A.D. 1683.

Three MSS., containing the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Pentateuch, and the Syriac Old Testament, were purchased at the cost of the University.

A.D. 1684.

Nine Oriental and Russian MSS. were given by Joseph Taylor, LL.D., of St. John's College. And Sir Rob. Viner, Bart., the loyal alderman of London, favoured the Library with a human skeleton, a tanned human skin, and the dried body of a negro boy!

A.D. 1685.

Thomas Marshall, or Mareschall, D.D., Rector of Lincoln College, and Dean of Gloucester, who died April 18, bequeathed his MSS., and all such among his printed books as were not already in the Library. The MSS.

amounted to 159, chiefly Oriental, including some valuable Coptic copies of the Gospels, &c., which were procured for him by Huntington, with a few in Dutch, and others miscellaneous in language and subject. They are entered in Bernard's Catalogue, pp. 272-3, and 373-4. The printed books are still kept together under his name.

A.D. 1686.

Fell, Bishop of Oxford, who died July 10, bequeathed a few MSS. They consist of an early and curious collection of _Vitae Sanctorum_ in four folio volumes, of a transcript (in nine folio volumes) of a _Glossarium Septentrionale_ by Francis Junius, Dionysius Syrus in Latin by Dudley Loftus, and two Greek MSS., Damascius and Euthymius Zigabenus, described at the end (col. 907) of Mr. c.o.xe's Catalogue of the Greek MSS. One other MS. has somehow been incorporated in this collection (now numbered 21-23) which does not belong to it. It is a _Clavis Linguae Sanctae_, or explanation of all the Hebrew, and some Chaldee, roots, found in the Old Testament, by Nicholas Trott, in three folio volumes, written with great care and neatness. This, of which the first part had been printed at Oxford in 1719, was sent to the Library in 1746, as appears from the following letter, preserved (without address) in a parcel of papers relating to the Library, now in the Librarian's study:--

'MY LORD,

'My wife's grandfather Judge Trott, cheif justice of South Carolina, desired on his death bed that his forty years' labour relating to the Hebrew root might be sent as a present to the Publick Library at Oxford.

I proposed to have carried it, but my time has allways been taken up at a disagreable series of Court Martials, and now I am again going to the West Indies. That I must beg your Lordship will order or give it a conveyance to the University, and I am, with great respect, my Lord,

'Your Lordship's most humble servant, '_23 Nov., 1746._ 'THOS. FRANKLAND.'

It appears, however, from the accounts, &c., that the MS. was not actually delivered until 1748 or 1749, when it was received through Dr.

Hunt.

A few of Bishop Fell's MSS. came subsequently to the Library among those of Rev. Henry Jones[144], who succeeded Fell in his rectory of Sunningwell, Berks, in the church of which parish the Bishop's wife was buried.

At the Visitation on Nov. 8, it was ordered that notice be given that 'Nullus in posterum quemlibet librum aut volumen extra Bibliothecam asportet,' and that monition be sent to every College and Hall for the return of any books taken out within three days. Several books appear to have been reported in previous years as missing; hence, doubtless, the issue of this order.

[144] Hearne's pref. to John Ross, p. 1.

A.D. 1687.

On the occasion of the visit of King James II to Oxford, chiefly, but unsuccessfully, made for the purpose of overawing the fellows of Magdalen College, who had refused to elect as president his nominee, Anth. Farmer, he was invited by the University to partake of a breakfast or collation in the Library. For this purpose he came hither on the morning of Sept. 5, between nine and ten, where, at the south part of the Selden end, a banquet was prepared which cost the University 160, consisting of 111 dishes of meat, sweetmeats, and fruit. The King sat here for about three quarters of an hour, and held some conversation with Hyde about a Chinese, 'a little blinking fellow,' who had recently visited the place, and about the religion of China; but asked no one to join him at the table. Upon rising to depart, a scene of strange indecorum, as it would now appear, ensued; the 'rabble' (as they are described) of courtiers and academics rushed upon the ma.s.s of untouched dainties, and began a disorderly scramble, in which they 'flung the wet sweetmeats on the ladies linnen and petticoats, and stained them.' The King watched the scramble for two or three minutes, and then departed, commending to the Vice-Chancellor and doctors his chaplain, W. Hall, who had preached before him the day previous, and delivering a most fatherly homily on the sin of pride, the virtue of charity, and the duty of doing as they would be done to. Good, gossipping, Ant. a Wood gives in his _Autobiography_ a full account of all that pa.s.sed, from which are taken the quotations made above[145].

[145] See also Miss Seward's _Anecdotes_, Supplement, 1797, p. 72.

A.D. 1688.

Dr. Hyde went up to London in this year to demand personally of the Company of Stationers the books which were due to the Library by Act of Parliament (1 James II, cap. 17, for seven years, continuing previous acts), but which they had neglected to send. His expenses were 6 5_s._

A.D. 1690.

Thirty pounds were paid in this year to Antony a Wood for twenty-five MSS. out of his library[146]. These are volumes of great value, including Chartularies of the Abbeys of Glas...o...b..ry and Malmesbury, and of the Preceptory of Sandford, Oxon, copies of Papal bulls relating to England, a register of lands in Leicestershire _temp._ Hen. VI, &c.

The rest of Wood's MSS., and printed books, came to the Library, together with the other collections preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, in 1860.

It is said that Wood in this year estimated the number of MSS. in the Library at 10,141. This must have been the number of separate books, not volumes, as in 1697 the latter appear from Bernard's Catalogue to have been about 6700.

[146] In Bernard's Catalogue the purchase is said to have been made in 1692, but this is an error, as it is entered in the accounts of 1690.

A.D. 1691.

On Oct. 8, died Dr. Thomas Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, who, retaining his attachment for the place over which he had presided from 1652 to 1660, bequeathed to it seventy-eight MSS. (now bound in fifty-four volumes), and all the printed books in his collection which the Library did not possess, the remainder going to Queen's College. They appear to have been received in the years 1693-4, as large payments for the carriage are found in the accounts then. His MSS. are described in the old Catalogue of 1697. The printed books, which are particularly rich in tracts of the time of Charles I and the Usurpation, are still kept distinct, being called _Linc._; ending, in the 8^o series, at about the middle of the shelves marked with the letter C in that division. They are placed in the gallery on the left hand of the great central room[147]. His legacy included a copy of the famous _Exposicio Sancti Jeronimi in Simbolo Apostolorum_, which was printed at Oxford in 1468, and completed, as the colophon states, on Dec. 17. This volume was given to Barlow, as he notes at the beginning, by Bishop Juxon, July 31, 1657.

It is exhibited in the gla.s.s case near the entrance. The Library possesses also seven other productions of the early Oxford press. They are as follow:--

1. _aegidius Roma.n.u.s de Peccato Originali_, dated March 14, 1479.

This was one of Rob. Burton's books. Qu. unique?

2. _Textus Ethicorum Aristotelis, per Leonardum Arretinum translatus_, 1479. One of Selden's books.

3. _Expositio Alexandri [de Ales] super tertium librum [Arist.] De Anima_. 'Impressum per me Theoderic.u.m rood de Colonia in alma universitate Oxon.' Oct. 11, 1481.

4. _Joh. Latteburii Exposicio Trenorum Jheremie_, July 31, 1482. No place, but printed with the same type as the last.

5. _Liber Festivalis_, in English, printed by Rood and Hunt, 1486.

Two copies, but both very imperfect. The more imperfect one of the two formerly belonged to Herbert, and was bought for 6 6_s._ in 1832; two additional leaves have been inserted by Mr. c.o.xe, which were found among Hearne's sc.r.a.ps, having been given to him as fragments of a Caxton by Bagford. The other copy was bought in 1852, at Utterson's sale, for 6 10_s._

6. _Opus Wilhelmi Lyndewoode super Const.i.tutiones Provinciales_. No place or date, but identified by the type.

7. _Vulgaria quedam abs Terentio in Anglicam linguam traducta_.

Without place or date, but also identified by the type. The following note, which corroborates the identification, is written in red ink on a fly-leaf in the volume (which includes several other tracts): '1483. Frater Johannes Grene emit hunc librum Oxon. de elemosinis amicorum suorum[148].'

A list of sixty-six books, which Hunt, the Oxford printer and bookseller, had in his hands for sale in 1483, is preserved in his own writing on a fly-leaf in a copy of a French translation of Livy, Paris, 1486, which was bought for the Library from Mr. C. J. Stewart, in Dec.

1860, for 12. The list is headed thus: 'Inventorium librorum quos ego Thomas Hunt, stacionarius universitatis Oxoniensis, recepi de Magistro Petro Actore et Johannis (_sic_) de Aquisgrano ad vendendum, c.u.m precio cujuslibet libri, et promito (_sic_) fideliter rest.i.tuere libros aut pecunias secundum precium inferius scriptum, prout patebit in sequentibus, Anno Domini M^o. CCCC^o. octuagesimo tercio.'

[147] In most of them is inscribed the motto, a?e? a??ste?e??.

[148] This last book is described by Dr. Cotton in the second series of his _Typographical Gazetteer_, published in 1866, from a copy in the University Library at Cambridge. Besides the other Oxford books enumerated by that learned bibliographer, several fragments of another, a _Compendium totius Grammaticae_ (conjectured to have been written by John Anwykyll, Waynflete's first Grammar Master at Magdalene College) have been discovered. They have been identified by Mr. H. Bradshaw, the Librarian of the University of Cambridge, whose extensive acquaintance with early typography is well known. That gentleman found, at Cambridge, two leaves in the University Library in 1859, two more in Corpus Christi in 1861, and two in St. John's in 1866. Four other leaves were discovered by the present writer in 1867, bound up as fly-leaves in a volume in the library of Viscount Dillon, at Ditchley, Oxfordshire. Mr.

Bradshaw supposes the book to have been printed about 1483-6.

A.D. 1692.

Thirty-eight Persian and Arabic MSS., with one printed book, were bought from Hyde, the Librarian. They are entered in Bernard's Catalogue, pp.

286-7. Being bought out of the funds of the University, no mention of the price paid for them is found in the Library accounts.

A.D. 1693.