He took up the packet which Wrentham had observed lying on the desk, and quitted the room.
‘Wish I could make him out,’ was Wrentham’s reflection, as, after lighting his cigar, he stood on the hearth with his back to the fire and glared round the room in search of something that might help to satisfy his curiosity. ‘Maybe there is nothing to make out.... But what does he want sending off letters to Madge Heathcote at this time of evening? I saw the address plainly enough, and that letter was for her.... There is something to find out.’
(To be continued.)
THE ASHBURNHAM COLLECTIONS.
In 1763, Mr Grenville, then First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, had occasion to enlist the services of a gentleman familiar with ancient handwriting, in the arrangement of papers and other business. So well did Mr Thomas Astle do his work, that, two years later, he was made Receiver-general on the Civil List; subsequently becoming, in succession, chief clerk in the Record Office, and keeper of the records in the Tower. Astle was a diligent and discreet collector of manuscripts; and mindful of his obligations to the Grenvilles, directed by his will that his valuable library should pass into the possession of the Marquis of Buckingham for the sum of five hundred pounds. That nobleman gladly accepted the conditional bequest, and housed the sometime keeper’s treasures honourably at Stowe. As opportunities offered, he and his successor added books and documents to Astle’s store, until they had brought together a mass of original materials for the history of the three kingdoms unrivalled by any other private collection.
The middle of the present century saw Stowe shorn of its glories; and in 1849, its famous manuscripts were advertised for public sale; but their threatened dispersion was fortunately averted by the Earl of Ashburnham purchasing the entire collection, and adding it to his own extensive library, rich in works of early European and English literature. At the time of the earl’s death he was the possessor of four distinct collections, known as the Stowe, the Barrois, the Libri, and the Appendix. The last-named, representing his occasional purchases, consisted of two hundred and fifty volumes, including richly illuminated missals and Books of Hours, choice copies of the works of Chaucer, Wickliffe, Gower, Dante; English chronicles, monastic registers, and individual manuscripts of great rarity and value. The Barrois collection of seven hundred and two manuscripts was notable for its specimens of ancient bindings, its illuminated manuscripts, and its examples of early French literature; while the Libri section was remarkable for its very ancient manuscripts, its copies of Dante’s Commedia, its works of early Italian literature, its rare autographs, and its letters of distinguished French men of science.
In 1879, all these treasures were offered by the present Earl of Ashburnham to the trustees of the British Museum for the sum of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds; but upon their requesting him to separate the manuscripts from the printed books, the earl intimated that, finding he had underpriced his library in the first instance, he should require the hundred and sixty thousand pounds for the manuscripts alone; or fifty thousand for the Stowe collection, and fifty thousand for the Appendix collection, if the trustees elected to buy them only; and with that intimation the negotiation ended. In the autumn of 1882 the Museum authorities sought Lord Ashburnham again, to learn that he would only sell the collection as a whole at the price he had originally named. The keeper of the department of Manuscripts went down to Ashburnham Place, examined the collection volume by volume, and returned with above nine hundred of the choicest volumes and portfolios of papers, for the inspection of the trustees themselves; and they came to the conclusion that, all things considered, the collection was worth the money demanded for it; and recommended the Treasury to purchase it, and give the trustees power to make over certain portions of the Libri and Barrois collections—said to have been abstracted from the public libraries of France—to the French government on payment of twenty-four thousand pounds. To this proposition the Treasury would not agree, not being prepared to purchase the collection en bloc.
Then Lord Ashburnham agreed to sell the Museum the Stowe and Appendix divisions for ninety thousand pounds. The Treasury offered seventy thousand pounds; whereupon the earl requested that the manuscripts in the possession of the Museum trustees should be returned to their proper home. Determined, if possible, to avert what they regarded as an irreparable national calamity, the trustees proposed to make good the twenty thousand pounds by allowing a reduction on the annual vote for the Museum to the amount of four thousand pounds for the next five years. ‘My Lords’ were obdurate, the earl was firm; and the disappointed Museum trustees had nothing left to them but to retire with an expression of their regret at the untoward result of their efforts to save the precious manuscripts from probable expatriation. A week or two later, however, they were gladdened by receiving a verbal intimation from the guardian of the public purse that the government were ready to purchase the Stowe collection provided it could be obtained for forty thousand pounds. Lord Ashburnham would not lower his demand to that extent, but consented to accept forty-five thousand pounds. So the bargain was struck, the House of Commons voted the money, and the much-talked-of manuscripts became the property of the nation.
Whatever the pecuniary value of the Stowe collection may be, the custodians of our great library may well rejoice upon acquiring its nine hundred and ninety-six volumes of charters and cartularies; ancient missals and rituals; old English chronicles; old statutes; reports of famous trials; household books; royal wardrobe accounts; papal bulls and indulgences; historical, legal, and ecclesiastical documents; diplomatic, political, and private correspondence; and papers of more or less value to the antiquary, genealogist, and general student. In truth, the subject-matter of this mass of manuscripts is of so varied a nature that it would almost be easier to say what is not, than what is to be found therein. We shall not attempt to do either, but content ourselves with enumerating some of the curiosities of the collection.
First among these comes a volume of Anglo-Saxon charters, the cover of which is adorned with figures of saints and martyrs, and a representation of the crucifixion, worked with the needle, in coloured silks and gold-thread. The first charter in the volume is one of six lines, by which Withred, king of Kent, granted certain lands to the nuns of Liming; His Majesty, ‘being illiterate,’ making the sign of the cross against his name. Another relic of Anglo-Saxon times is the register of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, the greater part of which is supposed to have been written in the reign of Canute. On the first page are portraits of that monarch and his queen ‘Ailgythu’ in their robes of state. On the fourth leaf are memoranda of the Conqueror’s building a palace at Winchester, and of the burning of the city in 1140 by Robert, Earl of Gloucester. A copy of Alfred’s will is followed by an account of the burying-places of the Anglo-Saxon kings and saints, various forms of benedictions, a list of relics preserved at Hyde, and a calendar of saints. On one page is a fragment of the exultat as chanted on Holy Saturday in the monastery, with the musical notes—consisting of lines and points placed over the syllables, and indicating by their forms the high and low tones in which these syllables were to be sung.