The acquisition of the Pirckheimer Library was made by the Earl himself, during his diplomatic mission into Germany on the affairs of the Palatinate. In this collection some of the choicest of the Arundelian MSS. which now enrich the British Museum were comprised. Its foundation had been laid more than a hundred and thirty years before the date of the Earl’s purchase. But part of the library of the first founder had passed into the possession of the City of Nuremberg. The collection which Lord Arundel acquired was rich both in classical manuscripts and in the materials of mediæval history.
The liberality with which these varied treasures, as they successively arrived in London, were made accessible to scholars was in harmony with the open-handedness by means of which they had been amassed. For a few years Arundel House was itself an anticipatory ‘British Museum.’ Then came the civil war. But the injury which the Arundel collections sustained from the insecurity and commotions of a turbulent time is very insignificant, in comparison with that sustained, after the Restoration, through the ignorance and the indolence of an unworthy inheritor.
The Successors of Lord Arundel.
The immediate heir and successor of Earl Thomas survived his father less than six years. He died at Arundel House in April, 1652, leaving several sons, of whom the two eldest, Thomas and Henry, became successively Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk. The first of these was restored to the dukedom in 1660. But the whole of his life, after attaining manhood, was passed in Italy and under the heavy affliction of impaired mental faculties, following upon an attack of brain-fever which had seized him at Padua, in 1645. He never recovered, but died in the city in which the disease had stricken him, lingering until the year 1677. It was in consequence of this calamity that the inheritance of a large portion of the Arundelian collections, and also the possession of Arundel House in London, passed from Earl Henry-Frederick to his second son, Henry.
We learn from many passages both in the Diary and in the Letters of John Evelyn that, under the new owner, Arundel House and its contents were so neglected as, at times, to lie at the mercy of a crowd of rapacious parasites. In one place he speaks of the mansion as being infested by ‘painters, panders, and misses.’ In another he describes the library as suffering by repeated depredations. He remonstrated with the owner, and at length obtained from him a gift of the library for the newly-founded Royal Society, and a gift of part of the marbles for the University of Oxford. In his Diary he thus narrates the circumstances under which these benefactions were made:—
Gift of the Arundel Library to the Royal Society;
Having mentioned that on the destruction of the meeting-place of the Royal Society, its members ‘were invited by Mr. Howard to sit at Arundel House in the Strand,’ he proceeds to say that Mr. Howard, ‘at my instigation, likewise bestowed on the Society that noble library which his grandfather especially, and his ancestors, had collected. This gentleman had so little inclination to books that it was the preservation of them from embezzlement.’ |Evelyn, Diary, &c., vol. ii, p. 20.| Elsewhere he says that not a few books had actually been lost before, by his interference, the bulk of the collection was thus saved. The gift to the Royal Society was made at the close of the year 1666.
and that of the Marbles to the University of Oxford.
In September of the following year this entry occurs in the same Diary:—‘[I went] to London, on the 19th, with Mr. Henry Howard of Norfolk, of whom I obtained the gift of his Arundelian Marbles,—those celebrated and famous inscriptions, Greek and Latin, gathered with so much cost and industry from Greece by his illustrious grandfather the magnificent Earl of Arundel.... When I saw these precious monuments miserably neglected, and scattered up and down about the garden and other parts of Arundel House, and how exceedingly the corrosive air of London impaired them, I procured him to bestow them on the University of Oxford. This he was pleased to grant me, and now gave me the key of the gallery, with leave to mark all those stones, urns, altars, &c., and whatever I found had inscriptions on them, that were not statues. This I did, and getting them removed and piled together, with those which were encrusted in the garden-walls, I sent immediately letters to the Vice-Chancellor of what I had procured.’ |Ib., p. 29. (edit. 1850.)| On the 8th of October he records a visit from the President of Trinity, ‘to thank me, in the name of the Vice-Chancellor and the whole University, and to receive my directions what was to be done to show their gratitude to Mr. Howard.’
Ten months later, Evelyn records that he was called to London to wait upon the Duke of Norfolk. The Duke, he says, ‘having, at my sole request, bestowed the Arundelian Library on the Royal Society, sent to me to take charge of the books and remove them.... Many of these books had been presented by Popes, Cardinals, and great persons, to the Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk; and the late magnificent Earl of Arundel bought a noble library in Germany which is in this collection. |Ib., pp. 122, 123.| I should not, for the honour I bear the family, have persuaded the Duke to part with these, had I not seen how negligent he was of them; suffering the priests and everybody to carry away and dispose of what they pleased, so that abundance of rare things are irrecoverably gone.’