The Authorship of A Brief Character of the Low-Countries Reconsidered

Abstract: A Brief Character of the Low-Countries has long been attributed to Owen Felltham; however, Hertfordshire MS Verulam IX.A.6a shows that Sir Harbottle Grimston the Elder (ca. 1578–1648) was the original author of a brief version of the work in 1621. Further evidence from the many manuscript copies of the work (in particular National Archives SP 84/99) indicates a process of scribal adaptation and addition as the work circulated over the following decades. Among those involved in this multiauthored cumulative text was one "J. S." (possibly the well-known Cavalier poet John Suckling), who added an important preface. Adaptations took place in separate manuscript streams, leading to the widely different printed versions of 1648 and 1652. A reassessment based upon both print and manuscript evidence suggests that 1648 is not an inferior, truncated text, but the culmination of a separate line of manuscript transmission. Errors and generalizing emendations in the 1652 printed version (to which Felltham contributed) render it a less authoritative text than scholars have assumed it to be.