Edward Conway and the Post-1615 Shakespeare Quarto-Collecting Route

Topic: Edward Conway and the Post-1615 Shakespeare Quarto-Collecting Route

1. Verified Sourced Facts

• Identity correction, 2026-07-09: the Shakespeare and drama collector was Edward Conway, second Viscount Conway (1594–1655). His father, Edward Conway, first Viscount (c.1564–1631), was the soldier, diplomat, and secretary of state. Their shared name has repeatedly blurred the packet's evidence.
• The second Viscount's Irish library catalogue survives at Armagh Robinson Library as Tituli catalogi sequentis in theologia, current object number P001209872, formerly cited as MS KH II 39.
• Armagh Robinson Library describes the second Viscount as a leading seventeenth-century collector and his Lisnagarvey library as containing about 8,000 volumes. More than fifty surviving books and the manuscript catalogue are documented through British Armorial Bindings.
• Daniel Starza Smith's locally reviewed UCL thesis reports that the second Viscount's catalogues collectively record more than 13,000 volumes: upward of 8,000 at Lisnagarvey, 5,000–6,000 in London, and another list of about 500 duplicate or imperfect books.
• Smith identifies William Chambers and Philip Tandy as the principal compilers of the Lisnagarvey catalogue between 1636 and 1640. H. R. Plomer's 1904 article prints Tandy saying that he was setting the books in alphabetical order and classifying them by size and subject.
• The Armagh catalogue is reported to contain 350 English plays from 1560–1640 and 619 plays in four languages. The Lost Plays Database, following Freeman and Grinke, gives 349 English plays; the one-item count difference should be acknowledged rather than silently harmonized.
• Smith, following Arthur Freeman and Paul Grinke, reports three apparently otherwise unrecorded Shakespeare-quarto entries: a 1597 Love's Labour's Lost; Henry 4 the first and second parte dated 1619; and The Taminge of the Shrew by W: Sh: dated 1621.
• Those three entries are not equally secure as evidence for lost editions. The two Henry IV parts may simply have been bound or catalogued together, and Smith notes that the Shrew entry may be the known 1631 edition misdated 1621.
• Independent early support for Conway's Shakespeare collecting appears in Plomer, “A Cavalier's Library,” The Library 5 (1904), p. 162. His reconstruction from state-paper book lists says that a list of about three hundred duplicate or imperfect books contained Shakespeare's workes and separately names The Tragedye of Othello the Moor of Venice.
• The 15 January 1621 Henry Neville III letter is TNA SP 14/119 f.38, Gale MC4319582233. It is signed Henry Nevill, dated at Billingbeare, and addressed to Sr Edward Conway knight at the Hagh.
• The 1621 recipient is probably the younger Edward Conway, the future book collector: he had been knighted in 1618 and spent most of the years after 1616 in the Netherlands. The identification is still qualified because neither wrapper nor calendar calls him junior, and the elder Conway also had continental business.
• The letter's references to being a darling of the Court & of the Muses, Christmas company at Billingbear, a Patronesse, and Conway's anticipated arrival document a friendly, courtly relationship. They do not mention books, quartos, manuscripts, Shakespeare, or Donne.
• The 24 November 1627 letter, TNA SP 16/85 f.53, Gale MC4323984326, is certainly to the elder Conway. Its wrapper calls him Lord Viscount Conway principall secretary; the younger collector was never secretary of state. The letter concerns Sir Richard Harrison and Windsor Forest walks, not book collecting.
• The Donne connection is multi-generational. CELM's John Donne introduction records that the elder Conway personally knew Donne, while the second Viscount collected verse and befriended the younger John Donne. The Conway Papers also preserve manuscripts connected with Donne's friend Sir Henry Goodere.
• Smith reports that the second Viscount owned the 1633 and 1635 editions of Donne's poems, An Anatomy of the World (1625 edition), and Ignatius his Conclave (1626). This establishes Donne collecting, but not a Neville-mediated transmission route.

2. Source-Control Position

• The packet now has a named catalogue witness for the quarto claims: Armagh Robinson Library P001209872 / former MS KH II 39. Because its folios are not publicly digitized, the three Shakespeare readings remain mediated through Freeman–Grinke and Starza Smith rather than newly transcribed here.
• Plomer's 1904 state-paper reconstruction independently establishes Shakespeare's workes and Othello in a second-Viscount book list, although it does not identify an edition.
• The direct Neville sources remain correspondence witnesses, not evidence of book transfer.
• BRO transcription sweeps found no direct Conway, Milton, Second Folio, or Shakespeare quarto witness in [local source path removed].
• Therefore the collecting fact is verified at scholarly-catalogue level, while the Neville-to-Conway transmission route remains a lead. It should not be written as a proved custodial route from Neville papers into Shakespeare print.
• The safer book formulation is: Henry Neville III wrote in 1621 to a Sir Edward Conway at The Hague, probably the future second Viscount; that second Viscount later assembled an exceptional drama library containing Shakespeare. No recovered document says that the correspondence transmitted a book or manuscript.

Status-Control Position

• Henry Neville III is documented corresponding with a Sir Edward Conway in 1621 and with the first Viscount/secretary in 1627.
• The second Viscount's Shakespeare collecting is now source-backed; the 1621 recipient identification and any movement of material remain unresolved.
• Do not combine the letter and library into a line of custody without an inscription, account, letter enclosure, binding, catalogue acquisition note, or other transfer witness.

3. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• Ken's First Folio material says there are letters from Henry Neville's son to Edward Conway and proposes that the relevant Conway son may connect to Shakespeare quarto collecting. This remains a provenance lead.
• Ken's John Donne material links Conways, Egertons, Donne-family patrons, and Shakespeare quarto ownership as part of a wider post-Folio reception-history problem.
• This is a provenance/transmission lead, not a proved line of custody.

4. Quoted Source Text

Henry Neville III to Sir Edward Conway, 15 January 1621

• Source: TNA SP 14/119 f.38; local transcription 1621 SP14 119 f38 transcription.
• Quotation:

“To my much honored frend Sr Edward Conway knight at the Hagh”

“if I had bin a darling of the Court & of the Muses”

• What it proves: Neville wrote familiarly from Billingbear to a knighted Edward Conway at The Hague in 1621; the Muses occur in the letter's courtly rhetoric.
• Limits: the text does not identify junior, mention a book, or establish a transfer.

The Armagh catalogue's Shakespeare entries

• Source: Daniel Starza Smith, John Donne and the Conway Papers, thesis p. 87, reporting Armagh Robinson Library P001209872 / MS KH II 39 and Freeman–Grinke.
• Quotation anchors:

“Henry 4 the first and second parte”

“The Taminge of the Shrew by W: Sh:”

• What it proves: specialist collation of the manuscript catalogue finds Shakespeare-attributed entries in the second Viscount's Irish library.
• Limits: the Henry IV phrase may describe bound copies, and the 1621 Shrew date may be erroneous. The catalogue folios still need direct image collation.

Plomer's independent Shakespeare book-list notice

• Source: H. R. Plomer, “A Cavalier's Library,” The Library, new ser. 5 (1904), p. 162; Internet Archive page.
• Quotation:

“a copy of ‘Shakespeare's workes’”

“The Tragedye of Othello the Moor of Venice”

• What it proves: an early reconstruction from Conway book lists independently documents Shakespeare print and Othello in the second Viscount's holdings.
• Limits: Plomer does not specify the edition and does not connect either book to Neville.

Tandy describes the Irish catalogue project

• Source: Plomer, p. 162, quoting Philip Tandy's letter of 26 December 1636.
• Quotation:

“I am setting Lord Conways books in alphabetical order”

• What it proves: the Irish catalogue was an active household project with explicit ordering and classification.
• Limits: Plomer does not provide a modern shelfmark for the quoted letter.

Local Twitter / synthesis layer retained as project history

• "We have letters from Henry Neville's son to Edward Conway."
• "I believe this one is to the son who apparently had a large collection of Shakespeare Quartos."
• "A 1621 letter from Henry Neville's son to Conway points toward the Conway family"
• Gale metadata: Sir Hen. Neville to Sir Edw. Conway.
• Gale metadata: SP 14/119 f.38
• Gale metadata: Jan. 15 1621

The first tweet statement is now too broad: one letter is probably to the son, while the 1627 letter is demonstrably to the father.

5. Citations

• Feinstein, Ken. Local Twitter material preserved in twitter First Folio and twitter John Donne.
• TWITTER BOOK ADDITIONS, Finding 34.
• Armagh Robinson Library. “Exploring the Conway-Rawdon Collection at Armagh Robinson Library.” Collection description and recorded talk by Brenda Collins and Daniel Starza Smith.
• Armagh Robinson Library, P001209872 (formerly MS KH II 39), Tituli catalogi sequentis in theologia; Library Catalogue of Edward, 2nd Viscount Conway. Manuscript catalogue; not publicly digitized at folio level during this pass.
• British Armorial Bindings. “Conway, Edward, 2nd Viscount Conway (1594–1655).” Surviving books, bindings, library history, and catalogue note.
• Smith, Daniel Starza. John Donne and the Conway Papers: A Biographical and Bibliographical Study of Poetry and Patronage in the Seventeenth Century. PhD thesis, University College London, 2012, especially pp. 85–88. document witnesses: starza_smith_conway_papers_thesis_vol1.pdf; verified page render: starza_smith-101.png.
• Freeman, Arthur, and Paul Grinke. “Four New Shakespeare Quartos? Viscount Conway's Lost English Plays.” Times Literary Supplement, 5 April 2002, pp. 17–18. Identified through Smith and the Lost Plays Database; full article not locally obtained in this pass.
• Plomer, H. R. “A Cavalier's Library.” The Library, 2nd ser. 5, no. 18 (April 1904): 158–172. DOI `10.1093/library/s2-V.18.158`; Internet Archive volume. document witnesses: nslibrarythe05libruoft.pdf.
• Bigger, F. J. “Lord Conway and his Books.” Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 2nd ser. 11 (1905): 95. Internet Archive page. Use for its Tandy/catalogue notice only; it conflates the careers of the first and second Viscounts. document witnesses: ulsterjournalofa11ulst.pdf.
• CELM. John Donne introduction, “The Conway Papers.” Catalogue witness for the distinct Donne relationships and archive-provenance problem. Repository example: TNA SP 9/51.
• Roy, Ian. “The Libraries of Edward, 2nd Viscount Conway, and Others: An Inventory and Valuation of 1643.” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 41 (1968): 35–46. DOI `10.1111/j.1468-2281.1968.tb01437.x`. Identified but not locally accessible for full-text review.
• Complete dated audit: EDWARD CONWAY SOURCE PASS 2026 07 09.
• Broader Conway/Donne bibliography and research leads: top books and articles.
• henry neville iii conway letters 1621 1627.
• Sir Henry Neville to Sir Edward Conway, 15 Jan. 1621. The National Archives, SP 14/119 f.38; Gale State Papers Online document MC4319582233. document witnesses: Henry-Neville-Conway.pdf.
• Sir Henry Neville to Secretary Conway, 24 Nov. 1627. The National Archives, SP 16/85 f.53; Gale State Papers Online document MC4323984326. document witnesses: neville-conway-2.pdf.

6. Notes on Access

• The collector, catalogue, and Shakespeare entries now have a scholarly source trail; the packet no longer treats Conway quarto ownership as an anonymous family claim.
• The direct Armagh catalogue folios and Freeman–Grinke article remain retrieval targets. Until they are obtained, quote the short catalogue entries through Starza Smith and preserve his cautions.
• The local 1621 and 1627 PDFs are high-resolution image witnesses, but only the first is even a possible connection to the book-collecting son. The second addresses the father in his secretarial office.
• The source pass checked document witnesses, Internet Archive, CELM/Folger, Armagh Robinson Library, British Armorial Bindings, Google Books, and BHO. Google Books and BHO produced no additional direct item; Ian Roy's article was identified but paywalled.
• The packet is ready as a research base because it now distinguishes collection history from transmission speculation. It must still be excluded from any proof chain asserting movement of Neville or Shakespeare papers.