Very early in the sixteenth century appeared a volume which seems to
have perplexed our literary historians by its mutable and undefinable
character. It is a book without a title, and miscalled by the deceptive
one of "Arnolde's Chronicle, or the Customs of London;" but "the
Customs" are not the manners of the people, but rather "the Customs" of
the Custom-House, and it in no shape resembles, or pretends to be "a
chronicle." This erroneous title seems to have been injudiciously
annexed to it by Hearne the antiquary, and should never have been
retained. This anomalous work, of which there are three ancient
editions, had the odd fate of all three being sent forth without a title
and without a date; and our bibliographers cannot with any certainty
ascertain the order or precedence of these editions. One edition was
issued from the press of a Flemish printer at Antwerp, and possibly may
be the earliest. The first printer, whether English or Flemish, was
evidently at a loss to christen this monstrous miscellaneous babe, and
ridiculously took up the title and subjects of the first articles which
offered themselves, to designate more than a hundred of the most
discrepant variety. The ancient editions appeared as "The names of the
Baylyfs, Custos, Mayres, and Sherefs of the Cyte of London, with the
Chartour and Lybartyes of the same Cyte, &c. &c., with other dyvers
matters good and necessary for every Cytezen to understand and know;"--a
humble title equally fallacious with the higher one of a "Chronicle,"
for it has described many objects of considerable curiosity, more
interesting than "mayors and sheriffs," and even "the charter and
liberties" of "the cyte."
In conveying a notion of a jumble,[1] though the things themselves are
sufficiently grave, we cannot avoid a ludicrous association; yet this
should not lessen the value of its information.
A considerable portion of this medley wholly relates to the municipal
interests of the citizens of London--charters and grants, with a vast
variety of forms or models of public and private instruments, chiefly of
a commercial description. Parish ordinances mix with Acts of Parliament;
and when we have conned the oath of the beadle of the ward, we are
startled by Pope Nicholas' Bull. We have the craft of grafting trees and
altering of fruits, as well in colour as in taste, close to an oration
of the messenger of "the Soudan of Babylon" to the Pope in 1488. Indeed,
we have many more useful crafts, besides the altering of the flavour of
fruits, and the oration of the Mahometan to the representative of St.
Peter; for here are culinary receipts, to keep sturgeon, to make vinegar
"shortly," "percely to grow in an hour's space," and to make ypocras,
straining the wine through a bag of spices--it was nothing more than our
mulled wine; and further, are receipts to make ink, and compound
gunpowder, to make soap, and to brew beer. Whether we may derive any
fresh hints from our ancestor of the year 1500 exceeds my judgment; but
to this eager transcriber posterity owes one of the most passionate
poems in our language; for betwixt "the composition between the
merchants of England and the town of Antwerp," and "the reckoning to buy
wares in Flanders," first broke into light "A Ballade of the Notbrowne
Mayde." Thus, when an indiscriminating collector is at work, one cannot
foresee what good fortune may not chance to be his lot.
Warton has truly characterised this work as "the most heterogeneous and
multifarious miscellany that ever existed;" but he seems to me to have
mistaken both the design of the collector, and the nature of the
collection. Some supposed that the collector, Richard Arnolde, intended
the volume to be an antiquarian repertory; but as the materials were
recent, that idea cannot be admitted; and Warton censures the compiler,
who, to make up a volume, printed together whatever he could amass of
notices and papers of every sort and subject. The modern editor of
"Arnolde's Chronicle" was perplexed at the contents of what he calls "a
strange book."
The critical decision of Warton is much too searching for a volume in
which the compiler never wrote a single line, and probably never
entertained the remotest idea of the printer's press. This book without
a name is, in fact, nothing more than a simple collection made by an
English merchant engaged in the Flemish trade. Nor was such a work
peculiar to this artless collector; for in a time of rare publications,
such men seemed to have formed for themselves a sort of library, of
matters they deemed worthy of recollection, to which they could have
easy recourse.[2] By the internal evidence, Arnolde was no stranger at
Antwerp, nor at Dordrecht. Antwerp was then a favourite residence of the
English merchants; there the typographic art flourished, and the
printers often printed English books; and as this collection was printed
at Antwerp by Doesborowe, a Flemish printer, we might incline with Douco
to infer that the Flemish was the first edition; for it seems not
probable that a foreign printer would have selected an English volume of
little interest to foreigners, to reprint; although we can imagine that
from personal consideration, or by the accident of obtaining the
manuscript, he might have been induced to be the first publisher.
Whoever was the first printer, the collector himself seems to have been
little concerned in the publication, by the suppression of his name, by
the omission of a title, by not prefixing a preface, nor arranging in
any way this curious medley of useful things, which he would familiarly
turn to as his occasions needed, and--if we may compare a grave volume
with the lightest--was of that class which ladies call their
"scrap-books," and assuredly not, according to its fallacious title, a
CHRONICLE.