The number of sales seem now to have increased annually, but it was some years before a library that could rank with Richard Smith’s was sold. In April 1683 the books of Brian Walton, Bishop of Chester, were sold (twenty-two years after his death) “by Samuel Carr, at his house of the King’s Head in St. Paul’s Churchyard.” About this time auction sales took place in various parts of the country, and Edward Millington was largely employed as a peripatetic auctioneer. In September 1684 he sold books at Stourbridge Fair (Bibliotheca Sturbitchiana). In 1686 two sales occurred at Trumpington (Obadiah Sedgwick in March, and William Whitwood in May) and two at Cambridge (Dr. Edmond Castell in June, and Rev. J. Chamberlaine, of St. John’s College, at Stourbridge Fair, in September). When we forget the change that has taken place in the value of money, and express our surprise that rare books should only realise a few shillings, we should note that the cost of the hire of thirteen carts for conveying Dr. Castell’s books from Emmanuel College to the sign of the Eagle and Child, where they were sold, was only three shillings.[43] In 1685 and 1686 occurred the famous sales of the stock of Richard Davis, the Oxford bookseller, which was satirised in the Auctio Davisiana, noticed in an earlier chapter.
In 1682 William Cooper published a list of book-sales up to that date, and again a fuller list in 1687, which contained a note of seventy-four sales in the ten years 1676-86. The following note is printed on the back of page 33 of Catalogus Librorum Bibliothecæ viri cujusdam Literati, 14th February 1686-87—
“To gratifie those Gentlemen whose curiosities may lead them to make perfect their Collection, I have caused to be printed the names of those persons whose libraries have been sold by auction, and the series of the time when” [1676-1686].
This list is reprinted by Hartshorne in his “Book Rarities of the University of Cambridge,” 1829 (pp. 454-57), and it forms the text for two excellent articles by Mr. A. W. Pollard in Bibliographica.
In 1687 Millington sold the valuable library of Dr. Thomas Jacomb, a Nonconformist minister (Bibliotheca Jacombiana), which realised £1300; and in February of the following year the library of a counsellor of the Parliaments of Montpelier, which had been brought from France to be sold in England (Bibliotheca Mascoviana).
T. Bentley and B. Walford sold in November 1687 an interesting library of an anonymous but distinguished defunct—Bibliotheca Illustrissima, which is described as follows in the Address to the Reader—
“If the catalogue here presented were only of common books and such as were easie to be had, it would not have been very necessary to have prefaced anything to the reader; but since it appears in the world with circumstances which no auction in England (perhaps) ever had before, nor is it probable that the like should frequently happen again, it would seem an oversight if we should neglect to advertise the reader of them. The first is, that it comprises the main part of the library of that famous secretary, William Cecil, Lord Burleigh: which considered, must put it out of doubt that these books are excellent in their several kinds and well chosen. The second is, that it contains a greater number of rare manuscripts than ever yet were offered together in this way, many of which are rendered the more valuable by being remarked upon by the hand of the said great man.”
A considerable number of sales took place between this date and the end of the century, but few were of any particular mark until the fine library of Dr. Francis Bernard came to the hammer in 1698.
Millington continued his travels in the country, and sold, among others, the library of Mrs. Elizabeth Oliver at Norwich in 1689, and some modern English books at Abingdon in 1692; and John Howell sold the Rev. George Ashwell’s library at Oxford in 1696.