“Stepes Towards Heaven Wherein My Forefathers Have Walked”: Spirituality, Family History, and Place in Elizabeth Isham's My Booke of Rememberance

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Notes

¹ The online project Constructing Elizabeth Isham, 1609–1654, directed by Clarke and Longfellow, offers a valuable introduction to the manuscript's travels and rediscovery, as well as several essays addressing the text's significance. Stephens' interpretation of Isham's account of the marriage negotiations Sir John undertook on his daughter's behalf and of her decision to remain single is also among the first scholarly treatments of the manuscript. See Stephens, “Courtship.”

² Laroche 121–35.

³ See Clarke and Longfellow, “[E]xamine My Life,” and Eardley.

⁴ See Stephens, “‘My Cheefest Work’” 192–95. For additional consideration of mothers' advice manuals, see Poole 69–88.

⁵ All quotations from Isham's My Booke of Rememberance refer to the transcription available at Constructing Elizabeth Isham, 1609–1654, where the work is at times labeled as Isham's Confessions. I have retained Isham's spelling throughout.

⁶ See Rye for transcriptions for many of these documents from the Lamport Hall records, including Sir John's “Rememberances,” 241–43. Rye includes a document by Sir John's father, Thomas Isham, entitled “The Mariage [sic] and Children of Thomas Isham”; see Rye 246–57. The first John Isham's records appear, without title, transcribed on 245–46.

⁷While it is impossible to identify John Isham's prayerbook from the description in My Booke of Rememberance, several scholars have written about the family's extensive book collections. Jackson offers a list of the books known to have been in the Lamport Hall library, but only a handful of the religious texts are dated before John Isham's death in 1596. Also see Gordon and Stephens, under 431–38.

⁸ For an account of John Isham's land purchases and their relationship to the enclosure movement, see Finch 8–28. What few details that can be gleaned regarding the structure of the manor house at Lamport Hall during Elizabeth's lifetime are available in G. Isham, “The Architectural History of Lamport Hall.”

⁹ See Finch 10. The genealogist Oswald Barron also notes that the Isham family is unique among Northamptonshire's landed gentry in that its surname originates from lands within the county. See Barron 141.

¹⁰ Quoted from an unsigned document in the Isham library, one that Rye concludes was written by a near member of the family. See Rye 278.