George Sandys

Letters

Counting two formal petitions by him, only eight of Sandys's letters are known to survive, the majority from when he was a member of the Council of State in Virginia. All are in secretarial hands and only two bear his signature or docketing. Five of them (SaG 40-43, SaG 45) are among the papers of Sir Nathaniel Rich (1585-1636), which subsequently passed into the muniments of successive Dukes of Manchester. They were recorded in HMC, 8th Report (1881), Part II, Appendix, pp. 39-41, and were for many years on deposit in the Public Record Office (Manchester Papers Nos 318-21, 326). They were in the sale of ‘The American Papers of Sir Nathaniel Rich’ at Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 5 May 1970, lot 44, and are now at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Two other letters (*SaG 44, SaG 46) are among the Colonial State Papers in the National Archives, Kew, and one other (a petition) is among the Virginia Company papers in the Library of Congress (SaG 39).

Documents

Some early scribal documents involved in the Chancery Proceedings of Sandys versus William Gascoigne, William Norton, William Calverley and Cuthbert Pudsey in 1609 are also in the National Archives, Kew (C2/CHASI/G61/138; C/15/92: see Davis, pp. 37-9). So too are various legal conveyances involving Sandys between 1602 and 1608, none of them bearing his own handwriting (see especially CO26/21/258/44 Eliz./Easter 1602; C54/1815, 3 James I, Pt. 17; and C54/1886, 5 James I, Pt. 9). These have been discussed in Davis (esp. pp. 272-3).

From his later years there iSandys's especially revealing Bill of Complaint in His Majesty's Court of Exchequer against the publisher William Stansby, together with Stansby's answer (dated 16 April 1635) and Sandys's replication (all scribal documents, in the National Archives, Kew, E112/215/831). These are quoted and discussed in Richard Beale Davis, ‘George Sandys v. William Stansby: The 1632 Edition of Ovid's Metamorphosis’, The Library, 5th Ser. 3 (1948-9), 193-212. For the Exchequer decree on the case (E125/20/136-7), see Richard Beale Davis ‘In Re George Sandys' Ovid’, Studies in Bibliography, 8 (1956), 226-30. One other later document is a deposition signed by Sandys in 1638 (*SaG 47).

Otherwise a substantial series of relevant documents is of letters by the Commissioners, Council or General Assembly of Virginia, the signatories to which in 1621-5 included Sandys (as well as usually the Governor Sir Francis Wyatt). These are, however, preserved only in official scribal copies. Some of these are among the Colonial State Papers in the National Archives, Kew (which are generally summarised in Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1574-1600, ed. W. Noel Sainsbury (London, 1860)). A few others are in Sir Francis Wyatt's Register Book of Transactions in Virginia now among the Wyatt family papers in the British Library (Add. MS 62135, ff. 200r-44r). By far the greater number, however, are now also in the Library of Congress. The early Virginia papers there are preserved among the Presidential Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Series 8, Volumes 16-21) and may normally be viewed only on microfilm, one set of which is in the British Library (SPR Mic B4/3, reels 64 and 65).

For reference, these various scribal copies relating to Virginia are listed below, in chronological order, according to the citations given in Kingsbury. Although Sandys was Treasurer and member of the Council of State in Virginia in 1621-25, after which he returned to London never to return to Virginia, he continued to be reapponted to the Council and to be involved in commissions relating to Virginia until the 1640s.

The relevant Virginia papers are as follows:

Presentation Volumes and Books from Sandys's Library

As is evident from information supplied in the course of Sandys's legal dispute with William Stansby, a large number of exempla of his Ovid's Metamorphosis (London, 1632) were presented to various people by the author, and it is possible that he was similarly generous with other of his publications. Few presentation exempla of Sandys's books have been recorded in more recent years, though such as are known — generally noted in Bowers & Davis (1950) — are given entries below (SaG 48-52).

Several books by other authors which were once in Sandys's library are also known (SaG 53-62). They can be recognised from his signature, motto (‘Habere eripitur habuisse nunquam’), binding or other marks of ownership, and most also have an abbreviated title written in italic capitals near the top of the fore-edge. They are, for the most part, discussed in Richard Beale Davis, ‘Volumes from George Sandys's Library Now in America’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 65 (1957), 450-7; in Edwin Wolf 2nd, ‘Some Books of Early English Provenance in the Library Company of Philadelphia’, The Book Collector, 9 (Autumn 1960), 275-84; and in M.A. Rogers, art. cit. in The Book Collector, 23 (1974), 361-70.

Manuscripts of Works by Sandys

Of those manuscript texts of works by Sandys recorded in the entries below — for the most part copies of single poems in miscellanies or else in musical settings in song-books — those relating to two of Sandys's major writings are of particular interest. One, a manuscript of A Paraphrase upon Job (SaG 6) has at least an interesting provenance in that it was once in the library of the Duke of Sussex, sixth son of George III, although, now that it has come to light since its sale in 1845, there is no clear evidence that it was an authorial presentation copy to a monarch or ever came into a Royal library in Sandys's lifetime. The work itself is not otherwise known to have circulated in manuscript except for extracts.

On the other hand, Sandys's A Paraphrase upon the Song of Solomon did have a circulation in manuscript for some time before its first publication in 1641, possibly, as Professor Davis has conjectured, because Sandys was hesitant to include so ‘sensual’ a poem in his Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems (1638), ‘a volume to be used in private devotionals’ and which, moreover, was ‘intended to please the King’. At present, ten contemporary scribal copies of this poem can be recorded (SaG 23-31), although more might well survive. Arthur Clifford, in Tixall Poetry (London, 1813), pp. 335-6, recorded his possession of a manuscript copy ‘transcribed in the year 1638’, while in 1872 Richard Hooper noted (I, xlvii) having seen a manuscript copy ‘inserted on the fly leaves of the folio of 1638 in the possession of Mr. F. S. Ellis, the well-known bookseller of King-street, Covent Garden’. Whether either of these manuscripts corresponds with any of those recorded below is not clear.

A few extracts from various of Sandys's works, probably copied from printed texts, are found in miscellanies and notebooks of the 17th or early 18th centuries: see SaG 63-67. A copy of Sandys's Hymn to my Redeemer in the hand of William Drummond of Hawthornden is recorded in The Poetical Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden, ed. L.E. Kastner, 2 vols (Edinburgh & London, 1913), II, 374, and was printed earlier in Edward Phillips's edition of Drummond's poems (London, 1656), but is not known now unless somewhere among the fifteen volumes of the Hawthornden Manuscripts now in the National Library of Scotland (MSS 2053-2067).

Miscellaneous

Various miscellaneous papers relating to Sandys and of biographical relevance are recorded in Davis, passim. A small notebook of some sixty pages containing synopses of sermons between 1629 and 1632 which has been described as being ‘in the minute autograph of Sandys’ was sold at Puttick & Simpson's, 1 July 1857, lot 1246, and is now in Edinburgh University Library (MS Dc. 8. 139). The association with Sandys evidently arises from an inscription at the top of the first page referring to the christening of ‘S^r George Sands, his Son. Sept^r: 3. 1629’. However, whichever member of the Sands or Sandys family this refers to, the manuscript is not in the hand of George Sandys the poet and would appear to have no direct association with him.

Notes on Sandys by William Oldys (1696-1761) are written in his exemplum of Gerard Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (Oxford, 1691), now in the British Library (C. 28.g.1, pp. 436-8). Notes on Sandys by the Rev. Joseph Hunter (1783-1861) in his Chorus Vatum Anglicanorum (Volume III) are also in the British Library (Add. MS 24489, ff. 122v-3v). The papers of Professor Richard Beale Davis (1907-81) relating to his work on Sandys between 1934 and 1978 are now preserved at the University of Virginia (462-a). Papers of Alexander McElwain relating to Sandys are at Harvard (56M-167).

Peter Beal