St John's College S.17 (James 411)

John Allsop, commonplace book. English and Latin, c. 1688

 

John Allsop, Sizar and Fellow of St John's College (b. c. 1668): commonplace book, c. 1688. Most of the headings have no entries, and over half the book is blank. However there are many sequential notes, ignoring the earlier headings, on Cicero's De Natura Deorum, and a history of principal events since the Creation. There follow lists - often very condensed and abbreviated - of books bought, drafts of letters, short themes, significant accounts of laboratory experiments (pp. 155-8) and abstracts of Descartes' principles. Also a less scholarly composition, 'The Maids Deniall', at p. 117. At the end the beginnings of an index. See K. M. Burton, 'Cambridge exercises in the seventeenth century', The Eagle 54 (1951), 248-58.

Manuscript extra information

190x155 mm. 322 numbered pp. (lacks 1 and 2), and 37 further unnumbered. Inside front cover a College bookplate (eighteenth century) and the inscription in Allsop's hand: 'Allsopp pret 1s. 6d.'

Holograph. Paper. Leather binding on boards. Some staining through damp.