Lister kept an ongoing record of his correspondence received and sent in folios 1-4 of his pocketbook, noting that My letters to be sent to ‘Mr Sharps Queens head in Fleet Street. To be left with Msrs. Capel and Kerby’
Lister continued in his pocketbook:
To my Lady M. Pye[1]
my mother[2]
To Sir William Hartoppe.[3] Weymouth
To my \br:/ Mich: Lister. Weymouth
To Rob: Grove.[4] Weymouth
To Mr Sharpe[5]
To Mr Briggs.[6]} 8br. 2d 1663, Gurnsey
To Mr Sharpe
To My B. Will [7]
To Mr. Sharpe Bordeaux 9ber. 16th 1663 by M. Camby bound for England
To my b. Will
To my b. Mich
To M Briggs
to M. Briggs. Bordeaux. 9ber. 16th. Post.
For my mother
For my Lady hartoppe[10]
For M. Peck[11] in the Sam[e] Packet, Bordeaux. Nov. 22.
Post Bordeaux. Nov. 23.
For my Brother Will
To M. Sharpe
To M. Peck
To M. Bataliers[12]. 9ber. 26
Marseilles.
Bordeaux. December 23d 1663
To M. Sharpe enclosed in M. Torreaines Lettres by Mssrs Capel and Kerby.
To Mr. Sharpe.
To my Lady M[other]. lincl.[13]
to Mr Faithorne att the blacke
Spread Eagle on Fleet=bridge[14]
To my brother Will: Enclosed.
Bordeaux December 28th 1663
Enclosed in Mr. Cambys to his Brother. To my b. Will.
Received from my b. Will London of the 27. Nov. English shells[15]
To my br. Will. Bordeaux
December. 30. Fr. st. [French style][16]
From M. Battaliers at Marseilles
December 15 Fr. St.
from Toulose M. Camby.
January 19th 1664
Montpellier. M Camby.
To by b. Will
M. Sharpe Montp. Feb. 9. 1664
and my L[ady]. mother
To my b. Will} Montpellier
To M. P and Mr. G.[17] Feb. 23. 1664
To M. Briggs
To M. Camby
To M. Camby my b. Will.
Enclosed. 15 Mar
To Mr. Pecke Vinsennes[18] May 6
Mr. Grove
Mr Sharpe
To my b. Will May 10 Vinsennes
My Lady
b. Mich
To M. Briggs Arles June 10
To my b. Will Aix June 20
M. Peck. August 13th
To my Father [19] Montp. August 1664
To M. Sharpe. 7br. 16th
Oct. 7th
To my br. W[ill].
To my L.H.[20]
To my M[other].
November
To my b. Mich
To my Lady
To Mr. Briggs
To Dr Guning[21]
To Mr. Pecke
To my B. Will
To my b. Will janvier 1665
To my B. Rich.[22]
[1] The first letter is to Lady Pye. Lister’s younger sister Jane married Hugh Allington on 26 June 1671. Their only surviving daughter, Barbara, married Richard Pye, a younger grandson of Sir Robert Pye of Faringdon, Berkshire (1585-1662). Sir Robert Pye was an M.P. as was Lister’s father, Sir Martin Lister, and both were in the Long Parliament; this may have been how the families were acquainted.
[2] Susanna Lister née Temple (d. ca. 1669), Lister’s mother. The letter was sent to or from her estate in Burwell, Lincolnshire.
[3] Sir William Hartopp (d. ca 1700) of Rotherby, Leicestershire, who was married to Lister’s half-sister Agnes Lister Hartopp (1630-1667). Lister also corresponded with their daughter and his niece Dorothy or “Doll” Hartopp.
[4] Presumably Robert Grove (c. 1634-1696) who seemed to be a bit of a gradual as well as graduate student at St. John’s College, Cambridge where he became acquainted with Lister; Grove was admitted as a pensioner in 1652, gaining his BA in 1657, then was made a fellow in 1659, proceeding MA in 1660, earned a bachelor of divinity in 1667, and finally received his Doctorate of Divinity in 1681. Grove would eventually become Bishop of Chichester, but at the time of this letter, he was chaplain to Humphrey Henchman, Bishop of London. See Grove’s letter to Lister of 9 December 1667, Bodl. MS Lister 3, fols 112-113.
[5] It is uncertain who Mr Sharpe was. One Thomas Sharpe matriculated at St. John’s College Cambridge in 1659, one year after Lister was made a fellow there, receiving his M.A. in 1667.
[6] Thomas Briggs (ca. 1633-1713) was a fellow and junior bursar at St. John’s College, Cambridge from 1661-62, and senior bursar from 1662-1668. Bodl. MS Lister 3 contains several of their letters whilst Lister was in Montpellier.
[7] William Lister, Lister’s brother, and son of Sir Martin Lister and Susanna Lister, née Temple.
[8] Presumably Lister’s eldest brother Michael (bur. Burwell Park 20 October 1678), who would inherit the Burwell Estate in 1670. On 25 August 1659, Michael married Anne Burrell Peers, widow of Thomas Peers of Alverston, Warwick.
[9] 9ber is September.
[10] Presumably Lister’s half-sister Agnes Lister Hartopp (1630-1667).
[11] John Peck (1639-82) was admitted as a sizar at St. John’s College, Cambridge in 1655, receiving his BA in 1659/60, and his MA in 1663. He was an esquire bedell from 1669 to 1682, a junior ceremonial officer of a university, usually with official duties relating to the conduct of ceremonies for the conferment of degrees. He was made a fellow in 1660. The seventeenth-century shelf list of the library of St. John’s College, Cambridge notes: ‘list books ‘from Dr Gower bought out of Mr Peck’s Library’, giving author, title, number of volumes, format, and price. The total expenditure is given as 53 pounds and 9 shillings. These items may relate to John Peck (BA 1659-60, fellow 1660, d. 1682)’. See St John’s College U.3, Shelf list of St John’s College Library, Cambridge, with a record of later donations and purchases. English and Latin, 1634-90, Special Collections. http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/st-johns-college-u3 [Accessed 31 July 2012]. Peck’s short biography is in Venn, Alum. Cantab, pt. 1, vol 3, p. 333. There are two letters of Peck to Lister extant in Bodl. MS. Lister 3, fols. 199-201.
[12] This may have been the ‘Mr Bat’, captain of the frigate Dove, mentioned in this pocketbook.
[13] Lincoln or Lincolnshire. The manor home of the Listers was in Burwell, Lincolnshire.
[14] This was the pub, the Black Spread Eagle, or Stationer’s House against St. Dunstan’s Church, in Fleet Street. See Henry A. Harben, A Dictionary of London (London, 1718), s.v. ‘Black Spread Eagle’. The pub was more properly in Bride Lane, off of the Fleet, and was mentioned by Samuel Pepys in his diary entry of 7 September 1663.
[15] Lister apparently had his brother Will forwarding him specimens for his natural history studies. Lister would go to found the field of conchology.
[16] Stilo novo dating (Gregorian calendar), as opposed to England’s Julian calendar.
[17] John Peck and Robert Grove.
[19] Sir Martin Lister (1602-1670) politician and landowner in Buckinghamshire and Lincolnshire who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 to 1648.
[20] Possibly Lady Hartopp. This could have been Agnes Lister Hartopp, Lister’s half-sister, or Dorothy “Doll” Hartopp, Lister’s niece.
[21] Peter Gunning (1614-1684), from 1661, Master of St John’s College, Cambridge, where Lister was a fellow. In the same year, Gunning was elected Regius Professor of Divinity, and was later Bishop of Ely in 1675. Gunning was a Royalist, serving Charles I in the royal court at Oxford during the English Civil War at the same time Lister’s great uncle Matthew was Royal Physician. As Martin Lister later received his fellowship by royal mandate at the Restoration, there may have been a political connection or connection of patronage between them.
[22] Lister’s eldest half-brother Richard (b. 1628) of Thorpe Arnold, Buckinghamshire. He was the son of Sir Martin Lister and his first wife Mary Wenman.
