ANNALS OF THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY. (continued 3)

Sixteen MS. treatises on Mathematics, Astronomy, and Ancient History, by Thomas Lydiat, were given by Will. Coward, M.D. They are placed amongst the Bodl. MSS., chiefly between Nos. 658-671.

A.D. 1700.

Considerable fears were entertained for the safety of the Divinity School and that portion of the Library which is built over it. About thirty-two years before, some failure had been observed in the roof of the former, which was rectified under the superintendence of Sir Christopher Wren. When Bishop Barlow's books were brought to the Library, in 1692 or 1693, the galleries on either side of the middle room were erected; and, as the beams of the roof of the School were then observed to give from the wall, they were anchored on both sides, under the direction of Dr. Aldrich. But the tight bracing had now caused the south wall, that which adjoins Exeter College garden, to bulge outwards, so that the book-stalls were found to have started from the wall by three and a-half inches at the top and two and a-half at the bottom; the wall itself was seven and a-half inches out of the perpendicular, and the four great arches of the vault of the School were all cracked. Hereupon Dr. Gregory, the Savilian Professor, was despatched to London to consult Sir C. Wren again, and, by his advice, additional buttresses of great depth and strength were erected on the south side, the weight of the bookstalls was removed from the roof of the School by their being trussed up to the walls with iron cramps; and the cracks in the vault were filled with lead or oyster-shells, and in some places with the insertion of new stones, and were then 'wedged up with well-seasoned oaken wedges.' This work went on through the summers of 1701 and 1702; and in 1703 some similar repairs were executed in some of the other Schools. The letters and papers of Wren on the subject, with the draughts, and reports of the workmen employed, are preserved in Bodley MS. 907. They are printed in [Walker's] Oxoniana, iii. 16-27.

In this year died Henry Jones, M.A., Vicar of Sunningwell, Berks[155]. He bequeathed to the Library sixty volumes in MS., very miscellaneous in character, and chiefly of the 16th and 17th centuries. Some of them had belonged to Bishop Fell. The bequest probably came to Oxford some few years after Mr. Jones' death, as the books are entered (in a full and accurate list) by Hearne, in the Benefaction Book, among the gifts of about the years 1706-12. It was from a modern transcript among these that Hearne edited the Historia Regum Angliæ of John Ross or Rouse; and seventy-one documents from No. 23, which is an Hereford Chartulary, were printed by Rawlinson at the end of his History of Hereford, 8^o, Lond. 1717. One volume has for many years been missing from the collection, viz., a funeral oration, by John Sonibanck, on the death of Queen Elizabeth of York, in 1503. A list of the MSS. is printed from the Benefaction Register, in Uffenbach's Commercium Epistolicum, pp. 200-208.

Between 1700 and 1738 Sir Hans Sloane is recorded to have given considerably more than 1400 volumes, together with his picture in 1731; but the majority of them do not appear to have been considered of much value, and only 415 are specified by name in the Benefaction Register. Dr. Hyde, in a letter to Hudson, which accompanied a list of the books for which the latter had asked with a view to registration, says he scarce thinks the entry to be 'for the credit of the business, nos inter nos[156].' But Hudson appears to have thought that the omission proceeded rather from carelessness, for, in a letter to Wanley, he says that he thinks Hyde assigned 'non causa pro causa[157].'

A.D. 1701.

The long-entertained idea of resigning the Librarianship was at length carried out by Dr. Thomas Hyde in this year, for the reasons given in the following letter, which was addressed by him to the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, probably Dr. Charlett. It is here printed from a copy sent by Hyde to Wake, then Rector of St. James, Westminster, and preserved amongst the Wake Correspondence in the library of Ch. Ch.:—

'March 10, 1700/01, 'Christ Church, Oxon.

'Sir,—I being a little indisposed by the gout, acquaint you thus by letter, that what I long agoe designed (as you partly knew) I am now about to put in execution. That is to say, I shall shortly lay down my office of Library-keeper, about a month hence, which resolution I do now declare, and I do hereby give you timely and statuteable notice of the same as Pro-Vice-Chancellor, entreating that, as the Statute requires, you will in two days order Mr. Cowper to draw a Programma to be set up at the Schools to the sence of the enclosed paper, he best knowing forms and lawyers' Latin.

'Among the Bodleian Statutes in the Appendix, in the Statute de causis amovendi aut libere recedendi, you will find that upon the Library-keeper's notice thus given, you are in two days' time to fix up the programma preparatory to make it known that about a month hence (which is about the end of this term) that office will be actually resigned and void.

'My reasons for leaving the place are two, viz. one is because (my feet being left weak by the gout) I am weary of the toil and drudgery of daily attendance all times and weathers; and secondly, that I may have my time free to myself to digest and finish my papers and collections upon hard places of Scripture, and to fit them for the press[158]; seing that Lectures (though we must attend upon them) will do but little good, hearers being scarce and practicers more scarce.

'I should have left the Library more compleat and better furnish'd but that the building of the Elaboratory[159] did so exhaust the University mony, that no books were bought in severall years after it. And at other times when books were sometimes bought, it was (as you well know) never left to me to buy them, the Vice-Chancellor not allowing me to lay out any University mony. And therefore some have blamed me without cause for not getting all sorts of books.

'Before the Visitations I did usually spend a month's time in preparing a list of good books to offer to the Curators; but I could seldom get them bought, being commongly (sic) answered in short, that they had no mony. Nay, I have been chid and reproved by the Vice-Chancellor for offering to put them to so much charge in buying books. These things at last discouraged me from medling in it. But, however, I leave the Library three times bigger than I found it[160], and furnished with a Catalogue of which I found it destitute. I wish the University a man who may take as much pains and drudgery as I have done whilst I was able to do it.

'I entreat you with all speed to cause the Register to put up the programma signed with your name, that so things may be regularly and statutably dispatched in order, until the time of actuall resignation shall come.

'In the mean time I remain, 'Your humble servant, 'THOMAS HYDE.'

John Hudson, M.A., of Queen's, afterwards D.D. and Princ. of St. Mary Hall, was elected in Hyde's room; he was opposed by J. Wallis, M.A., of Magd., the Laudian Professor of Arabic, but was chosen by 194 votes to 173[161]. A letter to him from Hyde on his election, with advice about the entering of Sir H. Sloane's books in the Register, the augmentation of Mr. Crabbe's salary, the Catalogues and the Statutes, is printed in [Walker's] Letters by Eminent Persons, i. 173. He had previously, in 1696-98, given seventy books to the Library, and in 1705-10 he added nearly 600. Hyde did not long survive his resignation, dying before one year had elapsed, on Feb. 18, 1702. He was buried at Handborough, near Oxford.

In this year Thomas Hearne, the famous antiquary, was appointed Janitor, or Assistant, in the Library. He tells us in his Autobiography (p. 10) that, from the time of his taking the degree of B.A. in Act term, 1699, 'he constantly went to the Bodleian Library every day, and studied there as long as the time allowed by the Statutes would admit,' and that the fact of this his 'diligence being taken notice of by all persons that came thither, and his skill in books being likewise well known to those with whom he had at any time conversed,' occasioned Hudson's appointing him to be an Assistant immediately upon his own election as Librarian. It appears, from the Visitors' Book, that a payment of £10 was made to him in this year, and that, in the next year, £30 were voted to him for his assistance in making an Appendix to the Catalogue of printed books[162], and for enlarging and correcting the Catalogues of MSS. and Coins. Extra payments of 50s. were also made to him in 1704 and 1706, and of 20s. in 1709.

The Bodley Speech. See 1682.

A.D. 1702.

A considerable number of printed books were given by Steph. Penton, B.D., and a collection of 500 coins was bequeathed about this time by Tim. Nourse, of Univ. Coll.

A.D. 1704.

The name of John Locke appears in the Register, as the donor of his own works (which he gave at Hudson's request), together with some others, including, with an honourable fairness, those of Bishop Stillingfleet written in controversy with himself. As Locke's expulsion from Ch. Ch., in 1684, by royal mandate, for political reasons, is sometimes, with an injustice which he himself would doubtless have warmly repudiated, represented as if it had been the act of Oxford itself, it is worth while to quote the language in which this gift from him, twenty years afterwards, is recorded, and recorded, too, by the pen of the earnest and conscientious Jacobite, Thomas Hearne: 'Joannes Lock, generosus, et hujus Academiæ olim alumnus, præter Opera ab ipso edita, ob ingenii elegantiam, doctrinæ varietatem, et philosophicam subtilitatem, omnibus suspicienda (here follow the titles of his own works), insuper ex suo in optimas artes amore, animoque ad supellectilem literariam augendam propenso, Bibliothecæ huic dono dedit libros sequentes;' scil. Churchill's Voyages and Travels, 4 vols., 1704, Stillingfleet's Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity, Stillingfleet's Answer to Locke, and Rob. Boyle's History of the Air. Locke desired, in a codicil to his will, that in compliance with a second request from Hudson, all his anonymous works should also be sent to the Library[163].

William Ray, formerly consul at Smyrna, presented about 600 coins, chiefly Greek, which E. Lhwyd (who reported their number to be about 2000) said he had been told had been collected at Smyrna by his cook[164]. But the Benefaction Register records that they were obtained by Ray from the widow of one 'domini Dan. Patridge,' who had himself intended to present them to the University. They were put in order, and a Catalogue made of them, some years afterwards, by Hearne, who intended to have given the Catalogue to the Library, 'had not,' he says, 'the ill usage he afterwards met with there obliged him to alter his mind[165].' Ray also gave a Turkish almanac.

A.D. 1706.

The supposed original MS. of The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety, by the author of The Whole Duty of Man, was given by Mr. Keble, the London bookseller. It is now numbered Bodl. MS. 21. Dr. Aldrich was of opinion that it is not in the author's own hand, but copied in a disguised hand by Bishop Fell. Hearne thought it to be in a disguised hand of Sancroft's; but the resemblance is very slight indeed[166].

A.D. 1707.

Six volumes of Archbishop Usher's Collectanea, with two or three other MSS. which had belonged to him, were given to the Library by James Tyrrell, the historian, who was the archbishop's grandson. He had placed them previously in the hands of Dr. Mill, for use by him in his edition of the Greek Test., and it was about a week before Mill's death, June 21, 1707, that they were transferred, together with a gift from Mill of various printed books, to the Library[167]. They are now placed among the Rawlinson Miscellaneous MSS., 1065-1074, and one volume containing various readings in the Gr. Test., is numbered Auct. T. v. 30. Other volumes of his MSS. Collections in the Library are Barlow, 10 and 13; e Musæo, 46 and 47; Rawl. Misc. 225, 280; Rawl. Letters, 89, and Rawlinson C. 849, 850, which last were given to Hearne by Tyrrell. Hearne has printed some extracts at the end of Gul. Neubrig. iii. 804. Six Samaritan and other MSS. which belonged to Usher are now in the class called Bodl. Orient.

By the bequest of Dr. Humphrey Hody the Library acquired some 400 or 500 volumes, being all those in his own collection which were wanting here, together with his MSS. Collectanea. These last, amounting to twenty-three volumes, are now numbered Bodl. Addit. 1. D. 1-4, 2. B. 1-16, 2. C. 1-3.

Thomas, Archbishop of Gocthan, in Armenia, visited England on an errand which seems to have justly excited great sympathy and attention. Sensible of the low condition of his fellow-countrymen, through their want of means of instruction, and being earnestly anxious to do something towards their elevation, he had spent some forty years in travels through Europe and Asia for the purpose of procuring books, establishing printing-presses, educating young men, and obtaining help for the furtherance of his Christian and patriotic projects. His first printing establishment, at Marseilles, was ruined by the mismanagement and fraud of those to whom it was entrusted. He then, for ten years, carried on a press at Amsterdam, where he printed, in Armenian, the New Testament, the Prayers and Hymns of the Church, a translation of Thomas à Kempis, and several other theological works, together with some in geography, history, and science. But troubles and trials again overtook him; disputes and law-suits involved him in debt; one hundred books, which he shipped for Armenia in 1698, were taken at sea, and so never reached their destination. And so, poor and sorrowful, in extreme old age, the Archbishop came to England to seek for help, recommended by Dr. John Cockburn, the English Minister at Amsterdam. He was well received by the Archbishops, and Sharp, of York, procured him an interview with the Queen, who gave him some assistance. Then, recommended by Bishop Compton[168], of London, he came to Oxford. What he received in the way of the help which he most of all needed, deponent sayeth not; let us hope it was not small. What he received in the way of honour, and what he did to cause the introduction of his name in these Annals, Hearne tells, in his own interesting way, in his Diary[169]:—

'May 24. Last night came to Oxon one of the Armenian Patriarchs. He is Patriarch of the Holy Cross in Gogthan (near Mount Ararat) in Greater Armenia. He subscribes himself in his speech to the Queen in the last month, by translation, Thomas. The next day he was attended to the publick Library by Dr. Charlett, Pro-Vice-Chancellor. At the entrance, Dr. Hudson, the Keeper, made him a handsome complement in Latin; but the Patriarch, being about 90 years of age, and understanding no Latin, nor Greek, nor any European language but Italian, took but little notice of any thing. He afterwards was carried to Dr. Charlett's lodgings, where he was treated.

'May 29. This day was a Convocation in the Theatre, when the Archbishop of the Holy Cross in Gocthan was created Doctor of Divinity, and his nephew, Luke Nurigian, and Mr. Cockburn, son of Dr. Cockburn, were created Masters of Arts. The day before, the Archbishop presented to the publick Library several books in Armenian which he has caused to be printed. Mr. Wyatt, the orator, spoke a speech in his commendation, and presented him, the Queen having been pleased to let us be without a Professor. During the Convocation, several papers printed at the Theatre were given to the Doctors, Noblemen, and some others, entitled, Reverendissimi in Christo Patris Thomæ, Archiepiscopi Sanctæ Crucis in Gocthan Perso-Armeniæ, peregrinationis suæ in Europam, pietatis et literarum promovendarum caussa susceptæ, brevis narratio; una cum dicti Archiepiscopi ad serenissimam Magnæ Britanniæ Reginam oratiuncula ejusque responso. Accedunt de eodem Archiepiscopo testimonia ampla et præclara. Printed upon two sheets, folio[170].'

In another volume of memoranda[171], Hearne adds the following notice of one of the books given by the Archbishop: 'Amongst other books which he gave to the Bodleian Library is a History, at the beginning of which the Archbishop's nephew put the following memorandums: "Historia Nationis Armeniæ, a Moise Chorenensi grammatico, doctore Armeno. Amst. 1695. Maii 28, 1707, Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ dono dedit reverendiss. Thomas Archiep. S. Crucis in Majori Armenia. Per manum ejusd. reverendiss. nepotis, Lucæ Nurigianidis." Underneath which is written, at the motion of Dr. Charlett, and by the direction of the said Archbishop's nephew: "Auctorem istius libri floruisse traditur seculo quarto post Christum."' The book is now numbered, 8^o V. 134 Th.

A.D. 1709.

In this year the first Copyright Act was passed, which required the depositing of copies of all works entered at Stationers' Hall at nine libraries in England and Scotland. This number was increased upon the Union with Ireland to eleven, but finally reduced to five (British Museum; Oxford; Cambridge; Advocates' Library, Edinburgh; and Trinity College, Dublin) by 5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 110.

A.D. 1710.

Dr. Richard Middleton Massey, formerly of Brasenose College, gave (with a few other books) a very curious and valuable series of Registers of the Parliamentary Committee for augmentation of poor vicarages, from 1645 to 1652, in eight folio volumes, with one earlier volume containing a list of livings in the diocese of Norwich, with their values and incumbents. To local antiquaries these proceedings are full of interest, while their historical and biographical value is equally great. They are now numbered Bodl. MSS. 322-330. Of the printed books given by Dr. Massey, most of those in octavo were placed at the end of Bishop Barlow's books, in the shelves marked D. Linc.

Three thousand pounds were offered by the University for the library of Isaac Vossius, but refused. But the books were shortly afterwards sold to the University of Leyden for the same sum[172].

A.D. 1711.

A watch which had belonged to Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is said to have been presented by Mr. Ralph Howland, of Maidenhead.

Grabe's Adversaria. See 1724.

A.D. 1712.

'July 19, Died Mr. Joseph Crabb, Under-keeper of the Bodleian Library, having kept in ever since this day sennight. He died of a rheumatism, occasion'd by a careless sort of life. He was, however, an honest harmless man. He was buried on Monday night following (between 7 and 8 o'cl.) in Haly-well Churchyard, very privately. Upon his coffin was put, I. C. ag. 38. 1712; but I heard him say some time since he was 39 years old[173].' He is described in the following caustic terms by Zach. Conr. Uffenbach, in a letter written in 1713, and printed in his Commercium Epistolicum[174]:—

'Alteri [præfecto Bibliothecæ], nomine Crab, caput vacuum cerebro est, lepidum alias, dignusque homo quem ridiculo illo encomio, quo tamen multi serio egregios viros onerarunt, ornetur, vociteturque Helluo, non librorum tamen sed præmiorum, quæ ab exteris Bibliothecam hanc invisentibus avide excipit, statimque cauponibus reddit pro liquore, ad guttur colluendum purgandumque a pulvisculo, qui librorum tractationem velut umbra aut nebula comitari solet. Quamvis non ejus, sed tertii infimique Bibliothecarii, hoc sit muneris, ut libros in loculos reponat, quævis in ordinem redigat atque emundet.'

The date of Crabb's appointment has not been ascertained, but it must have been previous to 1699, as on Nov. 8 of that year an order appears in the Visitors' Book for an extra payment to him of £10[175]; other additional payments of £5 and 50s. are made to him annually until 1710. Two vols. of an index to texts of printed sermons, ending about the year 1708, (now Bodl. MSS. 47 and 657,) which were, doubtless, intended to form a continuation of Verneuil's little book, are said in an old entry in the Catalogue to be by 'Mr. Crabb.' The following brief account of him is given in Rawlinson's MSS. collections for a continuation of Wood's Athenæ:—

'Joseph Crabb, son of Will. Crabb, clerk, born at Child-Ockford in Dorsetshire on —— 1674; educated in grammar learning at ——; matriculated as a member of Exeter College, 18 July 1691; took the degree of B.A. 17 Oct. 1695; became Sub-librarian at the public library; removed to Gloucester Hall, where he became M.A., 4 July 1705, and died ——.'

Rawlinson goes on to attribute to him (as his solitary claim to a place in the Athenæ) a Poem on the late Storm, Lond. 1704, fol., but this was written (as well as a Latin poem In Georgium reducem, Lond. 1719, fol.) by John Crabb, Fellow of Exeter College (B.A., Oct. 15, 1685; M.A., June 19, 1688), who was also a Sub-librarian at an earlier period, but the date of whose entrance into office as well as of quittance is not known. The latter became Rector of Breamore, Hants, in 1709, where he died in 1748 at the age of eighty-five. He is remarkable for having married four wives, all of whom lie buried with him in his church. The third of these, Grace Shuckbridge, became his wife when he was aged seventy-six and she was forty-nine; the last (who survived until March 13, 1777) was thirty-six when she took him, at the age of eighty-one, for better or worse. There is a handsome marble tablet to his memory on the north wall of the Chancel of Breamore Church, bearing the following inscription, and surmounted by his arms (scil., on a field gules a chevron between two fleur-de-lis above and a crab displayed below or; crest, a demi-lion rampant or) painted in their proper colours:—

'H. S. E. Reverend. Johan. Crabb, A. M. è Coll. Exon quondam Socius Oxon., Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ Sub-Librarius, et a sacris olim Episc. Fowler, hujus Parochiæ Minister residens amplius XXXVIII ann. Vir doctus, pius, generosus, in Ecclesiâ Orthodoxus, in Republicâ fidelis, et omnibus liberalis. Author Georgianæ et aliorum Carminum celebrium latine et anglice, Obiit tandem XIII Id. Martii, Anno ætat. suæ LXXXV., Æræ Christianæ MDCCXLVIII[176].'

On July 22, Thomas Hearne was appointed Second-keeper by Dr. Hudson, in the room of Crabb, while still retaining his post as Janitor, 'with liberty allow'd him of being keeper of the Anatomy schoole, or Bodleian repository, on purpose to advance the perquisites of the place, which are very inconsiderable[177],' but with the proviso that the salary of the janitor's place should go to an assistant officer. By this arrangement Hearne retained the keys, so that he could go in and out when he pleased[178].

'Sept. 16, Dr. Hudson told me to-day that some have complain'd that books in the Publick Library are not so easily come at as usual. I am glad there is such a complaint. I am afraid the complainers are such as us'd to steal books from the Library, and, upon that account, are concern'd that they are more strictly look'd after than formerly[179].'

A.D. 1713.

The learned and munificent Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop successively of Cashel, Dublin, and Armagh, on his death, Nov. 2, in this year, bequeathed to the Library a very large and valuable gathering of Oriental MSS., which had been chiefly procured for him in the East by Huntington, and at the sale of Golius' library, at Leyden, in October, 1696, by Bernard. The collection numbers at present 714 volumes, but probably some of these may have been books added for convenience' sake from other sources. Many of them bear the motto of some former owner (qu. Golius?), somewhat like in form to Selden's, but better in spirit, πανταχη την αληθειαν.' It is strange that no notice of this liberal gift is found in any of the Library Registers, and it is only from a passing mention in Hearne's preface to Camden's Elizabeth (p. lxvi.) that we find it was a death-bed legacy, and consequently learn the date of its acquisition. Hearne there says that the books were placed in the Library 'in tenebris;' and this expression was made one of the subjects of complaint against him when prosecuted in 1718 in the Vice-Chancellor's court on account of that preface. He then replied that the expression was correct, for that they were placed in a dark corner to which access was only had through a trap-door, but that he himself had put them there for want of a better place. He had wished to deposit them in one of the rooms in the Picture Gallery, but Dr. Hudson kept that for his own purposes[180].

At this period every stranger admitted to read in the Library had to pay nine shillings in fees, of which 1s. went to the Head Librarian, 3s. 6d. to the Second Librarian, 1s. 6d. to the Janitor, 2s. to the Registrar (for an order for admission, but in the Long Vacation this fee went to the Second Librarian), and 1s. to the Proctor's man[181]. In 1720 the fee to be received from every visitor not qualified to read was fixed at one penny, to be paid to a porter who was then first appointed to the charge of the Picture Gallery. It subsequently rose by a silent custom to the large sum of a shilling; but some few years ago the Curators fixed the charge to visitors at threepence each, unless accompanied, and in consequence franked, by some member of the University in his academic dress. Since this moderate sum has been fixed, the number of ordinary sight-seeing visitors has, naturally, much increased[182].

The suppression, by an order of the Heads of Houses, dated March 23, 1712/3, of Hearne's edition of Dodwell's tract De Parma Equestri Woodwardiana, was attributed by Hearne himself to (as the remote occasion) an incident connected with his office in the Library, which is related very fully by himself in vol. xliv. of his MS. Diary. On Feb. 20, Mr. Keil, the Savilian Professor of Geometry, brought to the Library an Irish gentleman named Mollineux, recommended by Sir Andrew Fountaine, to whom he requested Hearne to show the curiosities of the place. As Keil was 'a very honest gentleman,' Hearne little suspected that his friend was possessed with the 'republican ill principles' and 'malignant temper' of Whiggism, and consequently was not very guarded in his talk. After showing him various MSS. and coins, he took the visitor into the Anatomy School[183], where all kinds of odds and ends were preserved; amongst which was (as Hearne gravely notes in another place) a calf which, being born in the year of the Union, 1707, had (it is to be presumed in consequence thereof) two bodies and one head. What followed during the exhibition of this museum is worth relating in the diarist's own words:—

'I mentioned a picture engraved and hanging there with horns and wings, and underneath, uxor ejus ad vivum pinxil. This picture many had said was Benjamin Hoadley, the seditious divine of London; but, for my part, I gave no other description of it than this, that 'twas the picture of one of the greatest Presbyterian, republican, antimonarchical, Whiggish, fanatical preachers living in England. And this description was enough to exasperate him. And yet, for all that, he did not discover any passion, nor give the least hint that he was a Whig himself. Neither did he give any hint of it afterwards till I came to mention a tobacco stopper tipped with silver, and given to me by a reverend divine, who had informed me that it was made out of an oak that lately grew in St. James's Park, but was destroyed by the D. of M. for the great house he was building near St. James's, and that the said oak came from an acorn that was planted there by King Charles II, being one of those acorns that he had gathered in the Royal Oak, where he was forced to shelter himself from the fury of the rebells after the fight at Worcester. Mr. Mollineux was at the other end of the room when this was shew'd, and the said story told; but hearing it he comes immediately to the tables, and expresses himself in words of this kind, viz. that 'twas a bawble, and that an hundred such things were not worth the seeing. Mr. Keil however thought otherwise, and said that he thought my collection was better than that in the Laboratory. Some mirth passing after this, I went on with my description, and had not yet formed an opinion that Mr. Mollineux was a Whig; but finding that he was still inquisitive after other curiosities, and that he pretended to much skill in good ingraving and drawing, I produced the picture of a beautifull young man, over the head of which was ΕΙΚΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΗ, and underneath, Quid quæritis ultra? I did not tell them whose picture it was, but said that I shew'd it them as a thing excellently well done, which they all allow'd and view'd it over and over, and seemed to be mightily taken with it, and Mr. Mollineux in particular was pleased to say that 'twas admirably well done, and deserved a place amongst the most exquisite performances of this kind, at the same time asking how long I had had it, and whose picture I took it to be. To the former of which questions I reply'd, about a quarter of a year, to the latter that I did not pretend to tell who it was designed for. Yet Mr. Keil was pleased to laugh, and to tell Mr. Mollineux, They are all rebells, Mr. Mollineux, they are all rebells in this place, speaking these words in a merry joking way, and not with any intent to do me an injury. Mr. Mollineux took the words upon the picture down, which I did not deny him, not thinking that 'twas with a design to inform against me, as it afterwards proved. Yet from this time I began a little to suspect his integrity, and that he was not one of those good men I expected from Mr. Keil, whom I had always found to be a man of honesty.'

Hinc illæ lachrymæ! Poor Hearne was reported to Dr. Charlett the same afternoon for showing the Pretender's Picture; a meeting of the Curators of the Library was threatened; but eventually the matter seemed to pass over by his being desired by the Vice-Chancellor to give up the key of the Anatomy School, in order that the determining Bachelors might meet there, by which change Hearne was mulcted of the fees which he obtained for showing the room, and was sometimes detained one hour, or two, later than usual in order to see to the locking up of the staircase on which it is situated. On March 23, however, he was summoned before the Heads of Houses for remarks made in his preface to Dodwell's above-mentioned tract, and, after a sharp discussion, in which reference was made to his exhibition of the portraits, he was ordered to suppress his preface, and re-issue the book without it; to which he consented. He was pressed to make a formal retractation of the passages to which objection was made, but this he stiffly refused to do. He says in a letter to Sir Philip Sydenham that the only form of retractation or expression of sorrow he could have been prevailed on to sign (strongly resembling the famous apology of a middy to an insulted naval surgeon) would have been some such form as this:—'I, Thomas Hearne, A.M., of the University of Oxford, having ever since my matriculation followed my studies with as much application as I have been capable of, and having published several books for the honour and credit of learning, and particularly for the reputation of the foresaid University, am very sorry that by my declining to say anything but what I knew to be true in any of my writings, and especially in the last book I published, intituled, Henrici Dodwelli de Parma Equestri Woodwardiana Dissertatio, &c., I should incurr the displeasure of any of the Heads of Houses, and as a token of my sorrow for their being offended at truth, I subscribe my name to this paper, and permitt them to make what use of it they please[184].'

A.D. 1714.

An evidence of the increased intercourse which sprang up between Denmark and England, in consequence of the marriage of Queen Anne, is probably to be found in the number of Danish readers who frequented the Library in the interval between her marriage and her death. Between the years 1683 and 1714, forty-nine Danes are entered in the Liber Admissorum, besides many from Sweden, Norway, and the North of Germany. The total number of foreigners admitted within the same period was no less than 244.

'In the year 1714 were in the Bodleian Library:—

30169pr. vols.

05916MSS. vols.

In all36085.'

(Hearne's MS. Diary, vol. xci. p. 256.)

It is strange that, notwithstanding Selden's and Laud's large additions, the Library had therefore very little more than doubled since 1620.

It is recorded in vol. li. of the same Diary (p. 187) that the old series of portraits which were painted on the wall of the Picture Gallery was renewed in November of this year. These portraits, amounting in number to about 222, ran round the gallery, immediately under the roof; many of them were fancy-heads of ancient philosophers and writers, but besides these there were some real portraits of English writers and divines, up to the time of James I. A list of the whole series, as well as of the oil paintings in the Gallery, was printed by Hearne together with his Letter containing an Account of some Antiquities between Windsor and Oxford. Of the renovation of the wall-paintings he thus speaks in his preface to Rossi Historia Regum Angliæ (1716): 'Non possim quin bibliothecæ Bodleianæ Curatores laudem, qui pictori Academico [i.e. Wildgoose] in mandatis dederunt, ut veteres effigies renovet nitorique pristino restituat: quippe quas eo pluris æstimendas esse censeo, quod eas in galeria depingendas jusserit ipse Bodleius, Loci Genius.' When the Gallery was re-roofed in 1831, all these paintings were, however, removed [see p. 15].

About the end of this year the Arundel Marbles, which, strange to say, had been exposed to the open air within the quadrangle of the Schools ever since they were given to the University, were removed into one of the rooms on the ground-floor, where they still remain. It was said that they had suffered more 'since they were exposed to our air, than they did in many hundred years before they came into it[185].' But the influence of the air was not all they had to contend against, for Hearne tells us that the defacing of the Marble Chronicle (of which there are portions that were read by Selden, which now can no longer be read at all) and some others, was owing not merely to exposure to the weather, but 'to the abuses of children who are continually playing in the area, and of other ignorant persons[186].'

A.D. 1715.

We learn from Hearne's MS. Diary [vol. liii.] that differences between him and Dr. Hudson (of which he makes frequent mention) increased during this year. He was reported to the Vice-Chancellor in April for absence from the Library through his duties as Bedel, by reason of which readers had difficulty in obtaining books lodged above stairs. To this complaint his reply was that he was not bound, as Second Librarian, exclusively to do such 'drudgery,' but that Dr. Hudson was himself obliged by statute to deliver out such books as were under lock-and-key, and books in quarto and octavo, either personally or by his own special deputy. At the same time a complaint was made against him by three Bachelors of Arts of Queen's College, for refusing books to them which were out of the faculty of Arts prescribed to them by the statutes of the Library. Hearne's only reply to the Vice-Chancellor in this case was the asking whether they had, also in accordance with the Statutes, come to the Library in their hoods, if under two years' standing; at which 'he smiled.' It appears, therefore, that this requirement had already become obsolete. Dr. Hudson, however, regarded the matter more seriously, and threatened that Hearne should be turned out of both his places.

April 15. (Good Friday!) 'This morning Dr. Hudson went out of town, and that pert jackanapes Bowles (who is Dr. Hudson's servitor) came to tell me that he is gone, and that the sweeper of the Library being dead, I must not admitt any one to sweep the Library as formerly. I returned answer I had nothing to do in that case. In the afternoon I was at study in the Library, and Bowles brings up a woman and girl, and set them to sweeping, and left them there, tho' this should not have been, they being not sworn nor admitted as sweepers. Indeed all things are now done very irregularly in the Library by the permission of Dr. Hudson, and by the impudence of this pert, silly servitour, and I am afraid much mischief is done withall. The whole Library and galleries and studies and the Anatomy School used to be swept this day; they began about eight, and had not done till four or five in the afternoon. But now the Library only below stairs was swept over, and that very slightly, and all things were left in a bad condition, to my very great concern[187].'

At the visitation on Nov. 8, the Curators passed a resolution that the places of Under-librarian and Bedel were inconsistent, and that on S. Thomas' day Hudson should be at liberty to appoint some other person to Hearne's office. Hereupon Hearne immediately, without a moment's delay, resigned both the offices of Architypographus and Superior Bedel of Civil Law, and claimed to remain in the Library; but Hudson had fresh locks put on the doors, of which Bowles kept the keys, so that Hearne was unable to go in and out as before. However, he continued to execute his office whenever the Library was open until Jan. 23, 1716, when the Act which imposed a fine of £500, with other penalties, upon any one who held any public office without having taken the Oaths, came into operation. Then at once, all worldly interests, all affection for the old place of his studies and his care, gave way to the honest and unwavering dictates of his conscience; the Non-juror withdrew, and, with singularly hard measure, in spite of his representations, his place was ordered by the Curators to be filled up at Lady-Day, not on the ground of his own retirement, but on that of neglect of duty! His successor was Rev. John Fletcher, M.A., Chaplain, and afterwards Fellow, of Queen's College. Hearne states that his salary was, with great unfairness, withheld from him for the whole half-year preceding Lady-Day, together with some fees which were due[188]. But to the end of his life he maintained that he was still, de jure, Sub-librarian, and, with a quaint pertinacity, regularly at the end of each term and half-year, up to March 30, 1735[189], continued to set down, in one of the volumes of his Diary, that no fees had been paid him, and that his half-year's salary was due.

On Hearne's announcing John Ross's Historia Angliæ for publication in this year, W. Whiston forwarded to him a MS. of a Latin historical poem entitled Britannica, written in 1606 by an author of the same names as the forth-coming historian, with the following note inserted:—

'This book was written, as I think, by my great uncle, Mr. John Rosse, rector of Norton-juxta-Twycross in Leicestershire, where I was myself born. If it may be of any use to Mr. Hern at Oxford in his intended edition of this or some other work of the same author now advertis'd, or may be thought worthy of a place in the publick library of that University, it is hereby freely given thereto by

'WILLIAM WHISTON. 'London, December 12, 1715.'

Hearne adds that (of course) the author was altogether different from the Ross of his editing, and that the poem had been printed at Frankfort in 1607, as he learned from a MS. Catalogue of Mr. Richard Smith's books lent him by Bp. Fleetwood of Ely[190]. The MS. is now numbered, Bodley 573.

A learned tailor of Norwich was in this year recommended by Dr. Tanner, then Chancellor of Norwich Cathedral, for the Janitor's place in the Library should it be vacant. Although but a journeyman tailor of thirty years of age, who had been taught nothing but English in his childhood, Henry Wild had contrived within seven years to master seven languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic and Persian, to which Tanner adds, in another letter to Dr. Rawlinson, Samaritan and Ethiopic. The application appears to have been unsuccessful so far as the holding office in the Library was concerned; but Wild found some employment in the Library for a time in the translating and copying Oriental MSS[191]. He removed to London about 1720, and died in the following year, as we learn from an entry in Hearne's MS. Diary, (xcii. 128-9,) under date of Oct. 29, 1721, where we read:—

'About a fortnight since died in London Mr. Henry Wild, commonly called, the Arabick Taylour. I have more than once mentioned him formerly. He was by profession a taylour of Norwich, and was a married man. But having a strange inclination to languages, by a prodigious industry he obtain'd a very considerable knowledge in many, without any help or assistance from others. He understood Arabick perfectly well, and transcrib'd, very fairly, much from Bodley, being patroniz'd by that most eminent physician, Dr. Rich. Mead. He died of a feaver, aged about 39. He was about a considerable work, viz. a history of the old Arabian physicians, from an Arabick MS. in Bodley. The MS. was wholly transcrib'd by him a year agoe, but what progress he had made for the press I know not.'

Five MSS., including the Leiger Book of Malmesbury Abbey, together with a large number of printed books, were given on May 7, by William Brewster, M.D. of Hereford, a well-known antiquary[192].

A thick quarto volume (1052 pages) containing a Latin treatise by Adam Zernichaus on the controversy between the Eastern and Western Churches, concerning the Procession of the Holy Ghost, was forwarded to the Library through Sir Robert Sutton, ambassador at Constantinople, by Chrysanthus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, nephew and successor of Dositheus, an autograph Greek epistle from whom, occupying seven pages, is prefixed. At the end is a list of eleven German scribes who were employed upon the transcription of the volume, with the payments they severally received. It appears from the Benefaction Register that the volume was not actually received at the Library until 1722; and in 1731, an entry in the catalogue records that the MS. 'was restored to Sir Robert Sutton, by order of the Vice-Chancellor;' but no reason or explanation is given. For more than a century the Patriarch's gift was consequently lost from the place of its destination; but in Dec. 1864, having turned up for sale among the well-known stores of Mr. C. J. Stewart, it was secured by the Librarian at the cost of £5 15s. 6d., and is once more to be found in its legitimate quarters, numbered MS. Addit. Bodl. ii. c. 9. Chrysanthus also gave, in 1725, a copy of Dositheus' History of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which was printed, in Greek, in 1715.

A.D. 1716.

On Aug. 23, a legacy of £100 from Dr. South (who died July 8), for the purchase of modern books, was paid to the Vice-Chancellor[193].

Arms in the window. See 1610.

A.D. 1718.

One Mr. Hutton appears to have been employed in the Library during this year. It seems, from a passage in a letter of C. Wheatly's, printed in Letters by Eminent Persons, ii. 116, that the learned commentator Samuel Parker, son of the Bishop of Oxford, was also at some time employed in the Library; for Wheatly expresses a wish that S. Parker's son, then (1739) an apprentice to Mr. Clements the bookseller, might, if the accounts of his extraordinary proficiency be true, be placed 'in his father's seat, the Bodleian Library.' As Parker was a non-juror, his employment must doubtless have been at some earlier period than this, but his name is not met with in any of the old Account-books or Registers. One Thomas Parker occurs in the Library accounts in 1766 and in 1772.

A.D. 1719.

Dr. Hudson died, on Nov. 27, of dropsy. And at one o'clock on the afternoon of the very next day, Joseph Bowles, M.A., of Oriel College, was elected in his room.

The bitter terms in which Hearne frequently, in the course of his Diary, condemns Hudson's management, or rather mismanagement, of the Library, may be supposed to be owing in a considerable degree to personal pique and quarrel[194]. But they meet with very singular and abundant confirmation in the letter of Z. C. Uffenbach, quoted above (p. 130), when the writer expresses, in the following strong language, his opinion of Hudson's neglect and incapacity, and of the general condition of the Library under his management:—

'Perpende, quæso, mecum, vir eruditissime, quantus thesaurus ex solius Bodleianæ Bibliothecæ codicibus elici possit, nisi Proto-Bibliothecarii Hudson negligentia ac pertinacia obstaret. Is enim muneri abunde satisfecisse, imo eximie ornasse Spartam videri vult, dum tot annis unico scriptori, Thucydidem ejus puto, omni Bibliothecæ cura plane abjecta, insudavit, cum hoc, quod supra dixi, potius agendum fuisset. Nefandam hujus insignis Bibliothecæ sortem (ignosce justæ indignationi) satis deplorare nequeo. Inculta plane jacet, nemo ferme tanto thesauro uti, frui, gestit. Singulis sane diebus per trium mensium spatium illam frequentavi, sed, ita me dii ament, nunquam tot una vice homines in illa vidi quot numero sunt Musæ, vel saltem artes liberales. De librorum studiosis loquor; nam puerorum, muliercularum, rusticorum, hinc inde cursitantium, voluminumque multitudinem per transennas spectantium mirantiumque, cœtum excipio.... De Proto-bibliothecarii incuria jam dixi, ejusque stupendam in historia literaria librariaque, inprimis extra Insulam ultraque maria, ignorantiam taceo.'

Of Hearne, however, Uffenbach writes in the following different strain:—

'Hîc scholaris, ut hîc loqui amant, esse solet, atque etiamnum est, nomine Hearne, qui, præ reliquis, diligentiam suam non modo scriptis, sed in novo etiam Bibliothecæ catalogo confitiendo, typis proxime exscribendo, probavit; ast, quod dolendum, ad exemplum prioris, qui satis jejunus, inconcinnus, erroribusque innumeris scatens est.'

Hudson's successor, Bowles, had previously been his Assistant for some years, and as, while Hearne was Under-keeper, he had come into sharp collision with that irascible antiquary (see under 1715), his election now was a matter of sore annoyance to the latter. Hearne dwells upon it in his Diary with great bitterness and at great length: 'Competitors were Mr. Hall, of Queen's, and that pert conceited coxcomb Mr. Bowles (who is not yet Regent Master) of Oriel College. Bowles carried it by a great majority, having about 160 votes, and Mr. Hall about 77. I think it the most scandalous election that I have yet heard of in Oxford.' Of his supporters he speaks thus:—'Charlett and such rogues, who contrived to bring in that most compleat coxcomb Bowles to be Head-Librarian, to the immortal scandal of all that were concern'd in it[195].' And even, when ten years later he records Bowles' death, he indulges, in forgetfulness of charity to the departed, in the following strain: 'Of this gentleman (a most vile, wicked wretch) frequent mention hath been made in these Memoirs. He took the degree of M.A. Oct. 12, 1719. 'Tis incredible what damage he did to the Bodl. Library, by putting it into disorder and confusion, which before, by the great pains I had taken in it (&c.), was the best regulated library in the world[196].' Bowles' name never occurs in the Diary without some opprobrious epithet being attached to it, which may be accounted for partly from his having taken the oaths of allegiance after declaring he would never do it (a defection which Hearne never forgave in any one), but chiefly also from his having personally excluded Hearne from the Library, when the latter refused to resign his keys in 1715, by procuring new locks and keys, which he kept in his own custody.

Three or four days after Bowles' election, Mr. Fletcher, the Sub-librarian (disliking, no doubt, the appointment of his junior over his head), resigned his office, to which Bowles appointed the well-known antiquary, Francis Wise. Upon this appointment Hearne comments thus: 'Bowles put in Mr. Wise, A.M., of Trin. Coll. (a pretender to antiquities), tho' he had promised it to one of Oriel Coll., that came in fellow of Oriel when he did, and was very serviceable to him in getting the Head Librarian's place; for which Bowles is strangely scouted and despis'd at Oriel, as a breaker of his word, and a whiffling, silly, unfaithfull, coxcomb.' It must be allowed that the portrait of Bowles in the Library bears out in some degree Hearne's last epithet, by giving him the appearance rather of a fine clerical gentleman than of a student.

Baskett, the printer, presented to the Library a magnificent copy on vellum of the 'Vinegar' Bible, printed by him in 1717. Only three copies were so struck off; the second was placed in the King's Library, and the third was sold to the Duke of Chandos, for five hundred guineas, at whose sale, in 1747, Lord Foley purchased it for £72 9s.

A.D. 1720.

About this time, one John Hawkins, a highwayman (who was executed in May, 1722), is said by an accomplice, Ralph Wilson, who published an account of his robberies, to have defaced some pictures in the Library. The University is said to have offered £100 for discovery, and a poor Whig tailor was taken up on suspicion, and narrowly escaped a whipping. No particulars, however, of Hawkins' act are given in the pamphlet, and no further notice of it has been found elsewhere.

Joseph Swallow, B.A., who died in this year, is found from the Accounts to have been employed, for some short time, in the Library.

In this year the titles of all books which were bought out of the Library funds begin to be recorded, together with their prices; they are entered in a Register marked with the letter C.

Visitors' Fees. See 1713.

A.D. 1721.

The inscription on the Schools' Tower, beneath the statue of James I, was renewed in this year[197].

Sir Godfrey Kneller presented his own portrait to the Gallery.

A.D. 1722.

Mrs. Mary Prince is recorded to have presented heads of our Blessed Lord and of King Charles I, painted by herself. They appear to be the two paintings on copper, now hanging in the Sub-librarian's study, called Mus. Bibl. II. Beneath that of our Lord is the following inscription: 'This present figure is the symylytude of our Lorde Jesus our Saviour, imprinted in amyrald by the Predecessors of the Great Turke, & sent to Pope Innocent y^e Eight at the cost of the Great Turke for a token, for this caus, to redeme his brother that was taken prisner.' The inscription is, of course, if the painting be Mrs. Prince's work, reproduced literatim from some older copy.

The attachment to the old Stuart family, which was so warmly cherished in Oxford, appears to have lingered in the Bodleian, notwithstanding Hearne's departure, who himself would scarcely have thought that a vestige of it had been left behind. For in the Benefaction Register for this year, the gift of a portrait of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, from his widow Catherine, a natural daughter of James II, is entered as coming from 'filia Regis Jacobi II, του μακαριτου.'

Chrysanthus, Patriarch of Jerusalem. See 1715.

A.D. 1723.

The noble brass statue of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, (who was Chancellor of the University from 1617 to his death in 1630, and was the donor of the Barocci MSS.,) which forms such a conspicuous feature in the Picture Gallery, was presented this year by the earl's great nephew, Thomas, the seventh Earl of Pembroke. It was cast by the famous artist Hubert le Sœur, from a picture by Rubens, and is said to weigh about 1600 lbs. The letter of thanks from the University was read in Convocation on April 19; it is criticized by Hearne in his Diary[198] in the following terms: 'I am told that this letter is very silly and poor, and that, among other things, his Lordship is told in it that the statue is placed in æde immortalitatis. Now what this ædes immortalitatis, church, temple or chappel of immortality is, I cannot conceive, but am sure that the statue is at present fix'd in the Picture Gallery, adjoyning to the Bodl. Library.'

A.D. 1724.

The MSS. Adversaria of Dr. J. E. Grabe came to the Library in this year after the death of Bishop Smalridge (Sept. 27, 1719), in accordance with the will of their writer, who at his death (Nov. 12, 1712) bequeathed them first to Hickes and next to Smalridge, with the final reversion to the Bodleian. They form forty-three volumes. Some account of them is given in Hickes' Discourse prefixed to Grabe's Defects and Omissions in Whiston's Collection of Testimonies, &c. (8^o. Lond. 1712), and they are fully catalogued by Mr. Coxe in vol. i. of the general Catalogue of MSS., cols. 851-876. In a written list of them, preserved in the Library, Dr. Bandinel has noted that several volumes of the series were purloined before they came to Oxford, while remaining in the possession of a friend after Grabe's death.

A Zend MS. very well and clearly written (dated in the year 1005 of the era of Yezdegird, i.e. A.D. 1635), of the Leges Sacræ, Ritus, &c. Zoroastris, was received from G. Bowcher, a merchant in the East Indies. It was given in 1718, but not forwarded until 1723, when it was brought from India by Rev. Rich. Cobbe, M.A. It is now numbered Bodl. Or. 321. And a Coptic Lexicon, compiled and prepared for the press by Rev. Thos. Edward, M.A., a former Chaplain of Ch. Ch., was bought for the sum of ten guineas, which was specially granted from the University Chest. It is now numbered Bodl. Orient. 344. The author was originally of St. John's College, Cambridge, and tells us in his preface that Bishop Fell, who was also Dean of Ch. Ch., meeting him there in the house of Dr. Edmund Castell, with whom he was living, brought him to Oxford by appointing him a Chaplain of the Cathedral, with the view of carrying on the study of the Coptic language, which had fallen to the ground upon the death of Dr. Marshal of Lincoln College. But just when Edward was prepared to begin printing the results of his labours, his patron, the Bishop, died; and, as he found no one else cared for the subject, he took the College living of Badby in Northamptonshire, and quitted Oxford. He finally became Rector of Aldwinkle in the same county, and died there in the year 1721. His book is dated 1711. It is cited by Archdeacon Tattam in his Lexicon Ægyptiaco-Latinum. Another MS. Coptic Lexicon, in two volumes, was purchased in 1857.

A.D. 1726.

A large collection (in twenty-five volumes) of the tracts on the Roman Catholic Controversy which appeared between 1680-1690, was given by Will. Smith, M.A., of Univ. Coll., and Rector of Melsonby, Yorkshire.

A.D. 1727.

Thomas Perrott, D.C.L., of St. John's College, gave nine volumes of MSS., the most important of which is a copy-book of the letters written by Sir John Perrott, Lord Deputy of Ireland, in 1584-6. Another is a book of orders from the Privy Council to the officers of the Customs at London, 1604-18: a third, notes of a sermon preached by Usher at the Temple, July 2, 1620. A few political and miscellaneous tracts, tempp. Eliz.—Jac. I, and two heraldic MSS., complete the number. The MSS. are noticed in the return printed in the Record Commission Report for 1800, p. 348.

Some Greek MSS. were bought which had been brought from Mount Athos; three of them are now placed amongst the Cromwell MSS., Nos. 15, 16, and 27, and three others are numbered Miscell. Gr. 137-9.

Sale of Duplicates. See 1745.

A.D. 1729.

Mr. Bowles, the Librarian, died at Shaftesbury, the place of his birth, and was buried there on Nov. 25. On Dec. 2, Mr. Robert Fysher, B.M., Fellow of Oriel College, was elected his successor by 100 votes to 85 over Francis Wise, the Under-librarian. Mr. John Bilstone, M.A., Chaplain of All Souls' and Janitor of the Library, was also a candidate, but retired before the election, in the hope of securing Wise's return. As Wise held Hearne's old place, and was regarded by him as an usurper, and as Bilstone held in his possession the new keys which Bowles originally procured to render Hearne's old ones useless, the latter consequently regarded them both with great disfavour, and rejoiced greatly at the result of the election. His account of it is printed in the Reliqq. Hearn. vol. ii. p. 712.

Forty-two MS. volumes came to the Library by the bequest of the widow of Mr. Francis Cherry, of Shottesbrooke, Berks, the early patron and constant friend of Hearne[199]. Cherry himself died Sept. 23, 1713, and Hearne says that he had intended to give his MSS. to his old protégée. They are not, for the most part, of very great value, but among them are various volumes by Dodwell; and a book written and bound by Q. Eliz. is described above, under the year 1628. Hearne was greatly annoyed at a paper of his own, containing reasons for taking the oath of allegiance, which he had written in 1700, coming into the Library amongst these books; he endeavoured in vain (although now in these days his legal right would be at once recognized) to recover it, and it was published, to his still greater annoyance, by the Whigs, under the editorship of Mr. Bilstone, the janitor. An account of Hearne's endeavours to regain it, together with a notice of Mrs. Cherry's bequest and of the MSS., is to be found in Dr. Bliss' Appendix to his Reliqq. Hearn. ii. 899-906.

In the Register of Readers admitted by favour occurs, under date of April 19, the name of 'C. Wesley, Ædis Xti alumn.,' written in a neat and clear hand. The name of his great brother is not found in any register extending over the period of his stay in Oxford. At this time the Library appears to have been almost entirely forsaken. Between 1730-1740 it rarely happens that above one or two books are registered to readers in a day, while often for whole days together not a single entry occurs; and since, in the register for this period, the books are noted down by three hands, it can hardly be possible that the blanks are due to the negligence of librarians (as might have been supposed were the same handwriting found throughout) rather than to the lack of students.

A.D. 1735.

On the death of Hearne (June 10, 1735) fifteen of the MSS. of Thomas Smith, D.D., of Magdalen College, the well-known and learned non-juror, came to the Library, Smith having bequeathed them to Hearne on this condition. With them came also copies of Camden's Britannia and Annales Eliz., with MSS. notes by their author. The rest of Smith's MSS. appear to have come to the Library together with the mass of Hearne's collections, included in Rawlinson's bequest in 1755. They amount altogether to 138 thin volumes, containing notes, extracts and letters on all kinds of subjects. There is a very full written catalogue of their contents, in two volumes. Three Greek MSS. were given by Smith himself on his return from his travels in the East about 1681.

A.D. 1736.

The Library was enriched with the collections of the well-known antiquary, Thomas Tanner, Bishop of St. Asaph, who died on Dec. 14, in the preceding year. By his will, dated Nov. 22, 1733, he bequeathed his MSS. to the Library together with such printed books, not already there, as the Curators and Library-keeper should think fit to accept. But he directed his executor to burn all his sermon-notes, 'and other little pieces and attempts in divinity,' as well as all his own private papers and letters. The largest portion of his MSS. (nearly 300 volumes out of 467) consists of the papers which he himself says he 'bought of Archbishop Sancroft's executors,' but which it is said in the Gent. Mag. for 1782 (cited by Gough in his British Topography, i. 126) he bought for eighty guineas of the bookseller Bateman, to whom Sancroft's executors had sold them[200]. Together with these, and perhaps not now to be distinguished, are some of the collections of Dr. Nalson between 1640 and 1660. To the latter a claim was made through Archdeacon Knight, in 1737, by Dr. Williams of St. John's College, as grandson of Nalson; but the Bishop's brother replied (as we learn from a copy of his answer and of another letter written by him in 1753) that the Bishop had bought them at Ely, where they had lain neglected for many years, and he thought possibly from some one living in the house which Nalson inhabited when Prebendary of Ely. The matter ended by Dr. Williams waiving any claim which he had, in consideration of the place of deposit being the Bodleian[201]. Sancroft's and Nalson's papers together comprise a large series of letters of the time of the Civil War, of the highest interest and value, from most of the leading personages on both sides, including Charles I, Rupert, the Protector Oliver, and Hampden. There are also collections relating to various dioceses, with very much that illustrates both the ecclesiastical and literary history of the seventeenth century[202]. A selection from the Civil War letters was published, in 2 vols. in 1842, by Rev. Henry Cary, M.A. (a son of the translator of Dante, and at that time an assistant in the Library), under the title of Memorials of the Civil War; but the transcripts were very carelessly made, and scarcely a single letter can be trusted as faithfully and verbatim representing the original. Another volume of selections from Sancroft's papers was published, with much better care, by Will. Nelson Clarke, D.C.L., 8^o, Edinb. 1848, entitled, A Collection of Letters addressed by Prelates and Individuals of high rank in Scotland, and by two Bishops of Sodor and Man, to Archbishop Sancroft, in the reigns of Charles II and James VII[203]. A catalogue of the MSS., compiled by the Rev. Alfred Hackman, M.A. (now Sub-librarian) was published in 1860, in a thick quarto volume, forming vol. iv. of the general Catalogue of MSS. The several volumes are described in brief in the body of the work; but a very full Index is subjoined, in which the contents of all the letters and papers are entered in detail. The printed books (upwards of 900) contain many, by the Reformers and their opponents, which are of the utmost rarity in early English black-letter divinity. One of these is an unique copy (as it is believed) of an edition, printed without place or date, of the Pore Helpe, of which there is also an unique copy of another edition, equally without place or date, among the Douce books. It has not hitherto been remarked that two copies, or two editions, exist of this metrical satire. Another volume, which contains several tracts printed by W. de Worde and Gerard Leeu, has also two by Caxton, hitherto unnoticed as exhibiting his type, and described in the Catalogue simply as being books without place or date. The merit of their discovery as Caxton's is due to the recent research of Mr. Bradshaw, the Librarian of the Cambridge Library. The one is a clean and perfect copy of the Governayle of Helthe, with the verses called Medicina Stomachi, of which the only copy known to Mr. Blades is in the library of the Earl of Dysart at Ham House; the other a wholly unknown quarto edition, in the same type, of the Ars Moriendi.

Unfortunately, when Tanner was removing his books from Norwich to Oxford, in Dec. 1731, by some accident in their transit (which was made by river) they fell into the water, and were submerged for twenty hours[204]. The effects of this soaking are only too evident upon very many of them[205]. The whole of the printed books were uniformly bound in dark green calf, apparently about fifty years ago; the binder's work was well done, but unhappily all the fly-leaves, many of which would doubtless have afforded something of interest, with regard to the books and their former possessors, were removed. Many of Tanner's own letters are to be found amongst the Ballard and Hearne MSS., as well as scattered here and there in other collections; and one volume of them was purchased in 1859. Some coins were given by him in 1733. We learn from the Accounts that Thomas Toynbee, an undergraduate of Balliol College (B.A. 1743, M.A. 1745), received £12 12s., in 1741, for making a list of Tanner's MSS., and that E. Rowe Mores, the subsequently well-known antiquary, arranged some of his deeds in 1753-4.

A.D. 1738.

The fourth Catalogue of the printed books appeared this year in two volumes, folio, of 611 and 714 pp. respectively. It is still a Catalogue of great use and value, from its remarkable accuracy, and from the abundance and minuteness of its cross-references. The secret history of this Catalogue, however, as of the preceding one, is related by Hearne. By him, as he himself frequently tells us[206], the greater portion of it was virtually prepared soon after his appointment as Sub-librarian, in 1712 (although no mention of his name is made in Fysher's preface), and to him, therefore, its accuracy is most probably in a great measure due[207]. He compared every book in the Library with Hyde's Catalogue, and corrected many mistakes, adding notes here and there about anonymous and synonymous authors, and, as the Vice-Chancellor (Dr. Maunder, of Balliol) was anxious to have an Appendix issued, he transcribed for this purpose all his corrections and additions into two folio volumes, 'which' (to take up now Hearne's own account in his Diary, vol. lxii. p. 58, under date 1717) 'now lye and are to be seen in the Library.... But at last Dr. Hudson thought it more convenient with respect to himself that both Dr. Hyde's Catalogue and my Appendix should come out together as one intire work, so that he might have the honour of all. Upon which he employed one Moses Williams, his servitour[208] (the Dr. being then Fellow of University College), to transcribe it, the said Williams being in the Dr.'s debt. When Williams had done, he demanded the remaining part of his money, which was about ten or twelve pounds, the rest having been stopped by the Dr. for the debt just now mentioned. The whole was fifty lbs. which he bargained for with the Dr. But when Williams desired the said ten or twelve pounds, of which he had immediate occasion to discharge the fees and charges for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, the Dr. was in a very great passion, and refused to pay it. Upon which Williams moved the matter so far that the Catalogue was laid before the Delegates of the Press, and the Dr. was called before them to his very great mortification, and they told him that 'twas highly unreasonable to stop the poor lad's money. Upon which the Dr. in a great rage and fury paid him; otherwise Williams had most certainly put him into the Court. This Catalogue was last summer ordered to be printed, and the Dr. was refunded his money; but 'tis not yet put to the press, the Dr. being unwilling it should be printed till such time as he hath done Josephus.' But Hudson died before his Josephus was finished, and the proposed new Catalogue was consequently begun, and only begun, by his successor, Bowles. The latter printed as far as p. 244 of vol. i. and p. 292 of vol. ii. His successor, Fysher, upon his appointment, engaged the assistance of his friend, Emmanuel Langford, M.A., Vice-Principal of Hart Hall, who completed the second volume, while Fysher himself finished the first. At the end of the second volume appeared an announcement of a supplemental Catalogue, as being ready for the press, containing the books existing in College Libraries but wanting in the Bodleian. This, however, never appeared, and nothing is known of the MS. from which it was to have been printed. Fysher's Catalogue appears, from the University Accounts, to have occupied from 1735 in preparation, for which, and for transcribing it for the press, £194 5s. were paid to him.

Alexander Pope gave, together with copies of his Iliad and Odyssey, a curious volume, containing a series of 178 Portraits of East Indian Rajahs and Great Moguls, down to Aurung-Zebe. It is now numbered Bodl. MS. Sansk. 14.

The names of various persons (all, probably, undergraduates) employed in the Library about this time are learned from the Accounts:—1738, Mr. Hall; 1740-1, Mr. Allen; 1740, Mr. Toynbee (Ball. Coll., B.A., 1743); 1743, Mr. Jessett (All Souls', B.A., 1745); 1747, Mr. Thomas Winbolt (All Souls', B.A. 1748).

A.D. 1739.

Notification was given to the Vice-Chancellor, on June 9, that thirteen pictures (of no great value) were bequeathed to the Gallery by Dr. King, Master of the Charter House, by his will dated July 28, 1736, together with £200 for the cleansing and repairing the frames of the pictures already in the Gallery. A list of these thirteen is given in Gutch's transl. of Wood's Annals, vol. ii. pp. 969, 970. The pictures themselves are now in the Randolph Gallery. Dr. King also left a legacy of £400 to the University to prepare a complete and handsome edition of Zoroaster's Works, in Persian, with a Latin translation and notes; but this portion of his bequest was not accepted.

A.D. 1740.

A copy of the Byzantine historian, Pachymeres, was restored in this year, by order of the Curators, to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, from which it had by some means been removed; but the College paid £4 4s. for its restoration.

A.D. 1745.

In this year died Nathaniel Crynes, M.A., Fellow of St. John's College and Superior Bedel of Arts, to which latter office he had been elected Jan. 26, 1715/16[209]. He bequeathed to the Library all such books out of his own valuable collection as it did not already possess, the rest going to his own College. His books in octavo and smaller sizes, with a few quartos, are still kept distinct, under his own name, and number 968 volumes, many of which are of great rarity. Seven MSS. were presented by him in 1736. In 1727 he purchased some duplicates from the Library, for £3 16s. 8d., and a story, told by Warton in connection with this purchase, of his fortunately rejecting books which bore the name of Milton, will be found under the year 1620. There is a biographical notice of him in J. Haslewood's Introduction to Juliana Barnes' Boke of St. Alban's, Lond. 1810, pp. 86-7. In the Accounts for 1746 occur special payments to Fr. Wise, and to one Mr. Gerard Bodley, for cataloguing and arranging Crynes' books.

A.D. 1746.

Trott's Clavis Linguæ Sanctæ. See 1686.

A.D. 1747.

Dr. Fysher, the Librarian, died on Nov. 4, at Mr. Warneford's, of Sevenhampton, Wilts, and was buried, on Nov. 7, in Adam de Brome's chapel in St. Mary's Church, Oxford. And on Nov. 10, Rev. Humphrey Owen, B.D., Fellow of Jesus College (afterwards D.D., and chosen Principal of his College in 1763), was unanimously elected his successor[210]. Rawlinson mentions, in a letter to Owen of April 15, 1751, that he had heard a complaint that in Fysher's time 'there was a great neglect in the entry of books into the Benefactors' Catalogue, and into the interleaved one of the Library; as to these objections, my answers were as ready as true, at least I hope so, that Dr. Fysher's indisposition disabled him much from the duty of his office, and that I did not think every small benefaction ought to load the velom register[211].'

A.D. 1749.

A Runic Primstaff, or Clog Almanack, was given by Mr. Guy Dickens, a gentleman-commoner of Ch. Ch. It is now exhibited, together with another (see p. 105), in the glass case near the entrance of the Library. Pointer, in his Oxoniensis Academia (p. 143), mentions that an explanation of the Primstaff was given by himself; the Accounts show that it was also in this year.

A number of coins were added to the Numismatic Museum, which had been collected by the late Librarian, Fysher.

A.D. 1750.

A copy on vellum, with illuminated initials, &c., of vol. i. (reaching to the Psalms) of the Vulgate Bible, printed by Fust and Schoeffer in 1462, was bought for £2 10s.! The volume was imperfect at the end, ceasing at Job xxxii. 5, and seven leaves followed in contemporary and beautiful MS., which also ended imperfectly at Ps. xxxvi. 9, with one leaf wanting at the end of Job. But when the Canonici Collection of MSS. was received from Venice, in 1818, among some fragments which were found in one of the boxes were fourteen leaves of a MS. Bible, which were at once recognised as being part of those wanted to complete this book, and which left only four still deficient. The volume came to the Library from the collection of Nic. Jos. Foucault, 'Comes Consistorianus,' many other of whose MSS. and printed books came by Rawlinson's bequest; but through how many hands the missing leaves had passed in the seventy subsequent years ere they were thus marvellously restored to their place, it is impossible to tell[212].

A.D. 1751.

A benefaction from Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, of £60 to the Librarian and of £10 for the purchase of books, appears for the first time in the Accounts for this year. These sums (which are still annually paid into the General Fund) proceed from a bequest of £200 per ann. from Crewe (who died Sept. 24, 1721) to the University. A proposal to give these same sums to the Library, with other assignments for the remainder, was brought forward in Convocation on June 5, 1723, but the scheme was then rejected[213]. And thus nearly thirty years seem to have elapsed from the time of the bequest before the share for the Library was definitely fixed and paid.

Charles Gray, M.P. for Colchester, presented a MS. Roll, containing a Survey of the estates of the Abbey of Glastonbury at the Dissolution, which is printed by Hearne in his Appendix to Langtoft's Chronicle, vol. ii. pp. 343-388, from a copy made from this original; and an inscription, in the Phœnician language, upon a white marble stone, which was brought, with many others, from Citium, in the island of Cyprus, by Dr. Porter, a physician of Thaxted in Essex. The stone measures twelve inches in length, by three in breadth, and three in depth. It has been frequently engraved: first by Pocock (Travels in the East, vol. ii. pl. xxxiii. 2); next by Swinton (Inscriptiones Citieæ, 1750, and Philos. Trans. 1764); afterwards by Chandler, Barthélemy, &c.; and, lastly, by Gesenius (for whom former copies were collated with the original, and corrected, by Mr. Reay) in his Scripturæ Linguæque Phœniciæ Monumenta, published in 1837, where the inscription is described at pp. 126-133, part i., and engraved at pl. xi. part iii. It appears to be an epitaph by a husband in memory of his wife. The stone is now kept in one of the Sub-librarians' studies.

Thomas Shaw, the well-known Eastern traveller, bequeathed his collection of natural curiosities, which was sent to the Ashmolean Museum, and the MS. of his own travels, with corrections, and other papers. Copies of Caxton's Game of the Chesse and Recuyell of Troye were given by Mr. James Bowen, of Shrewsbury, painter[214].

A.D. 1753.

In May of this year died Henry Hyde, Lord Cornbury, son of Henry Hyde, Earl of Rochester, and great-grandson of the great Earl of Clarendon. He had made a will bequeathing all the Chancellor's MSS. to the University of Oxford, to be printed at their press, and the profits to be devoted to a school for riding and other athletic exercises in the University, should such an institution be accepted, or else to other approved uses. Dying before his father, through the effects of an accident, his bequest was void, as he was never actually in possession of the papers to which it referred; but after the death of his father in Dec. following, his sisters, who were the co-heiresses, carried out his will, by sending all the Clarendon MSS. in their possession to the University on the same conditions[215]. From these was published in 1759 (in which year the papers appear to have been deposited in the Library) the Life of the first Earl, reprinted in several editions up to the year 1827. This was followed, in 1767-73, by the publication, under the editorship of Dr. Rich. Scrope, of Magd. Coll., of vols. i., ii. of a selection from the State Papers; of which vol. iii. appeared under the editorship of Mr. Thos. Monkhouse, of Queen's Coll., in 1786. During the progress of this publication, however, the original collection of MSS. papers was very largely increased by the acquisition of various portions which had long before been detached. Some were obtained, before the publication of vol. i., from the executors of Rich. Powney, LL.D.; and many were presented to the University, before the publication of vol. ii., by the Radcliffe Trustees, who had bought them for £170 when sold by auction in 1764 by the executors of Joseph Radcliffe, Esq., one of the executors to Edward, third Earl of Clarendon, who died in 1723. Dr. Douglas (afterwards Bishop of Salisbury), who was employed in the latter purchase, himself bought and gave some MSS. which had belonged to Mr. Guthrie, and was instrumental also in procuring some letters from Viscountess Middleton, &c. Again, before the publication of vol. iii. many further papers were purchased by the Radcliffe Trustees from a Mr. Richards, near Salisbury (from whose father Mr. Powney had obtained his portion), and from Mr. W. M. Godschall, of Albury, Surrey. And lastly, about eight or ten years ago, several boxes (including Clarendon's own iron-bound escritoire), containing miscellaneous papers, were forwarded by the Clarendon Trustees in final discharge of their trust.

A MS. of the History of the Rebellion, in seven volumes, together with one of the Contemplations, in three volumes, was forwarded in 1785 or 1786 by the Duke of Queensbury. The former MS. appears to be that from which the first edition was printed by the Earl of Rochester[216].

A complete Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers is now in progress under the care of several editors. As far as it has advanced, it has proved the good judgment and the extreme correctness with which the printed selection was made; but as that selection ended with the Restoration, while the papers themselves reach on to 1667, the year of the Earl's banishment, the later portion may be expected to contain much of fresh interest and value.

It was in this year also that the first portion of the MSS. of Thomas Carte, the 'Englishman' and historian, came to the Library. It has been universally supposed that his voluminous and invaluable collections came en masse subsequently to his death, but the Library Register shows that Oxford was indebted to him for a considerable and important portion during his life. In this year we find that he sent the papers which relate to the life of the great Duke of Ormonde, with a large number of others bearing on the history of Ireland from the time of Queen Elizabeth, comprised in thirty volumes folio and quarto. In the following year, shortly before his death (which occurred on April 2, 1754) he forwarded twenty-six more of his Irish volumes, in folio, marked A, B, C, D, &c. And in 1757 nine more of the same series were forwarded by his widow from Caldecot, near Abingdon, according to an entry in the old Catalogue, which appears to correspond to one in the annual Register to the effect that four more boxes were forwarded by the executors, 'by order of Rev. Mr. Hill.' The remainder of his collections were left in the hands of his widow, who, re-marrying to Mr. Nicholas Jernegan, or Jerningham (of the family seated at Cossey, Norfolk), bequeathed them, upon her death, to him, with the reversion to the University of Oxford. While they were in Mr. Jernegan's possession they were largely used by Macpherson for his publication of State Papers, for which use of them £300 were paid; and the agreement entered into by the publisher Cadell, when borrowing some of them for this purpose, is preserved in the MS. Catalogue of the collection. In 1778, however, Mr. Jernegan disposed of his life-interest to the University, for (as Nichols[217] was informed by Price) the sum of £50, and the remainder were consequently at once transferred to the Library. The collection numbers altogether 180 volumes in folio, fifty-four in quarto, and seven in octavo, besides several bundles of Carte's own papers; and is accompanied by a very full list of contents, compiled by Carte himself, in one folio volume. The mass of papers relating to Ireland which these volumes contain is enormous, drawn chiefly from the stores accumulated by Ormonde at Kilkenny Castle; to which are added miscellaneous historical collections derived from Lords Huntingdon, Sandwich, and Wharton. There are, also, several volumes of extracts and papers, collected with immediate reference to Carte's History of England. And a third, and especially interesting, portion consists of the papers of Mr. David Nairne, under-secretary to James II during his exile, which reach from 1692 to 1718, and fill two volumes in folio and eight or nine in quarto. It was from these that Macpherson chiefly compiled his Original Papers, published in 1775, in 2 vols., 4^o. A Report upon the contents of the collection, with special reference to Ireland (omitting the Nairne papers) was made to the Master of the Rolls by T. Duffus Hardy, Esq., and Rev. J. S. Brewer in 1863, and was printed in the following year, together with an extremely useful summary of the contents of the various volumes, and a reference-table of the letters, &c., printed by Carte in his Ormonde volumes. In consequence of this Report, two Commissioners (the Rev. Dr. Russell, President of Maynooth, and J. P. Prendergast, Esq.) were appointed to examine the whole series, and select for transcription all historical and official papers of interest relating to Ireland, with a view to the preservation of copies in the Record Office at Dublin. Several transcribers are therefore now continuously employed in transcribing for this purpose the papers selected by the Commissioners. Some notice of the MSS. is to be found in the Record Commission Report for 1800, p. 354.

A.D. 1754.

In this year the MS. collections of Rev. John Walker, D.D., of Exeter (son of Endymion Walker, of Exeter; born 1674, dec. 1747[218]), from which he compiled his valuable and laborious work, The Sufferings of the Clergy, were forwarded to the Library by his son, William Walker, a druggist in Exeter, as appears from a letter from the latter preserved among papers relating to the Library in the Librarian's study. The annual accounts, however, mention the gift under the year 1756. Dr. Walker had expressed in his book (pref. p. xliii.) his intention to deposit his papers in some public repository, and his purpose was fortunately thus carried out. The papers have recently been bound, and now form twelve volumes in folio and eleven in quarto, with a few papers still in bundles[219]. A large number of letters from many among the sufferers and their representatives are here preserved; but, unfortunately, Walker's own handwriting is often hard to decipher. Many pamphlets which belonged to him (identified by the peculiar handwriting in MS. notes) are amongst a vast series recently bound and placed in continuation of the Godwyn Tracts; and several volumes of pamphlets written by Dissenters were given by himself in the years 1719-21.

The name of Hogarth occurs in the list of donors, as presenting his two engravings of the Analysis of Beauty, which he had published in the preceding year.

A.D. 1755.

This year is remarkable for the number and variety of the collections with which, during its course, the Library was enriched, comprehending those of Rawlinson, Furney, St. Amand, and Ballard.

On April 6 died Richard Rawlinson, D.C.L., a Bishop among the Non-jurors, notwithstanding that he passed in the world as a layman. From the time of Bodley, Laud, and Selden, he was the greatest benefactor the Library had known; and his only rivals since his own day have been Gough and Douce. In point of numbers, his donation of MSS. far exceeded all. From the short autobiographical notice of himself, given in his own collections for a continuation of the Athenæ Oxon. (where he has inserted a small portrait of himself, engraved, without his name, by Van der Gucht), we learn the following particulars. He was born Jan. 3, 1689/90, in the Old Bailey, his father being Sir Thos. Rawlinson, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1706. On March 9, 1707/8 (having been previously at St. Paul's School and Eton), he was matriculated as a commoner of St. John's College; but in consequence of the death of his father in the same year, he became a gentleman-commoner in 1709; B.A., Oct. 10, 1711[220]; M.A., July 5, 1713; Governor of Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals, 1713; F.R.S., 1714; ordained (among the Non-jurors) Deacon, Sept. 21, and Priest, Sept. 23, 1716[221]. He then travelled through the whole of England, except some of the northern parts, and in 1719 went into Normandy, where, while staying at Rouen, he received from Oxford the degree of D.C.L. by diploma of June 30. Thence he went to the Low Countries, where, in Sept., he was admitted into the Universities of both Utrecht and Leyden, and returned into England in Nov. On June 12 in the following year, he started on a longer journey, which he extended through Holland, France, Germany, the whole of Italy, and Sicily, to Malta; and returned on the death of his elder brother Thomas, also a well-known book-collector, in 1726. During his six years' travels, he had seen, he remarks, four Popes[222]. Admitted F.S.A. May 10, 1727. On March 25, 1728, he was consecrated Bishop, by Bishops Gandy, Doughty, and Blackbourne, in Gandy's Chapel[223]. Appointed a Governor of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in March, 1733. He resided at London House, Aldersgate, so called from having been in early days a mansion of the Bishops of London. During his lifetime he was a constant benefactor to the Library; in the years 1733-4-5-7-8-9 and 1750, he is entered in the great Register for special gifts of coins, books, and pictures. Some hundreds of printed books, now in the gallery called 'Jur.,' and elsewhere, were given by him at these times; while many of the Holbeins and other valuable portraits in the Picture Gallery came from him[224]. A few MSS. also came from him during his lifetime which are now placed in the general Bodley collection. But at his death all his collections came en masse[225]; collections formed abroad and at home, the choice of book-auctions, the pickings of chandlers' and grocers' waste-paper, everything, especially, in the shape of a MS., from early copies of Classics and Fathers to the well-nigh most recent log-books of sailors' voyages[226]. Not a sale of MSS. occurred, apparently, in London, during his time, at which he was not an omnigenous purchaser; so that students of every subject now bury themselves in his stores with great content and profit. But history in all its branches, heraldry and genealogy, biography and topography, are his specially strong points. The printed books bequeathed by him in selection from his whole library (of which those in quarto and smaller sizes are still called by his name) amounted to between 1800 and 1900[227], but the MSS. to upwards of 4800, besides a large number of old charters and miscellaneous unsorted deeds.

The staff of the Library being very small at the time, as well as ill-paid[228], and such an accession being completely overwhelming, the officers appear to have contented themselves with duly entering the printed books, while leaving the MSS. entirely neglected. About the beginning of the present century some steps were taken towards a Catalogue, and a portion were arranged and numbered; still later, considerably more was done. But it was only on the accession of the present Librarian to the Headship, that the full extent of Rawlinson's collections was ascertained. Every corner of the Library was then thoroughly examined, and cupboard after cupboard was found filled with MSS. and papers huddled together in confusion, while, last not least, a dark hole under a staircase, explored by the present writer on hands and knees, afforded a rich 'take,' including many writings of Rawlinson's Non-juring friends. The whole number of volumes thus brought to light amounted to about 1300.

The classes into which the whole collection of MSS. is now divided are the following:—

1. Class A: 500 volumes, chiefly of English history, with a few theological books. Amongst these are the Thurloe State Papers, in sixty-seven volumes, of which all of importance were published by Birch, in seven vols. folio, in 1742. These papers were found after the Revolution concealed in the ceiling of garrets in Lincoln's Inn, which belonged to the rooms formerly occupied by Thurloe; and they still bear too evident marks of the damp to which they were there exposed. They passed through Lord Somers' and Sir Jos. Jekyll's hands into those of a bookseller, Fletcher Gyles, from whom Rawlinson obtained them in 1751, and who, as Rawlinson says, asked at first an 'immoderate price' for them. Another series is that of Miscellaneous Papers of Sam. Pepys, in twenty-five volumes, containing his correspondence, collections on Admiralty business, &c.[229] These, together with many other volumes which belonged to Pepys (including many curious dockyard account-books of the times of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth) were 'redeemed from thus et odores vendentibus[230].' Of another acquisition Rawlinson writes thus:—

'There was lately an auction here of Mr. Bridgeman's books, curiosities, and MSS., who was formerly clerk of the Council to K. James II, and register to the Ecclesiastical Commission. Here I laid out some pence, and picked up some curiosities; the original minute-book of the High Commission, the proceedings every session with the names of those present, by which it appears that Bp. Sprat was not so innocent as he would persuade us in his letter to the Earl of Dorset to think, and that notwithstanding all his shiftings he sat to the penultim. Session of that Court;' [Letters canvassing the nobility, gentry, justices of the peace, &c., in favour of the repeal of the Test;] '3 letters from the D. of Monmouth, two to the King and one to the Queen, desiring an audience in which he would give them such satisfaction, ... very pathetic, and deserved at least some attention[231]; ... several volumes of treaties, ... instructions to ambassadors. Very remarkable are those to Lord Castlemain on his going to Rome, the King's two letters to the Pope, a third of revocation, all personal and complement, but no embassy of obedience. Copy-books of letters, private and public, wrote by K. Charles and K. James II, from which might be collected such a fund of true tho' secret history, that the prize is not to be valued[232], and will, I hope, be a standing monument of great events, and preserved in Bodley's repository, with the papers of Bp. Turner and other great men at and since the year 1688[233].'

There are also some papers in this class and in Class C which belonged to Archbp. Wake, about which Rawlinson writes, on June 24, 1741[234]:—

'My agent last week met with some papers of Archbp. Wake at a chandler's shop; this is unpardonable in his executors, as all his MSS. were left to Christ Church. But quære whether these did not fall into some servant's hands who was ordered to burn them, and Mr. Martin Folkes ought to have seen that done. They fell into the curate's hands of St. George, Bloomsbury.'

2. Class B numbers 520 volumes nominally, but really, including double numbers, 534. They comprise heraldry and genealogy (including MSS. of Sir Richard and Sir Thos. St. George, W. Wyrley, Guillim, Ryley, Glover, Le Neve, and other heralds) English and Irish history, and topography, including several monastic chartularies. Among the genealogical MSS. is a remarkable collection of pedigrees, in twelve volumes, which the present writer ascertained to have been compiled by Thomas Wilkinson, Vicar of Laurence Waltham, Berks, between about 1647 and 1681. They are arranged alphabetically, as far as the letter P in tolerable order and regularity, but thenceforward only in a rough and incomplete state. Unfortunately the handwriting is far from clear, and the ink has often made it worse. Among the volumes relating to Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, &c., are twelve or thirteen which belonged to William Holman, a voluminous collector for the first-mentioned county, who incorporated the gatherings of Rev. John Ousley and Thos. Jekyll. Morant, the historian of Essex, obtained the larger portion of Holman's books; some are in the British Museum; and the remainder ('the refuse,' says Morant) were bought by Rawlinson in 1752 for £10[235]. Besides the above-mentioned volumes, there are a large number of Holman's MSS. which are kept distinct, and which have been recently bound in fourteen folio volumes, eleven quarto, and five octavo. Under London are some nineteen or twenty volumes of Diocesan papers which belonged to Bp. John Robinson. They formed (with one volume in Class A and several in Class C) a mass which are described by Rawlinson, as follows[236]:—

'I lately rescued from the grocers, chandlers, &c. a parcel of papers once the property of Compton and Robinson, successively Bps. of London. Amongst those of the first were original subscription and visitation books, letters and conferences during the apprehensions of Popery amongst the clergy of this diocese, remarkable intelligences relating to Burnet and the Orange Court in Holland in those extraordinary times before 1688[237], minutes of the proceedings of the Commissioners for the Propagation of the Gospel, and a great variety of other papers. Amongst those of Bp. Robinson, numbers of originals relating to the transactions at the treaty of Utrecht, copies of his own letters to Lord Bolingbroke, and originals from Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Oxford, Electress and Elector of Hanover, Ormonde, Strafford, Prior, &c.; letters from the Scots deprived Bishops to Compton, and variety of State papers. They belonged to one Mr. [Anth.] Gibbon, lately dead, who was private secretary to both the afore-mentioned prelates.'