736J.   Verstegan, Richard. (1550-1640)

A Restitvtion Of Decayed Intelligence: In antiquities. Concerning the most noble, and renowned English Nation. By the study, and travell of R.V. Dedicated unto the Kings most excellent Majestie.

London: by Iohn Bill, Printer to the Kings most Excellent Maiestie, 1628
                                                                                        Price. $2,300

Quarto, 14 x 17 cm. Second edition (the first printed in England). –**4, A-Z4, Aa-Xx4 (Xx4, blank, lacking). There are Eleven engravings by Verstegan himself, (copies/re-cut for copies printed in England but very faithfully so) that appear in the text including the title vignette of the tower of Babel. The engravings illustrate various Saxon Gods who are the namesakes of our ‘days of the week’,( in the style of an emblem book) The arrival of the Saxons in Britain, and remains of ancient fish and fossils found inland. This edition also has woodcut initials, head and tailpieces. 

This copy is bound in original sheep rebacked about 100 years ago.

Having one of my favorite titles of an early modern book, this book does not betray its promise. The contents list reveal the breath of subjects explored by Verstegan in order that unlike Joannes Goropius Becanus his opinion would not exceeded his proofs.   The ten Chapters are expansive, consisting of observations historical, natural, linguistic, cultural and moral . Published first in Antwerp on the eve of ”The gun powder plot” and dedicated to James I , wonderful illustrated by Verstegan. The book defies categorisation touching upon many genres of books, Lexicon, Natural history (geology and paleontography) , Mythology (This includes the first English version of the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin) and Historical national controversies, Catholic apologetics (and idolatrie of the old pagan Saxons.”).

Verstegan sets out by reminding us that

“We not only finde Englishmen (and those no Idiots neyther) that cannot directly tellfrom whench the Englishmen are descended, and chancing to speak of the Saxons, doerather seeme to understand them for a kind of forraine people . . . how ridiculous it mustseem unto the posterity of the Brittaines, for Englishmen to borrow honour from them,not needing to borrow it of any in the world.”

Graham Parry places this book in a historical context:

“The reputation of the Anglo-Saxons was further enhanced by an influential little book published in 1605, ‘A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities’ by Richard Verstegan. In the dedication to King James, Verstegan ignores the conventional flattering genealogy of the King from Brutus and Arthur, and plainly asserts that ‘your majestie is descended of the chiefest blood-royal of our ancient English-Saxon kings.’ (James would probably have flatly denied any such affiliations.) Verstegan offered a convncing theory of the Teutonic origin of the British people which he buttressed with sensible evidence from Tacitus and other Roman historians, supplemented with philological material astutely used. He also introduced evidence of cultural and religious similarities with the ancient Germanic tribes encountered by the Romans. He acknowledged that his theory of Teutonic settlement lacked the glorious appeal of the far-fetched derivations from Troy or Greece or Scythia, but none the less he maintained there was a peculiar virtue in the Nordic line that was every bit as admirable as any Mediterranean inheritance. The repossession of Britain by the Saxons after the Roman occupation was a reinforcement of the old Teutonic strength. Verstegan admired the hardiness and energy of what he called the English Saxons (whom we would term the Anglo-Saxons) in their military and political affairs, just as he admired the spiritual brightness shown by their eager reception of Christianity. Above all, the vigor of the race was characterized by the English language, which overcame the Latin of the Romans and resisted the French of the Normans. A terse, witty, and sinewy language, it expressed the plain forthrightness of the English spirit. Although it showed the scars of its battles with Latin and French, it needed no meretricious ornaments from modern languages, and Verstegan was hostile to any new borrowings from Europe, or neologistic inventions, for ‘our tongue is most copious if we please to make our most use thereof.’” (Parry)

Jane P. Davidson  explains Verstegan’s discussion of

“ the geology of Britain in his Restitution.  He posited that Albion, as he calls England, was once part of the continent of Europe and connected to France as a peninsula. One of the reasons which he gave for this theory was the presence of what we would call fossils and what he recognized as the remains of animals which were not living in the areas in which they were found. I have retained Verstegan’s original spelling:

“A third reason is, that in digging about two fadome deepin the earth, though in some places more and in some lesse, innumerable shelles of sea life are found, and that commonly in all places of these plain and even grounds both in field and town and heerof to be thoroughly informed I have talked with such laboring men as usually digged welles and deep foundations of buildings and they all agree that they do commonly in all places find an innumerable quantitie of these shelles some whole and some broken and in many places the great bones of fishes whereof I have seen many and have had some even as they have bin digged out of the earth. For a more plain description of the manner and forme of these bones and shelles of fishes and to give the curious reader herin the more satisfaction I have thought good in the next ensuing page to set down some of them in picture.” (page103)

After this comment Verstegan placed his illustration ofvarious bones and shells, and a tongue stone, so that his readers might take his meaning, more plainly, as he put it. He went on to comment specifically about the tongue stone and to give further indication to his readers that he was something of an empirical scientist himself. His statement concerning tongue stones seems to indicate that Verstegan understood these to be fossils, if not fossil shark teeth:

“… potters woorking their clay, which is gotten in some espetial places, do fynd in it certain things which are as hard as stone and of the very forme and shape of the toungs of some sortes of fishes, each with the root unto it to make it the very markable and right proportion of such a kind of toung in all respects, some being more than two inches long and some lesse then one inche. And they that thus fynd them do not otherwise call them but the tongues of fishes, which beeing so, and turned into very hard stone, is a strange thing in nature, but the lesse strange because nature in her conversions of other sub-stances into stone is often seen to woork the lyk.”

ETYMOLOGIES and Lexicons:

Anthony a Wood, in Athenae Oxonienses (1691–92). emphasized Verstegen’s linguistic skills, calling him “a most admirable Critic in the Saxon and Gothic Languages. 

Were-wulf.

This name remaineth stil known in the Teutonic

Were-wulf. This name remaineth stil known in the Teutonic, & is as much to say as man-wolf; the greeks expressing the very lyke, in Lycanthropos.

Ortelius not knowing what were signified, because in the Netherlandes it is now clean out of use, except just composed with wolf, doth mis-interprete it according to his fancie.

The Were-Wolves are certain sorcerers, who having annoynted their bodyes, with an oyntment which the make by the instinct of the devil; and putting on a certain inchanted girdel, do not only unto the view of others seemed as Wolves, but to their own thinking have both the shape and nature of wolves, so long as they were the said girdel. And they do dispose theselves as very wolves, in wurrying and killing, and most of humaine creatures.

Of such sundry have bin taken and executed in sundry partes of Germanie,and the Netherlands. One Peeter Stump for being a Were-wolf/ and having killed thirteen children, two women, and one man; was at Bedbur not far from Cullen in the yeare 1589, put unto a very terrible death. The flesh of divers partes of his body was pulled out with hot iron tongs, his armes thighes and legges broke on a wheel, & his body lastly burnt. He dyed with very great remorce, defyring that his body might not be spared from any torment, so his soule might be saved.

The Were-wolf (so called in Germanie) is in France, called Loupgarou.

Jane P. Davidson, A History of Paleontology Illustration. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2008

Jane P. Davidson, “Historical Point of View: Fish Tales: Attributing the First Illustration of a Fossil Shark’s Tooth to Richard Verstegan (1605) and Nicolas Steno (1667)” in Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia vol. 150 (2000).   https://www.jstor.org/stable/4065077?read-now=1&seq=14#page_scan_tab_contents

Graham Parry. The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr. The anglo-saxon Pantheon according to Richard Verstegen 1605, Published in The recovery of Old-English. Kalamazoo Medieval Institute Publications 2000.