FOOTNOTES:
[1] Sloane MSS. 555.
[2] Edwards, Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, p. 469.
JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER, 1459?-1535
John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was born at Beverley in Yorkshire, and was the eldest son of Robert Fisher, a mercer of that town. The date of his birth is uncertain, some of his biographers placing it as early as 1459, and others as late as 1469. He was educated in the school attached to the collegiate church of his native place, and afterwards at Michael House, Cambridge (now incorporated into Trinity College), of which he became a Fellow in 1491, and Master in 1497. In 1501 he was elected Vice-Chancellor, and in 1504 Chancellor of the University. The respect in which Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the mother of Henry VII., held him, induced her to appoint him her chaplain and confessor, and it was principally through his exertions that the Countess's designs for founding St. John's College, Cambridge, were carried out, Fisher himself subsequently founding several fellowships, scholarships, and lectureships in connection with the college. He was appointed the first 'Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity' in the University of Cambridge in 1503, and in 1504 was consecrated Bishop of Rochester. The firmness with which he opposed the royal supremacy, and the divorce of Henry VIII., brought on him the displeasure of the King, and in 1534, having given too ready a credence to the 'revelations' of Elizabeth Barton, 'the nun of Kent,' he was attainted of misprision of treason, and soon afterwards, on his refusal to acknowledge the King's supremacy and the validity of his marriage with Anne Boleyn, was committed with Sir Thomas More to the Tower. During his imprisonment Pope Paul III. created him a cardinal, an act which greatly increased the irritation of the King against him, and on the 22nd of June 1535 Fisher was beheaded on Tower Hill.
Bishop Fisher, who was the author of a considerable number of controversial tracts, was a man of great learning, and is said to have possessed the finest library in the country. In an account of his life and death first published in 1665, which was professedly written by Thomas Baily, a royalist divine, but is said to have been really the work of Dr. Richard Hall of Christ's College, Cambridge, who died in 1604, a relation is given of the seizure of his goods and books after his attainder. 'In the meantime lest any conveyance might be made of his goods remaining at Rochester, or elsewhere in Kent, the King sent one Sir Richard Moryson, of his Privy Chamber, and one Gostwick, together with divers other Commissioners, down into that Countrey, to make seisure of all his moveable goods that they could finde there, who being come unto Rochester, according to their Commission, entred his house; and the first thing they did was, they turned out all his Servants; then they fell to rifling his goods, whereof the chief part of them were taken for the Kings use, the rest they took for themselves; then they came into his Library, which they found so replenished, and with such kind of Books, as it was thought the like was not to be found againe in the possession of any one private man in Christendom; with which they trussed up and filled 32 great vats, or pipes, besides those that were imbezel'd away, spoyl'd and scatter'd; and whereas many yeares before he had made a deed of gift of all these books, and other his household stuffe to the Colledge of St John in Cambridge, ... two frauds were committed in this trespasse; the Colledge were bereaved of their gift, and the Bishop of his purpose.' An account of his library and its confiscation is also to be found in a manuscript treatise concerning his life and death, preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. 'He had ye notablest Library of Books in all England, two long galleries full, the Books were sorted in stalls & a Register of ye names of every Book at ye end of every stall. All these his Books, & all his Hangings, plate, & vessels for Hawl, Chamber, Buttry, & Kitchin, he gave long before his death to St Joh: College, by a Deed of gift, & put them in possession thereof; & then by indenture did borrow all ye sd: books & stuff, to have ye use of ym during his life, but at his apprehension, the Lord Crumwell caused all to be confiscated, which he gave to Moryson, Plankney of Chester, and other that were about him, & so ye College was defrauded of all this gift.'
Erasmus represents Fisher as a man of the greatest integrity, of deep learning, incredible sweetness of temper, and grandeur of soul; and Sir Thomas More declared that there was 'in this realm no one man, in wisdom, learning, and long approved vertue together, mete to be matched and compared with him.'
An excellent portrait of Fisher is preserved among the Holbein drawings at Windsor Castle, and others are to be found in several of the Colleges of the University of Cambridge.
THOMAS CRANMER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, 1489-1556
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, the events of whose life are so well known that it is not necessary to give an account of them here, possessed a very fine library, both of manuscripts and printed books. Many of the volumes it contained are still in existence, and fortunately they can be identified without difficulty, as almost all of them bear the Archbishop's name written, it is believed, by one of his secretaries. As might be expected, the books are principally of a theological nature, although copies of the Greek and Latin Classics, and of works treating of historical, scientific, legal, medical, and miscellaneous subjects are fairly numerous. Strype tells us 'that the library was the storehouse of ecclesiastical writers of all ages: and which was open for the use of learned men. Here old Latimer spent many an hour; and found some books so remarkable, that once he thought fit to mention one in a sermon before the King.' Strype adds that Cranmer both annotated the books in his library, and also made extracts from them, and the notes which are found in many of those which have been preserved to our time confirm his statement.
The fate of the library after the fall of its owner can only be conjectured.
Soon after the accession of Mary to the throne Cranmer was put on his trial for high treason, and sentence of death was passed upon him; and although at that time his life was spared, he was included in the Act of Attainder passed in Parliament against the Earl of Northumberland, deprived of his archbishopric, and committed to the Tower. He had to produce an inventory of his goods; and a list of all the property found in the Archbishop's palaces is still preserved in the Record Office, but, with the exception that it is stated that a 'bible with other bookes of service' were 'conveyed and stolen awaie' from the chapel, no mention is made of the books. They probably shared the fate of the goods of Robert Holgate, Archbishop of York, who was deprived of his see in 1554, and imprisoned in the Tower, and while confined there had his houses at Battersea and Cawood rifled of all their valuables.
It is evident that many of Cranmer's books were acquired by Lord Lumley, then a young nobleman in high favour at Court; and others by Lord Lumley's father-in-law, Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, the Lord Steward, who at that time was forming a library at Nonsuch, which he had recently purchased of the Queen; as a number of the volumes which were in their libraries have the Archbishop's name inscribed in them.
By far the larger portion of Cranmer's books which have survived to the present time are preserved in the British Museum, whither they came in 1757 as part of the old Royal Library, Henry Prince of Wales having purchased the Lumley and Arundel collections in 1609. But some are also possessed by the Cambridge University Library, the Bodleian Library, and the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth, while others are to be found on the shelves of various cathedral and collegiate libraries, and a few are in private hands. Those belonging to the two University Libraries were probably gifts of Lord Lumley, who presented eighty-four volumes to the Cambridge University Library in 1598, and forty to the Bodleian in the following year.
Cranmer was the author of several theological books, and he also wrote the prologue to the second edition of the 'Great Bible,' printed in 1540. His works were collected and arranged by H. Jenkyns, and published in four volumes at Oxford in 1833. There is a portrait of the Archbishop, at the age of fifty-seven, by G. Fliccius in the National Portrait Gallery, and others are at Cambridge and Lambeth. Cranmer was born at Aslacton Manor, in Nottinghamshire, on the 21st of July 1489, and burned at the stake at Oxford on the 21st of March 1556.
MATTHEW PARKER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, 1504-1575
Archbishop Parker.
Matthew Parker, the second Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Norwich on the 6th of August 1504. He was the son of William Parker, a calenderer of stuffs, who, Strype says, 'lived in very good reputation and plenty, and was a gentleman, bearing for his coat of arms on a field gules, three keys erected. To which shield, in honour of the Archbishop, a chevron was added afterwards, charged with three resplendent estoilles.' Parker was first privately educated, and afterwards proceeded to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, of which college he was elected a Fellow in 1527. In the same year he took holy orders, and in 1535 was appointed Chaplain to Queen Anne Boleyn, who shortly afterwards conferred on him the Deanery of the College of St. John the Baptist at Stoke, near Clare in Suffolk. In 1538 he was created a Doctor of Divinity, and made one of the King's chaplains; and in 1544 he was elected Master of Corpus Christi College. He was chosen to the office of Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in 1545, and again in 1549. In 1552 he was appointed to the Deanery of Lincoln, of which he was deprived in 1554. During the reign of Mary, Parker lived quietly pursuing his studies, as he himself tells us, 'Postea privatus vixi, ita coram Deo lætus in conscientiâ meâ; adeoque nee pudefactus, nec dejectus, ut dulcissimum otium literarium, ad quod Dei bona providentia me revocavit, multo majores et solidiores voluptates mihi pepererit, quàm negotiosum illud et periculosum vivendi genus unquam placuit.' On the accession of Elizabeth he was summoned from his retirement and made Archbishop of Canterbury. His consecration took place on the 17th of December 1559. He died on the 17th of May 1575, and was buried in his private chapel at Lambeth, in a tomb which he had himself prepared. His remains, however, were disinterred in 1648 by Colonel Scot, the regicide, and buried under a dunghill, but after the Restoration they were replaced in the chapel.
Parker married in 1547 Margaret, daughter of Robert Harlestone of Matsal, in the county of Norfolk, by whom he had four sons, of whom two died in infancy, and a daughter. John, the eldest son, was knighted in 1603, and died in 1618.
Archbishop Parker was not only a great churchman, a distinguished scholar, and a warm promoter of learning, but he was also an ardent collector of books, and formed a very fine and valuable library, composed to a great extent of rare and choice manuscripts which had once belonged to the suppressed monasteries and religious houses. He also appears to have purchased Bale's fine collection of manuscripts.
Some of his books he presented to the Cambridge University Library during his lifetime, and in his will he made bequests of other volumes from his collection to that library. He also gave books to the libraries of the colleges of Caius and Trinity Hall, but the great bulk of his manuscripts and printed books he left to his own college of Corpus Christi.[3] An original list of these volumes is preserved in the college, with a note by John Parker, the Archbishop's son, stating that the missing volumes 'weare not found by me in my father's Librarie, but either lent or embezeled, whereby I could not deliver them to the college.' Some singular conditions were attached to this bequest by the Archbishop. 'Every year on the 6th of August, the collection is to be visited by the masters or locum tenentes of Trinity Hall and Caius, with two scholars on Archbishop Parker's foundation, and if, on examination of the library, twenty-five books are missing, or cannot be found within six months, the whole collection devolves to Caius. In that case the masters or locum tenentes of Trinity Hall and Benet, with two scholars on the same foundation, are the visitors: and if Caius College be guilty of the like neglect, the books to be delivered up to Trinity Hall: then the masters or locum tenentes of Caius and Benet, with two such scholars, become the inspectors; and in case of default on part of Trinity Hall, the whole collection reverts back to its former order. On the examination day, the visitors dine in the College Hall, and receive three shillings and four pence, and the scholars one shilling each.'[4] It is also probable that he was a benefactor to the library at Lambeth, for some of the manuscripts preserved there contain notes in his handwriting. The books which he did not specially bequeath he left to his son John, afterwards Sir John Parker.
In addition to the books which Parker gave to Corpus Christi College he founded several scholarships in connection with it, and bestowed upon it large sums of money and presents of plate. He also gave various pieces of plate to Gonville and Caius College and Trinity Hall.
Parker's love for books, and the pains he took to rescue the precious volumes which, after the dissolution of the abbeys and religious houses, were being destroyed or sold for common purposes, is so well told by Strype that his account is worth giving at length: 'His learning, though it were universal, yet it ran chiefly upon antiquity. Insomuch that he was one of the greatest antiquarians of the age. And the world is for ever beholden to him for two things; viz., for retrieving many ancient authors, Saxon and British, as well as Norman, and for restoring and enlightening a great deal of the ancient history of this noble island. He lived in, or soon after, those times, wherein opportunities were given for searches after these antiquities. For when the abbeys and religious houses were dissolved, and the books that were contained in the libraries thereunto belonging underwent the same fate, being miserably embezzled, and sold away to tradesmen for little or nothing, for their ordinary shop uses; then did our Parker, and some few more lovers of ancient learning, procure, both by their money and their friends, what books soever they could: and having got them into their possession, esteemed many of them as their greatest treasures, which other ignorant spoilers esteemed but as trash, and to be burnt, or sold at easy rates, or converted to any ordinary uses.
'He was therefore a mighty collector of books, to preserve, as much as could be, the ancient monuments of the learned men of our nation from perishing. And for that purpose he did employ divers men proper for such an end, to search all England over, and Wales, (and perhaps Scotland and Ireland too), for books of all sorts, some modern as well as ancient; and to buy them up for his use; giving them commission and authority under his own hand for doing the same. One of these, named Batman,[5] in the space of no more than four years, procured for our Archbishop to the number of 6700 books. It seems to be almost incredible, then, what infinite volumes all the rest of his agents in many more years must have retrieved for him.
'It was in those times that many of our choicest MSS. were conveyed out of the land beyond sea. Of this our Archbishop complained often; taking it heavily, as he wrote in one of his letters to Secretary Cecyl, "that the nation was deprived of such choice monuments, so much as he saw they were in those days, partly by being spent in shops, and used as waste paper, or conveyed over beyond sea, by some who considered more their own private gain than the honour of their country." This was the reason he took so much pleasure in the said Secretary's library; "that such MSS. might be preserved within the realm, and not sent over by covetous stationers, or spoiled in the apothecaries' shops." ... For the retrieving of these ancient treatises and MSS. as much as might be, the Archbishop had such abroad, as he appointed to lay out for them wheresoever they were to be met with, as was shewn before.
'But he procured not a few himself from such in his own time as were studious in antiquity: as, namely, several Saxon books from Robert Talbot,[6] a great collector of such ancient writings in King Henry the Eighth's time, and an acquaintance of Leland, Bale, etc. Some of which writings the said Talbot had from Dr. Owen,[7] the said King Henry's physician; and some our archbishop likewise had from him; as appears in one of the Cotton volumes:[8] which is made up of a collection of various charters, etc., written out by Joh. Joscelyn.[9] Where at some of these MSS. collected, the said Joscelyn adds these notes, The copy of this Dr. Talbot had of Dr. Owen. The Archbishop of Canterbury had this charter from Dr. Owen, etc. There be other collections of this nature now remaining in Benet College, sometime belonging to this Talbot, which we may presume the Archbishop, partly by his own interest, and partly by the interest of Bale, Caius, and others, obtained; particularly his annotations upon that part of Antoninus's Itinerarium which belongs to Britain. And another De Chartis quibusdam regum Britannorum. These are mentioned by Anthony à Wood.
'And he kept such in his family as could imitate any of the old characters admirably well. One of these was Lyly, an excellent writer, and that could counterfeit any antique writing. Him the Archbishop customarily used to make old books complete, that wanted some pages; that the character might seem to be the same throughout. So that he acquired at length an admirable collection of ancient MSS. and very many too: as we may conjecture from his diligence for so many years as he lived, in buying and procuring such monuments. The remainders of his highly valuable collections are now preserved in several libraries of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, but chiefly in that of Benet College, Cambridge.'
Archbishop Parker was one of the founders of the Society of Antiquaries in 1572. He took a special interest in the early English Chronicles, and endeavoured to revive the study of the Saxon language. Among other works he caused to be printed Flores Historiarum, attributed to Matthew of Westminster, Matthew Paris's Historia Major, and the Latin text of Asser's Alfredi Regis Res Gestæ in Saxon characters, cut by John Day, the printer. He also, says Strype, 'laboured to forward the composing and publishing of a Saxon Dictionary.' His great work, De Antiquitate Britannicæ Ecclesiæ et Privilegiis Ecclesiæ Cantuariensis, cum Archiepiscopis eiusdem 70, which, if not written by him, was produced under his immediate supervision, was printed by John Day in Lambeth Palace in 1572. A very limited number of copies of this work, the first book privately printed in England, were struck off; not more than twenty-five are known to exist, and no two are found quite alike. The preparation of the Bishops' Bible, which was completed in 1568, was performed under his auspices. A presentation copy to Queen Elizabeth from the Archbishop of the Flores Historiarum, very handsomely bound, with the royal arms on the covers; and a copy of the work De Antiquitate Britannicæ Ecclesiæ, etc., in a fine embroidered binding, which is also believed to have been presented to the Queen by the Archbishop, are preserved in the British Museum. These books were probably bound in Lambeth Palace, for in a letter to Lord Burghley, dated the 9th of May 1573, the Archbishop writes, with reference to the last-named work, 'I have within my house on wagis, drawers and cutters, paynters, lymners, wryters, and boke-bynders'; and he adds that he has sent Lord Burghley a copy of it 'bound by my man.'
A list of Parker's writings, and his editions of authors will be found in Coopers' Athenæ Cantabrigienses. There are portraits of him in Lambeth Palace, the Guildhall at Norwich, Corpus Christi College, and in the Master's Lodge, Trinity College, Cambridge. There is also a rare portrait of him, engraved in 1573, by Remigius Hogenberg, who appears to have been in the service of the Archbishop.