Humfrey Dyson (1582–1633) was a London

scrivener A scrivener (or scribe) was a person who could read and write or who wrote letters to court and legal documents. Scriveners were people who made their living by writing or copying written material. This usually indicated secretarial and ad ...

and

notary A notary is a person authorised to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents. The form that the notarial profession takes varies with local legal systems. A notary, while a legal professional, is disti ...

,. and notable early

book collector Book collecting is the collecting of books, including seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever books are of interest to a given collector. The love of books is '' bibliophilia'', and some ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. He was the son of, Christopher Dyson, a wax-chandler of the

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

of St Alban in central London. Humfrey himself may also have been a member of the wax-chandlers' company. Some accounts also identify him as a

clerk A clerk is a white-collar worker who conducts general office tasks, or a worker who performs similar sales-related tasks in a retail environment. The responsibilities of clerical workers commonly include record keeping, filing, staffing service ...

of the

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

of his day, though this is subject to doubt. Dyson is remembered as an early book collector, catering to the emerging market for political and historical information. His notebooks for 1610–1630 furnish a rare source for the study of tracts and books, and pricing in the book trade of that period. His collecting was focused on plays, tracts, broadsides, and proclamations. In 1618 he published, in

folio The term "folio" (), has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of books and printing: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging sheets of paper into book form, folding the sheet only once, and a term for a book ma ...

, ''A Book containing all such Proclamations as were published during the Raigne of the late Queene Elizabeth''. He wrote out the

will Will may refer to: Common meanings * Will and testament, instructions for the disposition of one's property after death * Will (philosophy), or willpower * Will (sociology) * Will, volition (psychology) * Will, a modal verb - see Shall and will ...

Henry Condell Henry Condell ( bapt. 5 September 1576 – December 1627) was a British actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. With John Heminges, he was instrumental in preparing and editing the First Folio, the col ...

(13 December 1627), and also witnessed the will and

codicil Codicil may refer to: * Codicil (will), subsequent change or modification of terms made and appended to an existing trust or will and testament * A modification of terms made and appended to an existing constitution, treaty, or standard form c ...

which

Nicholas Tooley Nicholas Tooley (c. 1583 – June 1623) was a Renaissance actor in the King's Men, the acting company of William Shakespeare. Recent research has shown that Tooley was born in late 1582 or early 1583; his birth name was not Tooley but Wilkin ...

, the

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

in Shakespeare's company, made on 3 June 1623. His association with these two notarial acts have suggested Dyson may have had links to

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

’s circle. His father's will, of 1608, refers to two daughters, Humfrey's sisters, respectively named Judith and Susanna. These happen to be also the names Shakespeare gave to two of his own daughters (

Judith Quiney Judith Quiney ( baptised 2 February 1585 – 9 February 1662), , was the younger daughter of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway and the fraternal twin of their only son Hamnet Shakespeare. She married Thomas Quiney, a vintner of Stra ...

, twin sister of

Hamnet Shakespeare Hamnet Shakespeare (baptised 2 February 1585 – buried 11 August 1596) was the only son of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, and the fraternal twin of Judith Shakespeare. He died at the age of 11. Some Shakespearean scholars spe ...

, and Susanna Hall). The Dyson household, in Wood Street, was not far from Silver Street, where Shakespeare was lodging in 1604. He was buried on 18 January 1632/3 at St Olave Old Jewry, London.Parish Register accessed on Ancestry.Com 19 July 2013

Manuscripts

*Dyson, Humfrey. "Catalogue of all such Bookes touching as well the State Ecclesiastical as Temporall of the Realme of England." MS 117, Codrington Library, All Soul’s College, Oxford.

Manuscripts

References

Further reading