HENRY had died intestate. The library which he had purchased from the Executors of Lord LUMLEY fell to the disposal of the King. The greater part of it went to augment the remains of the old royal library of England, portions of which had been scattered during JAMES’ reign, as well as before it. By that disposal of a collection, in which the prince had taken not a little delight during his brief possession, he became virtually, and in the event, a co-founder of the British Museum. [Sidenote: UNION OF THE ST. JAMES’ AND WHITEHALL LIBRARIES.] The library remained at St. James’ under the charge, for a time, of the prince’s librarian, Edward WRIGHT. The relics of the royal collection at Whitehall were then in the keeping of the eminent scholar and theologian, Patrick YOUNG. Eventually they too were brought to St. James’, and YOUNG took the entire charge. It was by his exertions that the combined collection was augmented by a valuable part of the library of Isaac CASAUBON. [Sidenote: Roe, _Negotiations_, pp. 335; 618.] It was to his hands that Sir Thomas ROE delivered the ‘Alexandrian Manuscript’ of the Greek Bible, the precious gift to King CHARLES of Cyril LUCAR, Patriarch of Constantinople. YOUNG survived until 1652, but he was deprived of his office in 1648. In that turbulent time the library narrowly escaped two perils. Some of the soldiers of the triumphant party sought to disperse it, piecemeal, for their individual profit. Some of the leaders of that party formed a scheme to export it to the Continent for a like purpose. It stands to the credit of a somewhat fanatical partisan—Hugh PETERS, one of the many men who are doomed to play in history the part of scapegoats, whatever their own sins may have really been—that his hasty assumption of librarianship (1648) saved the library from the first danger. [Sidenote: Comp. _Order-Book of Council of State_, vol. v, p. 454, and vol. xxiv, p. 604. (R. H.)] A like act on the part of Bulstrode WHITELOCKE, in the following year (July, 1649), saved it from the second. Probably, it was at his instance that the Council of State made or designed to make it a Public Library. [Sidenote: WHITELOCKE’S _Embassy to Sweden_, vol. i, p. 273. (Reeve’s edit.)] Four years afterwards, WHITELOCKE held at Stockholm a curious conversation with Queen Christina about its manuscript treasures, of some of which, he tells us, she was anxious to possess transcripts.