Collection of poems, predominantly religious, by Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Baron, professionally transcribed, with annotations by his uncle, Colonel Charles Fairfax

This material is held atUniversity of Leeds Special Collections

  • Reference
    • GB 206 Brotherton Collection MS Lt 105
  • Dates of Creation
    • ca. 1670
  • Name of Creator
  • Language of Material
    • English
  • Physical Description
    • 1 vol. (440 pp.), manuscript, together with an issue of The Intelligencer, number 288, covering the period 'from Munday, the 29th of Janu., till Munday, the 5th of Feb., 1648 [i.e. 1649]', the latter being printed material held in a separate envelope. Written in the careful, mixed hand of a professional amanuensis, with corrections and revisions, many in the predominantly italic, rounded hand of Charles Fairfax. Eight blank pages at the end have been filled at a later date by another hand with 'An account of my Lord Fairfax Ingagmts faithfully transcribed out of a Manuscript taken out of the Originall written by his owne hand found in his study after his decease'. The volume is held in a box. Bound in contemporary calf with some blind tooling on the outside covers and spine. The Fairfax armorial bookplate is pasted on to the front inside cover.

Scope and Content

Contains 194 seventeenth-century English poems, mainly Biblical paraphrases, chiefly the Psalms and the Song of Solomon, but also from Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, Samuel, Proverbs, and Luke; also, divine hymns, other religious and moralistic verse, occasional and miscellaneous verse, translations from Petrarch and of a French epigraph, and so-called 'Vulgar Proverbs', all apparently by Lord Fairfax himself.

Administrative / Biographical History

Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Baron Fairfax of Cameron (1612-1671), the parliamentary general. Charles Fairfax (1597-1673), antiquary and genealogist. For fuller details of the lives and achievements of both these men see the Dictionary of National Biography.

Access Information

Access is unrestricted.

Acquisition Information

Purchased at Sotheby's on 19 September 1994.

Note

In English.

Other Finding Aids

The poems are indexed in the BCMSV database http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/spcoll/bcmsv/bcmvlink.htm#bclt105