V.a.460 RESTRICTED. Review required (typical turnaround time 1 to 2 weeks). Use digital reproduction or microfilm. Original available by special permission only.

Diaries of Richard Stonley [manuscript], 1581-1598.

3 v.

Stonley's entries are brief and include quotations and paraphrases from the Bible, the Classics and proverbs such as the Proverbs or Adages by D. Erasmus, Englished by Richard Taverner, and his household accounts. Among the many books he bought was Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis on June 12, 1593 (v. 2, leaf 9). Stonley mentions public events occasionally: he saw Edmund Campion being taken to Tyburn on December 1, 1581. Stonley was often at Paul's Cross. On Sunday Stonley attended divine service and in 1581 comments several times on the preacher's departure from the order of the book of Common prayer. After the service Stonley often invited the minister and friends, whom he usually mentions by name, to dinner. By 1593 he was in financial difficulties and seeking the counsel of Lord Burghley; Stonley allows himself on comment on him (v. 2, leaf 58). By 1597 Stonley was in the Fleet prison and actively trying to liquidate his assets. There he gives his menus and lists his fellow diners; at times he went out with a keeper.
Volume 1 contains a preliminary note of expenses, May 10, 1580-June 26, 1581; volume 2 Francis Douce's copy of the first entries of the diary; volume 2 is bound in part of a mortgage by Humfrey Holte citizen and goldsmith of London to Richard Stonley of Alderichgatestrete, London, Gent. of a tenement ... in Fleet St., originally leased May 17, 1549.

Volume 1: June 15, 1581-December 31, 1582, 100 leaves; volume 2: May 14, 1593-May 24, 1594, [2], 92 leaves; volume 3: March 14, 1596/7-May 18, 1598, 77 leaves. Each bears a mark: "z"; "KK"; and "OO".

Richard Stonley was a teller in the Receipt of the Exchequer and lived in Aldersgate St., in the parish of St. Botolph, London. He owned property in Essex at Doddinghurst, where he was a neighbor of the Petre family, East Ham (Estham) and Halstead; in London; in Middlesex and elsewhere. Stonley's wife Anne was the daughter of John Branche and widow of Robert Donne and there are frequent references to his step-sons William Donne, the physician, and Dr. (later Sir) Daniel Donne, principal of New Inn, as well as to his own daughters and sons-in-law, Anne and William Higham or Heigham of East Ham and Dorothy and William Dawtrey of Moor or More, Sussex and to his brothers-in-law William Uvedale and Sir John Branche, lord mayor of London in 1580.

For other Stonley manuscripts see also Folger MS X.d.352, X.d.354, X.d.358, X.d.364.

For a list of Stonley's books among the Stonley papers at the P.R.O. see "The Library of Elizabeth's Embezzling Teller" in Studies in bibliography, II (1948-1950), p. 49-62.
"The pen's excellencie" : treasures from the manuscript collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library / compiled and edited by Heather Wolfe. Seattle : Distributed by University of Washington Press, 2002, p. 75.
Scott-Warren, Jason. "Books in the bedchamber: religion, accounting and the library of Richard Stonley." Tudor books and readers / edited by John King. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 232-252.

Stonely's diaries were known as early as the late eighteenth century. The Venus and Adonis reference (v. 2, leaf 9) is first mentioned in a May 7, 1794 letter from Francis Douce to George Steevens (Folger Shakespeare Library, MS C.b.10, no. 66). In 1796, Edmond Malone refers to the Venus entry on page 67 in An inquiry... (London, 1796), and it is noted in the fifth edition of Samuel Johnson and George Steeven’s The plays of William Shakespeare (London, 1803), revised by Isaac Reed, in vol. 2, p. 162. The diaries passed through various private hands for the next century and a half, largely out of sight of scholars. The second volume, with the Shakespeare reference (Folger MS V.a.460), has the 19th century bookplate of John Adair Hawkins (1757-1842). In the nineteenth century, they were apparently sold by booksellers James Rimell & Son, as item 547 in a (currently unlocated) catalogue. The first volume (Folger MS V.a.459) has the bookplate of William Niven (died 1921), FSA, ARE, of Kingwood, Berkshire, Marlow Place Library.

Purchased from bookseller William Wreden (of Palo Alto, California) in 1972.

Washington, D.C., Folger Shakespeare Library, 2016. Shakespeare, Life of an Icon. January 20th - 27th March 2016. Opening: 8v-9r.

Erasmus, Desiderius, -1536. Adagia. Selections. English.

Folgerpedia article about Folger Shakespeare Library V.a.460 (with partial transcription)
Digital image(s) of Folger Shakespeare Library V.a.460
Digital image(s) of Folger Shakespeare Library V.a.459
Digital image(s) of Folger Shakespeare Library V.a.461

Great Britain -- England -- London.
Great Britain -- England -- Essex.

V.a.459

MS Add 618

V.a.460

MS Add 618

V.a.461

MS Add 618