Queens' College : Augustini Soliloquia

Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, 354-430

Queens' College

<p style='text-align: justify;'>In Latin and English, created in England in the early fifteenth century.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>An inscription, signed by John Hussey, 1st Baron Hussey of Sleaford (also spelt Huse) and chamberlain to Mary Tudor on its final leaf suggest this early fifteenth-century English volume to have been the property of Mary Tudor: <i>Thys bok ys my ladey Maryes [?] the Kyenges dautter. jhs keppe and send the kyenge a pryenche. John huse the kyenges treu seruantt</i>. As a philosophical work of one of the church fathers, it is easy to see how it might have interested the Catholic princess. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>A later inscription by Edward Martin indicates that he bequeathed it to Queens’ College in 1662 during his second period as Queens’ President (1631–44 ejected, 1660–2). However, his position as a high church figure linked to the Royalist cause introduces a note of intrigue in relation to his ownership of the volume. Library documentation indicates that Queens’ MS 25 was in fact owned by the library well before the time of the English Civil War and Martin's bequest. As a book replete with Royalist and Catholic significance, it seems possible that it was deemed vulnerable to roundhead vandalism, and was thus removed to safety by Martin prior to his ejection from the college in 1644.</p>