Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, A.D. 1598-A.D. 1867: With a Preliminary Notice of the earlier Library founded in the Fourteenth CenturyMacray, William Dunn
History
Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, A.D. 1598-A.D. 1867: With a Preliminary Notice of the earlier Library founded in the Fourteenth Century
Macray, William Dunn
Bodleian Library
2. _Class B_ numbers 520 volumes nominally, but really, including double
numbers, 534. They comprise heraldry and genealogy (including MSS. of
Sir Richard and Sir Thos. St. George, W. Wyrley, Guillim, Ryley, Glover,
Le Neve, and other heralds) English and Irish history, and topography,
including several monastic chartularies. Among the genealogical MSS. is
a remarkable collection of pedigrees, in twelve volumes, which the
present writer ascertained to have been compiled by Thomas Wilkinson,
Vicar of Laurence Waltham, Berks, between about 1647 and 1681. They are
arranged alphabetically, as far as the letter P in tolerable order and
regularity, but thenceforward only in a rough and incomplete state.
Unfortunately the handwriting is far from clear, and the ink has often
made it worse. Among the volumes relating to _Essex_, _Norfolk_,
_Suffolk_, &c., are twelve or thirteen which belonged to William Holman,
a voluminous collector for the first-mentioned county, who incorporated
the gatherings of Rev. John Ousley and Thos. Jekyll. Morant, the
historian of Essex, obtained the larger portion of Holman's books; some
are in the British Museum; and the remainder ('the refuse,' says Morant)
were bought by Rawlinson in 1752 for £10[235]. Besides the
above-mentioned volumes, there are a large number of Holman's MSS. which
are kept distinct, and which have been recently bound in fourteen folio
volumes, eleven quarto, and five octavo. Under _London_ are some
nineteen or twenty volumes of Diocesan papers which belonged to Bp. John
Robinson. They formed (with one volume in Class A and several in Class
C) a mass which are described by Rawlinson, as follows[236]:--
'I lately rescued from the grocers, chandlers, &c. a parcel of
papers once the property of Compton and Robinson, successively Bps.
of London. Amongst those of the first were original subscription and
visitation books, letters and conferences during the apprehensions
of Popery amongst the clergy of this diocese, remarkable
intelligences relating to Burnet and the Orange Court in Holland in
those extraordinary times before 1688[237], minutes of the
proceedings of the Commissioners for the Propagation of the Gospel,
and a great variety of other papers. Amongst those of Bp. Robinson,
numbers of originals relating to the transactions at the treaty of
Utrecht, copies of his own letters to Lord Bolingbroke, and
originals from Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Oxford, Electress and Elector
of Hanover, Ormonde, Strafford, Prior, &c.; letters from the Scots
deprived Bishops to Compton, and variety of State papers. They
belonged to one Mr. [Anth.] Gibbon, lately dead, who was private
secretary to both the afore-mentioned prelates.'
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