A.D. 1809
The death of the eminent topographer and antiquary, Richard Gough, on Feb. 20, 1809275, brought into operation the bequest made to the Library in his will, dated ten years previously. This consisted of all his topographical collections, together with all his books relating to Saxon and Northern literature, ‘for the use of the Saxon Professor,’ his maps and engravings, and all the copper-plates used in the illustration of the various works published by himself. The transmission of this vast collection was accomplished by Mr. J. Nichols, the executor, in the course of the year; and some of his correspondence on the subject is printed in his Illustrations of Literary History, vol. v. pp. 556-561. The collection (which numbers upwards of 3700 volumes) was placed in the room formerly the Civil Law School, that room having been assigned to the Library a few years previously, and fitted up (at a cost of about £675) for the reception of various historical collections. In the same room are now the Carte, Dodsworth, Tanner, Willis, Junius, and portion of the Rawlinson, manuscripts, with other smaller collections; the name proposed to be given to it, and by which it was designated in Gough’s will, was ‘The Antiquaries’ Closet.’ Gough’s library consists, firstly, of a large series of maps276 and topographical prints and drawings, in elephant-folio volumes; of this a very brief outline-list is given in the printed catalogue, but a full list in detail exists in MS277. Secondly, of printed books and MSS., arranged under the heads of General Topography, Ecclesiastical Topography278, Natural History, the several Counties (with London, Westminster, and Southwark) in order279, Wales, Islands, Scotland, and Ireland. Thirdly, of 227 works connected with Anglo-Saxon literature and that of the Scandinavian races generally. Fourthly, of an extremely large and valuable series of printed Service-books of the English Church before the Reformation, together with a few MSS., chiefly Horæ. The value of this series may be gathered from the following statement of the Missals, Breviaries, Manuals, Processionals, and Hours, which it comprises, besides which there are Graduals, Psalters, Hymns, Primers, &c.
| Missals, | Salisbury use, | 30 | |
| Missals, | York use, | 4 | |
| Missals, | Rouen use, | 1 | |
| Missals, | Roman use, | 3 | |
| Missals, | ‘pro sacerdotibus in Anglia, &c. itinerantibus.’ | 1 | |
| Breviaries and Portiforia, | Salisbury use, | 18 | |
| Breviaries and Portiforia, | York use, | 2 | |
| Breviaries and Portiforia, | Hereford use, | 1 | 280 |
| Manuals, | Salisbury use, | 10 | |
| Manuals, | York (MS.) use, | 1 | |
| Processionals, | Salisbury use, | 10 | |
| Processionals, | York use, | 1 | |
| Hours, | Salisbury use, | 24 | |
| Hours, | Roman use, (besides several MSS.) | 1 |
Of several of these books there are more than single copies.
A fifth division of Gough’s library consists of sixteen large folio volumes of coloured drawings of monuments in churches of France, chiefly at Paris, in Normandy, Valois, Champagne, Burgundy and Brie, and at Beauvais, Chartres, Vendosme and Noyon. They form part of a large collection extending through the whole of France, which was made by M. Gagnières, tutor to the sons of the Grand Dauphin, and given by him to Louis XIV in 1711. Of this collection, now preserved in the Imperial Library, twenty-five volumes were lost amid the troubles of the French Revolution, between 1785 and 1801; but in what way, out of the twenty-five, these sixteen came into Gough’s hands, has not been clearly ascertained. The collection is of great value, as most of the monuments were defaced or destroyed by the revolutionary mobs. Gough’s volumes contain about 2000 drawings, of the whole of which facsimiles were made in 1860 by M. Jules Frappaz, by direction of the French Minister of Public Instruction, (who made application for the purpose, through Mr. J. H. Parker, in 1859) for the purpose of so far supplying the deficiency in the series at Paris281.
The copy of the British Topography, which Gough had prepared for a third edition (of which a considerable part of vol. i. had been printed, but was burned in the disastrous fire at Mr. Nichols’ printing-office in Feb., 1808,) was bought by the Curators of Mr. Nichols in 1812 for £150282. It has been recently bound in four very thick volumes. A fifth volume contains the proof-sheets of that portion of vol. i. which had been printed, extending to Cheshire, p. 446. The collections for the first edition make three volumes.
By Gough’s bequest the Library became also possessed (as mentioned above) of the very valuable copper-plates which illustrated his Sepulchral Monuments, and other works. In 1811, one hundred guineas were paid to Basire, the engraver, for cleaning and arranging 380 of these plates. Amongst these was the actual brass effigy of one of the Wingfield family in the fifteenth century, from Letheringham Church, Suffolk, of which an engraving is found in the Monuments. The brass is now exhibited in the glass case of miscellaneous objects of curiosity in the Picture Gallery.
The Catalogue of the collection was issued from the University Press, in a quarto volume, in 1814. It was chiefly compiled by Dr. Bandinel, to whom fifty guineas were paid for it, in 1813; but Dr. Bliss has noted283 that the first 136 pages were prepared by himself. In the Bibliographical Decameron (vol. i. p. xcv.) Dibdin has made honourable mention of the ‘perseverance, energy, and exactness’ with which he found Dr. Bandinel working on a very hot day in the year 1812, in the arrangement of the collection, ‘in an oaken-floored room, light, spacious, and dry.’
Some account and survey-books, belonging to University and Magdalen Colleges, which came to the Library among Gough’s MSS., were restored by vote of Convocation on March 9, 1814.
The MSS. which the well-known traveller, Rev. Edw. Dan. Clarke, LL.D., had collected during his journeys through a large part of Europe and Asia, were purchased from him in this year for £1000. A first portion of a Catalogue, comprising descriptions of fifty volumes, of which fifteen are in Latin, two in French (Alain Chartier, one being the printed edit. of 1526), and the rest in Greek, was published in 1812, in quarto, by Dr. Gaisford, who printed in full some inedited Scholia on Plato and on the Poems of Gregory Nazianzen. A second part of the Catalogue, containing a description of forty-five volumes in Arabic, Persian, and Æthiopic, was issued by Dr. Nicoll, in 1814. The special feature in the collection is a MS. of Plato’s Dialogues, from which the Scholia are printed in the Catalogue, written (on 418 vellum quarto leaves) by a scribe named John (who styles himself Calligraphus) in the year 896, for Arethas, a deacon of Patras, for the sum of thirteen Byzantine nummi. The D’Orville MS. of Euclid was also written for this Arethas (see p. 208).
Notes
275 A very full memoir of him is to be found in the Lit. Anecd. vol. vi. pp. 262-343, and 613-626. His miscellaneous library was sold by auction in 1810. Two drawings in sepia, by F. Lewis, of his house at Enfield, were bought in 1861.
276 One of these is a very curious manuscript map of England and Scotland, executed in the fourteenth century, which now hangs, framed and glazed, in the eastern wing of the Library. It was bought by Gough at the sale of the MSS. of Mr. Thomas Martin, of Palgrave, Suffolk, in 1774. A facsimile (engraved by Basire) and a description are given in the British Topography, 1780, vol. i. pp. 76-85. Another object of interest among the maps is a piece of tapestry, in three fragments, containing portions of the counties of Hereford, Salop, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Middlesex, &c. They are said by Gough, in a MS. note in his collections for a third edition of his Topography, to be parts of the three great maps of the Midland Counties, formerly at Mr. Sheldon’s house at Weston, Long Compton, Warwickshire, which are the earliest specimens of tapestry weaving in England, the art having been introduced by William Sheldon, who died in 1570. They are described in vol. ii. of the Topography, pp. 309-310. They were bought by Lord Orford at a sale at Weston for £30, and presented by him to Earl Harcourt, whose successor, Archbishop Harcourt, gave them to the Museum at York (where they now are) in 1827. In Murray’s Handbook for Yorkshire, they are said to have been made in 1579. One guinea was given by Gough for his fragments.
277 This list was drawn up about 1844-6 by Mr. Fred. Oct. Garlick, then an assistant in the Library (afterwards of Ch. Ch., B.A., deceased 1851).
278 Mr. A. Chalmers gave, in 1813, the second volume of a copy of Wharton’s Anglia Sacra, with MSS. notes by White Kennett, of which the first volume was in this division of Gough’s library. But both volumes had been bought by Gough for £1 1s. at the sale of J. West’s library in 1773, at which sale he procured, besides, several other books with Kennett’s notes. There are also volumes with MSS. notes by Baker (the ‘socius ejectus’) Cole, Rowe Mores, and other well-known antiquaries.
279 The County Histories are in many instances enriched with various notes and papers in print and MS. The Berkshire MSS. have been increased in the present year (1868) by the addition of the collections of the late Will. Nelson Clarke, D.C.L., of Ch. Ch., author of the History of the Hundred of Wanting (4o. 1824), which have been presented to the Library by Mr. Coxe, to whom they were given by his cousin, the collector, when the latter relinquished the idea of writing a history of Berks. They consist of a Parochial History of the county, transcripts of Heralds’ Visitations and of early records, and miscellaneous note-books and papers.
280 The splendid and, as it is believed, unique vellum copy of the Hereford Missal (’ad usum eccl. Helfordensis,’ fol. Rouen, 1502) which the Library possesses, came to it from Rawlinson among the books of T. Hearne, to whom it had been given by Charles Eyston, Esq., of East Hendred, Berks. (Hearne’s pref. to Camden’s Annales Eliz. 1. xxvii.) This Hereford volume is described, together with many of Gough’s books, in a book by Ed. Frère, entitled Des Livres de Liturgie des Eglises d’Angleterre imprimés à Rouen dans les xv. et xvi. Siècles, 8o Rouen, 1867.
281 See Gent. Magaz. for 1860, p. 406.
282 So in the Library Register of accounts. Nichols (Lit. Hist. vol. v. p. 559) says £100.
283 In his MS. Collectanea, in the possession of Rev. H. O. Coxe.