Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, A.D. 1598-A.D. 1867 Part 17

[206] Pref. to _Chron. de Dunstaple_, p. xii. _Autobiogr._ p. 11, &c.

[207] It is fair to say that Fysher remarks in his preface that experience proved how entirely vain and foolish were the reports which had been spread abroad of the little or the nothing which, after the labours of their predecessors, would remain for the then editors to do.

[208] Moses Williams took his degree as B.A. in 1708. One John Williams (probably the one of that name who is entered in the Register of Graduates as having taken the degree of B.A. at Oriel in 1704) appears to have been a colleague of Hearne's in employment in the Library, about 1704. For in a letter written to Hearne, March 20, 1705/6, one year and a-half after he had quitted Oxford, in which he mentions his having been appointed to the Head-mastership of Ruthin School in November, 1705, he refers to 'our dear friends that are in irons at the Bodleian Library, there being several, I suppose, that have been manacled in that pleasing prison since my being there.' (_Rawlinson Letters_, vol. xii. f. 1.)

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 4_s._ 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 16_s._ 8_d._, 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.

[209] He left a benefaction to his successor in this office, which now produces 13 6_s._ 8_d._ yearly.

A.D. 1746.

Trott's _Clavis Linguae Sanctae_. 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 Princ.i.p.al 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].'

[210] Memorandum by Owen himself, in reply to a question from Rawlinson, Rawl. MS. C. 989, f. 142. This volume contains a collection of letters to Owen, chiefly from Browne Willis and Rawlinson, between the years 1748-1756. It affords proof that Owen was what his correspondents would call an 'honest' man, _i.e._ a Jacobite. In one letter, Willis sends him a Latin inscription in praise of Flora Macdonald, which he says is 'on a fair lady's picture, in an honest gentl. seat in the province of St.

David's;' in another, Rawlinson sends him, as a contribution to the Oxford collection of verses on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, this Jacobite epitaph:--

'Here lies Fred., Down among the dead; Had it been his Father, Most had much rather; Had it been his Brother, Better than any other; Had it been a Sister, More would have mist her; Wer't the whole generation, Happy for the nation; But since it is only Fred., There is no more to be said.'

[211] Rawl. MS. C. 989.

A.D. 1749.

A Runic Primstaff, or Clog Almanack, was given by Mr. Guy d.i.c.kens, a gentleman-commoner of Ch. Ch. It is now exhibited, together with another (_see_ p. 105), in the gla.s.s 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 10_s._! The volume was imperfect at the end, ceasing at Job x.x.xii. 5, and seven leaves followed in contemporary and beautiful MS., which also ended imperfectly at Ps. x.x.xvi. 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 Consistoria.n.u.s,' many other of whose MSS. and printed books came by Rawlinson's bequest; but through how many hands the missing leaves had pa.s.sed in the seventy subsequent years ere they were thus marvellously restored to their place, it is impossible to tell[212].

[212] The story of this recovery has been already related by Archd.

Cotton in his _Typographical Gazetteer_, p. 339, where by mistake he refers the original purchase to the year 1752.

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 a.s.signments 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 Glas...o...b..ry 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 Phnician 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 Ess.e.x. The stone measures twelve inches in length, by three in breadth, and three in depth. It has been frequently engraved: first by Poc.o.c.k (_Travels in the East_, vol. ii. pl. x.x.xiii. 2); next by Swinton (_Inscriptiones Citieae_, 1750, and _Philos. Trans._ 1764); afterwards by Chandler, Barthelemy, &c; and, lastly, by Gesenius (for whom former copies were collated with the original, and corrected, by Mr. Reay) in his _Scripturae Linguaeque Phniciae 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].

[213] Hearne's _Diary_, xcvii. 12.

[214] A MS. vol. of collections by him relating to the history of Shropshire, dated 1768, is among Gough's books, Salop MS. 20.

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 inst.i.tution 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. G.o.dschall, 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 ma.s.se_ 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 ma.s.s of papers relating to Ireland which these volumes contain is enormous, drawn chiefly from the stores acc.u.mulated 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.

[215] On Feb. 4, 1868, a scheme for the appropriation of the acc.u.mulated fund (now amounting to about 12,000), which had been approved by the Clarendon Trustees, was accepted by Convocation. The money is to be applied to the erection of laboratories, &c., at the University Museum, for the Professor of Experimental Philosophy.

[216] In the Benefaction Book this gift is entered under 1793, but it is mentioned in the Preface to vol. iii. of the _State Papers_, dated May 29, 1786, as having been '_lately_' given. Another copy of part of the _History_, partly written by William Edgeman, who was Hyde's secretary at Scilly and during his first exile, came to the Library among Rawlinson's MSS., by whom it was bought at the sale of the Chandos Library in 1747 for 1 10_s._!

[217] _Lit. Anecd._ ii. 514.

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.