A.D. 1747.
Dr. Fysher, the Librarian, died on Nov. 4, at Mr. Warneford's, of Sevenhampton, Wilts, and was buried, on Nov. 7, in Adam de Brome's chapel in St. Mary's Church, Oxford. And on Nov. 10, Rev. Humphrey Owen, B.D., Fellow of Jesus College (afterwards D.D., and chosen Principal of his College in 1763), was unanimously elected his successor[210]. Rawlinson mentions, in a letter
to Owen of April 15, 1751, that he had heard a complaint that in Fysher's time 'there was a great neglect in the entry of books into the Benefactors' Catalogue, and into the interleaved one of the Library; as to these objections, my answers were as ready as true, at least I hope so, that Dr. Fysher's indisposition disabled him much from the duty of his office, and that I did not think every small benefaction ought to load the velom register[211].'
[210] Memorandum by Owen himself, in reply to a question from Rawlinson, Rawl. MS. C. 989, f. 142. This volume contains a collection of letters to Owen, chiefly from Browne Willis and Rawlinson, between the years 1748-1756. It affords proof that Owen was what his correspondents would call an 'honest' man, i.e. a Jacobite. In one letter, Willis sends him a Latin inscription in praise of Flora Macdonald, which he says is 'on a fair lady's picture, in an honest gentl. seat in the province of St. David's;' in another, Rawlinson sends him, as a contribution to the Oxford collection of verses on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, this Jacobite epitaph:—
'Here lies Fred., Down among the dead;
Had it been his Father, Most had much rather;
Had it been his Brother, Better than any other;
Had it been a Sister, More would have mist her;
Wer't the whole generation, Happy for the nation;
But since it is only Fred., There is no more to be said.'
[211] Rawl. MS. C. 989.
A.D. 1749.
A Runic Primstaff, or Clog Almanack, was given by Mr. Guy Dickens, a gentleman-commoner of Ch. Ch. It is now exhibited, together with another (see p. [105]), in the glass case near the entrance of the Library. Pointer, in his Oxoniensis Academia (p. 143), mentions that an explanation of the Primstaff was given by himself; the Accounts show that it was also in this year.
A number of coins were added to the Numismatic Museum, which had been collected by the late Librarian, Fysher.