Books Seen by Samuel Ward 'In
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BOOKS SEEN BY SAMUEL WARD BIBLIOTHECA REGIA', CIRCA 1614 JAMES P. CARLEY As early as the 1530s the antiquary John Leland (i5O3?-i552) envisaged the establishment of some sort of royal library, designed as a repository for the manuscript collections being removed from their previous monastic homes.^ From the period in which Leland was gathering, there is one particularly valuable piece of evidence: a list of the 910 books found in the Upper Library at Westminster Palace in 1542.^ The list was arranged alphabetically and each book given an inventory number; this was then inscribed in the upper right margin ofthe first or second folio (fig. i). At much the same time a second collection must have been inventoried, since there are at least 190 surviving manuscripts and approximately seventy-five printed books bearing inventory numbers from 911 to 1450. These books were also arranged in alphabetical order.^ Not all ofthe books recorded in the Upper Library can still be identified; some were later abstracted by private collectors, some sold as duplicates and a certain number destroyed at the time of Edward VI's Act against Superstitious Books and Images in 1550. Among the known survivors (if one includes both lists) almost 440 are manuscripts: some come from earlier royal collections and some are presentation copies to Henry himself, but many are refugees from the dissolved English religious houses. What an analysis of the two lists indicates, moreover, is that during Henry's reign a substantial collection of medieval manuscripts had been amassed. Even if Leland's vision was not fully realized, and even if there was considerable destruction during the period of the Dissolution, the royal collection was nevertheless well on the way to becoming a national repository.* During Elizabeth's reign private collecting activities flourished and individuals such as Thomas Allen (d. 1632), Lord Burghley (d. 1598), Sir Walter Cope (d. 1614), Sir Robert Cotton (d. 1631), John Dee (d. 1608), Sir Thomas Knyvett (d. 1618), Lord Lumley (d. 1609), Matthew Parker (d. 1575), Henry Savile of Banke (d. 1617), and John Twyne (d. 1581) built up considerable collections. Like Leland, moreover. Dee, Parker and Cotton all contemplated some sort of great national library.^ Elizabeth herself, however, does not appear to have favoured such a scheme and the Westminster collection was left to struggle on without significant growth: indeed, interested individuals such as Sir John Fortescue (d. 1607) and William, Lord Howard of Effingham (d. 1573) managed to make small abstractions from the earlier acquisitions.^ / ^ i ^^ /. The Royal Library inventory number in Royal MS. 8 D. Ill, f. 5 By the beginning ofthe reign of James I things had deteriorated to such a degree that Sir Thomas Bodley was able to obtain permission to remove whatever books he wished from the collection.' Fortunately, however, Bodley was blocked in this scheme through the intervention of Sir Peter Young, who had come from Scotland with James to serve as Royal Librarian. The individual who would finally amalgamate the royal collections into one coherent whole and establish the Royal Library as a major institution in its own right was also on the scene by this time: this was Sir Peter's fifth son Patrick (d. 1652), who would be closely associated with the Royal Library for almost forty years.^ Young actively resisted depredations ofthe library, as a document dating from 19 August 1646 shows: 'Where as I Patricke Young Gentleman, Keeper of his Ma*^^' Library, did diverse yeares since lend unto Sir Henry Spelman Knight one Ancient Manuscript in a large 4° bound in course black velvet with bosses and claspes guilded, containing in it amongst other particulars divers ofthe old Enghsh Saxon Lawes in Latine, I doe now declare and testifie on the word of an honest man and upon my credit, that the booke lately lent unto Sir Simonds D'Ewes by the Lady Spelman which I have seen in his custody is the same booke, which I lent unto the said Sir Henry Spelman being one ofthe bookes belonging to his Ma^'^- Library.'^ Young also collected and consolidated and by 1622 he was commissioned 'to make search in all cathedrals for old manuscripts and ancient records and to bring an inventory of them to His Majesty'.^** At Salisbury and Winchester, if not elsewhere. Young requested that books he had seen be brought afterwards to St James's Palace in London. It is not surprising, therefore, that fellow scholars turned to Young when they wished to locate manuscripts which might document England's past. In a letter of 27 August 1639, for example. Archbishop James Ussher appealed to Young as a critic of his own work: 'by the opportunity yow have of so many MSS. and your singular judgement in making use of them are able to informe me herein, as much as any I do know in England.'^^ Young's dealings with Ussher and Cotton are relatively well known, but there are also other individuals who made use of the royal collections under his supervision. One of these is Samuel Ward (1572-1642), third Master of Sidney Sussex 90 College, Cambridge (1610-42). Among Ward's papers can be found a group of miscellaneous notebooks which have been gathered together at Sidney Sussex and are now labelled and paginated.^^ Sidney MS. Ward G, described by Todd as 'a small memoranda book', contains a variety of Ward's jottings between 1604 and 1616. Included are a number of booklists: books borrowed and lent, books seen in other collections, books found in library registers and so forth.^^ On f 35r (fig. 2) there occurs a list of nine titles seen by Ward in the Royal Library. Since the lists coming immediately before and after this one carry a date of 1614 and since the handwriting seems to be more or less identical in all three cases, it seems reasonable to date this list to the same year. Ward and Young were well acquainted by 1614 and Young had acknowledged the older man as an authority on the history of texts. On 23 March 1613, for example. Young wrote to Ward concerning manuscripts of Matthew Paris and somewhat later, in 1621, James Wedderburn thanked Young for introducing him to Ward; Wirum... summae probitatis et doctrinae'.^'' Unlike his friends Ussher and Cotton, Ward does not seem to have abstracted books from the Royal Library for his own purposes ^'^ and all the titles he lists can probably be identified with surviving manuscripts.^^ The manuscripts seen by Ward were all acquired during the reign of Henry VIII, as the medieval provenances combined with the evidence of later inventory numbers (noted in parentheses in my edition) indicate. Six (nos. I, 2a and 2b, 3, 4 and 6) come, not surprisingly, from Rochester Cathedral Priory - the source for the greatest number of the surviving manuscripts in the Westminster list. One (no. 5) derives from Hagnaby, Lincolnshire, and this poses a slight problem, since it does not appear with the two other items noted by 'Leland' as possible candidates for the royal collections. What Ward's list shows about his interests ties in neatly with other evidence about his intellectual concerns in the years just before the Synod of Dort (1618-19). Like many of his protestant contemporaries Ward appealed to the Church fathers for support in a variety of theological questions.^^ In Gregory the Great (nos. 1-6), then. Ward might have hoped to find opinions on a number of topics which were concerning him at the time: the powers of the pope as pastor,^^ matters of jurisdiction,^'^ the claims of the bishop, the priesthood and the ecclesiastical hierarchy in general.'^'* Henry of Ghent (no. 7) opposed the mendicants on matters of confessional privileges and tried in general to restore Augustinianism to the Faculty of Theology. Samuel Ward was himself a pluralist - he was, tnter alia, chaplain to James Montagu, Bishop of Bath and Wells, Rector at Yatton, Archdeacon of Taunton and Prebendary of Wells (1615-42), Rector of Great Munden, Hertfordshire (1616-35), a Canon of York (1617-42), Rector of Terrington, Norfolk (1638-42), and a royal chaplain. It is not surprising, therefore, that he turned to Calimpre's Bonum universale de apibus (no. 9) - the section excerpted in Royal 6 E. Ill relates to the condemnation of Philippe de Greve (d. 1237) for opposing Guillaume d'Auvergne in the declaration against pluralities - with fascination. The other texts cited in no. 9, moreover, deal with problems of schism and reform and seem particularly germane in the years leading up to Dort.^^ 91 The Royal list is one of a large number which Samuel Ward compiled over his lifetime. Like a growing number of his contemporaries Ward was acutely aware of the disruption caused by the Dissolution and by the need to establish new libraries (such as that at Sidney Sussex, for example) for the housing of medieval manuscripts.^^ His correspondence contains many references to medieval texts and where copies could still be found. With Patrick Young, as already noted, he discussed Matthew Paris. William Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore, asked his opinion concerning manuscripts.^^ Clement of Rome and St John of Damascus form a topic in his correspondence with John Boys, Prebendary of Ely. For Ussher, in particular, he served as a kind of interlibrary loan service. In Cambridge, he obtained books from Dr Man at Trinity College for the Archbishop; from Robert Austin at King's College; a manuscript of Simeon of Durham from the University Library. As for modern scholars. Corpus Christi College proved to be a challenge and on 8 July 1608 he writes apologetically to Ussher: 'I have been at Bennet College, but could not get into the library, the master, who had one of the keys, being from here.