A.D. 1601
It is from this date that our notes on the history of the Library can begin to assume an annalistic form. A gift of £20 from Herbert Westphaling, Bishop of Hereford, was expended in the purchase of books with great success; no fewer than thirty were obtained, and amongst them were, ‘Evangelia quatuor Saxonica, lingua et charactere vetustiss.,’ being the MS. from which John Foxe had taken the text of the Saxon Gospels in the edition published at the expense of Archbishop Parker in 1571, and which was subsequently re-edited by Junius. It is now numbered, Bodl. MS. 441. An early edition (qu. editio princeps?) of the Gospels in the Russian language (now placed among the Bodley MSS. 213) appears among some books given by Sir Henry Savile27, whose brother-historian and antiquary, William Camden, is also registered as the donor of a few MSS. and printed books. Thomas Allen, M.A., of Gloucester Hall, the astrologer, gave twenty MSS28; the rest of his collection came subsequently to the Library, included in that of Sir Kenelm Digby, to whom Allen had bequeathed it. One of the twenty now given was an extremely curious volume, chiefly written in the ninth century (marked Auctarium F. iv. 32), including in its contents an original drawing (engraved in Hickes’ Thesaurus, p. 144) by St. Dunstan of himself as prostrate at the feet of the throned Christ29, a grammatical tract by Eutychius (or Eutex, as the scribe calls him, while professing doubt as to the right form), with Welsh glosses (noticed by Lhuyd in his Archæol. Brit. p. 226); the first book of Ovid De Arte amandi, with similar glosses30; and lections in Greek and Latin from the Prophets and Pentateuch, amongst which is one from Hosea containing, in the Latin version, a line or two unlike any known early version, (although faithful to the Hebrew), but found also in a quotation in Gildas31. Capt. Josias Bodley32 gave an astronomical sphere and other instruments in brass, which now stand in the south window adjoining the entrance to the Library. But the great benefactor of the year was the newly-appointed Librarian, Thomas James, who gave various MSS., chiefly patristic (which, however, Wood says, ‘he had taken out of several College libraries’), and sixty printed volumes. From the first preparation of the new foundation Bodley had fixed upon James, then a Fellow of New College, as his Library-Keeper. The volume of letters published by Hearne (from Bodl. MS. 699) in 1703, under the title of Reliquiæ Bodleianæ, consists chiefly of those which the Founder addressed to James while his collection of books was in process of formation, but unfortunately they have no dates of years, and Hearne printed them simply as they came into his hands, without any attempt to determine their order of sequence. We learn from these that James’ salary at the outset was £5 13s. 4d. quarterly; but almost at once he threatened to ‘strike’ unless it were raised to an annual stipend of £30 or £40, while at the same time he demanded permission to marry. This latter requisition appeared particularly grievous to Bodley, who had made celibacy a stringent condition in his Statutes, and he forthwith expostulated strongly with his Librarian on these his ‘unseasonable and unreasonable motions’ (p. 52). The upshot, however, was that Bodley, very unwillingly, consented to become the ‘first breaker’ of his own institution, (which ‘hereafter,’ he says, ‘I purpose to become inviolable,’) and, for the love he bore to James, allowed him to marry33. But it was not until the year 1813 that the Statute was altered and the Librarian released from his obligation of perpetual celibacy, and even then, by a singular and unmeaning compromise, it was ordered that he, as well as the Under-Librarians, should be unmarried at the time of election. The whole restriction was, however, finally removed on the revision of the Statutes in 1856. But its infringement appears to have been again tolerated, in one instance, at least, during the last century, viz. in the case of Dr. Hudson. Hearne34 enters the following ‘memorandum’ of uncharitable hearsay gossip respecting his quondam chief and friend: ‘Dr. Hudson was married when he was elected Librarian. His first wife was one Biesley. That he hath now is his second. It is said that he was married to this Biesley when he was Taberder of Queen’s. The Dr. hath been of a loose, profligate, and irreligious life, as I have often heard. The family of the Harrisons he is married into now is good for just nothing, being as stingy (if it can be) as himself.’
Notes
27 Savile’s benefactions were continued in the years 1609 and 1614, and in 1620 he sent a large number of Greek and Latin MSS.
28 In the year 1604 he appears again as the donor of some printed books. A notice of one of his MSS. (now Bodl. 198), which once belonged to Bishop Grosteste, was by him given to the Friars Minor at Oxford, and by them, about 1433, to Gascoigne, who presented it to Durham College, is to be found in Warton’s Life of Sir T. Pope, 1772, pp. 392-3. The volume contains MS. notes by both Grosteste and Gascoigne.
29 Another relic of Dunstan is preserved among the Hatton MSS. No. 30 of that collection. ‘Expositio Augustini in Apocalypsin,’ written in Anglo-Saxon characters, has the following inscription in large letters on the last leaf: ‘Dunstan abbas hunc libellum scribere jussit.’
30 These glosses, together with an ‘Alphabetum Nemnivi’ in Runic characters, (of which a facsimile is given in Hickes’ Thesaurus, p. 168), and some Welsh and Latin notes on weights and measures, are printed, with copious notes, by Zeuss in his Grammatica Celtica, 8vo. Leipz. 1853, vol. ii. pp. 1076-96. The MS. is described also in Wanley’s Catalogue, p. 63, and the latest account of it, together with a facsimile from the tract by Eutychius, is to be found in Villemarqué’s Notice des principaux MSS. des anciens Bretons, 8vo. Par. 1856. And the Alphabet of Nemnivus, together with another, and somewhat later, Runic Alphabet (of the ‘winged’ form), found in Bodl. MS. 572, is printed at pp. 10-12 of the Ancient Welsh Grammar of Edeyrn, edited for the Welsh MSS. Soc. in 1856 by Rev. John Williams, ab Ithel.
31 This reading was pointed out to the author by Rev. A. W. Haddan, B.D.
32 Afterwards Sir Josias, a younger brother of Sir Thomas, and Governor of Duncannon in Ireland, author of a humorous Latin tour in Lecale (a barony in the county of Down), which, although not unfrequently met with in MS, has never yet been printed.
33 Reliquiæ Bodl. p. 162. See also p. 183.
34 Diary, vol. lviii. p. 157.