William Bourne

The following is intended as a supplement and correction to the list in Taylor. It includes some additional manuscript sources unknown to her and redates those she was aware of. (There is nothing novel here about Bourne’s printed works.) With these manuscript revisions it is possible to offer a far more convincing chronology of Bourne’s work and to dispense with some hypothetical early manuscripts which she was forced to invent (and whose existence has been accepted by subsequent historians). The list is presented in chronological order. For details and locations of the printed works, see STC 2. [Almanac and rules of navigation] Printed 1567 No copies have been located but, according to STC 2, the edition of 1571 was largely a reissue. (Lost) text similar to Sloane 3651 Manuscript, datable to c. 1570/71 Described by Bourne elsewhere as ‘Concerning the mathematical sciences, treating upon geometry, perspective and also for the use of ordnance or artillery’ (Bodl. Rawlinson MS D 704, f.1r). It was given to Edward Fiennes ‘near about michaelmas was twelvemonth’; before the book of artillery was presented. Bodl. Rawlinson MS D 704: ‘William Bourns booke of artillery’ Manuscript, datable before May 1572 Exclusively an artillery text and therefore presumably a draft for The Art of Shooting in Great Ordnance . Evidence for dating: dedication is to Edward Fiennes who is addressed as Lord Clinton and Say, whereas in Regiment for the Sea Fiennes is also addressed as Earl of Lincoln, a position he was raised to on 4 May 1572 ( DNB ); practical artillery trials ‘hath been chargeable unto me within this five years one hundred marks out of my purse’ (f.3r); ‘if that I were in any place where that I might prove certain conclusions with ordnance’ (f.5v), which indicates that Bourne was writing before he was appointed master gunner at Upnor Castle in the third quarter of 1574 (Bodl. Rawlinson MS A 202, f.40r); ‘I have seven children all sons yet living that must be kept at my hand’ (f.4v). On the latter point, E.G.R. Taylor says in her edition of the Regiment for the Sea that in 1572 Bourne ‘had his own four boys to care for while his three stepsons were just emerging into the adult world’ (p.xxv). If this is correct as regards the stepsons then the artillery book could not have come much later because then the stepsons would be of an age where they would no longer be kept at Bourne’s hand. BL Sloane MS 3651 Manuscript, datable to 1572/73 Dedicated to Lord Burghley, but apparently written before the decision to split up its material into the separate treatises that became the Treasure for Travellers and the Art of Shooting in Great Ordnance . Refers to ‘my last work or almanac and rules of navigation’ (f.7r), presumably the 1571 edition. Dedicated to Burghley as Lord High Treasurer, a post he was appointed to on 15 July 1572 ( OxfordDNB ). It seems likely that this manuscript was offered for sale in both 1687 and 1688. In Bentley and Walford’s auction catalogue of 21 November 1687, item number 20 of ‘Manuscripts in English, in Folio’ is ‘William Bournes Book of Geometry and Perspective with his Treatise of the use of Artillery’ (p.89). The catalogue preface states that the sale ‘comprises the main part of the Library of that Famous Secretary William Cecil, Lord Burleigh’. (Although note that a great many of the printed books are dated well after Burghley’s death; the sellers have presumably mixed in their own stock with whatever they had of Burghley’s.) The BL copy of the catalogue Bibliotheca Illustris: sive Catalogus Variorum Librorum ... Quorum Auctis habebitur Londini, ad Insigne Ursi in Vico dicto Ave-Mary-Lane prope Templum D. Pauli, Novemb. 21 1687 (Per T. Bentley & B. Walford, Bibliopolas. Lond.) is shelfmark 821.i.8.(1.) and is signed on the title page ‘A Palmer -87’. It contains prices marked against many of the items; Bourne’s work fetched 3s6d. Less than three months later Benjamin Walford was behind another book sale, on 13 F