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. 1747218), 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 bundles219. 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.
Notes
218 His successor in his Exeter prebend was appointed in that year.
219 The present writer, in answer to an enquiry in Notes and Queries in 1862 (3rd series, i. 218), said that these papers were amongst the Rawlinson MSS. This mistake arose from the fact that the least important portion had recently been found in a mass of papers belonging to that collection, but they did not at any time themselves form part of it.