William Strode

Autograph Manuscripts

Although no attempt was ever made in the 17th century to collect his works for publication, the Devon-born Oxford poet William Strode was one of the most popular lyrical poets of his time. He has left behind at least one major autograph collection of his verse, in addition to other autograph manuscripts, and his contemporary reputation, both within Oxford circles and elsewhere, is attested by a large number of surviving contemporary copies of his poems.

His most important manuscript, the ‘Corpus Manuscript’, preserved at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (MS 325), is a notebook containing some 169 of his English, Latin and Greek poems in his own hand. Although this manuscript was known to Strode's first editor, Bertram Dobell, before 1907, it was not recognised as being autograph, and thus its significance established, until Margaret Crum described it in the Bodleian Library Record, 4 (1952-3), 324-35. The volume is, in fact, quite obviously a compilation in the hand of the poet responsible for almost all the verse it contains. The texts are partly fair copies, partly working drafts showing multiple layers of revision over a long period, the single hand therein (but for later annotations by William Fulman) varying from an informal mixed secretary to a stylish italic script. Besides the fact that many of the poems could be attributed to Strode from other sources, Crum could confirm the identity of the hand by comparison with Strode's autograph (italic) subscription on his ordination as priest in 1628 (*StW 1495).

Examination of the Corpus Manuscript could throw even more light on Strode manuscripts, for later in the seventeenth century the Oxford antiquary William Fulman annotated it with references to his ‘other Copie’ of Strode's poems, thus enabling one to form some impression of a second important original source which is otherwise unknown.

One other small collection of autograph poems by Strode is among the Portland Papers at the University of Nottingham (Pw V 397). This too is a manuscript that was known to scholars for decades before it was identified as autograph. Far from being simply a contemporary copy, the manuscript is a set of eight of Strode's most mature lyrical poems, written out in his formal italic hand, complete with elaborately curled descenders, possibly for presentation to someone. The texts may be regarded as intermediate in the evolution of the respective poems: that is to say, they are close (but with peculiar changes) to those in the Corpus Manuscript before the insertion in that manuscript of substantial later revisions (compare, for instance, the facsimiles now available of An Opposite to Melancholy, StW 641-2).

Letters and Documents

Yet other examples of Strode's handwriting may be found in miscellaneous records relating to his academic career at Oxford. Besides the subscription in 1628 already noted, over 160 signatures or inscriptions by Strode, entered between 1619 and 1642, can be found in subscription registers, sub-dean's books, and disbursements books in Oxford University Archives and, especially, at his college Christ Church (StW 1485-1500). It is quite likely that a study of all academic registers of this period would reveal even more inscriptions by Strode. Besides all else, the appearance of Strode's signatures among numerous entries by Richard Corbett, Henry King, William Cartwright, Thomas Goffe, George Morley, Jasper Mayne, Robert Burton and other poets and writers bears vivid witness to the active literary community that flourished at this college in this period.

An extant formal letter by Strode — the only original letter by him currently recorded (*StW 1485) — and an autograph licence for the publication of Donne's sermons (*StW 1501) both relate to his epistolary duties as Public Orator at the University of Oxford from 1629 onwards. In addition, transcripts by Thomas Smith (1638-1710) of sixteen ‘Letters of D^r. Strode written in the Name and by y^e Order of y^e University of Oxford’ are preserved in the Bodleian (StW 1484).

Manuscript Copies

Strode's reputation as a poet has depended upon manuscript sources. Except for a very few occasional verses printed in University miscellanies in his lifetime, and but for a relatively few poems which appear (usually in corrupt versions) in slightly later printed miscellanies, Strode's poetical works were not published in his own century, no definitive edition yet exists, and a large number of his poems (including most of the Latin and Greek verse) remains unpublished to this day. He was, nevertheless, among the most popular poets of the 1620s-1640s, for his poems enjoyed a flourishing circulation in manuscript. This extended from his immediate Christ Church circle to the miscellanies and song books compiled by innumerable other University and Inns of Court men and educated readers in general. In one special instance, at least 88 surviving manuscript texts of the Song ‘I saw faire Cloris walke alone’ (StW 747-834)— apparently written on the subject of Richard Corbett's wife, Alice — support the probability that this was the single most popular English lyric of the 17th century. It is also clear that it was the early versions of Strode's poems that circulated in this manner, at least some of them perhaps copied directly from the Corpus Manuscript before he returned to that manuscript to make his later revisions. Granted the rare bonus of having the poet's own autograph notebook to use as base text, the task that would be incumbent on any modern editor of Strode of tracing the textual history of his poems through an immense number of widely dispersed manuscript copies would still be considerable.

Among those contemporary manuscript copies of particular poems that clearly derive from Strode's immediate circle may be noted the text of his Latin gratulatory poem on William Laud, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, which is quoted in a letter of 27 April 1630 by Richard Corbett, who says of the verses ‘sure the man had a good meaning that made them…as yet they haue past no hands but mine owne, and ar not in the memory scarss in the Conscience of the Author’ (*CoR 780 and StW 1432). Strode was, in fact, Corbett's chaplain while Corbett was Bishop of Oxford. The miscellany of Daniel Leare (British Library, Add. MS 30982), who has been identified by Mary Hobbs as a distant cousin of Strode, is clearly of special importance for a similar reason. It is highly likely that Leare's texts of Strode's poems were copied, at least in part, directly from the Corpus Manuscript as it was about 1633 when Leare himself was temporarily at Christ Church. Further copies proliferated outside Christ Church, and it is interesting to note, among the many surviving transcripts of particular poems, examples made by such contemporary poets and writers as Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (StW 467 and StW 588, besides the doubtful StW 662); Thomas Traherne (StW 778); and Sir Kenelm Digby (StW 1411), as well as those in miscellanies of Robert Codrington (Bodleian, MS Eng. poet. e. 97); George Morley (Westminster Abbey, MS 41); and John Oldham (StW 810).

Principal Manuscript Collections

For convenient reference, not only the major autograph collections but also those other manuscripts containing generally ten or more poems by Strode (described more fully in the entries below) are here briefly listed, with the delta numbers originally supplied in IELM:

An untraced seventeenth-century duodecimo miscellany allegedly containing poems by Strode (as well as by ‘R. Corbett, W.L., Ben Johnson, J. Terrent … R.H., T. Cary, R. Gomersal, G.M.’ and others) was ‘found in 1840 behind the panel of a room in Ross market-house’. It was afterwards owned by the Rev. T.M. Webb of Hardwick Vicarage, Herefordshire, and is recorded in HMC, 7th Report, Part I (1879), Appendix, p. 691.

Another unidentified compilation is ‘an old manuscript volume’ from which ‘Eu. Hood’ [i.e. Joseph Haslewood (1769-1833)] edited six poems by Strode (together with one of doubtful authorship) in the Gentleman's Magazine, 93.ii (July 1823), 7-8: namely, the Song (‘I saw fair Cloris walke alone’), On a freinds absence, the Sonnet (‘My Love and I for kisses played’), Loves Ætna. song, the Song (‘Keepe on your maske, yea hide your Eye’), Song of Death and the Resurrection and the dubious A Lover to his Mistress (‘Ile tell you how the Rose did first grow redde’). All these poems appear in Daniel Leare's manuscript noted above (StW Δ 10), but the texts and headings here do not conform exactly to those printed by Haslewood.