As a good specimen of a Society’s bookplate may be given one engraved for the “Royal Institute of British Architects. Tite Donation 1868.” Sir William Tite, the architect of the Royal Exchange and of many great buildings,
was born in 1798 in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, London, and died at Torquay in 1873. He represented Bath in the House of Commons from 1855 until his death. His valuable library of early English books and other rarities was sold at Sotheby’s after his death.
The Right Honorable Sir Gore Ouseley, Baronet, Grand Cordon of the Persian Order of the Lion and Sun, and Grand Cross of the Imperial Russian Order of St. Alexander Newski—a famous Oriental scholar, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries—was born in 1770, and created a baronet in 1808. His wife was Harriott-Georgiana, daughter of John Whitelocke, Esq. In 1810 Sir Gore Ouseley became Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Persia, and afterwards at St. Petersburg. He died in 1844 at Hall Barn, Beaconsfield, which had belonged to Edmund Waller, the poet, and which he had twelve years before purchased from the poet’s descendant, Mr. Waller of Farmington.
“Whalley Hamerton” is a good idea in bookplates. It looks like unto a picture of some fine old seal. Whale’s heads for Whalley. It is in a scarce book: Marshal Ney. Report of the trial ... Paris: Printed and sold at Galignani’s ... 1815.
“A fenwyke! a fenwyke” is the motto at the foot of a Fenwick bookplate, probably Fenwick and Robinson. First and fourth, six martlets counterchanged, three cinquefoils. The Fenwicks were an intrepid race haunting the northern borders, and the proud House of Percy never went to battle without the valiant Fenwicks to help them.
“Richard Clark Esqʳ. Chamberlain of London.” Such are the words engraved below the plain armorial plate. Argent on a bend gules three swans proper, between as many pellets, a canton sinister azure charged with a demi-ram mounting of the first, armed or between two fleur-de-lis in chief of the last; on it a baton dexter of the field. The motto is “est modus in rebus.”
Guillim remarks: “The Swan is a Birde of great Beautie, and strength also: and this is reported in Honour of Him, that hee vseth not his strength, to Prey or tyrannize ouer any other Fowle, but onelie to be reuenged on such as first offer Him wrong; in which case he often subdueth the Eagle.”