Mc:Pr30 the Papers of Martin Joseph Routh (D. 1771–5; F
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MC:PR30 THE PAPERS OF MARTIN JOSEPH ROUTH (D. 1771–5; F. 1775–91; P. 1791–1854) Catalogued by Robin Darwall-Smith December 2015 Magdalen College Oxford MAGDALEN COLLEGE OXFORD i MC:PR30 PAPERS OF MARTIN ROUTH (D. 1771–5; F. 1775–91; P. 1791–1854) CONTENTS Introduction ii 1 - The life and career of Martin Routh ii 2 - Select bibliography of the works of Martin Routh iii 3 - The history of the present collection iii 4 - Bibliography of works about Martin Routh iv MC:PR30/1: Routh papers collected by John Bloxam 1 MC:PR30/1/C1: Letters concerning Routh’s family and personal life 1 MC:PR30/1/C2: Letters from members of Magdalen College 22 MC:PR30/1/C3: Letters concerning particular individuals or groups of people 130 MC:PR30/1/C4: Letters from miscellaneous correspondents 203 MC:PR30/1/MS1: Material concerning Richard Chandler’s life of William Waynflete 289 MC:PR30/1/MS2: Material concerning Routh’s research 295 MC:PR30/1/MS3: Material concerning Routh’s activities as President 299 MC:PR30/1/MS4: Inscriptions composed by Routh 303 MC:PR30/2: Documents from and concerning Routh’s Library 309 MC:PR30/2/MS1: MS Books from the Routh Library 309 MC:PR30/2/MS2: Catalogues of the Routh Library 312 MC:PR30/3: Documents relating to Routh’s scholarly research 312 MC:PR30/3/MS1: Documents relating to Reliquiae Sacrae 312 MC:PR30/3/MS2: Documents relating to Gilbert Burnet’s memoirs 313 MC:PR30/4: Routh Papers found in Magdalen after Bloxam 313 MC:PR30/4/C1: Letters, mainly concerning Routh’s family 314 MC:PR30/4/C2: Letters on Routh’s dealings with College Visitors 318 MC:PR30/4/C3: Miscellaneous correspondence 322 MC:PR30/4/MS1: Papers on South Petherwyn (now Petherwin) 324 MC:PR30/4/MS2: Miscellaneous Papers 326 MC:PR30/4/N1: Printed Miscellanea 328 MC:PR30/4/P1: Daguerreotype 328 MAGDALEN COLLEGE OXFORD ii MC:PR30 PAPERS OF MARTIN ROUTH (D. 1771–5; F. 1775–91; P. 1791–1854) INTRODUCTION 1 - The life and career of Martin Routh Martin Joseph Routh was born in South Elmham, Suffolk, on 18 September 1755. His father Peter was rector there, but later became master of the Fauconberge Grammar School at Beccles. Peter Routh and his wife Mary (née Reynolds) had fourteen children, of whom Martin was the oldest. Among the Routh children, the most significant, as far as concerns the current collection, are the third son, Robert, the sixth son Samuel (D. 1785–91; F. 1791–1811), who followed Martin to Magdalen, and the fourth and youngest daughter Sophia (1769/70–1848), of whom more later. Routh matriculated from The Queen’s College on 31 May 1770 aged only 14, but in the following year he migrated to Magdalen College having been elected a Demy there. He then remained at Magdalen for the next 83 years until his death. Routh was elected a Fellow of Magdalen in 1775, and in 1781 he became tutor to Edward South Thurlow (matr. 1781). Thurlow was extremely well connected: his uncles included Edward, 1st Baron Thurlow and Lord Chancellor from 1778–92, and Thomas (D. 1755–9; F. 1759–72), who was Bishop of Lincoln in 1779–87 and of Durham in 1787–91. Another early pupil who, like Thurlow, retained a lifelong link with Routh was Granville Penn (matr. 1780). In addition to his teaching, Routh took on several important College offices. He served as Librarian in 1781, Junior Dean of Arts in 1784 and 1785, and Bursar in 1786. At University level, he was appointed Senior Proctor in April 1785. It is important to remember these details about his career in the light of later accounts which like to dwell on his scholarly and apparently unworldly character. This is especially true in April 1791, when George Horne resigned as President. Routh, with his father’s advice and encouragement, keenly canvassed to be his successor (see MC:PR30/1/C1/3), and was elected by a majority of one in the final ballot on 28 April. As a published scholar (see below) and someone who had already shown an interest in and aptitude for College business, Routh would from the first have been a serious candidate for the post. Once elected President, Routh’s worldly ambitions seem to have been at an end: unlike other contemporary heads of house, he never served as Vice-Chancellor, nor does he seem ever to have aspired to a deanery or a bishopric. His only later appointment occurred in 1810, when he was instituted as Rector of Tilehurst, Berkshire, by his brother-in-law Thomas Sheppard, who owned the living. Routh tried to stay at Tilehurst during University vacations well into his nineties, and in later years his nephew John Routh acted as his curate. Nevertheless, he could still intervene in University politics on occasion: in 1821, for example, when his friend Richard Heber was standing as a Parliamentary candidate for the University of Oxford, Routh was energetically seeking support for him, as can be seen in these papers. When Routh first moved into the President’s Lodgings, his youngest sister Sophia acted as his housekeeper until she married Thomas Sheppard (D. 1747–9; F. 1749–70) in 1801. Thomas MAGDALEN COLLEGE OXFORD iii MC:PR30 PAPERS OF MARTIN ROUTH (D. 1771–5; F. 1775–91; P. 1791–1854) Sheppard was a wealthy man, and on his death in 1814 Sophia became a major philanthropist, supporting many causes, including Magdalen. One of her most substantial gifts was the construction of a new church in Theale, a hamlet within Tilehurst, which was consecrated in 1832. Routh took a keen interest in his sister’s project, and even provided the church with several pieces of medieval stonework which had been uncovered during the restoration of the College Chapel during this time. On Sophia’s marriage, it seems that another of Routh’s sisters, Anne, kept house for him for a while, but then in 1820 he married Eliza Agnes Blagrave, daughter of a Tilehurst family. Although Routh was thirty-five years older than his wife, the marriage proved a happy one, and several observers commented on the hospitable atmosphere which the Rouths created in the President’s Lodgings. Throughout his long Presidency, Routh kept a firm hand and a keen eye on the administration of Magdalen. Whether this was always advantageous to the College is another matter: Routh took no interest in any kind of reform, academic, institutional or otherwise, and Magdalen acquired a reputation as a backwater, to the point that the report of the Royal Commission into Oxford, published in 1852, dismissed it as being ‘among the least important’ academic institutions in the University. Routh also remained stoutlyloyal to traditional interpretations of the College statutes, as handed down to him, which could lead to abuses. By the 1790s, for example, it had become the custom that Demies were automatically elected to Fellowships, and could remain in their posts until the right post fell vacant, yet this was entirely contrary to Waynflete’s statutes. The greatest changes which took place at Magdalen during Routh’s Presidencywere undoubtedly architectural. After several years of dithering, and a disastrous demolition of the north range of the Cloisters (quickly reversed after national protest), Routh and the College engaged in a major rebuilding of the College in the 1820s and early 1830s, which culminated in a complete refurbishment of the Chapel. In his religion, Routh was a devout High Churchman. He claimed kinship with Archbishop Laud, and in his churchmanship derived inspiration from the Arminian divines of the 1630s. Worship in Magdalen Chapel assumed a significantly more High Church character than in many Anglican places of worship in England. Unsurprisingly, Routh took a supportive interest in the Oxford Movement, even if he did not completely agree with all its aims and beliefs, and its leaders, especially John Henry Newman, greatly admired him. Routh’s churchmanship let him to take an interest in outposts of Protestant episcopal churches elsewhere. In 1782, he was called upon to offer advice to the Episcopal Church in what would soon become the independent United States of America as to how to create an episcopate there, and his suggestion that its first Bishops should be consecrated in Scotland was followed. In 1803 he arranged for duplicate books from the disbanded undergraduate Library at Magdalen to be presented to King’s College, Nova Scotia. He was also a supporter of the newly-founded University of Durham, which in its early years was open only to Anglicans, and bequeathed his remarkable library to it. However, it was the Scottish Episcopalian Church which received Routh’s most loyal support: he dedicated Reliqiuae Sacrae to its Bishops and priests, and he MAGDALEN COLLEGE OXFORD iv MC:PR30 PAPERS OF MARTIN ROUTH (D. 1771–5; F. 1775–91; P. 1791–1854) regularly corresponded with Scottish Bishops. In addition, Routh and his sister Sophia Sheppard regularlysupported appeals for building churches or for supporting the Episcopal Church in other ways. Routh, however, was most distinguished among his contemporaries for his scholarship, and it is fair to say that he and the scientist Charles Daubeny (D. 1810–15; F. 1815–67) were the only members of Magdalen in the first half of the nineteenth century to enjoy international reputations for their learning. He was certainly unusual among Oxford heads of house at this time in publishing some major works and—characteristically for him—still more unusual in that his publications spanned almost seven decades, from 1784 until the year before his death.