A curious narrative communicated, almost a century afterwards, to the Society of Antiquaries, by James Theobald, proves that in this respect the gallery of antiquities—notwithstanding the noble benefaction to Oxford—was even more unfortunate than the library of books. At the time when these gifts were obtained for Oxford and for the Royal Society, another extensive portion of the original collections had already passed into the possession of William Howard, Viscount Stafford, and had been removed to Stafford House. Lord Stafford was a younger son of the collector, and appears to have received the choice artistic treasures which long adorned his town residence by the gift of his mother. |Dispersion of part of the Arundel Marbles.| According to Evelyn, Lady Arundel also ‘scattered and squandered away innumerable other rarities, ... whilst my Lord was in Italy.’ But in this instance he appears to speak by hearsay, rather than from personal knowledge. Tierney, the able and painstaking historian of the family, asserts that its records contain no proof whatever of the justice of the charge. |History of Arundel, p. 509.| And he traces the origin of Evelyn’s statement to a passage in one of the letters of Francis Junius, in which it is said of Lady Arundel that she ‘carried over a vast treasure of rarities, and convaighed them away out of England.’ Even to Junius, notwithstanding his connection with the family, the charge may have come but as a rumour.
Be that as it may, the subsequent dispersion of many treasures of art which the Earl had collected with such unwearied pains and lavish expenditure is unquestionable.
Lord Henry Howard, it has been shown, excepted the ‘statues’ from his gift to the University. They remained at Arundel House, but so little care was bestowed upon their preservation that when the same owner afterwards obtained an Act of Parliament empowering him to build streets on part of the site of Arundel House and Gardens, many of these statues were broken by the throwing upon or near them of heaps of rubbish from the excavations made, in the years 1678 and 1679, for the new buildings. These broken statues and fragments retained beauty enough to attract from time to time the admiration of educated eyes when such eyes chanced to fall upon them. Those which long adorned the seat of the Earls of Pomfret, at Easton Neston, in Oxfordshire, were purchased by Sir William Fermor, and were given to the University of Oxford by one of his descendants. Others which are, or were, at Fawley Court, near Henley, were purchased by Mr. Freeman. Others, again, were bought by Edmund Waller, the poet, for the decoration of Beaconsfield.
Still more strange was the fate which befell certain other marbles which Lord Henry (by that time Duke of Norfolk) caused to be removed from Arundel House to a piece of waste ground belonging to the manor of Kennington. These the owner seems to have regarded as little better than lumber. It is therefore the less surprising that his servants took so little care of them as to suffer them to be buried, in their turn, beneath rubbish which had been brought to Kennington from St. Paul’s, during the rebuilding of that cathedral. By-and-bye, precious marbles, excavated amidst so many difficulties arising from Turkish barbarism in Asia Minor, had to be re-excavated in England. Many years after their second burial, some rumour of the circumstance came to the knowledge of the Earl of Burlington, and by his efforts and care something was recovered. But the researches then made were, in some way, interrupted. They were afterwards resumed by Lord Petre. |Narrative by Theobald; printed in Anecdotes of Howard Family, pp. 101–120.| ‘After six days’ of excavation and search, says an eye-witness, ‘just as the workmen were going to give over, they fell upon something which gave them hopes. Upon further opening the ground they discovered six statues, ... some of a colossal size, the drapery of which was thought to be exceeding fine.’ These went eventually to Worksop.
Some Arundelian marbles were, it is said, converted into rollers for bowling-greens. The fragments of others lie in or beneath the foundations of the houses in Norfolk Street and the streets adjacent.
The Stafford-House portion of the collections—which included pictures, drawings, vases, medals, and many miscellaneous antiquities of great curiosity—was sold by auction in 1720. At the prices of that day the sale produced no less a sum than £8852.
The Arundelian cabinet of cameos and intaglios, now so famous under the name of ‘The Marlborough Gems,’ was offered to the Trustees of the British Museum for sale, at an early period in the history of the institution. The price asked by the then possessor, the Duchess Dowager of Norfolk, was £10,000. But at that time the funds of the nascent institution were inadequate to the purchase.
It affords conspicuous proof of the marvellous success which had attended Lord Arundel’s researches to find that the remnants, so to speak, of his collections retain an almost inestimable value, after so many losses and loppings. They are virtually priceless, even if we leave out of view all that is now private property.
When the Arundelian MSS. were transferred, in the years 1831 and 1832, to the British Museum, their money value—for the purposes of the exchange as between the Royal Society and the Museum Trustees—was estimated (according to the historian of the Royal Society) at the sum of £3559. |Weld, History of the Royal Society, vol. ii, pp. 448, 449.| This sum was given by the Trustees, partly in money, and partly in printed books of which the Museum possessed two or more than two copies. The whole of the money received by the Royal Society was expended by its Council in the purchase of other printed books. So that both Libraries were benefited by the exchange.
It may deserve remark that a somewhat similar transfer had been contemplated and discussed during the lifetime of the original donor. The project, at that period, was to make an exchange between the Royal Society and the University of Oxford. The University induced Evelyn to recommend Lord Henry Howard to sanction an exchange of such MSS. ‘as concern the civil law, theology, and other scholastic learning, for mathematical, philosophical, and such other books as may prove most useful to the design and institution of the Society.’ |Evelyn to Howard; 14 March, 1669.| But at that time, after much conference, it was otherwise determined.