Its prospects, as described not very long before by the late ducal owner, ‘presented to view at once a vast town, a palace, and a cathedral, on one side; and, on the other sides, two parks, and a great part of Surrey.’ Its fine gardens ended in ‘a little wilderness, full of blackbirds and nightingales.’ Yet it was close to the Court end of the town. But the price was thirty thousand pounds.
Another offer was that of Montagu House at Bloomsbury. Less charmingly placed, and architecturally less striking in appearance than was its rival, both its situation and its plan were better fitted for the purposes of a public Museum. |Montagu House and its History.| It stood, it is true, on the extreme verge of the London of that day. Northward, there was nothing between it and the distant village of Highgate, save an expanse of fields and hedgerows. And for a long distance, both to the east and the west, no part of London had yet spread beyond it, except an outlying hospital or two. But there were already indications that the town would extend in that northerly direction, more quickly than in almost any other. The house had seven and-a-half acres of garden and shrubberies; and its price was but ten thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds.
Montagu House had been built about sixty years before for Ralph Montagu, first Duke of Montagu. A spacious court separated the house from Great Russell Street, towards which it presented to view only a screen of pannelled brickwork, having a massive gateway and cupola in the centre, and turreted wings, masking the domestic offices, at either end. The house itself was rather stately than beautiful, but its chief rooms and its grand staircase were elaborately painted by the best French artists of the day. And the appendant offices were more than usually extensive.
It stood on the site of a structure of much greater architectural pretensions, erected for the same owner, only twelve years before, from the designs of Robert Hooke. That first Montagu House had been burned to the ground.
The offer of Montagu House was accepted by the Trustees and approved by the Government. It was found needful to make considerable alterations in order to adapt the building to its new uses. This outlay increased the eventual cost of the mansion, and of its appliances and fittings, to somewhat more than twenty-three thousand pounds. The adaptation, with the removal and re-arrangement of the Collections, occupied nearly five years. It was not until the beginning of the year 1759 that the Museum was opened for public inspection. When removed to Bloomsbury, it was but brought back to within a few hundred yards of its first abode.
Constitution of the Museum Trust.
We have seen that according to the plan for the government of the institution which Sloane had sketched in his Codicil of July, 1749, there would have been a Board of Visitors as well as a Board of Trustees. But, by the foundation Statute, enacted in 1753, both of these Boards were incorporated into one. Forty-one Trustees were constituted, with full powers of management and control. Six of these were representatives of the several families of Cotton, Harley, and Sloane, the head, or nearest in lineal succession, of each family having the nomination, from time to time, of such representatives or ‘Family Trustees,’ when, by death or otherwise, vacancies should occur. Twenty were ‘Official’ Trustees, in accordance, so far, with Sloane’s scheme for the constitution of his Board of Visitors; and by these two classes, conjointly, the other fifteen Trustees were to be elected.
The Official Trustees were to be the holders for the time being of the following offices:—(1) The Archbishop of Canterbury, (2) the Lord Chancellor, (3) the Speaker of the House of Commons, (4) the Lord President of the Council, (5) the First Lord of the Treasury, (6) the Lord Privy Seal, (7) the First Lord of the Admiralty, (8 and 9) the Secretaries of State, (10) the Lord Steward, (11) the Lord Chamberlain, (12) the Bishop of London, (13) the Chancellor of the Exchequer, (14) the Lord Chief Justice of England, (15) the Master of the Rolls, (16) the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, (17) the Attorney-General, (18) the Solicitor-General, (19) the President of the Royal Society, (20) the President of the College of Physicians.
Act of 26 Geo. II, c. 22, Clauses 4–8.
To the first three of these Official Trustees Parliament entrusted the appointment, from time to time, of all the Officers of the Museum, except the Principal Librarian, who is to be appointed by the Crown, on the nomination of the ‘Principal Trustees,’ as the first three Trustees—the Archbishop, Chancellor, and Speaker—have always been called.