William Jessop and Walter Yonge

 

Let me begin with the transcription of Walter Yonge’s notes on proceedings in the House of Commons preserved in the Additional Mss. 18,777-18780 of the British Library. Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote to me in the spring of 1967 asking if I would transcribe the four volumes for Dr Pearl. I agreed and spoke to her in the Manuscript Room of what was then the British Museum. A fee of £150 per volume was arranged between us and I duly set to work. (I was not her employee or simple assistant.)  I did not find Yonge’s handwriting difficult to read but it took me about a week to master the symbols he used at the start of his volumes (e.g. Additional Ms.18,777 fol.1r). I finished the first volume later that year and, by 1973, had completed all four volumes in draft. I did not need instruction in how to do this nor were the diaries in code.

On 12th September, 1975, the Times Higher Education Supplement published an interview with Dr Pearl in which it was stated that the “work is being prepared for publication.” (Subsequent claims to this effect on her behalf can be found in the 1990s.)

Between September, 1973 and January, 1987, I was unable to find an academic post. I wanted and hoped to do so but found employment as a Researcher at the House of Commons. The office in which I worked frequently received relatively flimsy publications - samizdat, in effect - for our consumption. It occurred to me that I could do that too and set about trying to establish some academic credentials thereby. You can find my publications list in the Printed Books Catalogue of the BL. By 1984, I was aware that Dr Pearl’s publication of the Yonge diaries had not taken place. I thought then that it was important that they should be available and asked a number of friends  if I should undertake the task. Their view was that, having had the first of these volumes for seventeen years, Dr Pearl was unlikely to be doing so in the near future. I bought photostats of all four volumes and duly set to work. I did inform Dr Pearl of my intentions when she had taken up her post at New Hall in Cambridge.

I fully understand that she was displeased. I duly received correspondence from her claiming that I had used the earlier transcription - this was not so - and supporting material threatening legal action from the Oxford University Press. Fortunately, I had an excellent Solicitor in the person of Amanda Gouldsmith of Ellison and Co, Colchester: the OUP found itself unable to proceed and I was able to publish Volume 1 of Yonge’s diary.

There was, however, a second line of attack. Gerald Aylmer, then President of the Royal Historical Society, wrote to me indicating that I might be stripped of my Fellowship in the RHS and questioning why I had not deposited copies of the transcript made by Keith Perrin of the letter book of William Jessop (Additional Ms.10,615) in the Bodleian or the British Library. This latter enquiry arose from Karen Kupperman’s enquiry to Dr Pearl at New Hall about the location of these transcripts. I carefully explained to Aylmer that (a) I had only been allowed to keep the third copy of Perrin’s transcript by Dr Pearl and that she had taken both to Hugh Trevor-Roper in Oxford along with Perrin’s observations on the de Witt system of shorthand Jessop had used in writing to Bermuda and Providence Island in the 1630s and (b) that a key to the de Witt system had been published by Thomas Anderson in his 1882 work, A History of Shorthand, which Professor Kupperman as a major scholar could have found and used.

Hugh Trevor-Roper’s letters to me on 7th and 22nd July, 1969 indicated that he had seen Dr Pearl (probably in the History Faculty Library in Merton Street, Oxford) on 6th July, 1969. He sent me a copy of Keith Perrin’s observations on the de Witt system on the latter date. This supports my position that he had received Perrin’s transcripts - i.e. the top and second copies on 6th July, 1969.

Once the question of the whereabouts of the transcripts was raised, I got in touch with Michael Borrie, one of the Keepers in the Department of Manuscripts of the B.L., which was then still in Bloomsbury, and offered to make my copy available to him for photocopying. I travelled from Westminster to Bloomsbury several times in my lunch hour to hand them over but he was never available - presumably, he, too was at lunch. Eventually, I did succeed and copies were made and deposited in the BL and Bodley. There was no delay on my behalf or obstruction on my part. I should add (a) that I never heard from Professor Kupperman and only met her for the first time in the autumn of 1992 when she gave a talk at the University of Essex and (b) that I sent copies of all my correspondence with Michael Borrie to Gerald Aylmer. Where Aylmer’s papers are now I do not know.