A.D. 1701
The long-entertained idea of resigning the Librarianship was at length carried out by Dr. Thomas Hyde in this year, for the reasons given in the following letter, which was addressed by him to the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, probably Dr. Charlett. It is here printed from a copy sent by Hyde to Wake, then Rector of St. James, Westminster, and preserved amongst the Wake Correspondence in the library of Ch. Ch.:—
‘March 10, 1700/01,
‘Christ Church, Oxon.
‘Sir,—I being a little indisposed by the gout, acquaint you thus by letter, that what I long agoe designed (as you partly knew) I am now about to put in execution. That is to say, I shall shortly lay down my office of Library-keeper, about a month hence, which resolution I do now declare, and I do hereby give you timely and statuteable notice of the same as Pro-Vice-Chancellor, entreating that, as the Statute requires, you will in two days order Mr. Cowper to draw a Programma to be set up at the Schools to the sence of the enclosed paper, he best knowing forms and lawyers’ Latin.
‘Among the Bodleian Statutes in the Appendix, in the Statute de causis amovendi aut libere recedendi, you will find that upon the Library-keeper’s notice thus given, you are in two days’ time to fix up the programma preparatory to make it known that about a month hence (which is about the end of this term) that office will be actually resigned and void.
‘My reasons for leaving the place are two, viz. one is because (my feet being left weak by the gout) I am weary of the toil and drudgery of daily attendance all times and weathers; and secondly, that I may have my time free to myself to digest and finish my papers and collections upon hard places of Scripture, and to fit them for the press158; seing that Lectures (though we must attend upon them) will do but little good, hearers being scarce and practicers more scarce.
‘I should have left the Library more compleat and better furnish’d but that the building of the Elaboratory159 did so exhaust the University mony, that no books were bought in severall years after it. And at other times when books were sometimes bought, it was (as you well know) never left to me to buy them, the Vice-Chancellor not allowing me to lay out any University mony. And therefore some have blamed me without cause for not getting all sorts of books.
‘Before the Visitations I did usually spend a month’s time in preparing a list of good books to offer to the Curators; but I could seldom get them bought, being commongly (sic) answered in short, that they had no mony. Nay, I have been chid and reproved by the Vice-Chancellor for offering to put them to so much charge in buying books. These things at last discouraged me from medling in it. But, however, I leave the Library three times bigger than I found it160, and furnished with a Catalogue of which I found it destitute. I wish the University a man who may take as much pains and drudgery as I have done whilst I was able to do it.
‘I entreat you with all speed to cause the Register to put up the programma signed with your name, that so things may be regularly and statutably dispatched in order, until the time of actuall resignation shall come.
‘In the mean time I remain,
‘Your humble servant,
‘THOMAS HYDE.’
John Hudson, M.A., of Queen’s, afterwards D.D. and Princ. of St. Mary Hall, was elected in Hyde’s room; he was opposed by J. Wallis, M.A., of Magd., the Laudian Professor of Arabic, but was chosen by 194 votes to 173161. A letter to him from Hyde on his election, with advice about the entering of Sir H. Sloane’s books in the Register, the augmentation of Mr. Crabbe’s salary, the Catalogues and the Statutes, is printed in [Walker’s] Letters by Eminent Persons, i. 173. He had previously, in 1696-98, given seventy books to the Library, and in 1705-10 he added nearly 600. Hyde did not long survive his resignation, dying before one year had elapsed, on Feb. 18, 1702. He was buried at Handborough, near Oxford.
In this year Thomas Hearne, the famous antiquary, was appointed Janitor, or Assistant, in the Library. He tells us in his Autobiography (p. 10) that, from the time of his taking the degree of B.A. in Act term, 1699, ‘he constantly went to the Bodleian Library every day, and studied there as long as the time allowed by the Statutes would admit,’ and that the fact of this his ‘diligence being taken notice of by all persons that came thither, and his skill in books being likewise well known to those with whom he had at any time conversed,’ occasioned Hudson’s appointing him to be an Assistant immediately upon his own election as Librarian. It appears, from the Visitors’ Book, that a payment of £10 was made to him in this year, and that, in the next year, £30 were voted to him for his assistance in making an Appendix to the Catalogue of printed books162, and for enlarging and correcting the Catalogues of MSS. and Coins. Extra payments of 50s. were also made to him in 1704 and 1706, and of 20s. in 1709.
The Bodley Speech. See 1682.
Notes
158 These were left in MS. at Hyde’s death, and have never been published.
159 i.e. the Ashmolean Museum.
160 Hyde was greatly mistaken here, as a calculation made by Hearne in 1714 (q.v.) showed that the Library had then little more than doubled since 1620.
161 Reliqq. Hearn. ii. 616.