“We cannot but presume that, casting (counting) what number of noble benefactors have already concurred in a FERVOUR OF AFFECTION to that PUBLIC PLACE OF STUDY, we shall be sure in TIME TO COME to find some OTHERS OF THE LIKE DISPOSITION to the advancement of learning.”[4]
With such a hallowed purpose ever before him, can we conceive the agonies of the founder of a public library, on being for ever denied an entrance into it? and yet such was the fate of one of the most illustrious of this race. The mournful history of the founder of the Cottonian Library will ever excite the regrets of a grateful posterity, and its catastrophe will witness how far above life he loved and valued his collected lore! It happened that among the many rare manuscripts collected by Sir Robert Cotton, one reached his hands, which struck him by the singularity of the subject; it was a political theory to show the kings of England “how to bridle the impertinency of Parliaments.” An unfaithful amanuensis, the son of the Dr. James whom we have just noticed, took copies and sold them to the curious. When the original was at length traced to the Cottonian collection, Sir Robert was sued in the Star-chamber, and considered as the author of a work whose tendency was to enslave the nation. It was long afterwards discovered that this manuscript had been originally written by Sir Robert Dudley, when in exile at Florence. Cotton was now denied all access to his library; his spirits sunk in the blackest melancholy; and he declared to an intimate friend, that “those who had locked up his library from him had broken his heart.” Now deprived of that learned crowd who once were flowing into his house, consulting and arranging his precious manuscripts; torn away from the delightful business of his life, and in torment at the doubtful fate of that manuscript collection, which had consumed forty years at every personal sacrifice to form it for the “use and service of posterity,” he sunk at the sudden stroke. In the course of a few weeks, he was so worn by injured feelings, that from a ruddy-complexioned man, “his face was wholly changed into a grim blackish paleness, near to the resemblance and hue of a dead visage.” Such is the expression of one who knew him well. Before he died, Sir Robert requested the learned Spelman to acquaint the Privy Council that “their so long detaining his books from him had been the cause of his mortal malady.” “On this message,” says the writer of a manuscript letter of the day, “the Lord Privy Seal came to Sir Robert, when it was too late to comfort him, from the King, from whom also the Earl of Dorset came within half an hour of Sir Robert’s death, to condole with Sir Thomas Cotton, his son, for his father’s death; and with an assurance that as his Majesty loved his father, so he would continue his love to him: Sir Robert hath intailed his library of books as sure as he can make it upon his son and his posterity. If Sir Robert’s heart could be ripped up, his library would appear in it, as Calais in Queen Mary’s.” Such is the affecting fate of the founder of the Cottonian Library, that great individual whose sole labour silently formed our national antiquities, and endowed his country with this wealth of manuscripts.
[1] Sir Simonds d’Ewes feelingly describes in his will, his “precious library.” “It is my inviolable injunction that it be kept entire, and not sold, divided, or dissipated.” It was not, however, to be locked up from the public good. Such was the feeling of an eminent antiquary.
A later Sir Simonds d’Ewes was an extravagant man, and seems to have sold everything about 1716, when the collection passed into the possession of the Earl of Oxford.
[2] Tirabosohi, VI. pt. i, 131.
[3] See Gutch’s edition of Wood’s “Annals of the University of Oxford,” vol. I. pt. ii. p. 928.
[4] The vigilant curiosity of Tom Hearne, the antiquary, collected the singular correspondence of the Founder of the Bodleian Library with Dr. James, the first librarian, and published it under the title of “Reliquiæ Bodleianæ, or Some Genuine Remains of Sir Thomas Bodley,” 1703, 8vo. The curious reader will find in Gutch’s edition of Wood’s “Annals of the University of Oxford” many letters by Bodley, and his liberal endowments to provide a fixed revenue after his decease.
