Autograph manuscript book containing religious meditations and effusions in prose and verse, compiled by Castilian Morris

The text includes some 85 prose meditations, prayers and paraphrases of scripture, 64 acrostic poems and a verse paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer (f.136r). The prayers on f.112v have emblematic illustration. First entry dated 23 August 1692, the last 11 July 1697.

Castilian (or Castillion) Morris, 1648-1702, was the second son of Colonel John Morris and his wife Margery, daughter of Dr Robert Dawson, Bishop of Clonfert and Kilmacduag. Colonel Morris was the Governor of Pontefract Castle and was executed in 1649. Castilian Morris received his distinctive name because he was born in 1648 during the siege of Pontefract Castle. He settled later in Leeds and was appointed Town Clerk there in 1684, at the instance of Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys. He died on 18 December 1702. His first wife Annabella, (daughter of William Ashenden, Gent. of Leeds) died in 1677, and he then married Mary, (daughter of George Jackson, merchant, of Leeds). By his first wife he had one son, John, and by his second wife he had at least 10 children, though most died in infancy, including two sons named Castilian: one christened at Saint Peter's, the Leeds parish church in July 1687 and another recorded in the family pedigree as having been born in 1692.

Access is unrestricted

Bought from Hofmann, January 1981

In English

The poems are indexed in the BCMSV database http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/spcoll/bcmsv/intro.html