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Discoveries from the Vault
Summer 2009: Letter Reveals Lord North’s Apprehension Over British Defeat at Trenton, 1777
On the night of Monday, February 10, 1777, Lord North—the British prime minister—sat at his desk at 10 Downing Street and wrote a quick note to his friend and chief intelligence official, William Eden. In addition to forwarding to Eden a letter intercepted by the spy John Vardill, North revealed his concern about the American victory at Trenton, New Jersey some six weeks earlier: “I am sorry to tell you that I am more apprehensive than I was that there is some truth in the article of news concerning the engagement at Trenton.”
North had reason to be concerned. Before Washington’s victory at Trenton in late December 1776, the fate of the American Revolution hung in doubt and the colonists’ morale had reached its lowest point. Forced to retreat from New York City through New Jersey, Washington found himself and his army encamped in Pennsylvania as the campaign season drew to a close for the winter. Thomas Paine, visiting Philadelphia, discovered the American cause to be in such a perilous state that he endeavored to revive it with a series of pamphlets. The first began: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sun-shine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country: but he that stands it now, deserves the thanks of man and woman.”
Washington believed that a victory at this nadir would go far in rousing the spirits of the troops and the American colonists in general. On the morning of December 26, 1776, Washington led his troops across the nearly-frozen Delaware River and through a snowstorm to seize some 900 Hessian mercenaries at Trenton. The Continental Army went on to defeat the British at Princeton a few days later. In the words of David McCullough, “[I]t was Trenton that meant the most, Trenton and the night crossing of the Delaware that were rightly seen as a great turning point. With the victory at Trenton came the realization that Americans had bested the enemy, bested the fearsome Hessians, the King’s detested hirelings, outsmarted them and outfought them, and so might well again.”
Indeed, Washington’s victory at Trenton boosted morale throughout the colonies and rekindled the drive that would lead to victory and American independence half a decade later. North’s apprehensions would prove to be well-founded.
Acquired by The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in June 2008, Lord North’s letter documents the prime minister’s realization that perhaps the empire which he led could be humbled by defeat at the hands of the Americans.
—Christopher D. Cook
Summer 2007: Seventeenth Century Hollar Prints Resurface
The famous artist and engraver Wenceslaus Hollar (Václav Hollar in his native land), was born in Prague in 1607. While working in Cologne in May 1636 he met and entered into the service of the English diplomat Thomas Howard, the 2nd Earl of Arundel.
In London, Hollar executed work at Arundel’s direction, and also taught drawing to the King’s children and composed for printsellers and publishers.
One of Hollar’s finer works created in England was a series of prints on the theme of the four seasons. A set of the three-quarter length series was recently located in The Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
A very popular series, ‘Four Seasons’ at one point even received a Parisian imprint. The Rare Book & Manuscript copy of ‘Spring’ is the fourth state of four, with the other prints being the second states of two.
In the words of Hollar’s bibliographer, Richard Pennington:
Of all etchers, Hollar is certainly the most varied in subject, one of the most varied in subject, one of the most accomplished in technique, and with a style that is full of charm, a humour, and a good nature that are evidently the character of the man himself.
We hope you find these prints as elegant and charming as we do.
—Christopher Harter
(Click on images for complete versions)
| VER | AESTAS | AUTUMNUS | HYEMS |
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Winter 2007: Lost Letter from Leopold von Ranke Found!
The German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) is today often regarded as the founder of the science of history as a discipline involving the use of a wide range of documents in historical research. At one time, a very interesting letter from Ranke to his publisher, George Reimer, was displayed in the History Seminar room in the library here, but since 1960 it's been believed to have been lost (see Guy Stanton Ford, “A Ranke Letter,” The Journal of Modern History, 32 [1960] pp. 142-144).
In the letter Ranke offers some suggestions for printing his first work, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1535, 1. Bd. (Leipzig u. Berlin, 1824), including how to cite passages quoted in his work.
Recently, the letter was re–discovered in the collection of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library, a victim of a too-brief catalog entry. Now, fully cataloged, the letter makes its 21st–Century debut here, for all to see.
—Bruce Swann
Letter Images:
pg1 pg2 pg3 pg4 Transcription Translation
Summer 2006: "The Humble Petition of William Andrews," ca. 1690
A handwritten letter from around 1690 that has long been in the uncataloged area of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library has recently been cataloged. Though known to curators in the past, cataloger Brandy Parris came upon it again and brought it to our attention. It gives us a peek at the underbelly of 17th-century life in London. The petition has now been properly cataloged by Cataloging Project Manager Christopher D. Cook, who offers the transcription below. Cook explains that the document was purchased by the University in August 1942, and has been mostly forgotten since it was displayed in DeLloyd J. Guths 1982 exhibition, Law Lives in the Library: Anglo-American Legal Books and Manuscripts.
N.B.: Abbreviations have been expanded and spellings have been modernized:
To the honorable the Bench of Justices
sitting at Hicks Hall
The humble petition of William Andrews––
Shows:
That the petitioner stands convicted by this honorable Court to now prison being sentenced to stand in the pillory and fined 40 marks upon pleading guilty to 2 indictments for keeping a disorderly house;
That the petitioner is maliciously prosecuted by the Constables, some of whom keep victualling houses and might be as well indicted as himself, he never lodging any women or idle persons in his house;
That there are several that live in the parish known harborers of women and idle persons (of whom the Constables cannot be presumed to be ignorant) who pass unprosecuted or presented;
That the petitioner questions not but he shall discover to this honorable Court several indirect practices used by the said Constables as also the houses where such idle persons haunt;
That the petitioner has a sick wife who has lain sick on his hands above 2 months.
The petitioner therefore humbly prays this honorable Court to order that he may be brought before the honors to make a discovery of the matters aforesaid, and that this honorable Court will be pleased to remit his fine and sentence, otherwise the petitioner’s wife must inevitably (sick as she is) come to the parish and himself be utterly ruined.
And the petitioner shall ever pray, etc.
(Click here for an image of the document)
The following remark on the reverse of the document tells us that the petition was a success:
“Fine reduced to 4 marks and corporal punishment remitted.”
—Christopher D. Cook
Spring 2006: The First Bible printed in the Western Hemisphere
Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God. Naneeswe Nukkone Testament kah wonk Wusku Testament. 2 vols. Cambridge, [Massachusetts]: Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson: 1663, 1661.
[The Holy Bible: Containing The Old Testament and The New. Translated into the Indian Language, And Ordered to be Printed by the Commissioners of the United Colonies in New-England, At the Charge, and with the Consent of the Corporation in England For the Propogation of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New-England.]
The first Bible printed in America was not an English Bible, nor was it a scholarly Greek, Hebrew, or Latin Bible. It is this 1661/63 Bible in Natick (also known as Wampanoag), the language of Algonquian people of the present-day state of Massachusetts. It is also the first Bible printed anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
This copy was purchased by the Friends of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Library to mark the 5 millionth volume added to the university collections.
The work was done by John Eliot with the help of Native American assistants. Eliot was an English missionary, working in New England as a teacher. Eliot had also been involved in the translation and printing of the first book printed in the American colonies, the “Bay Psalm Book” of 1640. In 1666, he attempted a grammar of the Natick language, but it is incomplete.
The Natick Bible was printed in Cambridge by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson with the help of a Native American compositor, James Printer.
The translation is significant because it is one of the few documents we have in the Natick language. Within one generation of Eliot’s missionary activities, the native people who spoke this language had disappeared, victims not of war, but of European diseases brought by the colonists.
At least one word of the Natick language was taken over into English, however, thanks to Eliot’s Bible. For the concept of an officer, captain, or duke, the Natick Bible uses the word mugquomp, a word alive and well in the English language as Mugwump.
About 1000 copies of “Eliot’s Bible” were printed, but only forty–two copies are still extant today.
The Bible can be found in The Rare Book & Manuscript Library under the call number 220.5973 El45h
—Valerie Hotchkiss
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