Prince Henry, the eldest son of James I., showed more taste for literary
matters than any of his predecessors, although he was much addicted to all
manly exercises. He not only took great interest in the books he already
found in his father's library, but he materially added to it by further
collections of his own. In 1609 he purchased the library of Lord Lumley,
who had been his tutor, and which was the finest then in England, except
that of Sir Robert Cotton. This library had originally belonged to Henry
Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, Lord Lumley's father-in-law, and it had been
largely increased since his death. Prince Henry only possessed the library
for three years, as he died in 1612, but during this time he made many
important additions to it. Not many of the original bindings remain upon
the Earl of Arundel's books, and those that do are usually simple. There
is one specimen in the British Museum that is especially good; it bears a
"cameo" of a white horse, galloping, with an oak spray in his mouth, in an
oval medallion, and if there were many others like it, Prince Henry
destroyed much beautiful work when he had them rebound.
It must be supposed that the bindings of both Lord Arundel's and Lord
Lumley's collection were in a bad state when Prince Henry acquired them,
as they now are almost invariably in bindings that were made for him after
1610, when he was made Prince of Wales. On the Prince's death, his
library, which was then kept at St. James's, reverted to the king, and
served largely to augment the old royal library, which had not been very
carefully kept up to the present time, and which, even afterwards,
suffered various losses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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