A CRITICAL EDITION OF JEREMY TAYLOR'S HOLY LIVING

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A CRITICAL EDITION OF JEREMY TAYLOR'S
HOLY LIVING (1650)
by
AALI AREEFUR REHMAN
B.A. , The University of Rajshahi, 1972
M.A., The University of Rajshahi, 1973
M.A., The University of Birmingham, 1979
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
We accept this thesis as conforming
to the required standard
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
FEBRUARY 1984
(7)Aali Areefur Rehman, 1984
In presenting t h i s thesis i n p a r t i a l fu l f i l m e n t of the
requirements for an advanced degree at the University
of B r i t i s h Columbia, I agree that the Library s h a l l make
i t f r e e l y a v a i l a b l e for reference and study. I further
agree that permission for extensive copying of t h i s thes i s
fo r scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my
department or by his or her representatives. It i s
understood that copying or publi c a t i o n of t h i s th e s i s
for f i n a n c i a l gain s h a l l not be allowed without my written
permission.
Department of English
The University of B r i t i s h Columbia
1956 Main Mall
Vancouver, Canada
V6T 1Y3
Date 12 May, 1984
i i
ABSTRACT
This dissertation presents a c r i t i c a l , old spelling edition of Jeremy
Taylor's The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650). As no manuscript is
extant, the text has been prepared from a collation of the f i r s t eight
editions of the book that had appeared by 1668, a year after Taylor's
death. The collation has shown that only the f i r s t edition of the book was
set from manuscript and that Taylor made some revisions and corrections in
four of the later editions. The second, fourth, sixth, and seventh editions
contain alterations that range from the addition of paragraph-length
passages to the correction of a few words.
The text presented here has been prepared according to the principles
formulated by Sir Walter Greg and Fredson Bowers. The f i r s t edition has
been chosen as the copy-text and al l authorial alterations in later editions
have been incorporated into the text. Autograph revisions and annotations
that appear in presentation copies of the f i r s t and f i f th editions (now in
the Libraries of the University of Northern I l l ino i s and King's College,
Cambridge) have also been included.
The text is accompanied by an introduction and a commentary. The
introduction includes a short l i f e of the author and a discussion of the
tradition of devotional literature and of Holy Living. The commentary
provides glosses, identifies sources, and gives translations of Taylor's
Latin, Greek and Italian marginal notes. The textual apparatus consists of
an introduction and two schedules. The introduction deals with the printing
histoVy and the transmission of the text. Textual notes appear in the f i r s t
schedule and emendations of accidentals in the second.
i i i
CONTENTS
I. CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
Taylor's Life and Major Works v
The Tradition of Devotional Literature xvi
Holy Living xiv
Taylor's Use of Religious and Clasical Literature xliv
Style 1 vi
The Reception of Taylor's Works, with Special Reference
to Holy Living . 1 xi
Notes lxi
II. TEXTUAL INTRODUCTION
The First Edition lxi
The Transmision of the Text lxvi i
The Present Edition xcv
Notes xcvi
Sigla and Abreviations c
Bibliographical Description of Editions Colated ci
I. THE TEXT 1
IV. TAYLOR'S NOTES 46
V. TEXTUAL NOTES 51
VI. EMENDATION OF ACIDENTALS 524
VI. COMENTARY 529
VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY 613
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I am grateful to Dr. Gemot Wieland of the Department of English, Dr.
Elizabeth Bongie of the Department of Classics, and Dr. Sylvana Carr of the
Department of Italian and Hispanic Studies for their help in translating
Taylor's Latin, Greek and Italian notes. To Dr. Harry Edinger of the
Department of Classics, who typed the Greek passages in the text and notes,
I am especially grateful. My thanks are also due to Dr. Tirthankar Bose for
h/is many acts of assistance. To my supervisor, Dr. Paul G. Stanwood, I am
deeply indebted for advice and help at every stage in the preparation of
this dissertation. I am grateful, most of a l l , to my wife Anu, for her help
and her never-failing patience and constant encouragement. My daughter,
Sameen, helped by lightening my dissertation-dark days.
V
TAYLOR'S LIFE AND MAJOR WORKS
Of Jeremy Taylor's early l i f e , as indeed of large parts of his later
l i f e , very l i t t l e is known. He was born in Cambridge, the fourth child of a
barber named Nathaniel Taylor and his wife, Mary. The exact date of
Taylor's birth is not known but he was baptized on 15 August, 1613 and this
has tradit ional ly been supposed to be the year of his bir th . Nathaniel
Taylor, though poor, belonged to a respectable lower middle class family.
Both he and his father, Edmund Taylor, had been churchwardens in Cambridge.
Nathaniel Taylor was also a man of some education. His son was later to
say, according to a tradit ion, though not a very trustworthy one, that he
had been "solely grounded . . . in grammar and the mathematics" by his
father. 1
In 1619, at the age of six, Taylor was sent to a free grammar school in
Cambridge that had been founded a year earl ier under the wil l of Dr. Stephen
Perse, Fellow of Caius College, who had died in 1615. After spending seven
years at the Perse School, Taylor was admitted, in 1626, as a sizar or "poor
scholar" to Gonville and Caius College. At Caius, too, the Perse
foundation provided him with the means to continue his education. He became
a Perse Scholar in 1628 and, after taking his B.A. three years later, was
elected a Perse Fellow in 1633. In the same year, when he was twenty, he is
said to have been ordained, though the exact date is unknown. In 1634 he
was made a Reader in Rhetoric at his College and was awarded the M.A.
Beyond the dates and a few details such as these, very l i t t l e
information has been unearthed about Taylor's nine years in Caius College.
He was in Cambridge when some of the seventeenth century's most famous
literary figures were there. Milton, Fuller , Crashaw and George Herbert
vi
were al l at Cambridge during these years, but nothing remains, either as
oral tradition or written allusion, to show that Taylor knew any of these
men at this time or later. But another contemporary, Henry More, was
Taylor's friend in later l i f e and i t is possible that they became acquainted
while at Cambridge. He also may have known George Rust, who became Dean of
Connor when Taylor was Bishop and, upon Taylor's death, Bishop of Dromore.
It was Rust who delivered the sermon at Taylor's funeral, a sermon to which
we are indebted for some interesting details of Taylor's early career.
In 1634 there occurred the event that was to change Taylor's l i f e .
After his appointment as Reader, he had been sharing rooms at College with a
Reverend Thomas Risden who was engaged as a preacher at St. Paul's . On one
occasion Risden, unable to go up to London for some reason, asked Taylor to
take his place. Taylor did, and preached a number of sermons at St.
Paul's . He preached, according to Rust, "to the admiration and astonishment
of his auditory; and by his f lor id and youthful beauty, and sweet and
pleasant a i r , and sublime and raised discourses, he made his hearers take
3
him for some young angel newly descended from the visions of glory."
Rust may be pardoned this extravagant eulogy on his friend, but we may take
i t that Taylor charmed and exceedingly impressed the worshippers at Paul's .
His name was mentioned to William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury and, at
this time, the most powerful man in the realm next to the King. Laud was
interested enough in the twenty-two year old Taylor to arrange to have him
preach before him. Laud heard Taylor, again according to Rust, "not less to
his wonder than satisfaction" but thought the preacher too young. Taylor
asked to be pardoned "that fault" and promised that " i f he lived he would
4
mend i t . " This interview was suff icient, i t appears, for Laud to become
his patron.
v i i
Taylor did not return to Cambridge after this event, but spent the next
two years under the protection and guidance of Laud. Almost nothing is
known for certain about how he spent this time, or of his movements, until
he was incorporated an M.A. at University College, Oxford in 1635. Soon
after, he was recommended by Laud for a Fellowship at Al l Souls College, but
his election was opposed by Gilbert Sheldon, Warden of the College. Laud
was Visitor of Al l Souls, so in January 1636, exercising his Vis i tor ' s
right , he appointed Taylor to the Fellowship.
At this point in his l i f e Taylor seemed to be well settled with al l the
advantages that a man of letters and a promising young clergyman might
wish. In 1638 he was presented, possibly upon Laud's recommendation, to the
rectory of Uppingham in Rutland by Bishop Juxon of London. He was also, at
some time during this period, made a chaplain to Laud. These additional
duties made frequent and lengthy absences from Al l Souls a necessity, and in
al l probability Taylor did not spend much time at Oxford. Uppingham may
have been his principal place of residence, but i t is more probable that he
was frequently in London, at Lambeth with his patron. The care of his
living was for the most part left to his curate.
As l i t t l e is known about his Oxford days as about his l i f e at
Cambridge. According to Anthony a Wood, i t was here that Taylor turned his
5
attention to casuistry and sharpened his s k i l l s in that art. He also
became acquainted, i t would appear, with William Chillingworth, Laud's
Godson, who had published The Religion of Protestants in 1637. One
acquaintance caused him much trouble at this time and later. This was a
Franciscan fr ia r who was known as Francis a Sancta Clara but whose real name
was Christopher Davenport. He was a Catholic convert from Protestantism,
had been to Douay where he had taken the degree of doctor of divinity and,
vi i i
after wandering in Spain and the Netherlands, had returned to England as a
missionary. Soon after his return he was appointed one of Queen Henrietta
Maria's chaplains. Sancta Clara, according to Wood, was extremely learned
and a man of moderation. One of his books, entitled Deus, Natura,
Gratia, had been put on the Index Expurgationis in Spain and Italy for being
too conciliatory in tone towards Protestantism. With this man Taylor was,
while he was at Oxford, on terms of close friendship. His intimacy with a
"Romish priest" was enough to create, and sustain, a suspicion of Catholic
leanings in him, a suspicion that he later took great pains to seek to
dispel . In the f i r s t of his writings to survive, the "Sermon Preached upon
the Anniversary of the Gunpowder Treason" delivered at Oxford on November 5,
1638, Taylor went out of his way to show his anti-Romanist views and prove
himself an Anglican. In doing so he gave much offence to Catholics, but
succeeded in showing the world clearly where his true loyalties lay.
Soon after obtaining his living of Uppingham, he had been appointed a
chaplain to Charles I. In the following year, on May 27, 1639, he was
married at Uppingham to Phoebe Landisdale or Langsdale, probably the sister
of Edward Langsdale, one of Taylor's former pupils at Cambridge. Beyond the
name of Taylor's wife, l i t t l e of his domestic l i f e at Uppingham is known
except that, according to the parish register, they buried a son William in
May 1642.
Taylor spent a few months more than three years at Uppingham. When we
next see him he is at Oxford with the King in November, 1642 at the
beginning of the most d i f f i cu l t period of his l i f e . For by this time the
"great storm" of seventeenth-century England had f ina l ly broken, Laud was in
the Tower, and King and Parliament were at war. When he joined the King,
probably at Nottingham where Charles had raised his standard, Taylor had
ix
with him the manuscript of his f i r s t book, Of the Sacred Order and Offices
of Episcopacy, which he had been working on at Uppingham. Read by Charles
even before its publication, i t pleased the King so much that, by royal
command, Taylor was made doctor of d iv ini ty at Oxford. He had wanted to
dedicate the book to the King, but Charles, though pleased with i t , would
not let Taylor dedicate i t to him. So i t was that when the book was
published in the same year i t was dedicated to Christopher Hatton, who
subsequently became Taylor's patron as wel as his friend. Episcopacy
Asserted, as the book is known, was Taylor's contribution to the
Anglican-Puritan religious quarrels that had been raging in England and
feeding the printing presses of the time. Defending episcopacy, the book
was part of the Anglican rejoinder to such works as Milton's tracts against
the bishops, "Of Reformation in England" and "Of Prelatical Episcopacy"
(1641) among others. Modern commentators see l i t t l e to praise in the book;
most find the style colourless and the overuse of quotation tedious.
While Taylor was with the King in 1642-3, the Parliamentarians
- sequestered his l iving of Uppingham and gave i t to a Presbyterian. In
compensation for this loss, the King gave him, in early 1643, the l iv ing of
Overstone in Northamptonshire, though Taylor may never have resided there.
How long Taylor stayed at Oxford is not known, but at some time in the next
two years, during which the Civ i l War took its course, he went to Wales.
His name next crops up in connection with the struggle between the Royalist
and Parliamentary forces for the possession of Cardigan Castle. Anthony
Wood mentions that Taylor had been made chaplain in the King's army at
Oxford,^ and i t may have been while acting as chaplain that he was
' captured in February 1645 when Cardigan Castle was taken by Parliamentary
forces under Rowland Laugharne. He was probably held prisoner there until