Ramsay's Essay originated as a long private letter he wrote when he was a ship's surgeon to an aspiring young officer, a midshipman about to be commissioned in 1760. The same material was given a further airing in 1762 to prepare a petty officer for the life he was hoping for as a commissioned officer. The recipient of this second letter was a seaman whose abilities had attracted the attention of Captain Charles Middleton, who advanced him to the command of a small armed vessel with the local rank of lieutenant. As he was a poorly educated man who might soon be expected to hold his own amongst the more polished lieutenants of the wardroom, Ramsay wanted him to have advice tailored to his situation. He explains he could find no book that gave the kind of advice he felt necessary for any young officer, and he therefore had his original letter of 1760, with the additional material of 1762 as an appendix, published anonymously in book form by a London printer in 1765.

Fifteen years later no comparable work on officer-training had appeared in print, while the need for capable officers had become still more urgent in the face of the dangers threatening Britain from her enemies in arms. Middleton, comptroller of the navy from July 1778, was in anxious correspondence with his friend and former shipmate Richard Kempenfelt, now chief of staff in the Channel fleet, as they considered ways to strengthen the navy materially, tactically and morally. Middleton sounded out Ramsay's availability to help with his paper work in 1779; and, with danger in the background and reform in the offing, the times seemed to call for a reissue of his treatise on the duties of sea officers. An improved and extended second edition appeared in February 1780, followed by a third later the same year, and others in translation. The time for anonymity had passed, and the author was declared to be the Reverend James Ramsay, chaplain in his Majesty's navy.

Despite its success the book was long lost to view and its significance overlooked. For many years the Essay was wrongly attributed to Admiral Sir Charles Knowles since the Bodleian Library's copy of the first anonymous edition bore his name on the cover.

It is an honor to contribute to this volume celebrating James Simpson, whose teaching, publications and friendship have been central to what being a scholar means to me. Among the many qualities of his work, I have found some to be particularly influential. First, clear-eyed argument, identifying key questions to ask in a way that invites us to investigate alongside him. Second, his willingness to take many kinds of writing seriously, despite the consensus view about their merits. Third, analyzing how a range of discourses (both in the sense of discursive fields in texts, but also critical discourses) help to not only communicate ideas but to form them. And finally (for this essay, at least), the ability not only to find larger patterns among texts and ideas but also to test those patterns against acute readings of individual examples. In James's work, then, we see both wood and trees – sometimes both the topography or ecology of whole regions and also the markings on individual leaves, with plausible connections made between those scales of analysis. Further, he draws on previous creative and critical books to develop a productive field for debate about a wide range of texts, ideas and institutions. Here I shall discuss one of those areas of debate: that of romance's thinking and its genre.

James is better known for his work in other areas (amply reflected in this volume), but he has written about romance several times, making powerful arguments about the structure of romances, their generic affiliation, and the way that they yield ethical value. This position is most clearly presented in “Derek Brewer's Romance,” but also developed in several other pieces. While giving support to some of James's insights – how his work helps to illuminate romances – I shall also ask how his work unsettles, or provokes debate, and how we might develop or modify some of those insights. In particular, how do we approach the relationship between overall structural coherence and local variation or counter-current; and how do unhappy endings pressurize our understanding of romance, which is, in James's argument, an inherently comic genre?

When Olive Schreiner (d. 1920) asked the question ‘the woman who is only a woman, what has she but her needle?’ in her posthumously published novel From Man to Man; Or Perhaps Only, she positioned clothwork as the expressive tool of the culturally ostracised and limited. She identified in women's ‘invisible stitching’ the artistic endeavour of those excluded from the male-dominated provinces of poetry, painting, and philosophy: the ‘voiceless expression’ of those prohibited from the masculine prerogative of verbal and linguistic articulation. Schreiner highlighted that in those stitched objects, fabrics, and cloths so overlooked as cultural artefacts, we can find written ‘all the passion of some woman's soul’, the hopes and desires of a womankind that has been systemically marginalised and disregarded, should we learn how to read them. The founder of the Irish Sisters of Charity in 1815, Mary Aikenhead (d. 1858), similarly described female clothwork as the province of the ‘ignorant’ in her writing. Whether the product of internalised misogyny or uttered with a more knowing awareness that a greater spiritual potential might be found in textile work, Aikenhead's statement sets up an opposition between Latin (male-authored) scripture and (female) clothwork as devotional domains and outlets. It illustrates a connection between women's relegation in the working of fabric, their marginalisation in theological discourses, and subjugation to mere obedience within Catholic ecclesiastical culture, as equally defined by androcentrism concerning vocality as the artistic vocations bemoaned by Schreiner.

Adso, the novice monk who narrates Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, set in a fourteenth-century Italian monastery, compares the curiosity monks have for books and knowledge with the sexual desires of laymen. This curiosity – which could spill over into the desire for forbidden knowledge – was one reason monasteries and monks continued to own manuscripts containing onomantic devices. However, the context had changed from the almost purely computistical nature of the early medieval corpus in which we find the ‘Sphere’ to much more diverse miscellanies in the later Middle Ages, when the ‘Victorious and Vanquished’ circulates in various recensions and languages too. Several monastic foundations can be positively identified as having owned manuscripts containing onomantic devices, and further manuscripts can be placed in the production and/or ownership of particular monks. The Cerne Abbey manuscript discussed below contains many items also on the Arts curriculum at Oxford University, which serves as a neat reminder that the medieval university and the monastery were inextricably linked. Oxford in particular had strong ties with both Franciscan and Augustinian priories from its foundation in the twelfth century. Many monks were sent to university to study, and all scholars were required to take at least minor orders before embarking on studies in the lower faculty of Arts. Monks and their books went back and forth between the university and the monastery, as did a vast array of texts and knowledge.

I identify two main reasons – seemingly polar opposites – as to why monks and monasteries took a keen interest in onomantic devices. For the first, Paxton's work on Cluniac death rituals is instructive. The Cluniac reforms of the Benedictine rule, which began in the tenth century, were extremely detailed about the rituals surrounding the death of any member of the monastery – a crucially important process that involved all the brethren. Therefore, the ability to accurately predict when someone might die or not was vitally important. So onomancies and other predictive devices were prevalent in monastic manuscripts.

[fol. 77v]

Mater Syona

¶ Mater Syon iocundare

Tantum decus dilatare.

Tibi uenit nouus dare

Noua martyr gaudia.

Comes Symon Thomam querit,

Causam Thome Simon gerit,

Et cum Thoma falsas terit

Leges per martyrium.

Thomas tytan orientis,

Simon sydus occidentis,

Vir uterque pie mentis

Pungnat pro iusticia.

Presul Thomas ueritatem

Se[r]uans dampnat prauitatem.

Pungnans dedit libertatem

Qua floret ecclesia.

Israelis Symon murus

Plebi clero profuturus

Pro utroque pungnaturus

Dura passus prelia.

Nunc uterque pugil fortis

Post occasum dire mortis

In agone sacre sortis

Migrat ad celestia. Amen.

Mater Syon (218)

Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Kk.4.20, fol. 77v

Mother Zion

¶ Be joyful, mother Zion, that your glory should increase so greatly. A new martyr comes to you to give new joy.

[5] Earl Simon seeks after Thomas, Simon conducts Thomas's cause, and with Thomas he crushes wrongful laws through martyrdom.

[9] Thomas the sun of the east, Simon the star of the west, each man with holy intent fights for justice.

[13] Archbishop Thomas, serving the truth, condemns wickedness. By fighting he bestows that liberty on which the church thrives.

[17] Simon was destined to be a defensive wall for the common people and clergy of Israel and to fight for both, enduring a hard battle.

[21] May each of those mighty warriors, after an end by cruel death in a martyrdom with holy result, now pass over into heaven. Amen.

Direct evidence of a struggle between two Tudor politicians for the same office is rare in itself; the more so over the Admiralty, because it seems only to have been in Mary's reign that appointment to this office was politically contentious. The replacement of Lord Clinton is documented from the State Papers Foreign simply because his chosen successor Lord William Howard was then serving as Deputy of Calais [II.5–7].

The Queen's marriage to Philip of Spain created an unprecedented constitutional uncertainty, never fully resolved. Unlike the consorts of later Queens Regnant, Philip had the title of King, and all official documents were issued jointly by the King and Queen. Philip's kingship was also expressed in regnal years running in complicated canon with those of his wife. Yet it was never clear just what power Philip had in his own right. While he was in England he acted jointly with the Queen; when he was in Brussels (which was most of the time) she sought his advice on all important issues. Philip also maintained direct contact with English ministers, including the Lord Admiral. For some while after his first departure in September 1555 he communicated (in Latin) with a select group of Privy Councillors, returning their regular reports with his minuted decisions and comments. One such exchange [II.8] shows the King acknowledging the Royal Navy's fundamental value to the nation's defence. Though there is a certain irony in this observation from the future sender of the Invincible Armada, the second half of Philip's reply reveals his real interest. The English fleet now under his control was a valuable accession in protecting the passage between Spain and her territories in the Low Countries. There was, however, a failure in providing a suitable escort for Philip's own crossing to Calais, prompting a frosty rebuke to the Lord Admiral [II.9]. Soon afterwards the Privy Council ordered a thorough review and overhaul of the navy, though the only direct evidence of this is an entry in the Council Register [II.10]. A year later this was followed by a radical reform of naval financing, replacing piecemeal supply with a fixed budget. For this we have only the registered decision [II.11], with no indication of the debate which prompted it.