“Some tyme after the King was murtherd by accident I was in ye company of one of Mr. Tate’s servants (with my wife & several others) whose master was one of those appoynted to examine the kings letters I asked him whether he ever saw aney of ye kings writing, he told me that his master tate committed severall of those letters to his custodie, and that those letters ye Parlt. put forth in print were written with ye king’s own hand, I asked him whether they printed all they had, he said no they burned maney, I asked ye reason, he said because they vindicated the king from maney things they charged upon him & that if those letters had bin printed they would have bin very much for the kings advantage & that they caused to be printed only those they thought would make against him, and that it was pittie they were burned. This my cosin Zouch Tats man spake at my sister Arundells at Stoake in ye company of maney with me John Crane junior. This he had told me before, but I loved to hear him againe.”
“Ex libris Joannis Holleri Brixi:
In Domino confido
Quisquis es inuentor nostri
te quæso libelli
Huic reddas cujusque nomen adesse”
is the contemporary inscription over the bookplate reproduced on another page:—
“Bibliothecæ”
“Novacellensis.”
“T”
It appears in a copy of D. Radvlphi Ardentis Pictavi, Doctoris Theologi per antiqui illustriss. Aquitaniæ Ducis Gulielmi huius nominis quarti, Concionatoris disertiss in Epistolas et Euangelia (et vocant) Sanctorum, Homiliæ, Ecclesiastis omnibus animarum curam gerentibus plurimum necessariæ, et ante annos propè quingentos ab Auctore conscriptæ, nunc primum in lucem editæ.
Quibus annecti curauimus eisusdem Homilias in Epistolas et Euangelia, quæ in communi Sanctorum legi consueuerunt. Then the printer’s block of two birds in fighting attitude between an upright staff separating them, with the motto: “Resparia crescunt concordia,” and the date 1560. Below the printer’s block: “Antverpiæ, In ædibus Viduæ & Hæredum Joan. Stelfii. M.D.LXX. Cum Priuilegio.”
Nova cella, or Newstifft, a beautiful Bavarian cloister of the Præmonstratensian Order in the diocese of Freysing, near the junction of the Moselle and Iser, was, in the year 1141, founded by three brothers: Otho, Bishop of Freysing; Henry, Margrave of Austria, and Conrad of Salzburg. They dedicated it to the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul. Alas! in the time of the Thirty Years’ War it was quite destroyed. On one blank leaf is pasted the bookplate here given, and on another is written, “Ex libris/T. H. Foster/In Festi Purificationis/ B.V.M. 88/+”. The book is in its original stamped binding, with clasps.
Now this short gossip on ex libris must draw to a close.
In one sense—that of variety—the study of bookplates can be elaborated in a never-ending course. You can set your mind on collecting, arranging, and studying the bookplates of lawyers. Again, you can limit that, and collect only the bookplates of barristers, as distinguished from solicitors; you can limit your attention to judges; you can confine it to a century, a country, or even a county; you can strive to put together all the Chippendale bookplates ever made; you can strive to collect every portrait-plate, every plate with a ship, every landscape-plate, every military bookplate, or collect military bookplates, at the same time excluding every aspirant below a general! The varieties are endless; it is merely a question of ringing the changes. Perhaps one of the most sensible divisions, in a small way, is that of collecting the plates of the various members of certain families.
Memorable words were spoken in March, 1891, by John Leighton, F.S.A., the first chairman of the Ex Libris Society: “The Society should be select, and in no way connected with profit, other than the pleasure to be derived in making the past patent to the present and future.”