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SPENCE, Joseph. AUTOGRAPH TRANSCRIPT OF THE LOVE LETTERS OF HENRY VIII, probably made whilst on the Grand Tour, [Rome, 1732 or 1741].

$500

Manuscript in ink, in French and English, 4to (271 x 193mm), nine pages, unbound, slightly foxed and stained but generally in good condition.

The love letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn are in the Vatican Archives. During the eighteenth century they seem to have been regarded as a pretty curiosity for English tourists, who were frequently shown them (as royal English tourists are today). This transcript by Joseph Spence (1699-1768), friend of Pope, antiquary and (to some extent) the Boswell of the mid-eighteenth century, was presumably made whilst taking a young nobleman on the Grand Tour. He was in Rome for most of March-June 1732 and from December 1740 to May 1741, as his entertaining unpublished letters to his mother (BL MS Egerton 2234) testify.

It would seem likely from the notes he made on his second tour, now part of BL MS Egerton 2235, to which these bear some resemblance, that this exercise was made on that occasion.

Sopence undoubtedly wanted to publish these letters, for later ntoes on the first leaf pose a series of queries: 'Q Whether these Letters are all printed; & when; & by whom? If not, whether it wd not be worth while to have them printed? ...' He plainly did not realise that the letters had been printed in 1714 by Hearne, and he was surely writing before 1745, when volume II of the *Harleian Miscellany* printed them in full, with translations where necessary, from what was presumably a different transcript. The first leaf of the present MS contains a summary of the letters. In the margins and on the back Spence has written ina different ink the queries mentioned above, and also what seem to be directions to another transcriber: 'This First ona leaf by itself - Then a fair Leaf - Then ye Letters in the order as they are numberd, & not as they stand now. The different Readings may be flung at the bottom of each page.' It may be that the *Harleian Miscellany* printed the letters from that transcript, or a derivative.

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