A.D. 1736
The Library was enriched with the collections of the well-known antiquary, Thomas Tanner, Bishop of St. Asaph, who died on Dec. 14, in the preceding year. By his will, dated Nov. 22, 1733, he bequeathed his MSS. to the Library together with such printed books, not already there, as the Curators and Library-keeper should think fit to accept. But he directed his executor to burn all his sermon-notes, ‘and other little pieces and attempts in divinity,’ as well as all his own private papers and letters. The largest portion of his MSS. (nearly 300 volumes out of 467) consists of the papers which he himself says he ‘bought of Archbishop Sancroft’s executors,’ but which it is said in the Gent. Mag. for 1782 (cited by Gough in his British Topography, i. 126) he bought for eighty guineas of the bookseller Bateman, to whom Sancroft’s executors had sold them200. Together with these, and perhaps not now to be distinguished, are some of the collections of Dr. Nalson between 1640 and 1660. To the latter a claim was made through Archdeacon Knight, in 1737, by Dr. Williams of St. John’s College, as grandson of Nalson; but the Bishop’s brother replied (as we learn from a copy of his answer and of another letter written by him in 1753) that the Bishop had bought them at Ely, where they had lain neglected for many years, and he thought possibly from some one living in the house which Nalson inhabited when Prebendary of Ely. The matter ended by Dr. Williams waiving any claim which he had, in consideration of the place of deposit being the Bodleian201. Sancroft’s and Nalson’s papers together comprise a large series of letters of the time of the Civil War, of the highest interest and value, from most of the leading personages on both sides, including Charles I, Rupert, the Protector Oliver, and Hampden. There are also collections relating to various dioceses, with very much that illustrates both the ecclesiastical and literary history of the seventeenth century202. A selection from the Civil War letters was published, in 2 vols. in 1842, by Rev. Henry Cary, M.A. (a son of the translator of Dante, and at that time an assistant in the Library), under the title of Memorials of the Civil War; but the transcripts were very carelessly made, and scarcely a single letter can be trusted as faithfully and verbatim representing the original. Another volume of selections from Sancroft’s papers was published, with much better care, by Will. Nelson Clarke, D.C.L., 8o, Edinb. 1848, entitled, A Collection of Letters addressed by Prelates and Individuals of high rank in Scotland, and by two Bishops of Sodor and Man, to Archbishop Sancroft, in the reigns of Charles II and James VII203. A catalogue of the MSS., compiled by the Rev. Alfred Hackman, M.A. (now Sub-librarian) was published in 1860, in a thick quarto volume, forming vol. iv. of the general Catalogue of MSS. The several volumes are described in brief in the body of the work; but a very full Index is subjoined, in which the contents of all the letters and papers are entered in detail. The printed books (upwards of 900) contain many, by the Reformers and their opponents, which are of the utmost rarity in early English black-letter divinity. One of these is an unique copy (as it is believed) of an edition, printed without place or date, of the Pore Helpe, of which there is also an unique copy of another edition, equally without place or date, among the Douce books. It has not hitherto been remarked that two copies, or two editions, exist of this metrical satire. Another volume, which contains several tracts printed by W. de Worde and Gerard Leeu, has also two by Caxton, hitherto unnoticed as exhibiting his type, and described in the Catalogue simply as being books without place or date. The merit of their discovery as Caxton’s is due to the recent research of Mr. Bradshaw, the Librarian of the Cambridge Library. The one is a clean and perfect copy of the Governayle of Helthe, with the verses called Medicina Stomachi, of which the only copy known to Mr. Blades is in the library of the Earl of Dysart at Ham House; the other a wholly unknown quarto edition, in the same type, of the Ars Moriendi.
Unfortunately, when Tanner was removing his books from Norwich to Oxford, in Dec. 1731, by some accident in their transit (which was made by river) they fell into the water, and were submerged for twenty hours204. The effects of this soaking are only too evident upon very many of them205. The whole of the printed books were uniformly bound in dark green calf, apparently about fifty years ago; the binder’s work was well done, but unhappily all the fly-leaves, many of which would doubtless have afforded something of interest, with regard to the books and their former possessors, were removed. Many of Tanner’s own letters are to be found amongst the Ballard and Hearne MSS., as well as scattered here and there in other collections; and one volume of them was purchased in 1859. Some coins were given by him in 1733. We learn from the Accounts that Thomas Toynbee, an undergraduate of Balliol College (B.A. 1743, M.A. 1745), received £12 12s., in 1741, for making a list of Tanner’s MSS., and that E. Rowe Mores, the subsequently well-known antiquary, arranged some of his deeds in 1753-4.
Notes
200 Eighteen other volumes of Sancroft’s MSS. are to be found in the Harleian Collection, Brit. Mus., and a few among Wharton’s books at Lambeth.
201 Thirty-one other volumes of Nalson’s papers were offered for sale to Dr. Rawlinson in 1751 (Letter to H. Owen, Rawl. MS. C. 989. fol. 121). Four volumes which belonged to Bp. Moore’s library were restored to Cambridge out of Tanner’s collection in 1741; two of them were registers of the Abbeys of St. Edmund’s-bury and Langley.
202 Some collections for Wiltshire made by Tanner did not come to Oxford with his library, but were forwarded by his son in 1751.
203 Dr. Clarke appears not to have been aware of the existence of an interesting volume of letters from Scottish Bishops to Bishop Compton of London, among Rawlinson’s MSS. (C. 985), which was rescued by Rawlinson, with the rest of Compton’s papers, from being destroyed as waste paper. Other letters, including a large number from Archbishop Burnett of Glasgow, addressed to Archbishop Sheldon, are in a volume of the Sheldon papers.
204 Gent. Magaz. 1732, p. 583.
205 None of them, however, are now in the state described in a note in Letters by Eminent Persons, ii. 89, where it is said that many ‘have received so much injury as to be altogether useless, crumbling into pieces on the slightest touch.’ Perhaps the unique copy of The Children of the Chapel Stript and Whipt which Warton says was amongst Tanner’s books, but which has never appeared in any Bodleian Catalogue, may have perished from this cause. For a notice of the disappearance of two of Churchyard’s tracts, see under the year 1659, p. 81.