Information is so abundant and readily available today through the internet and social media, it can be difficult to imagine the glacial pace of news reporting in the distant past, before the advent of printed newspapers and organized postal services. In the Middle Ages, long-distance travel occasionally enabled such news reporting through oral and written accounts. By the fifteenth century, personal letters and news sheets written on paper, readily available and far less expensive than parchment, facilitated dissemination of international news by merchants, diplomats, soldiers, clergy, and other travelers. Information included in personal letters could be repackaged or aggregated in news sheets, at first handwritten and later printed, to report on current events of broad geopolitical and economic interest. The Manuscripts Division has examples of both types of news media, complementing other holdings in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

The Ottoman Empire’s challenges and threats to the Christian West was a recurrent news theme from the fifteenth century and is the subject of the best-known international news report in the Manuscripts Division: Testament de Amyra Sultan Nichemedy (Garrett MS. 168), an elegant manuscript, decorated with the royal arms (see below), was produced in Bruges (ca. 1482) and then bound by the Caxton Binder in Westminster. The manuscript was for Edward, Prince of Wales (b. 1470), who ascended the English throne briefly as King Edward V (r. 9 April–25 June 1483), under the control of his uncle, the Lord Protector, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who ascended the throne as Richard III (r. 1483-85). The text of this manuscript, available in print, is a French translation of an anonymous Italian letter of 12 September 1481, concerning the death and funeral of the Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444-46, 1451-81), whose conquest of Constantinople in 1453 marked the the fall of the Byzantine Empire. The text also concerns the civil war faced by his successor, Beyazid II (r. 1481-1512).

From the mid-sixteenth century, news reporting by personal letter came to be complemented by organized scribal copying and dissemination of news sheets. The Manuscripts Division recently acquired a handwritten Genoese news sheet of around 1535 (Princeton MS. 239). This 21-line avviso, labelled “Copia de litera di Genoa de 22 Iulii,” offers an Italian news report, copied by a scribe on the recto of an unwatermarked paper sheet (28.3 x 19.5 cm) in a rapid cursive script, with abbreviations and corrections. The news sheet was presumably copied from a manuscript exemplar and dispatched to its intended reader by hand or post. The subject is the imminent defeat of the Ottoman Turkish Admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa (d. 1546) and death of the feared Turkish naval commander Aydin Reis (d. 1535), known as “Cacciadiavolo.” In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Genoa and Rome were close rivals of Venice in gathering and disseminating news. By the time it was written, news was already being circulated by printed news sheets, presumably in press-runs of 200 or more copies.

More common in the Manuscripts Division are personal letters conveying international news, such as a recently acquired three-page letter of 11 October 1480, with traces of a red wax seal (Princeton MS. 138.76). In it the Venetian merchant shipper Antonio Soranzo conveyed breaking news to Ierolimo Venier, member of an old Venetian noble family. The news was from the Greek fortress of Methoni, a town that the Venetians called Modon, located in the southwestern Peloponnese. Soranzo’s news dispatch concerned recent Ottoman military assaults by the forces of Sultan Mehmed II. Ottoman attacks were against a fortress known as the Castle of St. Peter (or Petronium) to the Knights Hospitalers of Saint John, and as Bodrum Kalesi to the Ottomans. The fortress built by the Knights Hospitalers was in the southwestern Turkish port city of Bodrum. They also had a fortress on the Greek island of Kos, twenty-four kilometers to the southwest. The Knights Hospitalers were able to resist attacks on both fortresses. Soranzo was a member of a Venetian family of merchant shippers, whose firm specialized in the importation of Levantine cotton from the Syrian ports of Hamā, Latakia, and Tripoli, for use in the European textile industry.

Italian news and diplomatic reports are found in other collections. A recent acquisition (Princeton MS. 138.77) is an anonymous Italian report dispatched from France around March 1552 to convey intelligence about the military preparedness of King Henry II (r. 1547-59), early in the Italian War of 1551-59. From stations across Europe and in the Ottoman and Persian empires, Venetian ambassadors prepared and submitted detailed diplomatic reports, which were later transcribed from archival copies for dissemination as bound sets of relazioni, such as Princeton MS. 157, dating from the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The Seventeenth-Century Italian Letters Collection (C0920) contains 97 letters and documents of various Italian church and political figures, primarily in Florence, Pisa, and Rome, 1598-1699. Many letters contain information about military and diplomatic history, focusing on the Farnese dukes of Parma, Spanish occupation of Milan, and political ambitions of the Holy See. Reporting on current events can also be found among the letters of Ottavio Falconieri (1636-75), the Papacy’s diplomatic internuncio in Flanders. His papers include 135 autograph drafts and secretarial copies of outgoing letters to Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597-1679) and others, chiefly written from Brussels between February 1673 and December 1674. This correspondence covers many subjects, including church affairs, international politics, books and learning, and everyday life. Also found in the papers is Affari d’Inghilterra, a 23-page political report on England (C1305).

International news reporting was not restricted to Italy. Many German, Dutch, English, and French printed examples in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections are preserved in the Folke Dahl Collection of Early Newsbooks, Corantos, and Newspapers, 1512-1787. The oldest example in this collection is a report by the German humanist and historian Michael Köchlin (or Coccinius) of Tübingen (1478-1512), De rebus gestis in Italia (Strasbourg: Johann Grüninger, 1512), a 24-page news sheet, which covered the Spanish siege of Bologna, the Venetian occupation of Brescia, the Battle of Ravenna, and other recent events. Printed news sheets can also be found by searching the online catalog under the subject heading “Newsbooks.” Printed news continued to coexist with personal news dissemination. For example, found in the Radcliffe Family Papers (C0926), of Hitchin, Hertfordshire, are twenty-seven business letters written from the Turkish city of Galata (near Istanbul) and eleven other letters from Aleppo (modern Syria), ca. 1703-57, relating in part to current political conditions that impacted trade and commerce between England and the Ottoman Empire.

For more information about holdings of the Manuscripts Division, consult the online catalog and finding aids site or contact Public Services, rbsc@princeton.edu

Garrett MS. 168, folios 14v-15r

The Manuscripts Division is pleased to announce that it has recently acquired the papers of the contemporary Irish poet and editor John Ennis, who is one of the poets included in the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Irish Poetry Collection. Ennis’s papers include 79 boxes of manuscripts, drafts, corrected typescripts, notes, literary and publishing correspondence, and other materials dating from the 1960s to the present. His papers also include files relating to his editorship of the Poetry Ireland Review (Dublin) and anthologies of Irish Canadian poetry. To date, nineteen volumes of his poetry have been published, beginning with Night on Hibernia (Dublin: The Gallery Press, 1976), which won the Patrick Kavanagh Award. He has also published with Dublin’s Dedalus Press and Book Hub Publishing. From 2002 to 2007, he co-edited three anthologies of Irish and Canadian poetry, and edited a further all-Canadian anthology in 2009. Ennis was at the Waterford Institute of Technology for forty years as Lecturer, Head of the School of Humanities, and Chair of the Centre for Newfoundland and Labrador Studies. At present, Ennis divides his time between Waterford, Canada, and his native County Westmeath, Ireland. Ennis’s correspondence is with fellow poets and authors, editors, publishers, and friends, from the 1960s almost to the present. Among them are Seamus Heaney, John F. Deane, Des Hogan, Dennis O’Driscoll, Brendan Kennelly, Macdara Woods, Neil Jordan, Michael Hartnett, Chris Agee, Noel Monahan, Seán Dunne, Paul Durcan, Frank Ormsby, Padraic Fiacc, Seán Lucy, Francis Stuart, Michael Longley, Peter Fallon (The Gallery Press), David Marcus (New Irish Writing, The Irish Press), James and Janice F. Simmons (The Poets House, Ireland), and others. The Papers of John Ennis (C1563) are described in the finding aid. For information about other Irish literary holdings of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, contact rbsc@princeton.edu

John Ennis’s Draft of “Orpheus”

The Manuscripts Division has just acquired four journals and related papers of Captain John Matthews (d. 1798), an officer in the British Royal Navy. He was involved in the African slave trade in Sierra Leone, first as an agent for the African Company of Merchants, 1785-87, and later as naval officer on coastal patrol, 1797-98. During the last fifteen years of the eighteenth century, the transatlantic commerce in African slaves was at its peak, even though British reformers, such as Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846) and William Wilberforce (1759–1833), were working tirelessly for the abolition of slavery, and the British government had begun resettling Africans in Sierra Leone. Matthews is best known for his book, A Voyage to the River Sierra-Leone on the Coast of Africa: Containing an Account of the Trade and Productions of the Country and of the Civil and Religious Customs and Manners of the People (London, 1788), which focuses on the natural history, geography, and ethnology of Sierra Leone. The book later appeared in a revised edition (1791) and a French translation by Nicolas-François de Bellart (1797).

Matthews’s book is comprised of a series of descriptive letters that he wrote during his residence in Sierra Leone to an unnamed English friend, 1785–87, with an additional letter on the American slave trade and his own illustrations, which he describes as having been “drawn on the spot.” Most interesting are Matthews’s explorations of Sierra Leone and insights into the African side of the transatlantic slave trade. He emphasizes the people he calls Mandingoes, a term for the Mande-speaking peoples of West Africa, including (but not restricted to) Sierra Leone. Matthews argued that the Muslim faith of certain African kings and their subjects led to continuing warfare in the hinterland against other kings and peoples who refused to accept Islam. This resulted in thousands of prisoners-of-war, who were then enslaved and sold to western traders for the Middle Passage to North America and the Caribbean. Despite compelling moral arguments against the slave trade, Matthews concluded that its abolition would not contribute to the well-being of Africans because of continuing religious wars and local enslavement. In making this argument, however, Matthews ignored the degree to which transatlantic demand for African slaves contributed to the trade

The first two Matthews journals, covering 1 April 1786–31 March 1787 and 28 April 1786–15 May 1787, concern the slave trade in Sierra Leone and negotiations with African kings and slave traders. The second volume also includes retained copies of four letters by Matthews, 20–25 April 1787. The third volume was the journal that Matthews kept aboard the HMS Vulcan, 3 May–15 September 1793, after he had been promoted to be the rank of captain in the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean fleet of Admiral Samuel Hood (1724–1816). He describes early stages of the Siege of Toulon (1793) his reassignment to HMS Courageux. In December 1795, Matthews became captain of the HMS Maidstone and on that ship kept his fourth journal, 1 January 1797–16 March 1798. In it he details his activities along the West African coast from 17 February 1797, in Sierra Leone but also Cape Coast Castle (now in Ghana); service in a convoy across the Atlantic and in the Caribbean, describing visits to leading figures in African coastal settlements; and official duties policing ships of various nations engaged in the slave trade (American, Dutch, Portuguese).

Of particular interest in this volume are Matthews’s “Detached Observations on the Manners and Customs of the Natives of Cape Gorse, Africa,” with headings, such as “Of the Craba & Acra” “Suicide,”, “Punishment of extravagance in youth,” “Veneration of the dead,” “Mode of ruining a man by costs of suit,” “Gaming,” and “Natural History.” This is followed by four watercolors by Matthews of the Sierra Leone coast, showing British colonial trading posts and anchored sailing vessels. He also offers navigational advice for sailing along the African coast from Sierra Leone to Cape Palmas. Along with the four volumes are a dozen separate items from the late 1780s, including his deposition on Sierra Leone and its “domestic slavery,” which he claims accounted for three-fourths of the population in the hinterland. There are also five watercolors of the Sierra Leone coast, signed by M. C. Watts as the artist; and three other watercolors (though with a shellac coating), similar to engravings in the second edition of Matthews’s book. Two are signed by Matthews and one by a Lieutenant John Larcom.

Three of four Matthews volumes complement A Voyage to the River Sierra-Leone on the Coast of Africa and provide additional information and illustrations not in the published editions. In his earlier career, Matthews served as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and saw active duty against the French naval forces in the West Indies during and immediately after the American Revolution. On the basis of these naval tours, Matthews wrote and illustrated The Maritime Campaign of 1778: A Collection of All the Papers Relative to the Operations of the English and French Fleets… (1779); and Twenty-one Plans: with Explanations of Different Actions in the West Indies during the Late War (1784). It was after this that Matthews became a partner in a series of slave voyages, though he would spend more time in the Royal Navy.

Matthews was from the English port city of Chester (about 28 miles southeast of Liverpool), which was a second-tier county town, with a population of about 10,000 in 1800. Matthews erected a monument in Chester Cathedral in memory of his wife, Anna Helena Matthews (d. 1793). Additional details about his life emerge from his last will and testament, on file in The National Archives (Public Record Office), at Kew. The will was made on Christmas Day 1797 and (with a codicil) probated on 15 June 1798, several months after the last entry in his journals. Matthews seems to have died a relatively affluent man, in part probably as a result of his involvement in the slave trade. His will lists ₤2250 in legacies, charities, annuities, and annual allowances—the equivalent of nearly $300,000 today. Family members mentioned in his will include a few born or living in Jamaica, Antigua, and New York. Among his personal possessions were paintings of the HMS Victory, HMS Vulcan, and the island of St. Lucia.

The finding aid for the Captain John Matthews Papers (C1575) is available online. These papers complement the Manuscripts Division’s growing holdings related to slavery in the Western hemisphere. See the earlier Manuscripts Division blog-post, “African Slavery in the Americas.” For holdings on European colonialism in Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, see the journals of Walter Dundas Bathurst (C1588), kept while he was serving as an officer of the Association Internationale du Congo, 1884-85; and the papers of General Sir John Grenfell Maxwell (C0583) and Brigadier General Herbert Cecil Potter (C1409), which in part concern the British army in Sudan, Egypt, and South Africa. For more information about holdings of the Manuscripts Division, consult the online catalog and finding aids site. One can also contact Public Services, rbsc@princeton.edu

John Matthews, Journal no. 4, with views of Africa.