Nam Bardos inter tot et stultos,
There’s few could understand ’em.”
Rouse was tactful enough to entertain Fairfax and Cromwell with a complimentary speech when the University gave them a banquet in the Library on May 19, 1649, and on the whole the Cromwellian visitation left the place alone, even when the learned Dr. Thomas Barlow[10] succeeded to Rouse’s place in April, 1652.
Various Gifts.
In 1659 the library of the “Learned Selden” arrived by bequest, after five years’ delay, and comprised about 360 MSS. with about eight thousand printed volumes, chiefly classics, theology and history; but among them are several unique early printed English tales and romances, such as Dan Hew of Leicestre, the Battayle of Egyngecourt, the Mylner of Abyngton. The Latin MSS. not sent perished in a fire at the Temple, in London, in 1680. The arrangement of the new acquisition in what is now called the Selden End fell to Thomas Lockey,[11] who succeeded Barlow in September, 1660, but resigned in 1665, when Thomas Hyde[12] succeeded. In the next year came the first Sanskrit MS. (in “Gentoo,” now S.C. 2862), presented by an East India merchant.
The Adversaria of Isaac Casaubon (largely the notes of that great scholar on Greek writers) were bequeathed by his son and arrived in 1673, together with the invaluable papers of Roger Dodsworth, whose name deserved to be on the title-page of “Dugdale’s” Monasticon Anglicanum. Dodsworth copied enormous masses of Yorkshire and North of England deeds and pedigrees just before the Civil War, in which very many of the originals perished. Fairfax had helped Dodsworth with an annuity, and bequeathed Dodsworth’s and some other valuable MSS. to the Library which he had guarded from harm in 1646.
The Third Catalogue.
The third Catalogue of the Library, which came out in 1674, was a folio of imposing dimensions, and though the MSS. are no longer included, was probably the largest which had till then appeared anywhere. It was of such general utility in the learned world that, for instance, Convocation deemed it worthy of presentation to Cosmo de Medici, and an interleaved copy of it was the only one used in the Mazarine Library at Paris till as late as 1761. It took nine years to prepare, and is attributed to Dr. Hyde, the Librarian. The period which ended with Hyde’s resignation in 1701 wound up with a large accession of Old and Middle English MSS. which came partly by the purchase of 112 Hatton MSS. in 1671 (including the copy of the English translation of Gregory’s De cura pastorali made by Alfred, which the king presented to Worcester Cathedral, and also a translation of the same author’s Dialogi, with a preface by King Alfred), and partly by the extensive collections of Franciscus Junius (François Du Jon), a pioneer of Anglo-Saxon studies, which arrived (after purchase) in 1677. The chief treasures (the Cædmon and Ormulum) are described in Chapter V. The Oriental collections were also more than doubled by the purchase of the 420 Pococke MSS. in 1692 (chiefly Hebrew and Arabic), and of the six hundred Huntington MSS. (of the same general character) in the next year. And probably these judicious and valuable purchases led to the bequest by Archbishop Narcissus Marsh of about seven hundred additional Oriental MSS. in 1713.
Dissolution of Parliament.
In 1681 a historic incident took place in what is now three of the Oriental Rooms of the Bodleian, but was then the Geometry School. The Parliament was held in Oxford on March 21-28 in that year, and King Charles II, having a secret promise of pecuniary aid from the French King, felt strong enough to do without consulting Parliament on a matter of the Protestant succession, and determined to put a sudden and dramatic end to the Session. The House of Lords was in the Geometry School, which stretches North from the great Tower, on the first floor. It had a broad staircase to itself. The House of Commons was summoned to the same School on Monday, March 28, to hear the King’s speech, about the subject of which nothing was known. To avoid confusion, the Commons were not allowed to use the broad staircase, but were hustled up a narrow winding stone staircase in the Tower itself, and when at the level of the first floor were precipitated into a room, and at last down five steps into the House of Lords. They arrived in a panting and dishevelled condition, only to hear a sudden and curt Royal Message, read by the King himself, announcing an immediate Dissolution of Parliament! The comedy then took a new turn, in which the King was protagonist. He bolted in great haste, scuttled across the quadrangle as fast as dignity and robes would allow, bundled into his coach, and was at Shotover, on the way to London, before the city in general became aware that the Parliament, which thought it had the King in its power from his want of supplies, was dissolved. The scene would have been broadly humorous, but for its sinister political significance.