Notes and Queries, Number 41, August 10, 1850 | Page 9

tract; and as there is a certain historical interest attached to it, some information on the subject may be acceptable to your readers. But it may be as well first to give the account of its production at the trial of Guy Fawkes and the conspirators, Jan. 27, 1606. (See _State Trials_, vol. ii. col. 180.) After Coke had introduced under the seventh head of his speech, as the fourth means for carrying on the plot, "their perfidious and perjurious equivocating," there follows:--
"And here was showed a Book, written not long before the Queen's death, at what time Thomas Winter was employed into Spain, entituled, 'A Treatise of Equivocation,' which book being seen and allowed by Garnet, the superior of the Jesuits, and Blackwell, the Archpriest of England, in the beginning thereof Garnet with his own hand put out those words in the title of 'Equivocation,' and made it thus; 'A Treatise against Lying and fraudulent Dissimulation.' ... And in the end thereof, Blackwell besprinkles it with his blessing, saying, 'Tractatus iste valde doctus, et vere pius et Catholicus est. Certe S. Scripturarum, patrum, doctorum, scholasticorum, canonistarum, et optimarum rationum pr?sidiis plenissime firmat ?quitatem ?quivocationis; ideoque dignissimus est qui typis propagetur, ad consolationem afflictorum Catholicorum, et omnium piorum instructionem.'"
Coke referred to it again at Garnet's trial, March 28, 1606 (_State Trials_, vol. ii. p. 234.); and the importance attached to the discovery of the work may be judged of by Morton's _Full Satisfaction_, 1606: a very large part of which is occupied in discussing it.
The copy in the Bodleian is the one which was produced at the trial. It is a small quarto in a vellum cover, on the outside of which is written, on the front side, in a later hand, "Blackwell de Equivocatione, &c.;" on the other side, in Sir E. Coke's hand, "Equivocations." It consists of sixty-six pages in all; i.e. two leaves at the beginning originally left blank, and not numbered; sixty-one pages numbered continuously, and fifty-nine of them written on: p. 61., that is, the fly-leaf at the end, contains Blackwell's imprimatur as described by Coke. On the first fly-leaf, at the beginning, is the following memorandum:--
"This booke, contening 61 pages, I founde in a chamber in the Inner Temple, wherein Sr Thomas Tresham used to lye, and whiche he obteyned for his two younger sonnes. This 5 of December, 1605." EDW. COKE.
"Os quod mentitur occidit animam."
It may be enough to remind the reader, that after Nov. 5, 1605, Coke, being Attorney-General, was engaged in prosecuting the discovery of the plot and seeking for evidence. Francis Tresham, to whom the authorship is attributed by Dodd (vol. ii. p. 427, 428.), was a son of Sir Thomas Tresham; his connection with Garnet and the plot is well known. Sir T. Tresham died Sept. 11, 1605. (Dodd, vol. ii. p. 58.) Francis had been committed {169} to prison, and died Nov. 20, 1605; and Coke found this in searching his chambers a fortnight after. The title originally stood thus:--
"A TREATISE OF EQUIVOCATION, _wherein is largely discussed the question_, whether a Catholicke or any other person before a Magistrate being demaunded uppon his oath whether a Prieste were in such a place, may (notwithstanding his perfect knowledge to the contrary), without Perjury, and securely in conscience answere, No: with this secreat meaning reserved in his minde, That he was not there so that any man is bound to detect it."
The words in small capitals and Italics occupying the first two lines are crossed out, and "whe-," the first syllable of whether, re-written at the beginning of line 3. At the end of this title, interlined by another hand, follow the words "_newly, overseer ... ignorants_;" but these words are also struck through and re-written on the preceding leaf, on which, written by the same hand by which the interlineation was made (Garnet's, as it would seem), the title stands,--
"A Treatise of against Lying and fraudulent Dissimulation. Newly overseen by the Authour, and published for the defence of Innocency and for the Instruction of Ignorants."
The "_of_", in Italics, is struck out. The MS. has other corrections throughout in the same (Garnet's) hand; and was evidently prepared for the press, as Blackwell's imprimatur implies.
I have to apologise for some incorrect dates in my last communication.
J.B.
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BOETHIUS' CONSOLATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY.
The celebrated treatise _De Consolatione Philosophi?_, was translated into English verse by John Walton, otherwise called Johannes Capellanus, in the year 1410. A beautiful manuscript on parchment, of this translation, is preserved in the British Museum (_Harl. MS._ 43.). Other copies are amongst the archives of Lincoln Cathedral, Baliol College, &c. It was printed in the Monastery of Tavestok in 1525, a copy of which impression is of the utmost rarity. There is an English prose translation by "George