Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, Part 1 of 2: With Notices of Its Chief Augmentors and Other Benefactors, 1570-1870.Edwards, Edward
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Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, Part 1 of 2: With Notices of Its Chief Augmentors and Other Benefactors, 1570-1870.
Edwards, Edward
Book collectors -- Great Britain; British Museum
It has been printed by Howell in the _Cottoni Posthuma_ of 1651, pp.
283–294; and is followed by _The Answer of the Committees appointed
by Your Lordships to the Propositions delivered by some Officers of
the Mint for inhauncing His Majesties monies of gold and silver_.
The ‘_Answer_’ as well as the speech, appears to be from Sir
Robert’s pen.
Footnote 14:
_Registers of the Privy Council_, James I, vol. v, pp. 484, 485,
489; Nov. 3–5, 1629. (C. O.) _Domestic Correspondence_, James I,
vol. cli, § 24, § 69, _seqq._, and vol. clii, § 78, _seqq._ In this
last-named document the following passage occurs. The writer is
Richard James, who for very many years was Librarian to Sir Robert
Cotton, and he is writing to Secretary Lord Dorchester.—‘About July
last, I was willed by Sir Robert Cotton to carry him [Mr. Oliver
Saint John] into the Upper Study and there let him make search among
some bundles of papers for business of the Sewers.... If he (St.
John) did make any mention of a projecting pamphlet there pretended
to be found, so God save me as I entered into no further
conversation of it. Neither can I believe that any such as this now
questioned was ever in keeping with us, or ever seen by Sir R.
Cotton until, of late, he received it from my Lord of Clare. For
myself, let not God be merciful unto me if, before that time, I ever
saw, heard, or thought of it’ (R. James to Dorchester, vol. 152, §
78). (R. H.) There is also some further information on the subject
in MS. Harl. 7000, ff. 267, _seqq._ (B. M.) A considerable number of
the letters of Richard James to Sir Robert Cotton, his friend and
benefactor, are preserved in MS. Harl. 7002. But these throw no
satisfactory light on the incident of 1629. I believe, however, that
to an observant reader they will be likely to suggest the idea that
Richard James knew more than he was willing that Sir Robert should
know. The letters are without dates, after the fashion of the times,
and this adds to their obscurity. But one thing is plain. The writer
ran away from London, either when he knew that the first inquiry was
imminent or thought it probable that a renewed inquiry would be set
on foot. In one of these letters, after many professions of
attachment, he writes thus: ‘From you, at this time, I should not
have parted, _if the exigence and penurie of my life had not forc’d
a silent retreat into myself, and my owne home at Corpus Christi
College_;’ and then, a fit of poesy—such as it was—coming over him,
he ends his letter metrically, as thus:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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