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By Hillary Nunn with Rebecca LarocheIn her last post on College of Physicians manuscript 10a214 (26/09/2013), Rebecca Laroche examined the collection's attributions to one "Dnam Yelverton" to explore the varying statuses of women who contributed to the volume. This entry not only continues that line of exploration, but incorporates a new geographical twist that allows us to make some exciting new connections among the manuscript's compliers.Page 61 of the CPP manuscript contains three recipes, the first and third attributed to Mistress Wilmer of Bowe – "To cause to avoyde grauell" and "To driue away small pocks or measles." The second recipe, which uses dead dead bees to provoke urine, is labeled as "per Eliza: Downing."While Mistress Wilmer is not the only contributor to be directly linked with a place, her association with Bowe is particularly interesting. After all, if it is fair to associate Bowe with the area of London once known as Stratford-at-Bow, then the geographical scope of our volume grows even wider. As we noted in an earlier post (20/06/2013), the parish of Hackney on London's west side, as well as the town of Stamford, can already be associated with the manuscript.Mistress Wilmer, however, adds to the network in a second, even more interesting way. According to Charles Wilmer Foster's The History of the Wilmer Family, George Wilmer earned a degree at Cambridge, married Margery Thwenge before 1606, and resided at Stratford-le-Bow.[1] George died in 1626, and Margery remarried prior to 1630.[2]George Wilmer's will, however, is what offers us the most tantalizing connection to the CPP manuscript. The document's fourth witness is one E. Layfield, whom Foster connects to Edmund Layfield, preacher at the nearby St. Leonards-Bromley. The will was proved on 26 May 1626, just short of three years before Layfield delivered a subsequently published sermon entitled The mappe of mans mortality and vanity at St. Leonards.[3]As Rebecca Laroche will show in the next post, Edmund Layfield is very likely the husband of Anne Layfield, who stakes the only direct claim to the CPP manuscript. The inscription "Anne Layfield, her Booke of Physicke and Surger, 1640" appears on the flyleaf, and, thanks to Mistress Wilmer, we can be more certain than ever as to the nature of the networks in which she moved.But this connection between the Wilmers and the Layfields introduces new challenges as well. If, as we have been positing, the first section of the CPP manuscript, where Mistress Wilmer's recipes appear, can be associated with Calybute Downing and his mother Elizabeth, how might they fit into the network? The Downings certainly must have enjoyed a connection to the Layfields, since the book eventually made it into Anne's possession. The positioning of Mistress Wilmer's recipes, however, suggest that the Downings must have had their own connection to her east end household, the exact nature of which remains to be uncovered.[1] Charles Wilmer Foster and Joseph A. Green, The History of the Wilmer Family (Leeds, 1888), 114. The book is available via the Internet Archive, at https://archive.org/stream/historyofwilmerf00fost#page/n11/mode/2up.[2] Foster, 117.[3] The mappe of mans mortality and vanity. A sermon, preached at the solemne funerall of Abraham Iacob Esquire, in the church of St. Leonards-Bromley by Stratford-Bow. May. 8. 1629. By Edmund Layfielde Bachelour in Divinity, and preacher there.