William Dunn Macray

“ Bandinel, after forty-seven years of office in the capacity of Head, and a total of fifty of work in the Library, forms a leading feature in the Bodley Annals of this year. At the age of seventy-nine the natural infirmities of age were felt by himself to be incapacitating him for the duties which he had so long and so regularly discharged, while at the same time the continually increasing pressure of work and enlargement of the Library, made those duties much more onerous than they had been even a quarter of a century before. ”

“ HICKES, GEORGE (1642–1715) , nonjuror, titular bishop of Thetford, was the second son of William Hickes of Ness in the parish of Stonegrave, Yorkshire, whose wife was a daughter of George Kay, M.A., rector of Topcliffe. His parents after their marriage settled on a large farm called Moorhouse at Newsham in the parish of Kirby Wiske, near Thirsk, where George was born 20 June 1642. When five years old he was sent to school at Thirsk, and when nearly ten to the grammar school at Northallerton, under Thomas Smelt, who throughout the Commonwealth instilled monarchical principles into his pupils. ”

“ To point out all the special treasures in each branch in which the Library is rich, as it would occupy the extent of several volumes, so it would require the combined knowledge of several students, each in his several sphere. While, therefore, no portion of the Library has been unnoticed, it will, the writer trusts, be readily pardoned, should those portions with which he is specially acquainted, and in the direction of which his own line of work specially leads, seem to any to occupy more prominence than others of equal importance. ”

“ At Worcester he began his study of the northern languages, and after one year's indefatigable work, compiled his ‘Anglo-Saxon and Mœso-Gothic Grammar,’ which was printed at Oxford in 1689. When in 1687 Bishop Thomas of Worcester was ill, it was feared that James II might try to fill a vacancy with some adherent to his projects, but Hickes assured the prebendaries that he would first pray the king to recall any congé d'élire issued for such a person, and then, if necessary, endure any penalty rather than summon the chapter to elect. ”

“ But the present narrative, while it embraces a wider range, is, at the same time, independent throughout of all that have preceded it, being largely compiled from sources available only to those who are familiar with the stores of the Library and habituated to their use, as well as from private accounts and papers, for access to which, as for other kind assistance, the writer is indebted to the Librarian. Yet it is only as an attempt that the volume asks to be received and judged; for a work of this kind cannot at once attain completeness. ”

“ The first stone of the western end of the Library, with the Convocation House beneath, was laid on May 13, 1634; it was fitted up with shelves and ready for use by 1640. Selden's books were placed here in 1659. The hideous great west window is a monument of the bad taste of the time; it is much to be hoped that it may some day be replaced by a window more worthy of its conspicuous position, and affording a less marked contrast with its opposite neighbour, the noble east window erected by Bodley himself. ”

“ Sir Thomas, for such he had become by King James's knighting him soon after his accession, was then busied with that greater work which made the closing years of his life eclipse all that had gone before. ”

“ BODLEY, Sir JOSIAS (1550?–1618) , soldier and military engineer, was the fifth and youngest son of John Bodley of Exeter, of whose sons Sir Thomas Bodley was the eldest. The date of his birth is not known, but it was probably about 1550. His early youth was spent abroad with his family at Wesel and Geneva [see Bodley, Sir Thomas] . He had the same foreign education as the rest of his brothers, and figures with them as one of the correspondents of the learned Drusius. ”

“ The parting was not without a great struggle; it was the abandoning what had been the cherished occupation of his life, and with the ceasing of that occupation he felt a too-certain foreboding (which he expressed to the writer of these pages) that the life would soon cease as well. A well-merited tribute was paid to him by Convocation in June, in both increasing the amount of his statutable pension, so that he retired on a full stipend, and in specially enrolling him among the Curators of the Library. ”

“ Considering that the time of the year was well-nigh the middle of the Long Vacation, it does not seem surprising that on one day there should have been no academic readers in the Library, even if there may have been academic riders on the race-course. The two occurrences have so little correspondence with each other that one would hope that the zealous Sub-librarian (who has deemed the same want of readers worth commemorating also in another note) assigned non causa pro causa. ”

“ The survey for the great Ulster plantation was entrusted to him, with others, in 1609, and was so well performed that in 1616 the king proposed to employ him in a renewed survey of the same province. But he complained in 1611 that he had had no share in the division, and prayed for a ‘competent allowance’ for the rest of his life. The prayer was answered on 3 Dec. 1612 by the issue of letters patent appointing him director-general of fortifications in Ireland for life. ”

“ To a conceited young minister, whose appearance did not commend itself to the corrector, he is said to have gravely presented a small book for children, called ‘The Mother's Catechism, dedicated to the young and ignorant.’ A ‘Scripture Dictionary’ was compiled by him about this time, and was printed at Aberdeen in two octavo volumes shortly after his death. Many prefaces to books are said to have been also his work, but of these no record has been preserved. On the authority of Chalmers a verbal index to Milton, which accompanied Bishop Newton's edition in 1749, is also assigned to him. ”

“ On April 6 died Richard Rawlinson, D.C.L., a Bishop among the Non-jurors, notwithstanding that he passed in the world as a layman. From the time of Bodley, Laud, and Selden, he was the greatest benefactor the Library had known; and his only rivals since his own day have been Gough and Douce. In point of numbers, his donation of MSS. far exceeded all. From the short autobiographical notice of himself, given in his own collections for a continuation of the Athenæ Oxon. ”

“ On the accession of Queen Elizabeth the family returned to England and settled at London, and Thomas was sent to Magdalen College at Oxford, entering there as a commoner under the tuition of Laurence Humphrey, D.D., afterwards president, whose religious teaching would be very much in accordance with that which had been inculcated at Geneva. In 1563 he took the degree of B.A., and in the same year was elected a probationer-fellow of Merton College, being admitted actual fellow in the year following. ”

“ Himself a successful student, he became eager to help others to whom thus the advantages of a library were denied; and, for a while without fee or reward, undertook a public Greek lecture in the Hall of Merton College, to which college he had been elected in 1563 [16] . And when, after years thus spent in academic pursuits, Thomas Bodley betook himself to diplomatic service abroad, he still, amidst all the distractions of foreign and domestic politics, preserved his affection for the scenes and the studies of his early familiarity. ”

“ The tract contains six sections devoted to as many arguments against the allowance of the Scriptures in the vernacular; and is possibly the earliest extant statement in English controversy of the opponent's case.
The first argument is that the use of the vernacular would quickly lead to multiplication of erroneous copies, while Latin copies, being written and read in the universities, are easily corrected. 2. That human understanding is insufficient for all the difficulties of Scripture. The knowledge of God is better gained by meditation and prayer than by reading. ”

“ Most, however, of the suggestions for extension of facilities to readers, as well as of the reasons alleged for alteration of system, have now been answered by the opening (through the liberality of the Radcliffe Trustees) of the Radcliffe Library as a noble reading-room for both day and evening. As the hours during which the Library may be used extend now, in consequence of this addition, from nine a.m. to ten p.m., it is at once apparent that the Bodleian presents greater advantages to students than can anywhere else be enjoyed ”

“ Peter-in-the-East, ‘at which time,’ says Wood, ‘our public library lost an honest and useful servant, and his children a good father.’ Of his children, a son Peter paid over some money on his father's account to the library after his death. ”

“ In May of this year died Henry Hyde, Lord Cornbury, son of Henry Hyde, Earl of Rochester, and great-grandson of the great Earl of Clarendon. He had made a will bequeathing all the Chancellor's MSS. to the University of Oxford, to be printed at their press, and the profits to be devoted to a school for riding and other athletic exercises in the University, should such an institution be accepted, or else to other approved uses. Dying before his father, through the effects of an accident, his bequest was void, as he was never actually in possession of the papers to which it referred ”

“ He showed such promise, however, that, by the advice of George Hughes, then minister at Plymouth, he was sent to Oxford, where he was admitted a batler at St. John's College in the middle of April 1659. He was no favourite there with the intruded president, Thankful Owen, because, as we are told, ‘he would not take sermon-notes, nor frequent the meetings of the young scholars for spiritual exercises,’ while the reading of James Howell's ‘Dodona's Grove’ and Bishop Hall's ‘Answer to Smectymnuus’ confirmed him in his aversion to the dominant party. ”

“ Consequently, any return of the number of readers entered on the register would not adequately represent the whole number of students who use the Library, although, of course, it would, with a margin for allowance, afford a very fair approximation. No record, however, of separate visits of readers is kept, as distinct from the books required; so that although a reader may be at work for days or weeks together, yet, if he continue to use only the same books, one entry alone will be made of his name. ”

“ The Library was largely enriched with books which were then modern, in which it appears to have been very deficient, by the legacy of the library of Rev. Charles Godwyn, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College. The collection, which is still in the main kept undivided (although a few folio and quarto volumes are placed in the general class marked Art.) , consists chiefly of works in English and general history, civil and ecclesiastical, published in the eighteenth century, and includes besides the later Benedictine editions of the Fathers. There is also a series of theological and literary pamphlets ”