The Magdalen Manuscript Summary

[Catherin Bergan]

Hiseighteen years in the army provided Warnie Lewis with a global, if not cosmopolitan, experience of life, which took him to postings in Europe, Africa, and Asia in the fading days of the British Empire. He traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean as he circumnavigated the globe. He visited cities and locales as varied as North Africa, West Africa, Suez, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, the Panama Canal, and the United States. Such an experience of the world informed his seven volumes of the history of the age of Louis XIV, which probably accounts in part for the critical acclaim his histories received.

Long regarded as a thorough and meticulous scholar, Don King has left no manuscript or stone unturned in his effort to bring to life one of the most interesting of the Inklings. He leaves the reader in little doubt that he has turned every page of the eleven volumes of Lewis family papers which Warnie Lewis compiled and edited, as well as every line of the diary which Lewis kept throughout his life. One would expect no less from King, but he always surprises by turning up hitherto unknown or unpublished letters and documents which throw light on the subject at hand, as he did with his earlier definitive books on Joy Davidman and Ruth Pitter.1 King not only uncovers the primary resources that bring us close to the life of Warnie Lewis, but he also has the skill to weigh them and balance them against each other to give a critical picture of Warren Lewis independent of the brother he so loved. King pays attention to the major secondary works on C. S. Lewis and the Inklings, but he does not shrink from disagreeing with a received tradition when the evidence warrants it. Of particular value is the appendix in which King provides a summary of the similarities and dissimilarities of the brothers.

Thomas Carte, son of the Rev. Samuel Carte, M.A. of Magdalen College, Oxford, and brother of Samuel and Sarah Carte, was born at Clifton in Warwickshire in 1686: matriculated at University College 8 July 1698 and took his degree from Brasenose in 1702, but in 1706 incorporated at King's College, Cambridge, taking his M.A. degree from that college in the same year. He took Holy Orders in about 1714, but in that year refused to take the oath of allegiance and, when in 1722 he was accused of high treason, fled into France, and adopted the name of Philips, not returning till about 1728. In the interval he collected materials for an English edition of De Thou's History, which were used for the seven-volume Latin edition, London 1733.

When he returned to England he commenced his Life of James Duke of Ormonde (published in 1735-36), his attention having been directed to Irish affairs from an early age. His History of England, to provide funds for which a Society of subscribers had been formed (see MS. Carte 174), was published in 1747-55. He died on April 2, 1754.

His wife was Sarah (ne Brett), who subsequently married Nicholas Jernegan.

Carte himself arranged his papers with care but not completeness, numbering each separate paper but allowing more than one chronological arrangement in a volume. The greater part he bound, affixing signs or letters, see the tables of comparative pressmarks: and the whole collection was uniformly re-bound in about 1860-70. The present numeration (MSS. Carte 1-276) does not indicate any natural order, either of subject or of date of presentation, and had the records of gift been sufficiently precise, an attempt would have been made to establish a historical and natural sequence.

This catalogue is an electronic version of the description of the Carte Papers in Falconer Madan, et al., A summary catalogue of western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford which have not hitherto been catalogued in the Quarto series, Vol. III, 10447-10724 (Oxford, 1895).

Carte's own list, with the additions, contained in MSS. Carte 277-79 are the primary authority for the contents of the original collection. In 1864 was printed a Report on the greater part of the collection by Sir T. D. Hardy and the Rev. J. S. Brewer, and in 1871 a still fuller and very valuable one by the Rev. Charles William Russell D.D. and John P. Prendergast.

A complete Calendar of the papers made by Edw. Edwards in 1877-83 and arranged in a long chronological series, remains in manuscript in the library, with a shorter summary list.

The 'Religion and Rebellion' project, a partnership between the Bodleian Library and the History of Parliament Trust, funded by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, was set up to enable the keying in of entries from the Edward Edwards calendar covering the years 1660-87, and their incorporation into this electronic catalogue. The Carte Calendar entries are also available, in their original chronological order.

In the Summary Catalogue as published in 1895, the spelling 'Ormonde' was used. In Edward Edwards' calendar 'Ormond' is used throughout. The latter is the preferred spelling in modern historical writing, and appears thus in the new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). The decision has been made to use 'Ormond' throughout this electronic version of the catalogue and calendar.

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