Queen Anne's books came to the British Museum with the rest of the old Royal Library of England in 1757.
ASTLE, THOMAS
Arms.—Az., a cinquefoil erm., a bordure engrailed of the second. Astle.
Crest.—On a chapeau, a plume of five feathers in a case arg. banded gu., and environed with a ducal coronet or.
[Collection of miscellaneous MSS. Stowe, 516.]
Thomas Astle (born 22nd December 1735, died 1st December 1803) was a book collector and antiquary, and a native of Yoxall in Staffordshire. In 1783 he was appointed Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London, where his literary tastes stood him in good stead, and he edited and indexed the treasures which were under his care with energy and success; he was also a Trustee of the British Museum.
Astle wrote several important works; perhaps the most useful of them are the Catalogue of the MSS. in the Cottonian Library, and a treatise on the Origin and Progress of Writing. His printed books now belong to the library of the Royal Institution, and his collection of Manuscripts is kept at the British Museum. This important collection belonged successively to the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe, and then to the Earl of Ashburnham, who sold it in 1883 to the Trustees of the British Museum.
Mr. Astle was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries.