[Local History]

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THE MACARTNEY-PHILLIPPS COPY

[WILTSHIRE]. THOMPSON, Thomas

The Visitation of Wiltshire taken 1565 by Tho. Thompson Lancaster Herald.

[s.i.]. [s.n., s.d., c.(?)1670s], .

Folio. Manuscript on paper, with some remains of pencilled sketches beneath ink. [4], 79ff. Paper watermarked foolscap, seven-pointed collar, three balls, countermark DA (similar to Heawood 2061, which he dates c.1676, but with a different countermark). Elaborate drawings of coats of arms (tricked) throughout. Modern gilt-tooled half calf, contrasting green morocco lettering-piece, earlier marbled boards. A trifle rubbed (largely to surfaces of boards). Small 'Heraldry Today' ticket to turn in of lower board. With the armorial bookplate of 'The Right Honble. Geo. Lord Macartney Knight of the Order of the White Eagle and of the Bath' to FEP, along with a manuscript shelf-mark 'H-2-22'

A seventeenth-century copy of the 1565 heraldic visitation of Wiltshire, originally undertaken by William Harvey (1510-67), who served as Clarenceux King of Arms in the final decade of his life. Conducted throughout the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and later Stuart monarchs, heraldic visitations were tours of inspection undertaken by senior officers of arms to regulate the use of coats of arms - the abuse of which had become widespread by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries - and to record genealogical pedigrees. The 1565 visitation represented the second of four inspections of Wiltshire (the others were undertaken in 1530, 1623 - by William Camden - and 1677). In addition to recording the details of the principle families of the county, the arms of the boroughs of Calne, Devices, Malborough, Salisbury, and those of the Merchant Adventurers of Devizes are also described, and in many cases in this copy, illustrated. This copy presents something of a conundrum. Whilst the paper dates this to c.1670s, the work purports to have been copied by the Lancaster Herald Thomas Thompson (d. 1641). Presented partly in narrative, and part tabulated form, it is most likely therefore a later seventeenth-century transcription of a copy made by Thompson, who had conducted the original Lincolnshire visitation of 1634. The unfoliated leaves at the beginning consist of three leaves of an index, and a single leaf which includes a title and several armorial bearings. Previously in the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps (when it was bound with a similar visitation of Somerset, dated 1637), and referenced as Phillipps MS 13389, 'Wiltshire do. 1565 part in tables, part narrative' in his Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum in Bibliotheca D. Thomæ Phillipps (Middle Hill, 1837). It was acquired by Phillipps, the voracious British manuscript collector, from Puttick and Simpson, who had secured the manuscripts of Anglo-Irish statesman and colonial administration George Macartney, First Earl Marcartney (1737-1806), best known for his Embassy to Beijing of 1792, from his heirs.

Phillipps MS 13389 (Part of).

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