CROMWELL'S SOLDIER'S BIBLE.
[To ene EDITOR ow THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In your issue of August 22nd (p. 273) you say that the equipment of Cromwell's Ironsides comprised a pocket Bible. This statement is very commonly made, but is a little misleading if understood to mean that the soldiers of the Commonwealth carried in their pockets or knapsacks a com- plete copy of the Bible. What they actually carried with them—" generally buttoned between the coat and waistcoat," and sometimes perhaps affording protection against bullets— was a slender volume of sixteen pages containing a selection of such Scripture texts as were deemed to " ehew the qualifica- tions of his inner man that is a fit Souldier to fight the Lords Battels." I have before me a reprint in facsimile of this little book, published by Messrs. Elliot Stock in 1895, with a repro- duction of the original cover of soft leather, fastened with strings, and with a short commendatory preface by Lord Wolseley. The title-page bears the date of 1643, and the imprimatur of Edmund Calamy, the famous Presbyterian divine, by whom the volume is said—I do not know on what authority—to have been compiled. The texts, as might have been expected, are taken almost entirely from the Old Testa- ment. It is a curious fact—pointed out in the interesting bibliographical introduction to the reprint—that, although the Authorized Version of the Bible had been in existence for forty years, the quotations are from an earlier translation— the so-called Geneva Bible of 1560—which was more in favour
with the Puritan sectaries.—I am, Sir, &c., 0. L. D.
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