A.D. 1795
A brief list (filling sixty small octavo pages) was printed at the Clarendon Press, of the Editiones principes, the fifteenth-century books, and the Aldines, then in the Library. The name of the compiler does not appear. It is entitled, ‘Notitia editionum quoad libros Hebr., Gr. et Lat. quæ vel primariæ, vel sæc. xv. impressæ, vel Aldinæ, in Bibliotheca Bodleiana adservantur.’
Four cabinets of English coins were presented by Thomas Knight, Esq., of Godmersham, Kent. Among them was an ornament (now exhibited in the glass case near the Library door) said to have been worn by John Hampden when he fell at Chalgrove Field269. It consists of a plain cornelian set in silver, with the following couplet engraved on the rim:—
‘Against my King I do not fight,
But for my King and kingdom’s right.’
The Curators renewed a request, made ineffectually some time before, that the several Colleges would make out returns for the Library of all such books in their own collections as did not appear in the Bodl. Catalogue. In the year 1801 they acknowledged the receipt of such lists from Magdalen270, Balliol, Exeter, and Jesus; Oriel sent a list subsequently (in 1808?); but these were all that were ever forwarded.
Notes
269 Lord Nugent, in his Memorials of Hampden, erroneously mentions this as being preserved in the Ashmolean Museum. He also repeats two mistaken readings first given in Miss Seward’s Anecdotes, iv. 358 (a volume dedicated to Price, the Librarian), where a small woodcut of the ornament is given.
270 A complete Catalogue of the Library of this College, compiled by Rev. E. M. Macfarlane, M.A., of Linc. Coll., was issued by the College, in three handsomely-printed quarto volumes, in 1860-62. The books of all writers belonging to the College, are entered separately in an Appendix in vol. iii.