Heythrop Library

This is the second part of a two-part post written by Professor Jane Stevenson, Senior Research Fellow in English, Book History, and Women’s Studies at Campion Hall, Oxford, about a manuscript in the Heythrop Library collection currently housed at Campion Hall. To read read part 1: https://heythroplibrary.co.uk/2025/12/05/the-life-of-mrs-dorothy-lawson-a-manuscript-part-1/

The published version and its relation to the manuscripts

The Life of Dorothy Lawson was first printed and published in 1851 by George Bouchier Richardson, a Newcastle artist and antiquary, at the behest of Sir William Lawson, heir and great-nephew of Sir Henry, who had died in 1834. (A reprint appeared in 1855, printed by J.G. Forster and Co. and published in Newcastle, and also in London by Charles Dolman, and the references in this post refer to this reprint.) Richardson edited the work and was evidently familiar with the Heythrop manuscript: in an ‘Advertisement’ prefaced to the text, he writes, ‘We are indebted to Sir William Lawson, baronet, for permission to publish the accompanying imprint of a very curious MS. biography of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, his ancestress through seven generations. The number of her descendants, down to 1798, exceeded two hundred.’¹ This is quite evidently reliant on Sir Henry’s preface of 1799 (on pages 2-3 of the manuscript).

However, Richardson knew of two manuscripts, which are likely to be the surviving Heythrop manuscript plus the lost Bruges manuscript which he had copied, which if so, had presumably not been returned to the nuns by Sir Henry. They may very well have given it to him; there were no Lawsons in the community by 1779, and they may have thought that he had a better right to it than they did. The printed version is orthographically variant from Sir Henry’s text, though otherwise apparently identical, suggesting that the older manuscript was used as the copytext. When Dorothy Lawson’s new mother-in-law rode out to formally greet the new bride as she came to her new home, ‘herself and her three daughters, the lady Rookby, Mrs Ingleby, and Miss Ja: Lawson were deked up in white sattine’².  In Sir Henry’s text, this is ‘herself and three daughters, viz. the Lady Rookby, Mrs Ingleby, and Mrs James Lawson, were decked up in white satin’ (page 25). He adds a marginal note on the identity of Mrs James Lawson. Sir Henry’s copy was made for the edification of members of the Lawson family: there is no reason to think that he would have considered it appropriate to preserve obsolete spellings. Richardson corrects him in a footnote: ‘by an error of the transcriber of two copies of the MS, the word Miss Ja: Lawson, is transformed into Mrs James Lawson. Sir Ralph Lawson, in his will dated Sept 4, 1623, gives “to his daughter Jane £200” ’³. The initial mistake was made by Ambrose Payne, who would not have been familiar with the Lawson family tree, or possibly by Sir Henry himself.

Richardson preserves Sir Henry’s annotations (and some contributions by Sir William), printing them as footnotes. His edition therefore preserves the orthography of the Bruges manuscript, and the notes from Sir Henry’s, corrected where he had additional information: he writes on page 46, ‘by the family pedigree her husband appears to have had four younger brothers, viz. Edmund, Anthony, James, and William’. In Richardson’s text, this is revised to ‘By the limitations in the settlement of the 10th of March 1597, it appears that her husband had five younger brothers. viz. Edmond, Anthony, Marmaduke, James, and William’⁴.

We therefore have a clear picture of how the Heythrop manuscript relates to both the original text by William Palmes and the published edition by George Richardson. Only one intermediary stands between William Palmes’ original biography, written in 1646, a copy made in the 1760s or 1770s, begun in Douai and finished in Bruges. This copy came to England in 1794, and was borrowed by Sir Henry Lawson in 1799. It apparently remained with him, since it was available to George Richardson. The only real mystery is why it ever left Brough Hall, given that Sir William was interested enough in his ancestress to commission an edition, and even to contribute information (there is a note attributed to W.L. on page 10 of the published work). However, much of Brough Hall was demolished in 1975, and what remained was converted into ten self-contained houses and apartments, so although the family continues to exist, the library may have been broken up in the seventies.

Jane Stevenson,
Senior Research Fellow in English, Book History, and Women’s Studies at Campion Hall, Oxford.

1. William Palmes SJ, The life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, of St. Antony’s near Newcastle-on-Tyne, ed. George Bouchier Richardson (London : Charles Dolman, 1955), p. v. ↩︎
2. Palmes, The life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, p. 12. ↩︎
3. Palmes, The life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, p. 12. ↩︎
4. Palmes, The life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, p. 27. ↩︎