspring more resembled their mother or their father. In one of her typical anti-feminine moments, she sees the father as dominant.

Bishop Joseph Hall meditated on the dormouse (he is interested in the idea that dormice woke from their long sleep fatter than they began it, and so must be living and thriving on air, like chameleons):

Upon the sight of a Dormouse.

At how easy a rate doe these Creatures live that are fed with rest; So the Bear and the Hedge-hog (they say) spend their whole winter in sleep, and rise up fatter then they lay down; How oft have I envied the thriving drowsiness of these Beasts; When the toil of thoughts hath bereaved me of but one hours sleep; and left me languishing to a new task; and yet, when I have well digested the comparison of both these conditions, I must needs say, I had rather waste with work, then batten with ease; & would rather choose a life profitably painful, then uselessly dull and delicate. I cannot tell whether I should say those Creatures live, which doth nothing; since we are wont ever to notifie life by motion; Sure I am their life is not vital; For me, Let me rather complain of a mind that will not let me be idle, then of a body that will not let me work.
Occasionall meditations by Ios. Exon ; set forth by R.H. (1631)

http://roy25booth.blogspot.com/2006/09/comenius-in-english.html

http://roy25booth.blogspot.com/2006/05/early-modern-pets.html

Investigating an early modern plagiary

I have been trying to pull together a discussion of the various tracts and parodies prompted by William Lilly’s failed astrological punt on the forthcoming terrors of the ‘Black Monday’ eclipse of 29^th March, 1652.

My reading around this led me to a pamphlet attributed on EEBO to Isabel Yeamans, The year of wonders: or, the glorious rising of the fifth monarch (1652), and I was (for such is the way of the academic world) heartened to have a female author, one of those much prized ‘early modern Englishwomen’ apparently on my roster.

Further reading exploded this: the pamphlet attributed to Yeamans is plagiarized from Nicholas Culpepper’s apocalyptic treatise on the same set of eclipses, Catastrophe magnatum, or, The fall of monarchie a caveat to magistrates, deduced from the eclipse of the sunne, March 29, 1652, with a probable conjecture of the determination of the effects.

Maybe ‘plagiary’ is too harsh a word: perhaps the material published as The year of wonders began as a set of extracts from Culpepper’s longer work, cutting out the rather self-important account of what eclipses are and why they are so influential, and getting immediately to his prognostications.

Who compiled these extracts I do not know. Isabel Yeamans herself seems highly unlikely. Until her marriage in 1664 there was no such person: in 1652 she was Isabel Fell. Rather bafflingly, there is in fact no actual indication of authorship in The year of wonders. I will have to try to trace how this attribution - which gave a woman author’s married name to a work compiled prior to her marriage - began, and when.

Could the attribution have any truth to it? Even as a girl of 15 (as she would have been in 1652), Isabel would probably not have lacked the basic ability to make the extracts: she would go on to be a preacher in the Society of Friends, a close ally of George Fox, and an emissary for the Quakers to Germany when they hoped to recruit Princess Elizabeth of the Palatinate to their sect. Her indubitable production is An invitation of love, to all who hunger and thirst after righteousness, to come and take of the water of life freely without money and without price with a word of advice to such as are asking the way to Sion (and are weeping) with their faces thither-ward : together with a faithful warning to the inhabitants of Babylon, to come out of her, lest (partaking of her sins) ye also come to partake of her plagues (1679), and she might have had a hand in A Lively Testimony to the Living Truth Given forth by Robert Jeckell upon his Death-bed (1676). That main surviving work speaks of ‘hoping the ponderous Reader … may not be distasted at the simplicity of the style’ – the amusing usage aside, the style is 17^th century Bible-speak.

But in 1652, the young Isabel Fell was at her family home up in Lancashire, Swarthmore Hall, near Ulverston (image of the hall above from the second website at end of this piece). This was the year that George Fox visited the family (in June), and converted her mother, Isabel and her sisters to Quakerism (ODNB). The year of wonders is dated by Thomason to March 21^st, 1652, just eight days before the foreboding eclipse. I suppose that Culpeper’s earlier treatise could conceivably have found its way to Lancashire, and a bright 17^th century fifteen year old (who we might imagine as already interested in the ideas of those who believed that the prophet Daniel’s Fifth Monarchy was arriving) have summarized it, and her extracts got back down to London in the hands of a traveling Quaker. But that’s quite a long train of possibilities, and it is far more obvious, from the emphasis of the full title, that The year of wonders: or, the glorious rising of the fifth monarch, was compiled in London from Culpeper to encourage those would had recently (from c.1648) been persuaded that the ‘Fifth Monarchy’ was about to begin on earth.

The plagiary (or excerpting) runs in seriatim order:

‘Yeamans’ page 4 is assembled from pages 12 and 18 in Culpeper; page 5 from pages 20 and 24, page 6 from 36 and 37; page 7 extracts Culpeper page 47; 8 from 48; page 9 then picks up Culpeper on page 68; page 10 seems to be part original, and partly from page 70 of Culpeper; 11 is from 70; 12 is 71; 13 comes from page 72, as does 14, and page 15 is page 74 of the original. The final page breaks with this progression, being taken from page 65 of the source (the extract-maker looked back for a passable ending).

The person who assembled The year of wonders does occasionally write their own material: the introductory half page, and part of page10 do not seem to be in Culpeper. If it was a merely fraudulent product, alterations for the first page are what you would expect. One tenuous sign of something like Quaker sensitivities (specifically about equality between the sexes) might be seen in the omission of Culpeper’s brisk urging of Sweden to extirpate its witches (p. 73) as a way of heading off the worst effects of the eclipse (and God’s wrath).

The gender of the author is not apparent (unlike Yeaman’s undoubted work, where she is repeatedly anxious to show the biblical authority for women preachers, writing very much in the spirit of her mother, author herself of Women’s Speaking Justified of 1666). When Culpeper predicts the dire effects of the forthcoming eclipse on pregnant women, he can add “(let them make use of my DIRECTORY for MIDWIVES to prevent it)”, which the plagiarist reduces to a bare prophecy, ‘such of them as are with child shall be too subject to misery’. This probably discounts Culpeper as having been paid to make his own extracts from his longer work.

Extracts from Nicholas Culpeper, then, with a London printing house cashing in on the anxiety about the 1652 eclipse - and pitching also at the Fifth Monarchists. How did it ever get attached to Isabel Yeamans? And why don’t any of these astrologers, doom-mongering about eclipses, admit that when you get a solar eclipse, you always get two lunar eclipses, because that’s just how the heavenly bodies are going to be aligned – three eclipses in a year is normal, and no reason to panic. But that’s another question still.

http://www.strecorsoc.org/maps/mapprest.html

http://www.manannan.co.uk/aosa/nostalgia/swarthmoor_hall_01.htm

2,800 miles of America

The holiday in America was rewarding and demanding. We (this means me and my son Timothy) drove 2,856 miles, in a Pontiac Grand Prix – a great lump of a car, but amazingly less spacious inside than my own Ford Focus. On ‘drive’, this would grind up the passes at 1,500 rpm, you had to select 3 or 2 to get any response from it – a basic incompatibility with my soft-footed driving style. On the freeways, it came into its own if you overtook past the speed limit, with a great throaty roar.

We 'did' the Rockies (over the highest paved road in America) – lots of marmots and pikas, and a breathless attempt at a walk. Then Mount Rushmore, the Black Hills, Devil’s Tower, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Dinosaur National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Arches National Park, and the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings.

Yellowstone is so big – you couldn’t fit it twice into the whole of Yorkshire. We had a day and a half. We saw Old Faithful and lots more of the geothermal stuff, and swam in the Firehole River. A wildfire prevented us from doing the full central loop, which was almost a relief.

I think that I enjoyed the Arches National Park the best. The hike up to Delicate Arch was phenomenal, but on the way to Landscape Arch subsequently, you just had to acknowledge that after this one, the heat and the altitude meant that this was your limit for the day. Instead of mountain bikes on the Slick Rock Trail, it was back to the motel for air-con and a pool.

The Mesa Verde made a thrilling visit, going up the ladders to Balcony House. I’d no idea that the people there were living so high up anyway – it’s at about 7,500 feet; or that their lasting legacy was for them a desperate expedient which they only lived in for 80-odd years before they had to abandon the Mesa completely.

On the final morning, we both loved a visit down the Mollie Kathleen gold mine at Cripple Creek (round the back of Pike's Peak). Geology is quite a theme in this holiday route. Dinosaur bones have been found all over the region, and sometimes the road will have signs naming the formations you are driving by: the drive up the Big Horn Mountains at the start of day 7 takes you through six major geological periods.

We saw humming birds, marmots, ground squirrels, a moose, prairie dogs, and a buffalo; but no bears.

My image is of Lewis Lake, going south out of Yellowstone towards the Grand Tetons. I shall now suffer from a lack of a daily overload of big scenery.

Vacation time

I am fluttering away from my keyboard for a holiday in and around the Rockies (thus squandering more than another year of carbon credit from frantic pedaling).

I hope in the meantime ‘Blogger’ might put itself back to aesthetic rights, as it is looking sub-basic at the moment, and I can’t be bothered for now fishing about in the HTML tags to try to put things right.

My image is a composite from Thomas Marent’s Butterfly: A Photographic Portrait, which has been delighting me recently. These are Colombian eighty-eights and eighty nines (Diaethria clymena) – ‘this our life, exempt from public haunt / Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in everything’.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Butterfly-Photographic-Portrait-Dk-Reference/dp/1405325402/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216719908&sr=1-1

As I gad off enjoying myself, I will not forget my late companion Anthony Maynard, whose funeral was yesterday:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7518329.stm

Paul III as Volpone in Barton Holyday's 'Survey'

The morale of the harpooner at Early Modern Whale has been boosted by the blog here managing to make the cut in Ralph E Luker’s selection of blogs ‘without which, history education on the internet would be seriously impoverished.’ (Can he really mean me?)

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/52237.html

My incidental reading for this week has been A survey of the world in ten books by the royal chaplain and archdeacon in Oxford, Barten Holyday (1661). I was intrigued to see by what means our pious author shrank such a large subject into 118 pages. He did it by following one of the few contemporary verse writers he admires, who happened (alas!) to be Thomas Tusser. Holyday writes his ‘survey’ in exactly 1,000 distiches, neatly dividing them hundred by hundred into the ten books, which cover these topics:

“Of inanimate Creatures; Of living Creatures; Of Nations; Of Languages and Arts; Of Philosophers and Historians; Of Physicians; Of Lawyers; Of Kings and Other Worthies; Of Politicians; Of Divines”.

The result is a series of moralised reflections (he calls them meditations) on everything that seems to him important. He can do a survey of the world because he lives within such a simple intellectual framework: the world, of course, is coeval with man; and everything in it was made for man. Everything exists in a divinely ordained order – order is life, he tells us:

Relations must be Own’d: Husband and Wife;

Father, Sonne; Master, Servant: Order’s Life.

Each section works in general from the past to the present, from Bible history, through classical, and so down to contemporaries, to the effect that the work also becomes a kind of mad bibliography, in which Holyday mentions all the writers he approves of – writers on the law and divinity mainly. Part of the out-of-the-way charm of the book is to see Holyday backing all the wrong horses: if only he could have written a couplet on Shakespeare or Donne, he’d have been quoted, and known to specialists. He does allude to two of Ben Jonson’s creations, but only for a satirical jibe at a pope and a famous cardinal:

Paul the Third and Morone (they so compact)

At Rome and Trent, Volpone and Mosca act.

There aren’t enough of these asperities, where Holyday’s distiches become epigrammatic.

Generally, he chooses to praise an array of names that could have come from Tristram Shandy.

Holyday does not always warm to new ideas: so he generally disapproves of astronomy – Copernicus having the sun stand still to escape doubts, has merely made new doubts; others dare to see spots blotting the sun itself – in the end, ‘the Art of starres who knows, but He that made them?’ (‘Copernicus does erre with great pretence / Of Art: but Galileus erres by sense’ is distich 389, returning to this general disapproval.) In each book, Holyday starts with the big things in creation, and works down. Book 1 starts with the heavenly bodies, and more or less ends with garlic. Similarly Book 2 (on animals) starts with some distiches about early modern whales, which are undeniably large in his account of them:

To see Nine hundred foote of Whale, may make

One think, Iland for Fish hee does mistake

But Holyday sometimes gets a quirkier observation than the time-honoured tale of whales being mistaken for islands:

The Whale’s Mouth’s a Portcullis, but Inverted!

Th’under jaw’s teeth into Holes above inserted.

My own little menagerie made me notice how he moralises the parrot:

A Parrot learn’d the Creed: may not such, greeve,

As can not say’t, or can not it Beleeve?

How anyone ever got the idea that camels particularly hate incest I cannot imagine, but here it is:

Much’t is the Afrique Camels Long can fast:

More, that they Incest hate, admir’dly chast!

‘Of nations’ critiques the English for love of two characteristic vanities:

Fashions and Prophesies are England’s staine:

Lets not bee Mad too, though wee have been vaine.

‘Of physicians’ shows Holyday at his most receptive to a new idea: William Harvey is another Columbus in the magnitude of his discovery:

Blood Circles from the Heart unto the Heart:

Man’s New America speakes Harvie’s Art

Elsewhere in the list of physicians, Holyday again shows his prejudices when he denounces the doctor and anti-demonologist Johan Weyer for not believing in witchcraft:

From Physique did Wierus runne to Evil?

Shall wee begin in Art, and End in Devil?

‘Kings and other worthies’ includes a couplet in appreciation of Charles V’s renunciation of his empire:

Charles the Fift scorn’d Glory, Pleasure, Pelfe:

Turn’d Court-Monke and the Emp’rour of Himselfe.

Among the English monarchs, Holyday makes only this cryptic remark about Henry VIII:

Henry, Our Eight, few Painters have well made:

Some give him too much Light, some too much shade.

I suppose that he might be implying that Henry VIII is either portrayed as better, or worse, than he actually was.

His take on Philip II is as a connoisseur and arch-plotter:

How Philip in his Gallery views his Mappes!

Consults! Intents in Mystery hee wrappes!

Among his politicians, Holyday was excited by Machiavelli, and actually pauses over him for several couplets; though his attitude is a predictable one:

In sadnesse Macchiavel thou didst not well

To helpe the World to runne faster to hell!

So, some of the 1,000 couplets are reasonably lively. Just occasionally, he can sound like an early modern version of Hilaire Belloc. Here he is on one of his theologians (I assume St Bernard):

Bernard so happily imploi’d his thought,

Hee scarce had time to thinke of what was nought.

Ah, that is so like me, also so happily employing my thought I scarce have time to think of what is nought. But next week, I disappear off on holiday, once again to America, a tour in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.

Bringing bobbing and hey ho to meet

I was attracted by this woodcut (quite unfamiliar to me) to read Heywood’s play to find out what is going on in the picture.

I suppose there must be discussion of the play in McLuskie’s book. Certain plays by Heywood are getting lots of critical attention (always A Woman Killed with Kindness, The Late Lancashire Witches, while The Fair Maid of the West has had a good run of late because of Bess’s travels to the eastern end of the Mediterranean). But A Mayden-head Well Lost, which no-one seems to have devoted an article to, has plenty to be said for it. Heywood had written in his Golden-Silver-Brazen-Iron Ages sequence the raunchiest dramas of the early English stage. But there he had the excuse of classical antiquity. This play’s bold title shows that the old boy was up to his old tricks.

In the picture the chaps sitting round the dinner table have just had an illegitimate baby served in them in a covered serving dish (though the artist - to use the term loosely - has made it look like a portrait picture with hinged side-panels). The mother of this baby, Princess Julia of Milan ought to be at the table with her father and his followers. The father is for the moment off-stage; in the right hand-panel is a mild illustration of the kind of hanky-panky that leads to these little moments of family embarrassment. On the right of the main group, in his motley coat, is the play’s clown (and he’s not a bad example of the type). The Duke of Milan had been unable to have his errant daughter killed when she confessed to him that she was pregnant, but the baby boy had been abandoned by a roadside (where it was instantly taken up by its father the Prince of Parma, who has bedded Julia on the usual grounds of verbal agreement to marry afterwards. Julia reminds him “Yet ere I yielded, we were man and wife, / Saving the Churches outward Ceremony”).

Urged on by the villain of the piece, Sforsa, the Duke of Milan presses his errant daughter into an urgent match with the Prince of Florence. But this potential bridegroom has heard enough about Julia (for Parma writes to him anonymously) to make threatening stipulations that she must prove to be an intact virgin. He is anyway in love with the other girl in the play, Lauretta, but she is only the daughter of a general who has died of grief at Milan’s ingratitude in regard to his greatest victory.

The inevitable bed-trick has to be played (Heywood seems to have been following Middleton closely). Sforza has learned where Lauretta and her mother are in impoverished exile, and he has 500 gold pieces for her if she agrees to act as the substitute bride.

So, here’s the central melodrama. Lauretta is in love with the Prince of Florence, and he loves her, though he faces the dynastic marriage to her morally doubtful rival. Along comes Sforsa to persuade her to go to bed with the man she loves:

Sforsa Ever rejoice faire Virgin, for I bring you
Gold, and Enlargement; with a recovery
Of all your former loss, and dignity,
But for a two hours labour: Nay, that no labour
Nor toil, but a mere pleasure.

Lauretta hears what the conditions are, and hangs tough:

Lauretta.
Doe you not blush, when you deliver this
Pray tell the Duke, all Women are not Julia ,
And though wee bee dejected, thus much tell him,
Wee hold our honour at too high a price,
For Gold to buy.

Her Mother backs up her apparently firm resolution: “If thou consentest to this abhorred fact, / Thy Mothers curse will seize on thee for ever”. Sforsa, like Vindice, is not abashed, and continues his argument, and in one of those special Heywood moments, Lucetta performs a complete volte-face:

Lauretta.
Sir bee answered,
If Julia bee disloyal: Let her be found
So by the Prince she weds: Let her be branded
With the vile name of strumpet: She disgrac’d
Me, that ne’re thought her harms; publicly struck me,
Nay in the Court: And after that, procur’d
My banishment: These Injuries I reap’t
By her alone, then let it light on her.

Sforsa.
Now see your error,
What better; safer, or more sweet revenge,
Then with the Husband? what more could woman ask?

Lauretta.
My blood rebels against my reason, and
I no way can withstand it: 'Tis not the Gold
Moves me, but that dear love I bear the Prince,
Makes me neglect the credit and the honour
Of my dear Fathers house: Sir, what the Duke desires
I am resolved to doe his utmost will.

Mother.
Oh my dear daughter.

Lauretta, like Shakespeare’s Helena, will get from the Prince of Florence an array of tokens (rings, the indenture for Julia’s marriage dowry). The Prince of Florence will discover that he has been in bed with the woman he really loves; and Lucetta can explain that she did it only to save him from marrying the unchaste Julia:

“Only the love I ever bare your honour,
Made me not prize my own. No lustful appetite
Made me attempt such an ambitious practice,
As to aspire unto your bed my Lord.”

And so through to the final couplet of the play: “And let succeeding Ages, thus much say: / Never was Maiden-head better given away.” Lauretta skates through to a complete victory, Julia and Parma settle down together, and the villain is left to reflect on the error of his ways: “Who would strive, / To bee a villain, when the good thus thrive?”

So, a pleasingly racy play (for its time). The clown is occasionally allowed to point out what underlies the fine sentiments:

Lauretta.
Oh let me lie
As prostrate at your foot in Vassallage,
As I was at your pleasure.
Prince
Sweete arise.
Clown.

Your Lordship hath bin up already, when she was down: I hope if the thing you wot of go no worse forward then it hath begun…

Reading the play made me wonder if there was any connection between two ‘faults written on the body’ sentiments. In early modern plays, no man, no matter how inexperienced with women, can be deceived about her virginity; the knowledge is inescapable. And if he discovers that his new bride is not a virgin, he acquires cuckold’s horns, the invisible signs that all men can somehow see.

I took a quick read through of a set of maidenhead ballads too. This was my favourite:

The loyal maids good counsel to all her fellow-maids. To be careful of wanton young men, They'll promise they love you again and again: But if they get their will of you before you are wed You may look a new sweetheart and a new maiden-head: And believe no false young men that will dissemble and lye, Lest they send you away with salt tears in your eye. To the tune of, Come hither my own sweet duck 1685-1688.

It is a warning about the lies men will tell so as “to bring bobbing and hey ho to meet”. The final stanza is very strange: it professes to be a personal testimony by the author, a woman, about chastity till marriage as the best course in life:

“She was a Maid that did set out this Song,

she was thirty before she was Wed,

She had great care of every one,

to save her Maiden-head

At last their came an honest Man

and made her his own dear Wife

If she had yielded to some that came before

she had been undone all the days of her life.”

Was this meant seriously? To persuade? Till thirty?

At Whitchurch Canonicorum

Two objects that, in terms of theological history, ought not to have co-existed so harmoniously as they have done over the centuries. At the right, a beautifully preserved octagonal Jacobean pulpit, where an angled door admits the preacher to read the word of God, and then deliver a sermon on a Bible text. It looks like something from a cruet set, and, from it, the divine word was judiciously sprinkled down on the congregation.
In the background, against the wall of the north transept, the almost unique English survivor of a former way of faith: it is the tomb of St Wita (St White, later latinised as St Candida). The oval apertures allowed those in need of the saint's intervention to insert affected limbs - or maybe their heads - and leave their votive offerings. The saint's coffin is above, and inside that, a leaden reliquary box containing bones of a woman that were old when the shrine was built. She might have been a Breton 'Saint Blanche' martyred by Vikings.
These two objects should not co-exist, but this deeply enfolded part of the Dorset landscape must have harboured sufficient Catholic sympathy for the relics not be be cast out. Edward the Confessor is still in Westminster Abbey, and Becket must be under Canterbury Cathedral somewhere, but St Wita is the only saint who remains in the parish church founded for her. There must once have been hundreds of shrines like this.

Whitchurch Canonicorum concentrates history: Sir George Somers is buried (at least, most of him) somewhere under the chancel. He had died in Bermuda on 9 November 1610, ‘of a surfeit of eating of a pig’ and "his nephew Matthew Somers decided to go against Somers's wishes that he return to Jamestown with supplies, and, burying his uncle's heart and entrails in Bermuda, carried his body back to England, where it was buried at Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset, with pomp and ceremony in 1611" (ODNB) There's an early 20th century plaque to the man whose first shipwreck and miraculous preservation on the 'still-vexed Bermudas' was written up by William Strachey, read by Shakespeare, and went into The Tempest.

Another reason to go out cycling

After a morning yesterday in the Reading University library, I came home to log on to the usual databases, only to discover that my college library card had expired yesterday. I have no access to anything: with it my Athens password has gone. EEBO, JSTOR, LION etc are all closed to me, until I can produce in person in the library a letter from a senior colleague vouching for who I am.

In this lull, here's me in the 'Circuit of the Cotswolds' Sportive the weekend before last. I am grinning at a photographer who is just running into position and shooting as he goes. Hence the rather dramatic slope I am apparently descending with sanguine skill. This was 103 miles with a 3,000 metre height gain involved, and took me 7 hours 38 minutes: probably 7 hours on the bike, the rest in refreshment halts and a puncture.

That women need a female redeemer: the heresy of Postellus

You don’t ever read very far in early modern theological writing before the author, confident in his orthodoxy, gets onto the subject of heresy. Then they can start to enumerate heresies, to collect them like stamps, as many as possible. Being deeply drawn towards your opposite is both a mark of confidence and anxiety. As (I think) the Joker says to Batman in The Killing Joke, you only needed one bad day in your life to have become like me.


Anyway, I was reading John Aylmer’s An harborovve for faithfull and trevve subiectes (1559), which is mainly a reassurance (a 'harbour', a refuge) to his fellow countrymen that they can accept another Queen as a very suitable ruler. The late Mary Tudor makes his case difficult, but he asserts that she was misled into tyranny by her churchmen, while Elizabeth is merciful. But he is dealing with questions of gender and fitness to rule. He has a difficult text in Deuteronomy, which he dutifully cites: ‘ “thou shalt chuse a Kynge among thy brethren, and not among thy systers.” And thereupon is inferred, that we may have no Quene. It is the like reason as if a man shuld say, Christ said Veni ad vocandum peccatores ad penitentiam, that is I am come to cal men sinners, and not women sinners. Therfor, either women be no sinners: or if they be, they shal not bee saved’

Alymer hastens to explain that Hebrew has to be understood as gender-neutral: ‘thoughout the whole scripture the masculine comprehendeth the feminin’. But Aylmer knows where his thoughts have led him, and he continues with the precise heretic involved in controversy about such texts:
‘Or els we must say with the phrenitik postellus: that women be not yet redeemed, but men and that they must have a woman to dye for them, as well as men hadde Christe.’

It seems to me very typical of early modern discourse that making a case that it is allowable for women to rule involves the author in an awkward confrontation with the Bible passage that contradicts him, and so into a view of an opinion (based on another Bible passage) that wildly opposes his own general line, the heresy that deduces from the Bible what would be a complete disqualification of women from rule – they are still awaiting their redeemer.

But I was intrigued by ‘Postellus’. He crops up quite often:


“Others broching it for truth that Christ died not for both Sexes, was not the Sauiour of Women, but Men only. An Assertion of Postellus the Iesuit, who in Paris put forth a booke entituled the Victory of Women, wherein he writes that one Iane was sent from God to be the Sauiour of Women. Contrary to the purpose of Christ, who Died for All, gaue himselfe for All: and directly opposite to the meaning of God, who at the cleansing of the Leaper commanded them to offer Lambes of both kinds, Male and Female: Ex vtroque genere proptereà sacrificium Offerri praecepit vt ostendat quia Christus pro nobis occisus simul Masculum Foeminamque saluabit: To shew (as Isychius excellently inferres) that Christ died for both Sexes, Women no lesse then Men.”

This is Henry King, A sermon of deliuerance Preached at the Spittle on Easter Monday, 1626.


These next five passages are in Thomas Rogers’ The faith, doctrine, and religion, professed, & protected in the realme of England, and dominions of the same expressed in 39 articles, concordablie agreed vpon by the reuerend bishops, and clergie of this kingdome, at two seuerall meetings, or conuocations of theirs, in the yeares of our Lord, 1562, and 1604 (1607):

‘That Christ on the Crosse hath suffered for the redemption of mankinde, and shall suffer againe for the saluation of the Deuills; such heretikes there haue bin; as Iesus, but shal againe suffer as Iesus Christ (which was one of Francis Ket his heresies, for which he was burned); for men, but one mother Iane is the Sauiour of women, a most execrable assertion of Postellus, the Iesuite.’
‘The Sauiour of Men, is Iesus Christ, a man, and no woman, who came into the world to saue no women but men, say some Papists, and redeemed the superior world onely, which is man, said Postellus the Iesuit; and yet not all men neither for S. Francis hath redeemed so many as are saued since his daies, say the Franciscan Friers.’
‘The Sauiour of women from her time till the end of the world, is S. Clare, affirm some, other papists, as Postellus saith it it one mother Iane.’
‘The Sauiour of men, and women, is S. Mary through her virginitie say some, is S. Christina, by her passion, say other Papists.’
‘There is no sufficient sacrifice yet offered for the sinnes of the world. One of F. Kets errors.’

Phew – rich material there, giving us a view of Francis Kett (thought possibly to have been Marlowe’s tutor in Cambridge), probably a Socinian, and apparently teaching that Jesus once exalted would die a second time to redeem the devils. But, heretic wrapped up with heretic, divided or two-part missions of redemption brings up Postellus and his interesting take on the theological position of women (Rogers is very keen to imply that these are the kind of things Catholics and Jesuits come up with).

Postellus apparently lived a very long time (maybe it is surprising he long survived the publication of his own opinions), and as such gets mentioned in George Hakewill’s survey of contemporary cases of longevity: “Gulielmus Postellus, a french man in our age held out to almost an hundred & twenty; the tops of his beard in his higher lip being then somewhat blackish & not altogether white” in An apologie of the povver and prouidence of God in the gouernment of the world (1627). Meric Casaubon seems to take the emollient and not evidently true line that it was only in his dotage that Postellus went so wildly off-message: ‘and was not this the case of learned Postellus, who fallen into some grievous wild fancies in his latter dayes, though sound enough still in other things, could never be reclaimed though means were used from time to time the best and gentlest (in respect to his worth and person) that could be thought of? But what talk we of particular men?’ A true & faithful relation of what passed for many yeers between Dr. John Dee ... and some spirits (1657)

Joseph Hall comes up with another beauty from Postellus’s repertoire of unorthodox opinions, which seems to have been that Man had been made by God, but just as far as the waist, while all below was the work (I infer) of the devil:

‘There is not one limme, or parcell in this glorious fabrick, wherein there is not both use, and beauty, and wonder. The superior members give influence, and motion to the lower, the lower, supportation to the superiour, the middle contribute nourishment to both: Was it heresie; or frenzy, or blasphemy, or all these, in the Paternians of old; revived of late times, by Postellus at Paris, that mans lower parts were of a worse author? Away with that mad misanthropy: there is no inch of this living pile, which doth not bewray steps of an allwise and holy omnipotence.’

The character of man laid forth in a sermon preach't at the court, March, 10. 1634. By the L. Bishop of Exceter (1635)

A reference in Alexander Ross, Pansebeia, or, A view of all religions in the world with the severall church-governments from the creation, to these times : also, a discovery of all known heresies in all ages and places, and choice observations and reflections throughout the whole (1655) seems to imply that if Postellus thought Christ’s mission to redeem specifically male humankind had left women still to be saved, it had at least been universal salvation for men: “One Postellus taught that men of all Sects and Professions should be saved by Christ.” My learned colleague Justin Champion has retrieved the surprisingly disinterested inquiry made by Richard Smith around 1671 into the authorship of the ‘Blasphemous treatise’ of ‘the Three Grand Imposters’, where Smith dismisses the idea that Postellus had written the treatise: “Guil Postellus, Aretinus, or any other writer of this last age on whom this Blasphemous Treatise is of late tymes by some fathered could not be the Authors thereof”
(posted at - eprints.rhul.ac.uk/153/1/Champion_IMPOSTOR.DOC)

Postellus also crops up in the very doubtfully orthodox Anima mundi, or, An historical narration of the opinions of the ancients concerning man's soul after this life according to unenlight[e]ned nature by Charles Blount.

I am rather surprised that Donne doesn’t seem to have picked up on any of this, having as he did a penchant for unorthodox doctrines that leave women short of getting to heaven.

The one more recent scholarly source about Postellus that I have found is a history of heresies on Google books, The History of Heresies and Their Refutation by St Alphonsus M Liguori:
“William Postellus, or Postell, was born in Barenton, in Lower Normandy; he was a learned philosopher, and Oriental traveler, and was remarkable as a linguist, but fell into errors of faith. Some even go so far as to say, that in his work, called Virgo Veneta, he endeavours to prove that an old maid of Venice, called Mother Johanna of Venice, was the Saviour of the feminine sex. Florimund, however, defends him from this charge, and says he wrote this curious work merely to praise this lady, who was a great friend of his, and frequently afforded him pecuniary assistance.”

How much John Donne would have enjoyed insinuating that, say, the Countess of Bedford was the long-awaited saviour for womenkind! How could he have missed it?!

My catholic author continues: “(Postellus) lived some time also in Rome, and joined the Jesuits, but they soon dismissed him, on account of the extraordinary opinions he professed. He was charged with heresy, and condemned to perpetual imprisonment, by the Inquisition; but he escaped to France, and his fame as a linguist procured him a favourable reception from King Charles IX, and the learned of that country. He then wrote several works, filled with the most extravagant errors, as De Trinitate, De Matrice Mundi, De Omnibus Sectis salvandis, De future Nativitate Mediatoris and several others of the same stamp. He was reprimanded by the Faculty of Theology, and the magistracy of Paris, for these writings, but as he refused to retract them, he was confined in the monastery of St martin des Champs, and there got the grace of repentance, for he retracted everything he had written, and subjected all to the judgment of the Church. He then led a most religious life in the monastery, and died on the 7th of September, 1581, being nearly one hundred years old.”

All sects saved, a female saviour for women, man as half made by God, half by the devil, a role in the transmission of the Protevangelion of James: Postellus is surely due a revival of interest.

My image is Filippino Lippi’s ‘Triumph of St Aquinas over the heretics’: the one book of wisdom, and the writers of heresy all looking deeply ashamed of what they have done, as it lies on the ground before them.

Low life imitating low art: blood, basins and ballads, 1647

I've been reading A true and sad reration [sic] of the great and bloudy murder committed at Ratcliff in Stepney Parish neer the City of London, upon the body of John Hunter, a sea man, who was stabbed to the heart with a long knife, by one Mr. Smith and his wife and a young maid. Wherein is related, the manner how they received his bloud in a bason, and how they were discovered. With their examination the last Sessions in the Old-Bayley, before the honourable bench, and their confession. For which fact, both Smith, his wife, and the other strumpet hath now suffered death January, 22. 1647.

John Hunter married the daughter of one Mr Smith of Ratcliff “who for many years have lived at the fore named place, but in no honest way”. There was a dowry promised him “a certaine summe of money with her”. This was not immediately paid, but after some months of marriage, Hunter with the agreement of his wife, went back to sea. He returned after an unspecified time on his voyage, spent the evening drinking with his shipmates, then went to his Mother-in-Law’s house ‘and being somewhat in drink asked his mother for his wifes portion, who immediately replyed, saying she would pay him his portion before he went to bed.’ Mrs Smith asked him to step into the parlour to receive what was due to him:

“Whereupon, she called in her husband, and another strumpet that were her maid, and having a long knife in her hand, gave him a mortal stab, piercing him to his very heart at the first blow.

The maid (like a cunning strumpet stood ready with a Bason to receive his bloud, the men (sic) also assisting them with his utmost power…”

But, immediately, “by a little Boy it was discovered, who seeing his brother fall, & his bloud to run in a bason, presently ran out, and cryed his Brother were slain.” Mrs Smith tried to get the child back into the house, but it was too late, neighbours called the watch, who, denied entrance at the front door, broke in at the back, and found the corpse.

The three were arrested, and taken to Whitechapel prison. On trial at Newgate, the women had nothing to say, but the husband vainly denied that he had been present. He was sentenced to hang at Tyburn, as was the maid, but the sentence on the old woman was that she was to be to be hanged at her own door. Suddenly, the pamphleteer launches into a bit of biographical detail:

“It is to be noted, that this Mrs Smith hath for many years, lived a most wicked & lewd life, keeping beautiful Creatures, (but many graines too light) within her house. And it is further related, that she had followed the trade so long, that she had worne her nose third-bare, being ashamed of the colour and out-side, insomuch, that her face were very much deformed. But in a short time she got a remedy for it, by getting a counterfeit Nose, having worn it for many years together.”

A sordid tale: a brothel-keeper (a noseless syphilitic) gets her daughter respectably married off to a sailor, but for a price. He is fobbed off from immediate payment of the dowry, and goes back to sea. Counter to Mrs Smith’s sanguine expectations, he survived, and, emboldened by drink, demanded payment of the promised dowry from his formidable Mother in Law. She barely took a moment to plan and execute his killing, accomplished with one accurate stab.

But isn’t this a case of low-life imitating low art? John Lawrence seems to have stepped out of a ballad: the sailor who returns to a marriage that was never meant to last, the sudden violence, the child who exposes the crime, and, as my colleague Adam Roberts reminds me, the collection of his blood in a basin. I suppose that households had basins for medicinal bleedings, and their utility was obvious to an old woman long familiar with doctors, who intends to stab her son in law.

This is the ballad of Lamkin, or ‘Long Lankyn’, in one of its recited forms. Lamkin is a bogeyman, neither alive nor dead (one feels that Mrs Smith probably had more than something of the same creepy vibe), an eternal have-not that will assail those who live well, and find ready allies among servants irked by the ease and sumptuous possessions of the family they work for:

Said my lord to his ladye,
as he mounted his horse,
Take care of Long Lankyn,
who lies in the moss.

~

Said my lord to his ladye,
as he rode away,
Take care of Long Lankyn,
who lies in the clay.

~

Let the doors be all bolted,
and the windows all pinned,
And leave not a hole
for a mouse to creep in.

~

Then he kissed his fair ladye,
and he rode away;
He must be in London
before break of day.
~

The doors were all bolted,
and the windows were pinned,
All but one little window,
where Long Lankyn crept in.

~

'Where is the lord of this house?'
said Long Lankyn:
'He is gone to fair London,'
said the false nurse to him.

~

'Where is the ladye of this house?'
said Long Lankyn:
'She’s asleep in her chamber,'
said the false nurse to him.

~

'Where is the heir of this house?'
said Long Lankyn:
'He’s asleep in his cradle,'
said the false nurse to him.

~

'We’ll prick him, and prick him,
all over with a pin,
And that will make your ladye
to come down to him.'

~

So he pricked him and pricked,
all over with a pin,
And the nurse held a basin
for the blood to run in.

~

'Oh nurse, how you sleep!
Oh nurse, how you snore!
And you leave my little son Johnstone
to cry and to roar.'

~

'I’ve tried him with suck,
and I’ve tried him with pap;
So come down, my fair ladye,
and nurse him in your lap.'

~

'Oh nurse, how you sleep!
Oh nurse, how you snore!
And you leave my little son Johnstone
to cry and to roar.'

~

'I’ve tried him with apples,
I’ve tried him with pears;
So come down, my fair ladye,
and rock him in your chair.'

~

'How can I come down,
'tis so late in the night,
When there’s no candle burning,
nor fire to give light?'

~

'You have three silver mantles
as bright as the sun;
So come down, my fair ladye,
by the light of one.'

~

'Oh spare me, Long Lankyn,
oh spare me till twelve o'clock,
You shall have as much gold
as you can carry on your back.'

~

'If I had as much gold
as would build me a tower,'
[.....]
[.....]

'Oh spare me, Long Lankyn,
oh spare me one hour,
You shall have my daughter Betsy,
she is a sweet flower.'

~

'Where is your daughter Betsy?
she may do some good;
She can hold the silver basin,
to catch your heart’s blood.'

~

Lady Betsy was sitting
in her window so high,
And she saw her father,
as he was riding by.

~

'Oh father, oh father,
don’t lay the blame on me;
'Twas the false nurse and Long Lankyn
that killed your ladye.'

~

Then Long Lankyn was hanged
on a gallows so high,
And the false nurse was burnt
in a fire just by.

Interesting that the lady offers her daughter to the ghoul to buy time – and that they can somehow hang Lamkin. There’s the collection of blood in a basin by the Jew’s daughter, in the ballad of the same name, and by Lavinia in Titus Andronicus. My image is an upmarket 18th century barber's basin, and if you didn't care what it had been used for, it's yours for $1875 from:

http://www.michaeljwhitmanantiques.com/cmpg/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=37