Textmanuscripts - Les Enluminures
ii (paper) + 17 (+ tipped-in slip foliated 2b) + ii (paper) folios on paper, two watermarks: single-handled pot with spout with letters or design on belly and 4-petalled flower extending from top (ff. 5, 7, 8, 10), and pot with no handles with pattern on belly and crescent moon extending from top (ff. 1, 2, 13, 15, 16), neither identified in Briquet or in Piccard, modern foliation [cited in this description] in pencil in Arabic numerals, lower fore-edge recto, 1-2, 2b, 3-17, with f. 2b a small tipped-in snippet glued to f. 3 (collation uncertain, perhaps: i14 [+1 tipped in after f. 2 (f. 2b)], ii4 [-1 before f. 15]), no catchwords, no signatures, no ruling (justification c.155-170 × c.125-130 mm), no visible pricking, written in a Chancery cursive / Italic hand, in brown ink, in 4 columns (but f. 1v in 2 and 3 columns, f. 2 in 5 columns), with 631 PAINTED ILLUSTRATIONS (c. 20-30 × c. 10-27 mm) in red, blue, yellow, green, black, and white, depicting coats of arms, most numbered in red or brown ink with identifying captions of 1-5 lines in brown ink, scribal corrections via strikethrough and interlinear insertion (ff. 2v, 5v, 8), with several erasures at f. 2, partial detachment of f. 1, slight fading at f. 16v, overall in good condition. Bound by N. Marlière (f. i verso), 19th century, in brown quarter calf with marbled paper over pasteboard, spine with five raised bands to create six compartments, the bands ornamented with gilt-tooled rules, the compartments with gilt flowers, with a black label gold-stamped “BLASONS BRITANNIQUES” in the second compartment, binding in good condition. Dimensions c.175-177 × c.133-135 mm.
Details of this armorial’s composition, coverage, and organization suggest a link between its completion and the trial and execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587). The hand-painted coats of arms of English notables, chiefly Elizabethan, were most likely compiled for Guillaume de l’Aubespine de Châteauneuf, French ambassador to England from 1585-1589, who secretly corresponded with the Mary during her imprisonment. His pocket-sized manuscript offers insights into French and English diplomatic relations at the end of the sixteenth century and is evidence of the ambassador’s interest in the fate of Mary Queen of Scots, as well as his broader interest in heraldry.
1. Copied in England or France, probably in 1586 with additions up to c. 1596, based on paleographical, decorative, and textual evidence, including specification of the year 1586 in the text itself (twice at f. 1v, in the hand of the main text), and a listing of arms of Mayors of London from 1570 through 1596 (f. 14-14v). Likely compiled for or by Guillaume de l’Aubespine de Châteauneuf, the French ambassador to England whose arms open the collection.
2. Binding stamped in black ink “N. Marlière” (f. i verso), a moderately well-attested binder (see discussion below).
3. Inside front cover, bookplate of Aimé [Nicolas] Leroy (1793-1848), author and bibliophile of Valenciennes of a man sitting at a desk reading framed by an elaborate gothic window, with a shield bearing the motto “Mes livres font ma joie” (engraving, signed, J. Potier Burdet).
4. Added owner or dealer annotation, probably in faded or effaced pencil, in a modern hand, mostly indecipherable even under UV light, but perhaps “<liln[illegible]102[illegible]10>” (f. iv).
5. Added owner or dealer annotation in pencil, in a modern hand, “JC 8295” (f. ii), probably that of antiquarian book-dealer Justin Croft.
6. Private collection.
ff. 1v-17, incipit, “Ce sont les armoires de Guillaume de Tobespine baron de Chateaunoeuf en berri conseiller du Roy et son Embassadeur pres La Royne D’Angleterre en Lan 1586 … Baiencourt. le noir. Illÿs[.] le Conte de ligni .... [sic.] Roy des Indes[.] Le Roy de poulane.”
An anonymous armorial mainly featuring English notables of the Elizabethan era, particularly those associated with the trial of Mary Queen of Scots. No edition known. Likely compiled for or by Guillaume de l’Aubespine de Châteauneuf, the French ambassador to England whose arms open the collection.
f. 1v, Two coats of arms, both c. 30 × c. 26-27 mm., painted in blue and red of Guillaume de l’Aubespine de Châteauneuf (1547-1629), Ambassador to England, 1585-1589 (Quarterly, 1 and 4, Gules three Roses Argent, 2 and 3, Azure a Helm Argent) and “Les armes de Marie de la Chattre dame et baronesse de Chasteau noeuf,” his wife, Marie de La Châtre (d. 1626) (Party per pale, 1. Per fess, 1. Gules three Roses Argent, 2. Azure a Helm Argent; 2. Gules, a Cross moline Vair, a bordure engrailed Argent).
f. 1v, Six coats of arms, all c. 30 × c. 10 mm., painted in red, blue, yellow, black, and white, each topped with a coronet: William Paulet, Third Marquess of Winchester KB JP (c. 1532-1598) (Sable, three Swords in pile, points in base Argent, pommels and hilts Or); Philip Howard, Thirteenth Earl of Arundel (1557-1595) (Gules, a Lion rampant Argent, armed and langued Azure); “Les armes du Conte doxford,” Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) (Quarterly Gules and Or, in the first a Mullet Argent); Henry Percy, Ninth Earl of Northumberland, KG (1564-1632) (Or, a Lion rampant Azure, armed and langued Gules); “Les armes du conte de Shrewsbery talbot,” George Talbot, Sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, Sixth Earl of Waterford, Twelfth Baron Talbot, KG, Earl Marshal (c.1522/8-1590) (Gules, a Lion rampant Or, armed and langued Azure, a bordure engrailed Or); and “Les armes du conte de Kent graie,” Henry Grey, Sixth Earl of Kent (1541-1615) (Barry of six Argent and Azure, in chief three Torteaux).
ff. 2-17: An additional 623 coats of arms, arranged in 5 columns on f. 2, otherwise 4 columns, each illustration c. 20-22 × c. 18-20 mm., and painted in red, blue, yellow, green, black, and white. They open with the arms of Claude de Louvigny, sieur d’Estréelles (of Étaples), of his wife Jeanne de Longjumeau, and of the former impaling the latter (f. 2). Thereafter, we find mostly English arms, first for members of the Elizabethan court, including Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby; William Somerset, 3rd Earl of Worcester; Edward Manners, 3rd Earl of Rutland; George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland; Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon; Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick; Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke; and Henry Neville, 6th (de jure 4th) Baron Bergavenny; and along with arms of the Earls of Sussex, Bath, Southampton, Bedford, Hertford, Leicester, Essex, Lincoln, and Essex; and of the Lords Dacre, Cobham, Dudley, Paget, Howard, North, and Burghley (ff. 2-3), among others. The next sequence (ff. 3-12) provides armorial bearings of English monarchs and aristocracy from William the Conqueror until Henry VIII. Following this we find arms of prominent Elizabethans, including William Fleetwood (c.1525-1594), Recorder of London, 1571-1591; Sir Roger Manwood (1524/5-1592), Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, 1578-1592; and Sir Walter Mildmay (1520/1-1589), Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1559-1589; as well as Sir Francis Walsingham (c.1532-1590), Sir Phillip Sidney (1554-1586), and Sir Christopher Wraye (c.1522-1592) (all at f. 13-13v). The catalogue then turns to Lord Mayors of London from Sir Rowland Hayward (1570) and Sir Thomas Ramsay (1570), to Mr. Henry Billingsley (1596) (all f. 14rv), suggesting a terminus for the manuscript of c.1596 – and members of London livery companies. It closes with arms of the Artois families of Bai[lli]encourt, Le Noir, and Illÿs, and those of “le Conte de Ligni,” “Roÿ des Indes,” and “Le Roÿ de poulane” (f. 17).
This small armorial, which mainly features the arms of Elizabethan notables, along with historical English royals and aristocracy (ff. 3-12), reflects the era’s interest in heraldry. Specification of the year “1586” (twice on f. 1v) and the manuscript’s coverage and organization suggest a link between its compilation and the trial and execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587). Crowned Queen of Scotland in 1543, the Catholic Mary was queen consort of France – the country in which she had been raised – from 1559 until the death of her husband, Francis II, in December 1560. Returning to Scotland in August 1561, she ruled the Protestant kingdom amidst a tense religious climate, soon marrying and bearing a son, James VI. Forced to abdicate in favor of the boy, Mary fled to England, seeking the protection of her cousin, Elizabeth I who, since many Catholics regarded Mary as England’s true sovereign, imprisoned her. In 1586 Mary was found guilty of plotting against Elizabeth; she was executed in the following year at Fotheringhay Castle.
Our manuscript was likely created during or immediately after Mary’s trial for Guillaume de l’Aubespine de Châteauneuf (1547-1629) and his wife, Marie de La Châtre (d. 1626) or for a member of their household. Châteauneuf replaced Michel de Castelnau de la Mauvissière (1520-1592) as French ambassador to England in 1585 (Wilkinson, 2004, p. 27). Like his predecessor, he maintained a secret correspondence with Mary during her imprisonment (Lasry, Biermann, and Tomokiyo, 2023) and, for a time, worked with Pomponne de Bellièvre, envoy extraordinary to the English court, to plead Mary’s case (Édouard, 2014; Paranque, 2019, pp. 187-199). Although implicated in the Babington Plot (Paranque, 2019, p. 176), Châteauneuf managed to escape prosecution, remaining in his ambassadorial post until 1589. An extract from his report to France’s King Henry II on Mary’s execution was published in Paris only a few months after her death ([L’Aubespine, 1587]; Wilkinson, 2004, pp. 130-132).
The coats of arms on the first two pages of our codex reflect a preoccupation with these events: Northumberland and Arundel (f. 1v) had been implicated in various plots to restore Mary to the throne. Shrewsbury (f. 1v) and Huntingdon (f. 2) acted as joint custodians of Mary until 1570; Winchester and Oxford (f. 1v) were judges at her 1586 trial, at which Derby (f. 2), a former ambassador to the French court, was an official. Cumberland, Bergavenny, and Pembroke (f. 2) participated in the trial; Kent (f. 1v) and Worcester (f. 2) were among the commissioners who sentenced Mary to death; and Rutland and Warwick (f. 2) were commanders appointed to quell the Northern Rebellion which aimed to set Mary upon the English throne. An unexplained peculiarity appears on f. 2: the arms of Claude de Louvigny, sieur d’Estréelles (of Étaples) and of his wife Jeanne de Longjumeau, a prominent French Protestant (Joblin, 1992, pp. 289, 297-299).
By the nineteenth century, our manuscript had entered the private library of bibliophile and author Aimé Nicolas Leroy (1793-1848) of Valenciennes. Leroy exhibited a marked love of books from a young age. Completing his bachelor’s degree in 1812, he embarked upon the study of law in Paris where he took advantage of the post-Revolution dispersion of monastic and aristocratic libraries to begin building his collection. Early in his studies, already afflicted by obsessive bibliophilia, he purportedly obtained skin from the corpse of poet Jacques Delille (1738-1813), which he claimed to have incorporated into the green morocco binding of a fine copy of Delille’s translation of Virgil’s Georgics ([Dinaux], 1849, p. 9; Le Glay, 1841, pp. 260-261; Leroy, 1832, pp. 267-270). Official completion of his studies in 1817 granted him freedom “to continue the formation of one of the most curious provincial libraries” imaginable ([Dinaux], 1849, p. 13). Part II of Le Glay’s 1841 Mémoire sur les bibliothèques … du Département du Nord, “Bibliothèques particulières,” includes extracts of a letter from Leroy in which he describes the bookplate he affixed to his favorite books (the bookplate found in our manuscript) and summarizes the contents of his then 12,000 volume, mainly printed, collection (Le Glay, 1841, pp. 257-261).
Despite bearing the bookplate Leroy reserved for his favorite books – and heraldry was among his interests: he co-authored at least one article on the topic (Leroy and Dinaux, 1842) – our armorial is not mentioned in Leroy’s letter to Le Glay. Indeed, it seems Leroy’s library contained very few manuscripts. Leroy’s co-author, the historian Arthur M. Dinaux (1795-1864), was a long-term collaborator – the pair co-edited most of the sixteen volume Archives historiques et littéraire du Nord de la France, et de Midi de la Belgique (1829-1857) – and friend who ultimately authored Leroy’s obituary ([Dinaux], 1849). Intriguingly, the description of Dinaux’s library (Le Glay, 1841, pp. 262-275) notes a sizeable manuscript collection, with numerous genealogical and heraldic works, plus a 1587 manuscript on the origin of Fontenelles Abbey illuminated with coats of arms (pp. 265-266). The description mentions that Leroy made a copy of this book for his own library (p. 266). Perhaps Dinaux brought our manuscript to Leroy’s attention, or even owned it before passing it to his friend.
A further point of interest is offered by our book’s black-stamped “N. Marlière” at f. iv. A moderately well-attested binder apparently active around the middle of the 19th century, about whom little else seems to be known, N. Marlière is not listed in Fléty (1988) nor in Du Bois d’Enghien (1954), though the latter mentions one J. Marlier, a binder active in Dinant, 1865-1869 (p. 188). We have traced ten other “N. Marlière” or “Naz. Marlière” bindings, plus a further nine attributed simply to “Marlière,” none postdating the 1840s. At least four of these books – a 1712 copy of Lalli’s L’innocenza difesa da Numi (binding: N. Marlière), listed as no. 731 in Trentesaux’s 1857 Catalogue, and possibly identical with de Jonghe, 1860, no. 2994; a 1659 copy of Petit’s Histoire de la ville de Bouchain (binding: Naz. Marlière), auctioned as lot 175 at Pescheteau-Badin’s Paris sale on October 24th, 2008; a 1639 edition of Hoyer’s Flammulæ Amoris (binding: N. Marlière), listed by AbeBooks; and an 1800 copy of Marchena’s Fragmentum Petronii (binding: N. Marlière), auctioned as lot 89 in Ader Nordmann’s Paris sale on March 13th, 2012 – at one point belonged to Aimé Leroy. Further Marlière bindings appear in Arthur M. Dinaux’s 1864 Catalogue (nos. 84-89, 152, 2585, and 2708). It may be that research into Dinaux and Leroy will shed additional light on Marlière, or vice-versa.
Offering a puzzle for scholars of modern binding and of nineteenth-century book collecting, this intriguing example of the Early Modern armorial genre, with its unusual focus on a high-profile trial and regicide, is sure to capture the attention of collectors and researchers specializing in heraldry, sixteenth-century England, and Elizabethan diplomacy.
Catalogue de la bibliothèque de feu M. Arthur Dinaux, Paris, 1864.
https://archive.org/details/cataloguedelabi00dinagoog/
Catalogue des livres et manuscrits formant la bibliothèque de feu M. J. B. Th. de Jonghe …, Brussels, 1860.
Catalogue de la précieuse collection de livres, délaissée par feu monsieur Ad. Trentesaux, Juge à Tournai, Brussels, 1857.
Dinaux, Arthur M., Aimé Nicolas Leroy, and A. J. G. Le Glay, eds. Archives historiques et littéraire du Nord de la France, et de Midi de la Belgique, 16 vols., Valenciennes, 1829-1857 .
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009396654
[Dinaux, Arthur M.]. Notice sur Aimé Leroy, Bibliothécaire de la Ville de Valenciennes, …, Mons, 1849.
Du Bois d’Enghien, Hector. La reliure en Belgique au dix-neuvième siècle: essai historique, suivi d’un dictionnaire des relieurs, Brussels, 1954.
Édouard, Sylvène. “La fin de Marie Stuart et le « commencement » de sa gloire: la réception de la nouvelle de son exécution en 1587,” Le sang des princes: Cultes et mémoires des souverains suppliciés (XVIe-XXIe siècles), Rennes, 2014.
https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pur.50407
Fléty, Julien. Dictionnaire des relieurs français ayant exercé de 1800 à nos jours; suivi d’un guide pratique des relieurs, doreurs, marbreurs, et restaurateurs contemporains, Paris, 1988.
Joblin, Alain. “Le protestantisme en Boulonnais (milieu XVIIe siècle - début XXe siècle),” Revue du Nord 74, no. 295 (1992), pp. 285-308.
https://doi.org/10.3406/rnord.1992.4733
Lasry, George, Norbert Biermann, and Satoshi Tomokiyo. “Deciphering Mary Stuart’s Lost Letters from 1578-1584,” Cryptologia 47 (2023), pp. 101-102.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01611194.2022.2160677
[L’Aubespine, Guillaume de]. Le discours de la mort de trés-haute et treés-illustre Princesse Madame Marie Stouard, Reyne d’Ecosse, [Paris, 1587].
Le Glay, A[ndré Joseph] G[hislain]. Mémoire sur les bibliothèques publiques et les principales bibliothèques particulières du département du Nord, Lille, 1841.
Leroy, Aimé Nicolas, and Arthur Dinaux. “Les blasons et cris d’armes des chevaliers des comtés de Flandre, Hainaut, Artois et Cambrésis, vers l’an 1500,” Archives historiques et littéraires du Nord de la France 4 (1842), pp. 5-26.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k32101154/f11.item
Leroy, Aimé Nicolas, and Arthur Dinaux. Les hommes et les choses du nord de la France et du midi de la Belgique, Valenciennes, 1829.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009720726
Leroy, Aimé N[icolas]. Molière et les deux Thalies: dialogue en vers, Paris, 1816.
Leroy, Onésime. Études morales et littéraires sur la personne et les écrits de J.-F. Ducis, Paris, 1832.
Paranque, Estelle. Elizabeth I of England through Valois Eyes, New York, 2019.
Wilkinson, Alexander S. Mary Queen of Scots and French Public Opinion, 1542-1600, New York, 2004.
AbeBooks. Flammulæ Amoris S. P. Augustini Versibus et Iconibus exornatæ …
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/Flammul%C3%A6-Amoris-Augustini-Versibus-Iconibus-exornat%C3%A6/30436608423/bd
Briquet Online
https://briquet-online.at
Goodare, Julian. “Mary [Mary Stewart] (1542-1587),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, May 24, 2007
https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/18248
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
https://www.oxforddnb.com
Pescheteau-Badin. Livres Anciens et Modernes, Paris, 24 Oct 2008, Lot 175
https://www.pescheteau-badin.com/lot/2595/602671
Piccard Online
https://www.piccard-online.de/start.php
Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts
https://sdbm.library.upenn.edu/
TM 1329
