Stanhope, Philip, 1st Earl of Chesterfield (1584-1656)

A Booke of seuerall receipts / for severall infirmities both in Man and / Woman, and most of them eyther tryed by / my selfe or my wife, or my Mother / or approued by such persons as I / dare giue Credit vnto, that haue / Knowne the experiment of it / themselves.

Compiler's holograph MSS., with additions by other hands.

2 vols. folio. 32 x 21 cm. 18th cent. tooled calf binding, lettered ABC (Vol. I), DEFG (Vol. II): one clasp (of two) wanting in each volume.

Ruled in red and foliated.

Written by several hands, many leaves blank, and some cut out.

The attribution of this MS. to Stanhope is based on the internal evidence of the entries: the first on fol. E.2. which speaks of a 'remedye for ranke Styans...tryed upon my owne childe Arthur Stanhope', the second on Fol. A.4. 'A Plaister for an Ague taught me by my Sonne Ferdinandos wife'. On A.3v the name of 'K. Chesterfield' appears and is presumably that of Stanhope's first wife, the daughter of Lord Francis Hastings, who died in 1636. On fol. B.2, is a reference to my Brother [in law] George Hastings.

For these reasons the bulk of the volumes' content would seem to date from the 1630s or thereabouts. There are, however, additions in other hands which probably have a later date: most noteably, there is a reference to chocolate in MS.761, which is first noted in England in the 1640s - the recipe in MS.761 is passed on from someone else, suggesting that by the time the recipe is transcribed chocolate has been in the country long enough by this time for it to spread beyond a small group and for recipes to be in circulation. Some of the volumes' content, then, may well be from the later seventeenth century.