Historical context: Manuscript and print
Many of the texts in Henry Bellingham's Book were copied (in whole or in part) from printed books and pamphlets circulating in the mid-seventeenth century. Although the scribes did not copy the printed texts word for word, they did sometimes copied whole sentences, paragraphs, and sections from the printed books with very few amendments. In a world when printed matter was cheap, and an amanuensis was not, what does this contradictory situation suggest?
The printing press had already influenced European communication and commerce for two centuries when Henry Bellingham started his manuscript in the late 1640s. When compared with the bespoke system of manuscript text production that predominated in the early fifteenth century, the mechanical duplication of texts via the printing press allowed publication to a wide audience cheaply and quickly. Printers attempted to produce the number of copies that the anticipated audience desired so that when the print run was complete copies were available for purchase at markets and from peddlers.
Printed texts were bought and sold, of course. They were also read aloud, borrowed, passed along to friends and relatives within letters, and otherwise shared throughout the English-speaking world. Reading was not necessarily a solitary activity, nor were printed texts as static as we sometimes think. People made manuscript copies of printed texts they borrowed before returning them. They copied down interesting passages that they wanted to remember. They recorded pertinent passages under headings in their commonplace books. And just as manuscript drafts were made in the course of fine-tuning an argument, handwritten copies with summaries, deletions and annotations could be a useful exercise in the course of deconstructing an argument. This process brought the text closer to the its reader, allowing him to take ownership of, and engage with, the text in ways unintended by the original author.
Although he could certainly read and write well, Henry Bellingham most likely employed an amanuensis (a personal scribe) to write for him. Retaining a servant for such a purpose was not uncommon among seventeenth-century elites. Anyone who could afford to hire an amanuensis likely did so, as having such a servant was a demonstration of social status. The ink used for writing stained fingers, and quill pens meant that writing was a slower process. Henry Bellingham was a member of several Parliaments; the volume of reading and writing required for an MP to conduct his business suggests that he probably kept his personal scribe busy. Francis Bacon, one of many contemporaries of Bellingham who kept a personal notebook, recorded his plan for how this book would be compiled, "The principall use of this book is to receyve such parts and passages of Authors as I shall note and underline in the bookes themselves to be wrytten foorth by a servant and so collected into this book."*
Two centuries after the invention of the printing press, manuscript culture was hardly dead. In fact, people used manuscript in much the same way as they had in the fifteenth century: for composition and copying passages to keep, distribute, or use as a crutch for memory. The primary difference introduced by print was that some texts could be distributed faster and more cheaply through mechanical duplication. In the case of Henry Bellingham's Book, we have a manuscript that is almost entirely composed of passages from texts circulating in print. The scribes carefully copied down the publication information so we can be sure that they were looking at the printed text (or at a manuscript copy of the printed text). This book is further evidence of the endurance of manuscript culture and its important role in the intellectual lives of English elites.
*Cited in Stuart Clark, "Wisdom Literature of the Seventeenth Century: A Guide to the Contents of the 'Bacon-Tottle' Commonplace Books," Transactions of the Cambrideg Bibliographical Society 6, no.5 (1976), 293.