MS.9318

WRIGHT, Thomas (c.1654 -?) Manuscript entitled "A Call to Repentance or a Warning before Judgement" [Circa. 1716. Dated on title page]. Thomas Wright recounts an unprovoked and seemingly mindless attack that he suffered 'in the year 1668' at the age of 14 and which left him disabled for the remainder of his life. He issues a 'Warning before Judgement' to those who have done injury to him, and to encourage 'all wicked men to leave of their boasting and Glorying of their wicked and cruel actions and to call their sins to remembrance'. Towards the end of his narrative, he describes the appalling attitudes of society towards him as a disabled man: 'I am become a scorn […] struck at me with their Cudgells others have struck me with their fists […] I am become now a prey unto the Children in the streets'. He is continually confronted with the prevailing attitudes towards disability: 'I am made to hang down my head like a bullrush and to goe heavily […] like a sparrow on the houstop which hath no mate'. This first-hand account of disability in early modern England is written by Thomas Wright at the age of 62, 48 years after the incident. Written in an easy-to-read script, the Wright's account offers an articulate affecting encapsulation of one man's suffering. With biblical quotations throughout, this account also offers a warning to the parents of children to 'bring up your children in the fear of the Lord while they are young that so when they are old they may never depart from it'

England, c.1716

Material: vellum; 30 leaves; dimensions: diameter 95 mm, length 155 mm

Purchased from Dean Cooke Rare Books Ltd, 2022.

The seller purchased the manuscript from a dealer in Lincolnshire who had obtained the volume in a house clearance.