LIVES OF
THE FOUNDERS
OF THE
BRITISH MUSEUM;
WITH
NOTICES OF ITS CHIEF AUGMENTORS AND OTHER BENEFACTORS.
1570–1870.

DALLASTYPE.

The first British Museum; formerly the residence of the Duke of Montagu.

The old “Townley Gallery.”

For the materials of the earlier of the ‘Lives’ contained in this volume I have been chiefly indebted to the Collection of State Papers at the Rolls House; to the Privy-Council Registers at the Council Office; and to many manuscripts in the Cottonian, Harleian, Sloane, and Lansdowne Collections at the British Museum.

The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.

Chapter I.

Introduction.

II.

The Founder of the Cottonian Library.

III.

The Collectors and Augmentors of the Old Royal and Public Library at St. James’.

IV.

The Collector of the Arundelian MSS.

V.

The Collector of the Harleian Manuscripts.

VI.

The Founders of the Sloane Museum.

3... “The reverence and respect your Petitioners bear to the memory of the most learned Sir Robert Cotton are too great not to mention, in particular, that from the liberal use of his Library sprang (chiefly) most of the learned works of his time, for ever highly to be valued. The great men of that age constantly resorted to and consulted it to shew the errors and mistakes in government about that period. And, as this inestimable Library hath since been generously given and dedicated to the Public use for ever, to be a National Benefit, your Petitioners presume that no expression of gratitude can be too great for so valuable a treasure, or for doing honour to the Memory and Family of Sir Robert Cotton.”—‘Petition to the Honourable House of Commons from the Cottonian Trustees’ (drawn up antecedently to the Foundation Act of the British Museum); 1752.

Chronological Epochs in the Formation of the British Museum.

In two particulars, more especially, our great National Museum stands distinguished among institutions of its kind. The collections which compose it extend over a wider range than that covered by any other public establishment having a like purpose. And, if we take them as a whole, those collections are also far more conspicuously indebted to the liberality of individual benefactors. |The Public debt to private Collectors.| In a degree of which there is elsewhere no example, the British Museum has been gradually built up by the munificence of open-handed Collectors, rather than by the public means of the Nation, as administered by Parliament, or by the Governments of the day.

The real founders of our British Museum have been neither our British monarchs nor our British legislators, as such. They have been, commonly, individual and private British subjects; men loyal both to the Crown and to the People. Often, they have been men standing in direct lineal descent from the great Barons who dictated the Charter of our liberties, in the meadow near Windsor, and from those who led English knights and English bowmen to victory, on the wooded slopes near Poitiers. Sometimes, they have been men of very lowly birth; such as could point to no 6ancestral names appended to Magna Charta, or to the famous letter written from Lincoln to Boniface the Eighth; such as may, indeed, very well have had ancestors who gave their lives, or their limbs, for England at Poitiers or at Cressy, but who certainly could point to no heraldic memorials of feats of arms done on those bloody fields of France. Not a few of them, perhaps, would have been vainly asked to tell the names of their grandfathers. One boast, however, is common to both of these groups of our public benefactors. They were men who had alike a strong sense of gratitude to those who had gone before them, and a strong sense of duty to those who were to come after them. To nearly all of the men whose lives will be told in this volume are applicable, in a special sense, some words of Julius Hare:—‘They wrought in a magnanimous spirit of rivalry with Nature, or in kindly fellowship with her.... |J. & A. Hare, Guesses at Truth, vol. ii, p. 18.| When they planted, they chose out the trees of longest life—the Oak, the Chestnut, the Yew, the Elm,—trees which it does us good to behold, while we muse on the many generations of our Forefathers, whose eyes have reposed within the same leafy bays.’ They were men whose large impulses and deep insight led them to work, less for themselves than for their successors. It is by dint of what men of that stamp did—and did, not under the leading of the Gospel according to Adam Smith, but of a Gospel very much older than it—that upon us, whose day is now passing, Posterity, so to speak, ‘has cast her shadow before; and we are, at this moment, reposing beneath it.’ Of Public Benefactions, such as those which this volume very inadequately commemorates, it is true, with more than ordinary truth, that we owe them, mainly, to a generous conviction in the hearts of certain worthies of old days that they owed suit and service to 7Posterity. This may, indeed, be said of public foresight, when evidenced in material works and in provisions to smooth some of the asperities of common life and of manual toil. But it may be said, more appropriately still, of another and a higher kind of public foresight;—of that evidenced in educational institutions, and in the various appliances for raising and vivifying the common intellect; for enlarging its faculties; diffusing its enjoyments; and broadening its public domain. As it has been said (by the same acute thinker who has just been quoted) in better words than any of mine:—‘The great works that were wrought by men of former times; the great fabrics that were raised by them; their mounds and embankments against the powers of evil; their drains to carry off mischief; the wide fields they redeemed from the overflowings of barbarism; the countless fields they enclosed and husbanded for good to grow and thrive in; ... all this they [mainly] achieved for Posterity.... |J. & A. Hare, Guesses at Truth, vol. ii, p. 13.| Except for Posterity; except for the vital magnetic consciousness that while men perish, Man survives, the only principle of prudent conduct must have been, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”’

The pages which follow have been written in the belief that they afford—whatever the defects of their Writer—useful illustrations of this great and pregnant truth. To him it has not been given to work ‘for Posterity,’ otherwise than as a Chronicler of some of the workings of other men. But he owns to a special delight in that humble function. Its charm,—to his mind,—is enhanced, on the present occasion, by the very fact that so much of the work now about to be narrated is the work of men who only rarely have been labouring with other means, or with other implements, 8than those which were personal to themselves, as individuals.

In the chief countries of the Continent of Europe—on the other hand—great national Museums have, commonly, had their origin in the liberality and wise foresight either of some sovereign or other, or of some powerful minister whose mind was large enough to combine with the cares of State a care for Learning. In Britain, our chief public collection of literature and of science originated simply in the public spirit of private persons.

The British Museum was founded precisely at that period of our history when the distinctively national, or governmental, care for the interests of literature and of science was at its lowest, or almost its lowest, point. As regards the monarchs, it would be hard to fix on any, since the dawn of the Revival of Learning, who evinced less concern for the progress and diffusion of learning than did the first and second princes of the House of Hanover. As regards Parliament, the tardy and languid acceptance of the boon proffered, posthumously, by Sir Hans Sloane, constitutes just the one exceptional act of encouragement that serves to give saliency to the utter indifference which formed the ordinary rule.

Long before Sloane’s time (as we shall see hereafter), there had been zealous and repeated efforts to arouse the attention of the Government as well to the political importance as to the educational value of public museums. Many thinkers had already perceived that such collections were a positive increase of public wealth and of national greatness, as well as a powerful instrument of popular education. It had been shewn, over and over again, that for lack of public care precious monuments and treasures 9of learning had been lost; sometimes by their removal to far-off countries; sometimes by their utter destruction. Until the appeal made to Parliament by the Executors of Sir Hans Sloane, in the middle of the eighteenth century, all those efforts had uniformly failed.

But Sir Hans Sloane cannot claim to be regarded, individually or very specially, as the Founder of the British Museum. His last Will, indeed, gave an opportunity for the foundation. Strictly speaking, he was not even the Founder of his own Collection, as it stood in his lifetime. The Founder of the Sloane Museum was William Courten, the last of a line of wealthy Flemish refugees, whose history, in their adopted country, is a series of romantic adventures.

Parliament had previously accepted the gift of the Cottonian Library, at the hands of Sir John Cotton, third in descent from its Founder, and its acceptance of that gift had been followed by almost unbroken neglect, although the gift was a noble one. |(T. Carte to Sir Thomas Hanmer, Speaker of the House of Commons; Hanmer Corresp., p. 226.)| Sir John, when conversing, on one occasion, with Thomas Carte, told the historian that he had been offered £60,000 of English money, together with a carte blanche for some honorary mark of royal favour, on the part of Lewis the Fourteenth, for the Library which he afterwards settled upon the British nation. It has been estimated that Sloane expended (from first to last) upon his various collections about £50,000; so that, even from the mercantile point of view, the Cotton family may be said to have been larger voluntary contributors towards our eventual National Museum than was Sir Hans Sloane himself. That point of view, however, would be a very false, because very narrow, one.

Whether estimated by mere money value, or by a truer standard, the third, in order of time, of the Foundation-Collections, that 10of the ‘Harleian Manuscripts,’—was a much less important acquisition for the Nation than was the Museum of Sloane, or the Library of Cotton; but its literary value, as all students of our history and literature know, is, nevertheless, considerable. Its first Collector, Robert Harley, the Minister of Queen Anne and the first of the Harleian Earls of Oxford, is fairly entitled to rank, after Cotton, Courten, and Sloane, among the virtual or eventual co-founders of the British Museum.

Chronologically, then, Sir Robert Cotton, William Courten, Hans Sloane, and Robert Harley, rank first as Founders; so long as we estimate their relative position in accordance with the successive steps by which the British Museum was eventually organized. But there is another synchronism by which greater accuracy is attainable. Although four years had elapsed between the passing—in 1753—of ‘An Act for the purchase of the Museum or Collection of Sir Hans Sloane, and of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts, and for providing one general repository for the better reception and more convenient use of the said Collection, and of the Cottonian Library and of the additions thereto,’ and the gift—in 1757—to the Trustees of those already united |The Old Royal Library, formed by Prince Henry (son of James I) at St. James’.| Collections by King George the Second, of the Old Royal Library of the Kings his predecessors, yet that royal collection itself had been (in a restricted sense of the words) a Public and National possession soon after the days of the first real and central Founder of the present Museum, Sir Robert Cotton. But, despite its title, that Royal Library, also, was—in the main—the creation of subjects, not of Sovereigns or Governments. Its virtual founder was Henry, Prince of Wales. It was acquired, out of his privy purse, as a 11subject, not as a Prince. He, therefore, has a title to be placed among the individual Collectors whose united efforts resulted—after long intervals of time—in the creation, eventually, of a public institution second to none, of its kind, in the world.

Prince Henry’s story is not the least curious of the many life-stories which these pages have to tell. That small span of barely eighteen years was eventful, as well as full of promise. And it may very fitly be told next, in order, after that of Cotton, who was not only his contemporary but his friend.

As the Royal Library was, in a certain degree, a Public Collection before the foundation of the Museum, so also was the Arundelian Library of Manuscripts. It did not become part of the British Museum until nearly eighty years after the amalgamation of the Cottonian, Harleian, Sloanian, and Royal Collections into one integral body. But the munificent Earl who formed it had often made it public, for the use of scholars, in his own lifetime. One or two of his descendants allowed it to fall into neglect. Before it left old Arundel House, in the Strand, it was exposed, more than once, to loss by petty thefts. But when, by another descendant, the injury was repaired, and the still choice collection given—at the earnest entreaty of another of our English worthies, John Evelyn—to the Royal Society, the Arundelian MSS., like the Library at Saint James’ Palace, became (so far as a circle of literary men and of the cultivators of scientific inquiry were concerned) a public possession. Many of the Arundelian marbles had also become—by other acts of munificence worthy of the time-honoured name of Howard—to the Public at large, and without restriction, ‘things of beauty,’ and ‘joys for ever.’ Others of them, indeed, are—even in 12these days—shut up at Wilton with somewhat of a narrow jealousy of the undistinguished multitude. But, by the liberality of the Dukes of Marlborough, the choice gems gathered by the Earl of Arundel during his long travels on the Continent, and his widespread researches throughout the world, have long been made available to public enjoyment, in more ways than one. The varied narrative of that famous Collector’s life may, perhaps, not unfitly be placed next after that of the best of the Stuart princes. Arundel, like Henry, was the friend of Sir Robert Cotton, and was proud of that distinction.

Undoubtedly, there is more than one point of view from which we may regard the preponderating share borne by private collectors in the ultimate creation of our national repository as matter of satisfaction, rather than matter of shame. It testifies to the strength amongst us—even at times deeply tinged with civil discord—of public and patriotic feeling. Nor is this all. It testifies, negatively, but not less strongly, to a conscientious sense of responsibility, on the part of those who have administered British rule in conquered countries, and in remote dependencies of the Crown. Few readers of such a book as this are likely to be altogether unacquainted with national museums and national libraries which have been largely enriched by the strong hand of the spoiler. Into some such collections it is impossible for portions of the people at whose aggregate expense they are maintained to enter, without occasional feelings of disgust and humiliation. There are, it is true, a few trophies of successful war in our own Museum. But there is nothing in its vast stores which, to any visitor of any nationality whatever, can bring back memories of ruthless and insolent spoliation.

13That narrowness of conception, however, which has made some publicists to regard the slenderness of the contributions of the Nation at large, when contrasted with the extent of those of individuals, as if it were a cause for boasting, is visibly, and very happily, on the decline. It is coming to be recognised, more implicitly with every year that passes, that whatever can be done by the action of Parliament, or of the Government, for the real promotion of public civilisation,—in the amplest and deepest meaning of that word,—is but the doing of the People themselves, by the use of the most effective machinery they have at hand; rather than the acceptance of a boon conferred upon them, extraneously and from above.

If that salient characteristic in the past history of our British Museum is very far from affording any legitimate cause of boasting to the publicist, it affords an undeniable advantage to the narrator of the history itself. It not only broadens the range of his subject, by placing at its threshold the narrative of several careers which will be found to combine, at times, romantic adventure and political intrigue with public service of a high order; but it binds up, inseparably, the story of the quiet growth of an institution in London with occasional glimpses at the progress, from age to age, of geographical and scientific discovery, of archæological exploration, and of the most varied labours for the growth of human learning, throughout the world.

As an organized establishment, the British Museum is but little more than a century old. The history of its component parts extends over three centuries. That history embraces a series of systematic researches,—scientific, literary, and archæological,—the account of which (whatsoever the needful brevity of its treatment in these 14pages) must be told clumsily, indeed, if it be found to lack a very wide and general interest for all classes of readers—one class only excepted.

Even the least thoughtful among those visitors who can be said to frequent the Museum—as distinguished from the mere holiday guests, who come only in crowds, little favourable to vision; to say nothing of thought—will occasionally have had some faint impression or other of the great diversity and wonderful combination of effort which must have been employed in bringing together the Collections they look upon. Every part and almost every age of the world has contributed something; and that something includes the most characteristic productions and choicest possessions of every part. Almost every man of British birth who,—during many centuries,—has won conspicuous fame as a traveller, as an archæologist, or as a discoverer, has helped, in one way or other, to enrich those collections. They bear their own peculiar testimony to nearly every step which has been taken either in the maritime and colonial enterprise, or in the political growth, of the British empire. Nor is their testimony a whit less cogent to the power of that feeling of international brotherhood, in matters of learning and science, which grows with their growth, and waxes stronger with their strength.

To the remarkable career of the first of those four primary Collectors, whose lifelong pursuits converged, eventually, in the foundation of an institution, of the full scope of which only one of the four had even a mental glimpse—and Sloane’s glimpse was obviously but a very dim one—the attention of the reader has now to be turned. Sir Robert Cotton’s employments in political 15life (unofficial as they were), and the powerful influence which he exerted upon statesmen much abler than himself, will be found, it is hoped, to give not a little of historical interest to his biography, quite additional to that which belongs to his pursuits as a studious Collector, and as the most famous of all the literary antiquaries who occur throughout our English story.

To the conspicuous merits which belong to Sir Robert Cotton as a politician of no mean acumen, and as,—in the event,—the real Founder of the British Museum, are added the still higher distinctions of an eminently generous spirit and a faithful heart. His openhandedness in giving was constant and princely. His firmness in friendship is testified by the fact that although (in a certain point of view) he was the courtier both of James the First and of Charles the First, he nevertheless stood persistently and unflinchingly by the side of Eliot, and of the men who worked with Eliot, in the period of their deepest court disgrace. By the best of the Parliamentarian leaders he was both reverenced and loved. And he reciprocated their feeling.

My personal pleasure in the task of writing the life of such a man as he was is much enhanced by a strong conviction that certain recent attacks upon his memory are based upon fallacious evidence, shallow presumptions, and hasty judgments. It is my hope to be able to shew to the Reader, conclusively, that Cotton was worthy of the cordial regard and the high esteem in which he was uniformly held by men who stood free of all bias from political and party connexion—such, for example, as William Camden, who spoke of him, almost with dying lips, as ‘the dearest of all my friends,’—as well as by those great Parliamentarian leaders whose estimate of him may, perhaps, be thought—by hasty readers—to rest partly, if 16not mainly, on the eminent political service which he was able to render them.

When these pages shall come from the Press just three hundred years will have elapsed since Sir Robert Cotton’s birth. Our English proto-collector was born in the year 1570. The year 1870 will, in all probability, witness the definite solution of a knotty problem as to the future of the great institution of which he was the primary and central founder.

Cotton may be regarded as the English ‘proto-collector,’ in a point of view other than that which concerns the British Museum. No Library in the United Kingdom can, I think, shew an integral ‘Collection,’ still extant, the formation of which—as a Collection—can be traced to an earlier date than that of the collection of the Cottonian Manuscripts.

Whether the British Museum shall continue to be the great national repository for Science, as well as for Literature and Antiquities, is a question which is fast ripening for decision; and it is one which ought to be interesting to all Britons. It is also, and very eminently, one of those questions of which it is literally—and not sarcastically—to be affirmed that ‘there is much to be said on both sides.’

Personally I have a very strong conviction on that subject. But in treating of it—in the ‘Postscript’ which closes the present volume—it has been my single and earnest aim to state, with the utmost impartiality I am able to attain, the leading arguments for maintaining the Museum in its full integrity; and also the leading arguments for severing the great Natural History Collections 17from the rapidly growing Libraries and from the vast Galleries of marbles, bronzes, pottery, medals, and prints. It is the business of writers to state and marshal the evidence. It is the business of Parliament to pronounce the judgment.

The main epochs in the History of the British Museum afford what may be looked upon almost as a ‘table of contents’ to the present volume. And they may be brought under the Reader’s eye in a way which will much facilitate the correct apprehension of the author’s plan. I exhibit them thus:—

1757–1831:—

(I)

1757. Old ‘Royal Library.’

Restored, by Henry, Prince of Wales, in the year 1609, by the purchase—and incorporation with the remnants of an ancient collection—of the Library of John de Lumley, Lord Lumley (Born circa 1530; Restored in blood, as VIth Baron Lumley, in 1547: Died 1609); Continued by Charles I and Charles II, Kings of England, &c., from 1627 to 1683; Given to the Nation by King George the Second in 1757.

This Old Royal Library, although, as above mentioned, it still contains fragments of the more ancient Collection of the Kings of England—and among them books which undoubtedly belonged to King Henry the Sixth, if not to earlier Plantagenet kings—may fairly be regarded as of Prince Henry’s foundation in the main. Lord Lumley’s Library (which the Prince bought in bulk) contained that of his father-in-law, Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, into which had passed a part of Archbishop Cranmer’s Library. But this conjoined Collection has not wholly passed to the British Museum. It suffered some losses after Prince Henry’s death. On the other hand, it had acquired the collection of MSS. formed by the Theyers (John and Charles), in which was included another part of the Library of Cranmer; as I shall shew hereafter.

1759. Hebrew Library (Printed and Manuscript) of Da Costa.

Collected by Solomon Da Costa, formerly of Amsterdam, and chiefly between the years 1720 and 1727; Given by the Collector, in 1759, to the Trustees of the British Museum ‘for inspection and service of the Public, as a small token of my esteem, reverence, love, and gratitude to this magnanimous Nation, and as a thanksgiving offering ... for numberless blessings which I have enjoyed under it.’ (From Da Costa’s Letter to the Trustees.)

A collection, small in extent, but of great intrinsic worth; and very memorable, both as the generous gift of a good man; and as instancing the co-operation (at the very outset) of the love of learning in a foreigner—and a Jew—with a like love in Britons, for a common object; national, indeed, but also much more than national.

(III)

1762. The Thomason Collection of English Books and Tracts, Printed and Manuscript.

Collected by George Thomason (Died 1666); Purchased by King George the Third, in 1762, for presentation to the British Museum.

This Collection—the interest of which is specially but by no means exclusively political and historical—was formed between the years 1641 and 1663 inclusive, and it contains everything printed in England during the whole of that period which a man of great 22enterprise and energy could bring together by daily watchfulness and large outlay. It also contains many publications, and many private impressions, from printing-presses in Scotland, Ireland, and the Continent of Europe, relating to or illustrating the affairs of the United Kingdom and of the Commonwealth. In his lifetime, the Collector refused £4000 for his library, as insufficient to reimburse his costs, charges, and labour. His heirs and their assigns kept it for a century and then sold it to King George III for £300. It includes many political MSS., which no printer dared to put to press.

(IV)

1766. The Solander Fossils.

Collected by Daniel Charles Solander (Died 16 May, 1782); Purchased by Gustavus Brander and by him presented to the Museum (of which he was one of the first Trustees) in 1766.

The ‘Solander Fossils’—so called from the name of the eminent naturalist who found and described them—formed the primary Collection on which by gradual accessions the present magnificent collection of fossils has been built up.

(V)

1766. The Birch Library of Printed Books and Manuscripts.

Collected by Thomas Birch, D.D., a Trustee of the British Museum (Died 1766), and bequeathed by the Collector.

1772. The Hamilton Vases, Antiquities, and Drawings.

Collected by Sir William Hamilton (Died 6 April, 1803); Purchased by Parliament from the Collector in 1772 for £8400.

(VII)

1790–1799. The Musgrave Library.

Collected by Sir William Musgrave, a Trustee (Died 1799); Acquired, partly by gift in 1790; partly by bequest in 1799.

(VIII)

1799. The Cracherode Library and Museum.

Collected by the Reverend Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, a Trustee of the British Museum (Died 1799), and bequeathed by the Collector.

(IX)

1799. The Hatchett Minerals.

Collected by Charles Hatchett, and purchased for £700.

(X)

1802. The Alexandrian Collection of Egyptian Antiquities.

Collected by the French Institute of Egypt in 1800; Transferred to the Crown of England by the 24terms of the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801; Given to the Museum in 1802 by King George the Third.

(XI)

1802. The Tyssen Anglo-Saxon Coins.

Collected by Samuel Tyssen; Purchased by the Trustees (for £620).

(XII)

1805–1814. The Townley Marbles, Coins, and Drawings.

Collected by the Townley Family, and chiefly by Charles Townley, of Townley in Lancashire; and acquired by Parliament, by successive purchases, in the years 1805 and 1814, for the aggregate sum of £28,200.

(XIII)

1807. The Lansdowne Manuscripts.

Collected by William Petty Fitzmaurice, Marquess of Lansdowne (Died 1805), who incorporated in it from time to time parts of the Libraries and Manuscript Collections of William Cecil, Lord Burghley (Died 1598); of Sir Julius Cæsar (Died 1636); of White Kennet, Bishop of Peterborough (Died 1728); of John Strype (Died 1737); of Philip Carteret Webb (Died 1770); and of James West (Died 1772). Purchased by Parliament for the sum of £4925.

1810. The Greville Minerals.

Collected by Charles Greville. Purchased by Parliament for the sum of £13,727.

(XV)

1810. The Roberts English Coins.

Collected by Edward Roberts, of the Exchequer; Purchased by Parliament for the sum of £4200.

This Collection extended from the Norman Conquest to the reign of George the Third. It was purchased for the Collector’s heir.

(XVI)

1811. The De Bosset Greek Coins.

Collected by Colonel De Bosset. Purchased by the Trustees for the sum of £800.

(XVII)

1813. The Hargrave Library.

Collected by Francis Hargrave. Purchased by Parliament for the sum of £8000.

(XVIII)

1815. The Phigaleian Marbles.

Discovered, in 1812, amongst the ruins of Ictinus’ Temple of Apollo ‘the Deliverer’ at Phigaleia, in Arcadia, built about B.C. 430. Purchased in 1815, for the sum of £15,000.

1815. The Von Moll Library and Museum.

Collected by the Baron Von Moll (Died ...). Purchased (at Munich) for the sum of £4768 (including the contingent expenses), out of the Fund bequeathed by Major Edwards.

The Library of Baron Von Moll comprised nearly 20,000 volumes, and a considerable Collection of Portraits and other Prints. His Museum consisted of an extensive Herbarium and a Collection of Minerals. The purchase was completed in 1816.

(XX)

1816. The Beroldingen Fossils.

Acquired by purchase; and the only considerable acquisition, made in this department, between Brander’s gift of Fossils (gathered from the London Clay) in 1766, and the purchase of Hawkins’ fine Collection, in 1835.

(XXI)

1816. The Elgin Marbles.

Collected, under firman of the Ottoman Porte, between the years 1801 and 1810—and chiefly in the years 1802 and 1803—by Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin (Died 14 October, 1841). Purchased by Parliament in 1816 for the sum of £35,000.

(XXII)

1816. The Montagu Zoological Collections.

Collected by Colonel George Montagu (Died 2720 June, 1815), and arranged, as a Museum of British Zoology—and especially of Ornithology—at Knowle, in Devonshire. Purchased at a cost of £1100.

(XXIII)

1818. The Burney Library.

Collected by Dr. Charles Burney (Died 28 December, 1817). Purchased by a Parliamentary vote for the sum of £13,500.

(XXIV)

1818. Mrs. Banks’ Archæological Collections.

Collected by Mrs. S. S. Banks, and by Lady Banks; comprising a valuable series of coins, medals, prints, &c., and presented to the Museum by the Survivor.

(XXV)

1823–1825. The King’s Library.

Collected by King George the Third (Died 1820); inherited by King George the Fourth, and by him transferred, on terms, to the British Museum.

(XXVI)

1824. The Payne-Knight Cabinets, Library, and Museum.

Collected by Richard Payne Knight (Died 24 April, 1824), a Trustee; comprising Marbles, Bronzes, Vases, Prints, Drawings, Coins, Medals, and Books. Bequeathed by the Collector.

1825. The Persepolitan Marbles.

(XXVIII)

1825. The Oriental Collections of Claudius James Rich.

Claudius Rich was British Consul at Bagdad (Died 5 Oct., 1821). He made an extensive gathering of Persian, Turkish, Syriac, and Arabic MSS., and of Coins, &c. These were purchased by a Parliamentary vote.

(XXIX)

1825. Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s Italian Library.

Given, by the Collector, in 1825, and subsequently increased, by another gift.

(XXX)

1827. The Banksian Library, Herbaria, and Museum.

Collected by Sir Joseph Banks, P.R.S. (Died 19 June, 1820), and a Trustee. Bequeathed by the Collector, with a prior life interest, to Robert Brown (Died 1858); and by him transferred to the British Museum in 1827.

Sir Joseph’s botanical Collections included the Herbaria, severally, of Cliffort; of Clayton (the basis of the ‘Flora Virginica’); of John Baptist Fusée d’Aublet (Died 6 May, 1728); of Nicholas Joseph Jacquin, author of the ‘Floræ Austriacæ’ (Died 24 October, 1817); and of Philip Miller, author of ‘The Gardener’s Dictionary’ 29(Died 18 December, 1771); with portions of the Collections of Tournefort, Hermann, and Loureiro.

(XXXI)

1829. The Hartz-Mountains Minerals.

Collected at various periods and by several mineralogists. This fine Cabinet was for a considerable period preserved at Richmond. Presented by King George the Fourth.

(XXXII)

1829. The Egerton Manuscripts.

Collected by Francis Henry Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater (Died 11 February, 1829). Bequeathed by the Collector; together with a sum of £12,000, to be invested, and the yearly income to be applied for further purchases of MSS. from time to time; and with other provision towards the salary of an ‘Egerton Librarian.’

(XXXIII)

1831. The Arundelian Manuscripts.

Collected, between the years 1606 and 1646, by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, &c. (Died 4 Oct., 1646); Given in 1681 by his eventual heir, Henry Howard, Esquire (afterwards XIIth Duke of Norfolk—Died in 1701), and at the request of John Evelyn, to the Royal Society; Transferred by the Council of that Society, in 1831,—partly by purchase, and partly by exchange—to the Trustees of the British Museum. The Collection includes the bulk of the Library of Bilibald Pirckheimer, purchased at Nuremberg, by Lord Arundel, in 1636.

(XXXIV)

1823. The Beaumont Gallery.

Collected by Sir George Howland Beaumont (Died 7 February, 1827); Given by the Collector in 1823 to the British Museum, on condition of its usufructuary retention, during his lifetime. Deposited in the National Gallery, under terms of arrangement, after the Collector’s death.

(XXXV)

1830. The Holwell-Carr Gallery.

Collected by the Reverend William Holwell Carr (Died 24 December, 1830), and by the Collector bequeathed to the British Museum. Deposited under arrangements similar to those adopted for the Beaumont Pictures in the National Gallery.

These are the primary Accession-Collections that came to the British Museum, during the first seventy years which elapsed after its public opening (January, 1759). They form a noble monument alike of the liberality and public spirit of individual Englishmen, and of the fidelity of the Trustees to the charge committed to them as a body. And the reader will hardly have failed to notice how remarkable a proportion of the most munificent of the 31Benefactors of the institution were, previously to their gifts, numbered amongst its Trustees.

If the liberality of Parliament failed to be elicited in due correspondency—in respect either to the amount or the frequency of its grants—to that of individuals, the failure is rarely, if ever, ascribable to oversight or somnolency on the part of the Trustees. If, during the lapse of those seventy years, they obtained grants of public money which amounted, in the aggregate, to but £151,762—little more, on an average, than two thousand pounds a year—they made not a few applications to which the Treasury, or the House of Commons, refused to respond. Meanwhile, the gifts of Benefactors probably much more than trebled the public grants.

At the outset, the Museum was divided into three ‘Departments’ only: (1) Manuscripts; (2) Printed Books; (3) Natural History.

The acquisition, in 1801, of the Alexandrian monuments, was the first accession which gave prominence to the ‘Antiquities’—theretofore regarded as little more than a curious appendage to the Natural History Collections. Four years later came the Townley Marbles. It was then obvious that a new Department ought to be made. This change was effected in 1807. The Marbles and minor Antiquities, together with the Prints, Drawings, Coins, and Medals (formerly appended to the Departments of Printed Books and of MSS.) were formed into a separate department. Twenty years afterwards the ‘Botanical Department’ was created, on the reception of the Banksian herbaria and their appendant Collections. The division into five departments continued down to the date of the Parliamentary inquiry of 1835–36 [Book III, Chapter 1]. Soon afterwards (1837), the immediate custody of the ‘Prints and 32Drawings’ was severed from that of the ‘Antiquities’ and made a special charge. In like manner, the Department of ‘Natural History’ was also (1837) subdivided; but in this instance the one department became, eventually, three: (1) Zoology; (2) Palæontology; (3) Mineralogy. The two last-named divisions were first separated in 1857. How the eight departments of 1860 have become twelve in 1869 will be seen hereafter.

It will also, I think, become apparent that this subdivision of Departments has contributed, in an important measure, to the enlargement of the several Collections; as well as to their better arrangement, and to other exigencies of the public service.

We have now to enumerate the more salient and important among the many successive acquisitions of the last forty years. Taken collectively, they have so enlarged the proportions of the national repository as to make the ‘British Museum’ of 1831 seem, in the retrospect, as if, at that time, it had been yet in its infancy.

In 1831 there were still living—here and there—a few ancient Londoners whose personal recollections extended over the whole period during which the Museum had existed. One or two of them could, perhaps, still call to mind something of the aspect which the gaily painted and decorated rooms of old Montagu House presented when—as children—they had been permitted to accompany some fortunate possessor of a ticket of admission to ‘see the curiosities;’ and were hurried by the Cerberus in charge for the day from room to room; the Cerberus aforesaid (unless his memory has been libelled) seeming to count the minutes, if a visitor chanced to show the least desire for a closer inspection of anything which caught his eye. And, 33in some points—although certainly not in that point—the Museum of 1831 was not very greatly altered, much as it had been enlarged, from the Museum of 1759. Cerberus had long quitted his post; but many portions of the Collections he had had in charge retained their wonted aspect, much as he had left them.

Such octogenarian survivors—if endowed with a good memory—would see, in their latest visits to Great Russell Street much more to remind them of what they had seen in the first, than a new visitor of 1831 could now see,—in 1869,—were he, in his turn, striving to recall the impressions of his earliest visit.

The period now to be briefly outlined—in order to a fair preliminary view of our subject—is marked, like that of 1759–1831, by continued munificence on the part of private donors; but it is also marked—unlike that—by some approach towards proportionate liberality from the keepers of the public purse; as well as by energetic and persistent efforts for internal improvement, on the part both of Trustees and of Officers. It forms a quite new epoch. It may be said, unexaggeratedly, to have witnessed a re-foundation of the Museum, in almost everything that bears on its direct utility to the public.

In regard to this last period, however—no less than in regard to the foregoing one—only the more salient Collections can here be enumerated. Many minor ones have been passed over already, notwithstanding their intrinsic value. Many others—equally meriting notice, were space for it available—will have, in like manner, to be passed over now.

(XXXVI)

1833. The Borell Cabinet of Greek and Roman Coins.

Collected by the late H. P. Borell, of Smyrna. Purchased by the Trustees for £1000.

(XXXVII)

1834. Sams’ Collection of Egyptian Antiquities.

Collected by Joseph Sams. Purchased, by a Parliamentary grant, for £2500.

(XXXVIII)

1834 (and subsequent years). The Hawkins Fossils.

Collected by Thomas Hawkins, of Glastonbury. Purchased, by successive grants of Parliament, in the years 1834 and 1840.

(XXXIX)

1835. The Hardwicke Ornithological Museum.

Collected by Major-General Hardwicke. Bequeathed by the Collector.

(XL)

1835. The Salt Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

Collected by Henry Salt, British Consul at Alexandria 35(Died 30 October, 1827). Purchased (at various times) by Parliamentary grants.

Of Mr. Salt’s successive Collections of Egyptian antiquities the most valuable portions have come to the Museum; chiefly in the years 1823 and 1835.

(XLI)

1836. The Marsden Cabinet of Oriental Coins.

Collected by William Marsden (Died 6 October, 1836). Bequeathed by the Collector.

(XLII)

1836. The Sheepshanks Collection of Etchings, Prints, &c.

Collected by John Sheepshanks (Died October, 1863); and Given by the Collector.

(XLIII)

1837–43. The Canino Vases.

A selection from the superb Museum of the Prince of Canino (Died 29 June, 1840); acquired by successive purchases before and after the Collector’s death.

(XLIV)

1839. The Mantell Fossils.

Collected by Gideon Algernon Mantell (Died November 10, 1850). Purchased by a Parliamentary grant.

1841–1847. Syriac Manuscripts from the Nitrian Monasteries.

Collected by the Reverend Henry Tattam and by M. Pachot. Purchased by the Trustees, by three successive bargains, in the years 1841–1847.

(XLVI)

1842. The Harding Prints and Drawings.

Purchased, for the Trustees, by selection at the Collector’s sale. The selection comprised 321 very choice specimens of early German and Italian masters; and was acquired for the sum of £2390.

(XLVII)

1843. The Raphael Morghens Prints.

Purchased by the Trustees, by a like selection, at a public sale in 1843.

(XLVIII)

1845. The Lycian or Xanthian Marbles.

Discovered by Sir Charles Fellowes (Died 1860) in the years 1842–1844. Transferred to the Museum at the cost of the Trustees in 1845.

(XLIX)

1847. The Grenville Library.

Collected by the Right Hon. Thomas Grenville (Died 17 December, 1846). Bequeathed by the Collector.

1847. The Michael Hebrew Library.

Collected by H. J. Michael, of Hamburgh. Purchased by the Trustees from his Executors.

(LI)

1847. John Robert Morrison’s Chinese Library.

Collected by J. R. Morrison (son of the eminent Christian Missionary and Lexicographer—Died 1843). Purchased from his Executors by a Parliamentary grant.

(LII)

1848. The Croizet Fossil-Mammals.

Collected by M. Croizet in Auvergne. Purchased by the Trustees.

(LIII)

1851–1860. The Assyrian Antiquities.

Partly discovered by Austen Henry Layard. Excavated at the public charge, and under the joint direction of the Trustees of the British Museum and of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in 1851 and subsequent years by the Discoverer, and by H. Rassam, and W. K. Loftus.

1853. The Gell Drawings.

Drawn and Collected by Sir William Gell (Died 4 February, 1836). Bequeathed by the Honorable Keppel Craven (Died 1853).

(LV)

1853. The Stephens Cabinet of British Entomology.

Collected by James Francis Stephens (Died 22 December, 1852). Purchased by the Trustees.

Although this Collection contained about 88,000 specimens, it cost the Trustees only £400.

(LVI)

1854. The Des-Hayes Tertiary Fossils.

Collected, in France, by M. Des Hayes. Purchased by the Trustees.

(LVII)

1855–1860. The Halicarnassian and Cnidian Marbles.

Discovered and excavated by C. T. Newton (then Vice-Consul at Mitylene) and other Explorers (earlier and later). In part Presented by Lord Canning of Redcliffe (then Ambassador at Constantinople); and in part excavated and transported by the Trustees, with the aid of Parliamentary grants made in 1855 and subsequent years.

1856. The Temple Museum of Italo-Greek and Roman Antiquities.

Collected by Sir William Temple (Died 1856) during his Embassy at Naples. Bequeathed by the Collector.

(LIX)

1857. The Cautley Fossils from the Himalayas.

Collected by Major Cautley, during his service in India. Purchased by the Trustees.

(LX)

1858. The Bruchmann Fossil Plants.

Collected by Bruchmann at and near Œningen. Purchased by the Trustees.

(LXI)

1859. The Carthaginian Antiquities.

Discovered,—and excavated (partly at the cost of the Trustees),—by Nathan Davis and others, during the year 1856 and subsequent years. The Davis Collection includes a series of Phœnician Inscriptions, some of which are of great antiquity. Purchased from the Collector.

1860. The Allan-Greg Cabinet of Minerals.

Collected, mainly, by R. H. Greg, of Manchester. Purchased by the Trustees.

(LXIII)

1860. The Gardner Herbarium of Brazil.

(LXIV)

1860. The Cyrene Marbles.

Discovered, and excavated by Lieutenants R. M. Smith and Porcher, under firmans from Constantinople, and at the charge of the Trustees, in 1860 and subsequent years.

Book III, Chapter 3.]

(LXV)

1862. The Haeberlein Fossils.

Collected by Haeberlein. Brought from Solenhofen; and Purchased by the Trustees.

(LXVI)

1863. The Sicilian Antiquities.

Discovered and excavated by George Dennis (Her Majesty’s Consul at Benghazi), under direction from the Foreign Office, in 1862 and subsequent years. Presented by Earl Russell.

1863. The Bowring Collection of Foreign Insects.

Collected by John Bowring. Presented by the Collector.

The Collector obtained a large portion of this fine Cabinet of Entomology during his own travels in India, Java, and China. It consists chiefly of Coleopterous insects.

(LXVIII)

1864. The Wigan Cabinet of Coins.

Collected and Presented by Edward Wigan.

(LXIX)

1864. The Rhodian Marbles.

Excavated, at the charge of the Trustees, by MM. Salzmann and Biliotti, in 1863 and subsequent years.

(LXX)

1864. The Cureton Oriental Manuscripts.

Collected by the late William Cureton, D.D. (Died 17 June, 1864). Purchased by the Trustees from his Executors.

(LXXI)

1864. The Wright Herbarium of Cuba and New Mexico.

1864. The Tristram Cabinet of the Zoology of the Holy Land.

Collected by the Reverend H. B. Tristram, M.A. Presented by the Collector.

(LXXIII)

1865. The Hebrew Library of Almanzi.

This valuable series of Hebrew Manuscripts, &c. was collected by the late Joseph Almanzi, of Padua; and was purchased by the Trustees of his Executors.

(LXXIV)

1865. The Erskine Oriental Manuscripts.

Collected by William Erskine, during his residence in India. Purchased by the Trustees.

(LXXV)

1865. The Malcolm Persian Manuscripts.

Collected by Sir John Malcolm (Died 31 May, 1833) during his Embassy to Persia. Purchased by the Trustees.

(LXXVI)

1865. The Kokscharow Minerals.

Collected by Colonel de Kokscharow. Purchased by the Trustees.

1865. The Ephesian Marbles.

Excavated, at the charge of the Trustees, by Vice-Consul Wood.

(LXXVIII)

1865. The Christy Pre-Historic and Ethnological Museum.

Collected and Bequeathed by Henry Christy (Died 4 May, 1865).

(LXXIX)

1865. The Bank of England Cabinet of Coins and Medals.

(LXXX)

1865. Witt’s Ethnic Museum.

Collected and Presented by Henry Witt.

(LXXXI)

1866. The Blacas Museum.

Collected by the Dukes of Blacas (The elder Collector died in 1839; the younger, in 1865). Purchased, by the Trustees, of the heirs of the Survivor.

1866. The Woodhouse Museum.

Collected by James Woodhouse, Her Majesty’s Treasurer at Corfu (Died February, 1866). Bequeathed by the Collector.

(LXXXIII)

1866. The Cuming Conchological Collection.

Collected by Hugh Cuming (Died 1866). Acquired by the Trustees in 1866, partly by gift, and partly by purchase, under the directions of the Collector’s Will.

(LXXXIV)

1867. The Hawkins Collection of English Political and Historical Prints.

Collected by Edward Hawkins (Died 1867). Purchased by the Trustees.

(LXXXV)

1868. The Abyssinian Antiquities and Manuscripts.

Acquired by the Trustees during and after the Abyssinian War; partly by gift from the British Government, and partly by the researches of the Representative of the Trustees in the British Camp. Another and a very valuable portion of the Abyssinian Manuscripts came to the India Office, by the gift of Lord Napier of Magdala; and by the Secretary of State for India was given to the British Museum.

1868. The Slade Archæological Collection.

Collected by Felix Slade (Died 1868). Bequeathed by the Collector.

(LXXXVII)

1869. The Hays Collection of Egyptian Antiquities.

As I have had occasion to observe in a former paragraph, the preceding list is, of necessity, an abridged list. It is by no means a complete or exhaustive one. The prescribed bounds—those of a single volume for a very wide and multifarious subject—compel the writer to treat his subject by way of selection. The reader is solicited to keep that fact in mind; as well for its bearing on the chapters which follow, as on the introductory chapter now under his eye. And in regard both to this brief enumeration of the successive component parts of the Museum, and to the biographical notices of which it is the preliminary, the cautionary remark here repeated applies to every Department of the national repository. It holds good of the Natural History Collections, and of the Collections of Antiquities, no less than of the Collections of Printed Books and of Manuscripts.

Among the many minor, but intrinsically important, Collections thus—compulsorily—passed over, in the present volume, are some of which brief notices have been given (by the same hand) in a preceding work, published in 1869. Those ‘Notices,’ however, relate exclusively to 46collectors and collections of Printed Books, of Engravings, of Drawings, and of Manuscripts. Thus,—to give but a few examples,—important collections, now forming part of the British Museum, and gathered originally by Thomas Rymer (1713); Thomas Madox (1733); Brownlow Cecil, Earl of Exeter (1739); David Garrick (1779); Peter Lewis Ginguene (1816); the Abate Canonici (circa, 1818); John Fowler Hull (1825); Frederick North, sixth Earl of Guildford (1826); Count Joseph de Puisaye (1827); the Marquess Wellesley (1842); D. E. Davy (circa 1850),—are all noticed in an Appendix headed ‘Historical Notices of Collectors’ to the volume entitled ‘Free Town Libraries’ published in 1869. Of that Appendix the notices above referred to form, respectively, Nos. ‘848’ (Rymer); ‘570’ (Madox); ‘186’ (Cecil); ‘351’ (Garrick); ‘372’ (Ginguene); ‘165’ (Canonici); ‘462’ (Hull); ‘683’ (North); ‘781’ (Puisaye); ‘1049’ (Wellesley); and ‘249’ (Davy).

The existing constitution of the Board of Trustees of the British Museum has been on many occasions, and by several writers, somewhat freely impugned. More than once it has been the subject of criticism in the House of Commons. With little alteration that Board remains, in 1869, what Parliament made it in 1753. Obviously, it might be quite possible to frame a new governing Corporation, in a fashion more accordant with what are sometimes called the ‘progressive tendencies’ of the period.

But I venture to think that the bare enumeration of the facts which have now been briefly tabulated, in this introductory chapter, gives a proof of faithful and zealous administration of a great trust, such as cannot be gainsaid 47by any the most ardent lover of innovation. Both the Collections given, and the Collections purchased, afford conclusive and splendid proofs that the Trustees and the Officers have alike won the confidence and merited the gratitude of those whose acquirements and pursuits in life have best qualified them to give a verdict on the implied issue.

If, of late years, the public purse has been opened with somewhat more of an approach to harmony with the openhandedness of private Englishmen, that result is wholly due to unremitting effort on the part both of the Trustees who govern, and of the Officers who administer, or have administered, the British Museum. And, to attain their end, both Trustees and Officers have, very often, had to fight hard, as the later chapters of this volume will more than sufficiently show.

‘Est in hac urbe nobilis Eques, homo pereruditus rerum vetustarum et omnis historiæ, sive priscæ, sive recentis, studiossisimus, qui ex ipsis monumentis publicis et epistolis duarum reginarum Angliæ et Scotiæ veram eorum quæ gesta sunt, historiam didicit, et jam regis jussu eandem componit, digeritque in ordinem.’

The Personal and Public Life of Sir Robert Cotton.—His Political Writings and Political Persecutions.—Sources and Growth of the Cottonian Library.—The Successors of Sir Robert Cotton.—History of the Cottonian Library, until its union with the Library of Harley, and with the Museum and Miscellaneous Collections of Sloane.—Review of some recent Aspersions on the Character of the Founder.

Sir Robert Cotton was the eldest son of Thomas Cotton of Conington and of Elizabeth Shirley, daughter of Francis Shirley of Staunton-Harold in Leicestershire. He was born on the 22nd of January, 1570, at Denton, in the county of Huntingdon. Denton was a sort of jointure-house attached to that ancient family seat of Conington, which had come into the possession of the Cottons, about the middle of the preceding century, by the marriage of 49William Cotton with Mary Wesenham, daughter and heir of Robert Wesenham, who had acquired Conington by his marriage with Agnes Bruce.^[1]

The Cottons of Conington were an offshoot of the old Cheshire stock. They held a good local position in right of their manorial possessions both in Huntingdonshire and in Cambridgeshire, but they had not, as yet, won distinction by any very conspicuous public service. Genealogically, their descent, through Mary Wesenham, from Robert Bruce, was their chief boast. Sir Robert was to become, as he grew to manhood, especially proud of it. He rarely missed an opportunity of commemorating the fact, and sometimes seized occasions for recording it, heraldically, after a fashion which has put stumbling-blocks in the way of later antiquaries. But the weakness has about it nothing of meanness. It is not an unpardonable failing. And with the specially antiquarian virtues it is not less closely allied than with love of country. In days of court favour, James the First was wont to please Sir Robert Cotton by calling him cousin. Sir Robert’s descendants became, in their turn, proud of his personal celebrity, but they too were, at all times, as careful to celebrate, upon the family monuments, their Bruce descent, as to claim a share in the literary glories of the ‘Cottonian Library.’

This cousinship with King James—and also a matter which to Sir Robert was much more important, the descent to the Cottons of the rich Lordship of Conington with its appendant manors and members—will be seen, at a glance, by the following—

[From the Cotton Roll XIV, 6 [by Segar, Camden, and St. George]; compared with MS. Hark 807, fol. 95, and with MS. Lansd., 863, containing the heraldic Collections of R. St. George, Norroy, Vol. III, fol. 82 verso.]

[For the continuation of the Cotton Pedigree, showing (1) the descent from Sir Robert of the subsequent possessors of the Cottonian Library, up to the date of the gift to the Nation made by Sir John Cotton, and (2) the relationship of the Cottonian Trustees of the British Museum, see the concluding pages of the present Chapter.]

52Robert Cotton was educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A. towards the close of 1585.^[4] Of his collegiate career very little is discoverable, save that it was an eminently studious one. |Cotton’s Early Friendships.| Long before he left Trinity, he had given unmistakeable proofs of his love for archæology. Some among the many conspicuous and lifelong friendships which he formed with men likeminded took their beginnings at Cambridge, but most of them were formed during his periodical and frequent sojourns in London. John Josceline, William Dethick, Lawrence Nowell, William Lambarde, and William Camden were amongst his earliest and closest friends. Most of them were much his seniors. Whilst still in the heyday of youth he married Elizabeth Brocas, daughter and eventually coheir of William Brocas of Thedingworth in Leicestershire. Soon after his marriage he took a leading part in the establishment of the first Society of Antiquaries. 53Some of Cotton’s fellow-workers in the Society are known to all of us by their surviving writings. Others of them are now almost forgotten, though not less deserving, perhaps, of honourable memory; for amongst these latter was—

at a time when such praise could seldom be given truthfully. It was as a contributor towards the common labours of that Society that Cotton made his earliest appearance as an author. The subjects chosen for his discourses at the periodical meetings of the Elizabethan antiquarians indicate the prevalent bias of his mind. Nearly all of them may be said to belong to our political archæology.

Before the close of the sixteenth century, his collections of Manuscripts and of Antiquities had already become so large and important as to win for him a wide reputation in foreign countries, as well as at home. His correspondence indicates, even at that early period, a generous recognition of the brotherhood of literature, the world over, and proves the ready courtesy with which he had learned to bear somewhat more than his fair share of the obligations thence arising. In later days he was wont to say to his intimates: ‘I, myself, have the smallest share in myself.’ From youth, onwards, there is abundant evidence that the saying expressed, unboastingly, the simple facts of his daily life.

Camden was amongst the earliest of those intimates, and to the dying day of the author of the Britannia the close friendship which united him with Cotton was both unbroken and undiminished. The former was still in the 54full vigour of life when Cotton had given proof of his worthiness to be a fellow-labourer in the field of English antiquities. In 1599 they went, in company, over the northern counties; explored together many an old abbey and many a famous battle-field. When that tour was made, the evidences of the ruthless barbarism with which the mandates of Henry the Eighth had been carried out by his agents lay still thick upon the ground, and may well have had their influence in modifying some of the religious views and feelings of such tourists. Not a few chapters of the Britannia embody the researches of Cotton as well as those of Camden; and the elder author was ever ready to acknowledge his deep sense of obligation to his younger colleague. For both of them, at this time, and in subsequent years, the storied past was more full of interest than the politics, howsoever momentous or exciting, of the day. But, occasionally, they corresponded on questions of policy as well as of history. There is evidence that on one stirring subject, about which men’s views were much wont to run to extremes, they agreed in advocating moderate courses. In the closing years of the Queen, Cotton, as well as Camden, recognised the necessity that the Government should hold a firm hand over the emissaries of the Church and Court of Rome, whilst refusing to admit that a due repression of hostile intrigues was inconsistent with the honourable treatment of conscientious and peaceful Romanists.

It was, in all probability, almost immediately after Cotton’s return from the Archæological tour to the North which he had made with his early friend, that he received a message from the Queen. Elizabeth had been told of his growing fame for possessing an acquaintance with the mustiest of records, and an ability ‘to vouch precedents’ 55such as few students, even of much riper years, had attained to. He was now to be acquainted with a dispute about national precedency which had arisen at Calais between Sir Henry Neville and the Ambassador of Spain. |The Tractate on English precedency over Spain.| It was Her Majesty’s wish that he should search the records which bore upon the question, and send her such a report as might strengthen Neville’s hands in his contest for the honour of England.

Such a task could not fail to be a welcome one; and Cotton found no lack of pertinent evidence. The bent and habit of his mind were always methodical. He begins his abstract of the records by tabulating his argument. Precedency, he says, must have respect either to the nation or to the ruler of the nation. A kingdom must rank either (1) according to its antiquity, or (2) according to ‘the eminency of the throne royal,’ by which phrase he means the complete unity of the dominion under one supreme ruler. On the first title to precedency he observes that it may be based either upon the date of national independence, or upon that of the national recognition of Christianity. He claims for England that it was a monarchy at least four hundred and sixty years before Castile became one; that Christianity had then been established in it, without break or interruption, for a thousand years; |Cottoni Posthuma, pp. 76, 77.| whereas in Spain Christianity was ‘defaced with Moorish Mahumetisme,’ until the expulsion of the Moors by Ferdinand, little more than a century before the time at which he was writing.

His assertion of the greater ‘eminency of the throne royal’ in England than in Spain is mainly founded on the union in the English sovereignty alone of supreme ecclesiastical with supreme civil power; and on the lineal descent of the then sovereign ‘from Christian princes for 800 years,’ whereas the descent of the Kings of Spain ‘is 56chiefly from the Earls of Castilia, about 500 years since,’ and the then King of Spain was ‘yet in the infancy of his kingdom.’

Two minor and ancillary arguments in this tract are also notable: The Spanish throne, says Cotton, hath not, as hath the English and French, ‘that virtue to endow the king therein invested with the power to heal the king’s evil; for into France do yearly come multitudes of Spaniards to be healed thereof.’ And he further alleges that ‘absolute power of the King of England, which in other kingdoms is much restrained.’ The time was to come when the close friend and fellow-combatant of Eliot and the other framers of the great ‘Petition of Right’ would rank himself with the foremost in ‘much restraining’ the kingly power in England, and would discover ample warrant in ancient precedents for every step of the process. But, as yet, that time was afar off.

Immediately on the accession of King James, Sir Robert Cotton greeted the new monarch with two other and far more remarkable tractates on a subject bearing closely on our relations with Spain. Their political interest, as contributions to the history of public opinion, is great. Their biographical interest is still greater. But I postpone the consideration of them until we reach a momentous crisis in Sir Robert’s life on which they have a vital bearing. He also wrote,—almost simultaneously,—a much more courtierlike ‘Discourse of his Majesty’s descent from the Saxon Kings,’ which was graciously welcomed. |Domestic Correspondence, James I, vol. i, f. 3 (R. H.).| In the following September he received the honour of knighthood. |Returned to Parliament.| In James’ first Parliament he sat for the County of Huntingdon, in fellowship with Sir Oliver Cromwell, uncle of the future Protector. There is no evidence that at this period 57he took any active part in debate. Nor did he, at any time, win distinction as a debater. But in the labours of Committees he was soon both zealous and prominent. Two classes of questions, in particular, appear to have engaged his attention:—questions of Church discipline, and questions of administrative reform. |Dom. Cor. as above; vol. xix, pp. 37 seqq.; vol. xxvii, pp. 44 seqq. (R. H.); MS. Cott. Jul. C., iii, p. 10. (B. M.)| He also assisted Bacon in the difficult attempt to frame acceptable measures for a union with Scotland.

The fame of his library and of his museum of antiquities continued to spread farther and wider. He had many agents on the Continent who sought diligently to augment his collections. His correspondence with men who were busied in like pursuits both at home and abroad increased. Much of it has survived. On that interesting point at which a glance has been cast already, its witness is uniform. He was always as ready to impart as he was eager to collect. Few, if any, important works of historical research were carried on in his day to which he did not, in some way or other, give generous furtherance. At a time when he was most busy in forming his own library, he helped Bodley to lay the foundation of the noble library at Oxford.

Readers who can call to mind even mere fragments of that superabundant evidence which tells of the neglect throughout much of the Tudor period of the public archives of the realm, can feel little surprise that Sir Robert Cotton should have been able to collect a multitude of documents which had once been the property of the nation, or of the sovereign. Those who are most familiar with that evidence ought to be the first to remember that, under the known circumstances of the time, the presumption of honest acquisition is stronger than that of dishonest, whenever conclusive proof of either is absent. English State Papers 58had passed into the possession not only of English antiquarians, but of English booksellers—and not a few of them into that of foreigners—before Cotton was born. Other considerations bearing on this matter, and tending as it seems in a like direction, belong to a later period of Sir Robert’s life. There is, however, a very weighty one which stands at the threshold of his career as a collector.

Almost the earliest incident which is recorded of Cotton’s youthful days, is his concurrence in a petition in which Queen Elizabeth was entreated to establish a Public and National Library, and to honour it with her own name. |Attempt of Cotton and Camden to Establish a National Library.| Its especial and prime object was to be the collection and preservation, as public property, of the monuments of our English history. The proposal was not altogether new. It was a much improved revival of a project which Dr. John Dee had once submitted, in an immature form, to Queen Mary. It was the reiteration of an earnest request which had been made to Queen Elizabeth by Archbishop Parker, at a time when Cotton was still in his cradle. The joint petition of Cotton and Camden met with as little success as had attended the entreaties of those who had taken the same path before them. |Petition, &c. (undated) in Cotton MS. Faustina, E. V, ff. 67, 68.| The petitioners were willing to bind themselves, and others like-minded, to incur ‘costs, and charges,’ for the effectual attainment of their patriotic object, on the condition of royal patronage and royal fellow-working with them in its pursuit. When Cotton, upon bare presumptions, is charged to be an embezzler of records, this Petition comes to have a very obvious relevancy to the matter in question. The relevancy is enhanced by the fact that two, at least, of those who had (at various times) concurred in promoting its object, gave to the Library of their fellow-labourer in the field of antiquity, manuscripts and records which, had the issue of their project been 59otherwise, they would have given to the ‘Public Library of Queen Elizabeth,’ in express trust for their fellow-countrymen at large.

Indirectly, this same petition has also its bearing on a curious passage relating to Sir Robert Cotton which occurs among the Minute-books of the Corporation of London, and which has recently been printed by Mr. Riley, in his preface to Liber Custumarum.

On the 10th of November, 1607, the Court of Aldermen of London recorded the following minute: |Cotton and the City Records of London.| ‘It is this day ordered, that Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Town Clerk, Mr. Edmonds, and Mr. Robert Smith, or any three of them, shall repair to Sir Robert Cotton, from this Court, and require him to deliver to the City’s use three of the City’s books which have been long time missing—the first book called Liber Custumarum; the second, called Liber Legum Antiquorum; and the thirde, called Fletewode, which are affirmed to be in his custody.’ Of the results of the interview of Master Chamberlain and his fellow-ambassadors with Cotton no precise account has been preserved. It is plain, however, from the sequel, that they found the matter to be one for which such extremely curt ‘requisition’ was scarcely the appropriate mode of setting to work. The Corporation appealed in vain to the Lord Privy Seal Northampton; and they had afterwards to solicit the mediation with Cotton of two of their own members—Sir John Jolles and another—who were personally known to him. Their interposition was alike ineffectual. Of the interview we have no report; but Sir Robert, it is clear, asserted his right to retain the City books (or rather portions of books) which were then in his hands, and he did retain them. They now form part of the well-known and very valuable Cottonian MS., ‘Claudius D. XI.’

60That these London records had once belonged to the citizens is now unquestioned. That Cotton—both in 1607 and again in the following year—asserted a title, of some sort, to those of them which were then in his hands, seems also to be established. Is the fair inference this: ‘Their then holder, in 1607, had obtained them wrongfully, and he persisted, despite all remonstrance, in his wrongful possession’? Is it not rather to be inferred that, whosoever may have been the original wrongdoer, Sir Robert Cotton had acquired them by a lawful purchase? |The Dispute about City Records.| If that should have been the fact, he may possibly have had a valid reason for declining to give what he had, ineffectually and rudely, been commanded to restore.

On the other hand, it is impossible to defend Sir Robert’s occasional mode of dealing with MSS.,—some of which, it is plain, were but lent to him,—when, by misplacement of leaves, or by insertions, and sometimes by both together, he confused their true sequence and aspect. Of this unjustifiable manipulation I shall have to speak hereafter.

The years which followed close upon this little civic interlude were amongst the busiest years of Cotton’s public life. He testified the sincerity of his desire to serve his country faithfully, by the choice of the subjects to the study of which he voluntarily bent his powers.

|Cotton’s Memorial on Abuses in the Navy.|

Abuses in the management of the navy and of naval establishments have been at most periods of our history fruitful topics for reformers, competent or other. In the early years of James there was a special tendency to the increase of such abuses in the growing unfitness for exertion of the Lord High Admiral. Nottingham had yet many years to live,—near as he had been to the threescore and ten when the new reign began. But even his large 61appetencies were now almost sated with wealth, employments, and honours; and ever since his return from his splendid embassy to Spain, he seemed bent on compensating himself for his hard labour under Elizabeth by his indolent luxury under James. The repose of their chief had so favoured the illegitimate activities of his subordinates, that when Cotton addressed himself to the task of investigating the state of the naval administration he soon found that it would be much easier to prove the existence and the gravity of the abuses than to point to an effectual remedy.

The abuses were manifold. Some of them were, at that moment, scarcely assailable. To Cotton, in particular, the approach to the subject was beset with many difficulties. He was, however, much in earnest. |The Inquiry instituted by Cotton into Abuses in the Royal Navy.| When he found that some of the obstacles must, for the present, be rather turned by evasion than be encountered—with any fair chance of success—by an open attack in front, he betook himself to the weaker side of the enemy. He obtained careful information as to naval account-keeping; discovered serious frauds; and opened the assault by a conflict with officials not too powerful for immediate encounter,—though far indeed from being unprotected.

Of Sir Robert’s Memorial to the King, I can give but one brief extract, by way of sample: ‘Upon a dangerous advantage,’ he writes, ‘which the Treasurer of the Navy taketh by the strict letter of his Patent, to be discharged of all his accounts by the only vouchee and allowance of two chief officers, it falls out, strangely, at this time—by the weakness of the Controller and cunning of the Surveyor—that these two offices are, in effect, but one, which is the Surveyor himself, who—joining with the Treasurer as a Purveyor of all provisions—becomes a paymaster to himself ... at such rates as he thinks good.’ It is a suggestive statement.

62Cotton’s most intimate political friendships were at this time with the Howards. Henry Howard (now Earl of Northampton),—whatever the intrinsic baseness and perfidy of his nature, was a man of large capacity. He was not unfriendly to reform,—when abuses put no pelf in his own pocket. To naval reforms, his nearness of blood to Nottingham, the Lord High Admiral, tended rather to predispose him; for when near relatives dislike one another, the intensity of their dislike is sometimes wonderful to all bystanders. Interest made these two sometimes allies, but it never made them friends. Northampton gave his whole influence in favour of Sir Robert’s plan. He began the inquiries into this wide subject by persuading the King to appoint a Commission. On the 30th of April, 1608, Letters Patent were issued, in the preamble of which the pith of the Memorial is thus recited: ‘We are informed that very great and considerable abuses, deceits, frauds, corruptions, negligences, misdemeanours and offences have been and daily are perpetrated ... against the continual admonitions and directions of you, our Lord High Admiral, by other the officers of and concerning our Navy Royal, and by the Clerks of the Prick and Check, and divers other inferior officers, ministers, mariners, soldiers, and others working or labouring in or about our said Navy;’ |Commission for Inquiry on the Abuses in the Navy.| and thereupon full powers are given to the Commissioners so appointed to make full inquiry into the allegations; and to certify their proceedings and opinions. Cotton was made a member of the Commission, and at the head of it were placed the Earls of Northampton and of Nottingham. It was directed that the inquiry should be carried at least as far back as the year 1598. The Admiral’s share was little more than nominal. The proceedings were opened on the 7th of May, 1608, when, as

63Cotton himself reports, an ‘elegant speech was made by Lord Northampton, of His Majesty’s provident and princely purposes for reformation of the abuses.’ Northampton, he adds, ‘took especial pains and care for a full and faithful discharge of that trust.’ At his instance Sir Robert was made Chairman of a sort of sub-committee, to which the preliminary inquiries and general array of the business were entrusted; |Proceedings in the Commission for the Navy Royal; MS. Cott. Julius F. iii, fol. 1. (B. M.)| ‘Sir Robert Cotton, during all the time of this service, entertaining his assistants at his house at the Blackfriars as often as occasion served.’

The inquiry lasted from May, 1608, to June, 1609. Cotton was then requested by his fellow-commissioners to make an abstract of the depositions to be reported to the King. It abundantly justified the Memorial of 1608. James, when he had read it, ordered a final meeting of the Commissioners to be held in his presence, at which all the inculpated officers were to attend that they might adduce whatever answers or pleas of defence might be in their power. ‘In the end,’ says Sir Robert, ‘they were advised rather to cast themselves at the feet of his grace and goodness for pardon, than to rely upon their weak replies; which they readily did.’ The most important outcome of the inquiry was the preparation of a ‘Book of Ordinances for the Navy Royal,’ in the framing of which Sir Robert Cotton had the largest share. It led to many improvements. But, in subsequent years, measures of a still more stringent character were found needful.

In the next year after the presentation of this Report on the Navy, Sir Robert addressed to the King another Report on the Revenues of the Crown. The question is treated historically rather than politically, but the long induction of fiscal records is frequently enlivened by keen glances both at underlying principles and at practical results. 64Once or twice, at least, these side glances are such as, when we now regard them, in the light of the subsequent history of James’s own reign and of that of his next successor, seem to have in them more of irony than of earnest. The style of the treatise is clear, terse, and pointed.

On no branch of the subject does the author go into more minute detail than on that delicate one of the historical precedents for ‘abating and reforming excesses of the Royal Household, Retinue, and Favourites.’ He points the moral by express reference to existing circumstances. Thus, for example, in treating of the arrangements of the royal household, he says, ‘There is never a back-door at Court that costs not the king £2000 yearly;’ and again, when treating of gifts to royal favourites: ‘It is one of the greatest accusations against the Duke of Somerset for suffering the King [Edward VI] to give away the possessions and profits of the Crown in manner of a spoil.’

Not less plainspoken are Cotton’s words about a question that was destined, in a short time, to excite the whole kingdom. Tonnage and poundage, he says, were granted simply for defence of the State, ‘so they may be employed in the wars; and particular Treasurers account in Parliament’ for that employment. |Proceedings in the Commission for the Navy Royal, &c.; as above.| ‘They are so granted,’ he adds, ‘in express words; and that they proceed of goodwill, not of duty. Precedents of this nature are plentiful in all the Rolls.’ A final example of this sort may be found in the pithy warning grounded upon Richard the Second’s grant to a minion of the power of compounding with delinquents. It was fatal, he says, both to the king and to his instrument. ‘It grew the death of the one and the deposition of the other.’

Cotton’s Report on the Crown Revenues has also an 65incidental interest. Out of it grew the creation of the new dignity of baronets. Were His Majesty, says the writer, ‘now to make a degree of honour hereditary as Baronets, next under Barons, and grant them in tail, taking of every one £1000, in fine it would raise with ease £100,000; |Cotton’s Proposition for the Creation of Baronets, 1609.| and, by a judicious election, be a means to content those worthy persons in the Commonwealth that by the confused admission of [so] many Knights of the Bath held themselves all this time disgraced.’ When this passage was written that which had been, under Elizabeth, so real and eminent an honour as to be eagerly coveted by patriotic men, had been lavished by James with a profusion which entailed their contempt and disgust. I have before me the fine old MS. from a passage in which Cotton borrowed the title of the new dignity. |9 R. II. Durh. 17 July, 1385. Cotton MS., Nero D., vi, § 16. (B. M.)| The word occurs thus:—‘Ceux sont les estatutz, ordenances ... de n̄re très excellent souv seigneur le Roy Richard, et Johan, Duc de Lancastre, ... et des autres Contes, Barons, et Baronnetz, et sages Chivalers.’

Sir Robert was himself amongst the earliest receivers (June, 1611) of the new order. Its creation led to many jealousies and discords. It gave both to the King and to his councillors not a little trouble in settling the precise privileges and precedencies of its holders. In those controversies the author of the suggestion took no very active part. King James was much more anxious for the speedy receipt of the hundred thousand pounds, than about the ‘judicious election’ of those by whom the money was to be provided. Cotton’s satisfaction with the ultimate working out of his plan must have had its large alloy.^[5]

66This is the more apparent, inasmuch as, at the first acceptance of his project, Sir Robert had obtained the King’s distinct promise that no future creation of a baron should be made, until the new peer had first received the degree of baronet; unless he belonged to a family already ennobled. Hearing of a probability that the royal promise in this respect was likely to be broken, he wrote to Somerset:—‘If His Highness will do it, I rather humbly beg a relinquishing in the design of the baronets, as desponding of good success.’ |Cotton to Somerset (undated) MS. Harl., 7002, f. 380. (B. M.)| But to James all projects for the opening of gold mines—whether at home or abroad—were much too attractive to be staved off by any puritanic scruples about pledge or promise. For him, from youth to dotage, the one thing needful was gold.

The question of the baronetcies is one of the earliest which brings us in presence of the eventful political connection which subsisted between Cotton and the Earl of Somerset. |The Political Intercourse of Sir R. Cotton with Lord Somerset. 1613–1615.| Of its first beginnings no precise testimony seems to have survived. But there is a strong presumption that when Somerset was led, by his fatal love for Lady Essex, to change his early position of antagonism to the Howards for one of alliance and friendship, he came frequently into contact with Sir Robert, who had long been familiarly acquainted with the Earl of Suffolk—and also with his too well-known Countess—as well as with the Earl of Northampton.

The one ineffaceable stigma on Somerset’s memory 67which was brought upon him by his disgraceful marriage has barred the way to an impartial estimate of his standing as a politician. A man who was branded by his peers (though upon garbled depositions) as a murderer can scarcely, by possibility, have his pretensions to statesmanship fairly weighed in a just balance. Such testimony, it is true, as that on which Somerset was found guilty of the poisoning of Overbury would not now suffice to convict a vagrant of petty larceny. It would not indeed at this day be treated as evidence at all; it would be looked upon as a mere decoction of surmises. But the foul scandal of the marriage itself has so tainted Somerset’s very name that historians (almost with one consent) have condoned the baseness of his prosecutors.

With some of this man’s contemporaries it was quite otherwise. Some English statesmen whose names we have all learnt to venerate, looked upon the murder of Overbury as a revengeful deed instigated by Lady Somerset, wholly without her husband’s complicity; and they looked at Somerset’s conviction of complicity in the crime as simply the issue of a skilfully-managed court intrigue, for a court object. They knew that Somerset’s enemies had been wont to say amongst themselves, ‘A nail is best driven out by driving in another nail,’ and had, very effectually, put the proverb into action. They knew, too, that to the rising favourite the King had committed—most characteristically—the pleasing task of communicating, on his behalf, with the Crown lawyers, as their own task of compiling the depositions against the falling favourite went on from stage to stage.

Sir Robert Cotton believed not only that Somerset was guiltless of the murder of Overbury, and that the Earl’s political extinction was resolved upon, as the readiest means 68of making room for a new favourite, but he also believed that Somerset’s loss of power involved the loss by England—for a long time to come—of some useful domestic reforms, as well as its subjection to several new abuses. This belief was a favourite subject of conversation with him to his dying day. He was in the habit of imparting it to the famous men who, in the early years of the next reign, joined with him in fighting the battles of parliamentary freedom against royal prerogative. There may well have been an element of truth in Cotton’s view of the matter, though, in these days, it seems but a barren pursuit to have discussed the preferability to England of the rule of a Robert Carr rather than that of a George Villiers.

What is now chiefly important in the close political connection which was formed between Cotton and Somerset is the fact that it eventually thrust Sir Robert’s fortune and entire future into great peril, even if it did not actually hazard his life itself, as well as his fair fame with posterity. The life that was preserved to him was also to be redeemed by future and brilliant public service. |1615.| His fortune sustained no great damage, and much of it was afterwards spent upon public objects. His reputation as a statesman, however, suffered, and must suffer, some degree of loss. Somerset led him to become an agent in urging on the treaty for the marriage of Prince Charles with the Infanta of Spain. As it seems, his agency was—for a very brief period—even active and zealous. Neither Somerset nor Cotton, however, set that intercourse with Gondomar afoot which presently brought Sir Robert within the toils. It was pleasantly originated by the wily Spaniard himself, in the character of a lover of antiquities, deeply anxious to study Sir Robert’s Museum, in its owner’s company.

It is unfortunate for a truthful estimate of the degree of 69discredit attachable to Cotton for this agency in promoting a scheme pregnant with dishonour to England, that little evidence of the share he took in it is now to be derived from any English source. His own extant correspondence yields very little, though it suffices to establish the fact of the agency, apart from that testimony of Gondomar, which will be cited presently.

Under Cotton’s own hand we have the fact that in a conversation with himself the Ambassador of Spain on one occasion held out (by way, it seems, more immediately, of inducement to the English Government to shape certain pending negotiations on other matters into greater conformity with Spanish counsels) |Cotton to Somerset; (undated) Harleian MS. 7002, fol. 378. (B. M.)| the threat that, if such a course were not taken, ‘turbulent spirits—of which Spain wanteth not—might add some hurt to the ill affairs of Ireland, or hindrance to the near affecting of the great work now in hand;’ a threat which Cotton transmits to Somerset without rebuke or comment.

Early in 1615, Cotton had an interview with Gondomar in relation to the progress of the marriage negotiation in Spain. Of what passed at this interview we have no detailed account other than that which was sent to the King of Spain by his Ambassador. The way in which Cotton’s name is introduced, and the singular misstatement that he had the custody of ‘all the King’s archives,’ seem to imply that Gondomar had still but little knowledge of the messenger now employed by James and by Somerset to confer with him. Throughout, the reader will have to bear in mind that the narrative is Gondomar’s, and that all the material points of it rest upon his sole authority.

‘The King and the Earl of Somerset,’ writes the Ambassador, ‘have sent in great secrecy by Sir Robert Cotton—who is a gentleman greatly esteemed here, and 70with whom the King has deposited all his archives—to tell me what Sir John Digby has written about the marriage of the Infanta with this Prince. Cotton informed me that he was greatly pleased that the negotiation had been so well received in Spain, because he desired its conclusion and success. He enlarged upon the conveniencies of the marriage, but said that the King considered Digby not to be a good negotiator, because he was a great friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and of the Earl of Pembroke, who were of the Puritan faction, and was in correspondence with them.’... ‘In order to make a beginning,’ continued Cotton, as Gondomar reports his conversation, ‘the King must beg your Majesty to answer three questions: (1.) “Does your Majesty believe that with a safe conscience you can negotiate this marriage?” (2.) “Is your Majesty sincerely desirous to conclude it, upon conditions suitable to both parties?” (3.) “Will your Majesty abstain from asking anything, in matters of Religion, which would compel him to do that which he cannot do without risking his life and his kingdom; contenting yourself with trusting that he will be able to settle matters quietly?” |Gardiner Transcripts of Simancas MSS.| When an answer is given to these questions he will consider the matter as settled, and will immediately give a commission to the Earl of Somerset to arrange the points with me. |See also S. R. Gardiner, in Letters of Gondomar, giving an Account of the affair of the Earl of Somerset; (Archæologia, vol. xli.)| This Sir Robert Cotton is held here, by many, to be a Puritan, but he told me that he was a Catholic, and gave me many reasons why no man of sense could be anything else.’ He afterwards adds: ‘Sir Robert Cotton, who has treated with me in this business, tells me that after the marriage is agreed upon, [and] before the Infanta arrives in England, matters of Religion will be in a much improved condition.’ The writer of this remarkable despatch, it may be well to mention, had asserted with 71equal roundness, but a few months before, that James himself had said, at the dinner-table: ‘I have no doubt that the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church.’

Nor is it unimportant, as bearing on the degree of credibility to be assigned to Gondomar’s despatches, when they chance to be uncorroborated,—to remark that a despatch addressed by him to the Duke of Lerma, in November, contains an express contradiction of an assertion addressed to Philip, in the preceding April. To the King, as we have just seen, he narrates Cotton’s communication of despatches written by Digby. To the Minister he writes, six months later, that ‘a traitor had given information’ against Cotton, for communicating Papers of State to the Spanish Ambassador, and that the charge is ‘false.’ |Simancas MS. 2534, 61 (Gardiner Transcripts).| Discrepancies like this (howsoever easily explained, or explainable) suffice to show that Gondomar’s testimony, when unsupported, needs to be read with caution; and of such discrepancies there are many. Consummate as he was in diplomatic ability of several kinds, this able statesman was nevertheless loose (and sometimes reckless) in assertion. He was very credulous when he listened to welcome news. It is impossible to study his correspondence without perceiving that to him, as to so many other men, the wish was often father of the thought.

On the 22nd of June, Sir Robert paid another visit to Gondomar. He told me, says the Ambassador, that the King’s hesitations had been overcome; that James was now willing to negotiate on the basis of the Spanish articles, with some slight modifications; that Somerset had taken his stand upon the match with Spain, had won the co-operation of the Duke of Lennox, and was now willing to stake his fortunes on the issue. Sir Robert Cotton, adds Gondomar, ‘assured me of his own satisfaction at the turn 72which things had taken, as he had no more ardent wish than to live and die an avowed Catholic, like his fathers and ancestors.^[6] Whereupon I embraced him, and said that God would guide.’

Thus far, I have, advisedly, followed a Spanish account of English conversations. Although believing that there exists, already ample, evidence (both in our own archives and elsewhere) for bringing home to the Count of Gondomar wilful misstatements of |Sir Robert Cotton’s Account of the first interview with Count Gondomar.| fact—in the despatches which he was wont to write from London—as well as very pardonable misapprehensions of the talk which he reports, I have preferred to put before the reader the Ambassador’s own story in its Spanish integrity.

The mere fact, indeed, that an English historian^[7], deservedly esteemed for his acute and painstaking research, as well as for his eminent abilities, has honoured Gondomar’s story by endorsing it, is warrant enough for citing these 73despatches as they stand. But they have now to be compared with another account of the same transaction given by authority of Sir Robert Cotton himself. It was given upon a memorable occasion. The place was the Painted Chamber in the Palace of Westminster. The hearers were the assembled Lords and Commons of the Realm.^[8]

The Spaniard, it seems, was far, indeed, from holding—as he says that he held—his first conference with Cotton 74either in his own ambassadorial lodging, or upon credentials given in the name and by the command of King James. That Cotton sought him he suggests, by implication. That the visit, in which the ground was broken, was made at the King’s instance, he states circumstantially. Both the suggestion and the assertion are false.

As the reader has seen, Sir Robert’s openness in exhibiting his library and his antiquities was matter of public notoriety. |1614. February.| Profiting by that well-known facility of access, the Spanish Ambassador presented himself at Cotton House in the guise of a virtuoso. ‘Do me the favour—with your wonted benevolence to strangers—to let me see your Museum.’ With some such words as these, Gondomar volunteered his first visit; led the conversation, by and bye, to politics; found that Cotton was not amongst the fanatical and undiscriminating enemies of Spain at all price—outspoken, as he had been, from the first, in his assertion both of the wisdom and of the duty of England to protect the Netherlanders; showed him certain letters or papers (not now to be identified, it appears), and in that way produced an impression on Cotton’s mind which led him to confer with Somerset, and eventually with the King. So much is certain. Unfortunately, the speeches at the famous ‘Conference’ on the Spanish Treaty, in 1624, are reported in the most fragmentary way imaginable. The reporter gives mere hints, where the reader anxiously looks for details. Their present value lies in the conclusive reasons which notwithstanding the lacunæ—they supply for weighing, with many grains of caution, the accusations of an enemy of England against an English statesman—whensoever it chances that those accusations are uncorroborated. King James himself (it may here be added), when looking back at this mysterious transaction some years later, 75and in one of his Anti-Spanish moods—said to Sir Robert: ‘The Spaniard is a juggling jack. I believe he forged those letters;’ alluding, as the context suggests, to the papers—whatever they were—which Gondomar showed to Cotton at the outset of their intercourse, in order to induce him to act as an intermediary between himself and the Earl of Somerset.

At this time, the ground was already trembling beneath Somerset’s feet, though he little suspected the source of his real danger. He knew, ere long, that an attempt would be made to charge him with embezzling jewels of the Crown. In connection with this charge there was a State secret, in which Sir Robert Cotton was a participant with Somerset, and with the King himself. And a secret it has remained. Such jewels, it is plain, were in Somerset’s hands, and by him were transferred to those of Cotton. Few persons who have had occasion to look closely into the surviving documents and correspondence which bear upon the subsequent and famous trials for the murder of Overbury, will be likely to doubt that the secret was one among those ‘alien matters’ of which Somerset was so urgently and so repeatedly adjured and warned, by James’s emissaries, to avoid all mention, should he still persist (despite the royal, repeated, and almost passionate, entreaties with which he was beset) in putting himself upon his trial; instead of pleading guilty, after his wife’s example, and trusting implicitly to the royal mercy.

For the purpose of warding off the lesser, but foreseen, danger, Cotton advised the Earl to take a step of which the Crown lawyers made subsequent and very effective use, in order to preclude all chance of his escape from the unforeseen and greater danger. |1615. July.| By Sir Robert’s recommendation 76he obtained from the King permission to have a pardon drawn, in which, amongst other provisions, it was granted that no account whatever should be exacted from Somerset at the royal exchequer; and to that pardon the King directed the Chancellor to affix the Great Seal. The Seal, however, was withheld, and a remarkable scene ensued in the Council Chamber. There are extant two or three narratives of the occurrence, which agree pretty well in substance. Of these Gondomar’s is the most graphic. The incident took place on the 20th of August. The despatch in which it is minutely described was written on the 20th of October. There is reason to believe that the Ambassador drew his information from an eye-witness of what passed.

‘As the King was about to leave the Council Board,’ writes Gondomar, ‘Somerset made to him a speech which, as I was told, had been preconcerted between them. |The scene in the Council Chamber, respecting the Pardon drawn by Sir R. Cotton for Somerset.| He said that the malice of his enemies had forced him to ask for a pardon; adduced arguments of his innocency; and then besought the King to command the Chancellor to declare at once what he had to allege against him, or else to put the seal to the pardon. |1615. August.| The King, without permitting anything to be spoken, said a great deal in Somerset’s praise; asserted that the Earl had acted rightly in asking for a pardon, which it was a pleasure to himself to grant—although the Earl would certainly stand in no need of it in his days—on the Prince’s account, who was then present.’ Here, writes Gondomar, the King placed his hand on the Prince’s shoulder, and added—‘That he may not undo what I have done.’ Then, turning to the Chancellor, the King ended with the words: ‘And so, my Lord Chancellor, put the seal to it; for such is my will.’ The Chancellor, instead of obeying, threw himself on his 77knees, told the King that the pardon was so widely drawn that it made Somerset (as Lord Chamberlain) absolute master of ‘jewels, hangings, tapestry, and of all that the palace contained; seeing that no account was to be demanded of him for anything.’ And then the Chancellor added: ‘If your Majesty insists upon it, I entreat you to grant me a pardon also for passing it; otherwise I cannot do it.’ On this the King grew angry, and with the words, ‘I order you to pass it, and you must pass it,’ left the Council Chamber. His departure in a rage, before the pardon was sealed, gave Somerset’s enemies another opportunity by which they did not fail to profit. They had the Queen on their side. On that very day, too, the King set out on a progress, long before arranged. For the time the matter dropped. Before the Ambassador of Spain took up his pen to tell the story to his Court, Villiers, ‘the new favourite,’ had begun to supplant his rival; so that the same despatch which narrates the beginnings of the fall of Somerset, tells also of the first stage in the rapid rise of Buckingham.

About a month after this wrangling at the Council Board, Somerset again advised with Sir Robert Cotton on the same subject. |Report of the Trial of the Earl of Somerset. (MS. R. H.)| Cotton recommended him to have the Pardon renewed; saying to the Earl, ‘In respect you have received some disgrace in the opinion of the world, in having passed’ [i. e. missed] ‘that pardon which in the summer you desired, and seeing there be many precedents of larger pardons, I would have you get one after the largest precedent; that so, by that addition, you may recover your honour.’ Strangely as these closing words now sound, in relation to such a matter, they seem to embody both the feeling and the practice of the times.

In another version of the proceedings at the trial of May, 781616, Somerset is represented as using in the course of his defence these words: ‘To Sir Robert Cotton I referred the whole drawing and despatch of the Pardon.’ And again: ‘I first sought the Pardon by the motion and persuasion of Sir Robert Cotton, who told me in what dangers great persons honoured with so many royal favours had stood, in former times.’ |MS. Report of Trial (R. H.)| Sir Robert’s own account of this and of many correlative matters of a still graver sort has come down to us only in garbled fragments and extracts from his examinations, such as it suited the purposes of the law-officers of the Crown to make use of, after their fashion. The original documents were as carefully suppressed, as Cotton’s appearance in person at the subsequent trial was effectually hindered. At that day it was held to be an unanswerable reason for the non-appearance of a witness,—whatever the weight of his testimony,—to allege that he was regarded by the Crown as ‘a delinquent,’ and could not, therefore, be publicly questioned upon ‘matters of State.’ There is little cause to marvel that a scrutinising reader of the State Trials (in their published form) is continually in doubt whether what he reads ought to be regarded as sober history, or as wild and, it may be, venomous romance.

One other incident of 1615 needs to be noticed before we proceed to the catastrophe of the Gondomar story.

In May of this year Sir Robert wrote a letter to Prince Charles, which is notable for the contrasted advice, in respect to warlike pursuits, which it proffers to the new Prince, from that more famous advice which had but recently been offered to his late brother. |Comp. MS. Cott. Cleop. F. vi, § 1. ‘An Answer ... to certain military men, &c., (April, 1609).| He had lately found, he tells Prince Charles, a very ancient volume containing the principal passages of affairs between the 79two kingdoms of England and France under the reigns of King Henry the Third and King Henry the Fifth, and had caused a friend of his to abstract from it the main grounds of the claim of the Kings of England to the Crown of France; translating the original Latin into English. This he now dedicates to the Prince, ‘as a piece of evidence concerning that title which, at the time when God hath appointed, shall come unto you.’ He ends his letter in a strain more than usually rhetorical:—‘This title hath heretofore been pleaded in France, as well by ordinary arguments of civil and common law, as also by more sharp syllogisms of cannons in the field. There have your noble ancestors, Kings of this realm, often argued in arms; there have been their large chases; there, their pleasant walks; there have they hewed honour out of the sides of their enemies; there—in default of peaceable justice—they have carried the cause by sentence of the sword. |Sir R. Cotton to Prince Charles. (MS. Lansd. 223. fol. 7.) (Copy.) (B. M.)| God grant that your Highness may, both in virtues and victories, not only imitate, but far excel them.’

The royal commission for the first examination of Cotton was issued on the 26th of October, 1615. Two months afterwards he was committed to the custody of one of the Aldermen of London. His library and papers were also searched.

Cotton’s accusation was that of having communicated papers and secrets of State to the Spanish Ambassador. He was subjected to repeated examinations, which (as we have seen) are extant only in part. He maintained his innocence of all intentional offence. |Cotton’s examinations by Commission Jan.-April, 1616.| ‘The King,’ he said, ‘gave me instruction to speak as I did. If I misunderstood His Majesty my fault was involuntary. I followed the King’s instruction to the best of my belief and recollection.’ 80The examiners, however, were more intent by far on extracting something from Cotton that would tell against Somerset, than on the punishment of the fallen favourite’s ally and agent. Coke, in particular, was indefatigable in the task. It was as congenial to him as was the study of Bracton or of Littleton.

What then must have been his delight when,—whilst attending a sermon at Paul’s Cross,—word was brought to him which gave hope of a discovery of Somerset’s most secret correspondence? The pending proceedings had stirred men’s minds in city and suburb, as well as at Court. A London merchant had been asked, a little while before, to take into his charge a box of papers. The depositor was a woman of the middle class, with whom his acquaintance was but slight. At that time there was nothing in the incident to excite suspicion. But, at a moment when strange rumours were afloat, the depositor suddenly requested the return of the deposit. The merchant bethought himself that the circumstances now looked mysterious. If the papers should chance to bear on matters of State, to have had any concern with them, howsoever innocent, might be dangerous. He carried the box to Sir Edward Coke’s chambers. Not a moment was lost in apprising the absent lawyer of the incident. Such news was of more interest than the sermon. Probably, the preacher had not finished his exordium, before all the faculties of Coke and of a fellow-commissioner were bent on the letters which had passed between Somerset and Northampton.

If Gondomar is to be believed, some secret papers belonging to King James himself were part of the precious spoil.^[9]

81As usual, there are two accounts of the original secretor of the papers so opportunely discovered. According to one of them, the box was delivered by Somerset’s own order to the woman by whom it was carried to the London merchant. |Cotton’s dealings with Somerset’s Correspondence.| |1615.| According to another, Somerset entrusted the papers to Cotton; and the latter, anticipating the search and sealing up of his library, gave them to a female acquaintance with whom he thought they would remain in safety, but whose own fears led her to shift their custody, in her turn.

That the letters which Northampton had received from Somerset—containing, amongst many other things, numerous references to the imprisonment of Overbury in the Tower—had been in Sir Robert Cotton’s hands is unquestioned. After Northampton’s death, Cotton, to use his own words, had been ‘permitted to peruse and oversee all the writings, books, &c. in the Earl’s study.’ In the course of this examination he proceeds to say, ‘I had collected thirty several letters of my Lord of Somerset to the Earl of Northampton, which, upon request, I delivered to my Lord Treasurer [the Earl of Suffolk,] who sent them to the Earl of Somerset.’ Suffolk, it is to be remembered, was Northampton’s heir.

Thus far, no charge rests upon Cotton in relation to this correspondence. What he did in disposing of Somerset’s 82letters was done by order of the representatives of their deceased owner. It is far otherwise with respect to their treatment after they had repassed, by Suffolk’s gift, into the hands of Somerset, their writer.

The letters were undated. That they should be so was in accordance with the practice of a majority of the letter-writers of the time—as students of history know to their sorrow. |Extracts of Examinations, &c. (R. H.).| When suspicion was aroused and inquiry commenced about the real cause of Overbury’s death, Cotton’s advice was sought by Somerset. He told me, says Somerset himself: ‘These letters of yours may be dated, so as may clear you of all imputation.’ Did he mean that the dates might be forged, and so be made to bear false witness? Or did he mean that, by putting their true dates to the letters, their contents would exculpate an innocent man? To these questions there is absolutely no answer, save the presumptive answer of character.^[10]

83Whatever may be our estimate of the difficulty attending on the admission of such exculpation as that, in respect of a charge which amounts (in substance) to participation, after the fact, in the crime of murder, there is really now no alternative. That Sir Robert Cotton put dates to Somerset’s undated letters is certain. It was found to be absolutely impossible, after desperate effort, to prove that the dates were false. It is alike impossible to prove that they are true. These dates are in Cotton’s own hand, without any attempt to disguise it.

Upon the hypothesis of Somerset’s guilt, the question is beset with as much difficulty, as upon the hypothesis of his innocence. By procuring Overbury’s imprisonment—with whatever motive, or beneath whatever influence—Somerset had brought himself under inevitable suspicion of complicity in the ultimate result of that imprisonment. He was already within the web. His struggles made it only the more tangled.

Sir Robert Cotton remained in custody until the middle of the year 1616. He was effectually prevented from appearing in May of that year as a witness at his friend’s trial. |Domestic Corresp. James I, vol. lxxxvii, f. 67 (R. H.).| He was himself put to no form of trial whatever. But he had to purchase his pardon at the price of five hundred pounds. It received the Great Seal on the 16th July. |Bacon to Villiers, Feb. 1; and April 18; 1616.| Remembering Bacon’s share in each stage of the proceedings against Somerset, and the lavishness of his professions 84to Villiers of the extreme delight he felt in following the lead of the new favourite throughout every step of the prosecution of the old one, it is suggestive to note that the framers, five years afterwards, of a pardon for the Lord Chancellor Bacon were directed to follow the precedent of the pardon granted in July 1616 to Sir Robert Cotton.

Nor is it of less interest to observe that, to some of Sir Robert Cotton’s closest friends, it seemed—at the moment when every part of the matter was fresh in men’s minds—that it was much more needful for him to exonerate himself from a suspicion of having stood beside Somerset too lukewarmly, than to clear himself from the charge of committing a forgery in order to cloke a murder. Very significant, for example, are the words of one of those friends which I find in a letter addressed to Cotton on the very day on which his pardon passed the Great Seal:—‘If I say I rejoice and gratulate to you your return to your own house, as I did lament your captivity, ... it will easily be credited.... The unsureness of this collusive world, and the danger of great friendships, you have already felt; and may truly say, with holy David, Nolite fidere in principibus.... As I hear, you have begun to make good use of it, by receiving to you your Lady which God himself had knit unto you. It is a piety for which you are commended. And, were it not for one thing I should think my comfort in you were complete.... It is said you were not sufficiently sincere to your most trusting friend, the pitied Earl. |E. Bolton to Sir R. Cotton; Cott. MS. Julius C., iii, fol. 32. (B. M.)| Though I hold this a slander, yet being not able to make particular defences, I opposed my general protestation against it as an injury to my friend. Yet wanting apt countermines to meet with those close works by which some seek to blow up a breach into your honour, I was not a little afflicted.... 85I leave the arming of me in this cause to your own pleasure.’

The caution as to the danger of the friendships of grandees and great favourites was one which Cotton took to heart. In the years to come he had occasionally to give critical advice, in critical junctures. But, in the true sense of the words, he learnt, at last, not to put his trust in Princes. Long before his acquaintance with Somerset and his private conferences with James, a very true and dear friend had noted a dangerous proclivity in Sir Robert’s character. |Arthur Agarde to Sir R. Cotton: Cott. MS. Julius C., iii, fol. 1.| It prompted, by way of counsel, the words: ‘Be yourself; and no man’s creature; but [only] God’s. And so He will prosper all your designs, both to his glory and your good.’

That ply had been taken too deeply, however, to be very easily smoothed out. In the years to come Sir Robert Cotton approached—more than once, perhaps—the brink of the old peril. As Buckingham clomb higher and higher, and busied himself with many transactions of the nature of which he had but a very insecure mental grasp, he felt his need of the counsels of experienced men. He made occasional advances to Cotton, amongst others. They were met; and not always so warily, as might now have been expected.

But against the danger which over-confiding intercourse with too-powerful courtiers was sure to bring in its train, Cotton found a better safeguard in wounded self-esteem, than even in dearbought experience. He soon saw that in Buckingham’s character there was at least as much of vacillation as of versatility. The famous lines which describe the son as

86would have a spice of truth if applied to the father. But their applicability is only partial; whereas the lines which follow are almost as true—a single word excepted—of the first Duke of Buckingham as they were of the second—

When Sir Robert Cotton perceived that James’s new favourite would listen, in the morning, to grave advice on a grave subject, and affirm his resolution to act upon it; and yet, in the afternoon suffer himself to be carried from his purpose by the silly jests or malicious suggestions of youngsters and sycophants, unacquainted with affairs and often reckless of consequences, he saw the wisdom of standing somewhat aloof. He rarely, however, refused his advice, when it was asked. In regard to matters of naval administration,—the authoritative value of his opinion on which was now everywhere recognised, save in the dockyards and their dependencies,—he gave it with especial willingness. But henceforward, to use Agarde’s words, he was ‘no man’s creature.’

Five years passed on, marked by events which stirred England to its core, but to Sir Robert Cotton they were years of comparative quiet. He was, indeed, very far from being a careless bystander. He observed much, and learnt much. |Growth of Cotton’s Literary and Public Correspondence.| Had it not been for the lessons which those publicly eventful years impressed on his receptive mind, he might have gone to his grave with no other reputation than that of a profound antiquary, and the Founder of the Cottonian Library.

Meanwhile, his pen worked as hard in the service of scholars, both at home and abroad, as though he had been a 87busy proof-reader in a leading printing-office. He supplied, at the same time, on the right hand and on the left, precedents and formulæ, with a diligence and readiness which would have won both fame and fortune for a long-accustomed conveyancer. Camden consults him, continually, for help in his historical labours. Ben Jonson puts questions to him about intricate points of Roman geography. |MS. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 239. (B. M.)| William Lisle seeks Cotton’s aid in the prosecution of his studies of the language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons. |Ib., fol. 288, seqq.| Peiresc consults him on questions in Numismatics. |Domestic Corresp., Jas. I, vol. lxxxi, § 15. (R. H.)| If great officers of State chance to quarrel amongst themselves about their respective claims to carry before the King the sword Curtana, at some special ceremony, they agree to refer the dispute to Sir Robert Cotton and to abide—without fighting a duel—by his momentous decision. If a courtier obtains for a friend the royal promise of an Irish viscounty he writes to Cotton, asking him to choose an appropriate and well-sounding title. |MS. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 378.| Roger Maynwaring begs him to determine the legal amount of burial-fees. |Ib., fol. 252.| Dr. Lambe asks him to settle conflicting pretensions to the advowson of a living which, in old time, belonged to an abbey. |Ib., fol. 229.| Augustine Vincent implores his help in a tough question about patents of peerage. |Ib., fol. 379.| The Lord Keeper Williams seeks advice on questions of parliamentary form and privilege. |Edwards’ Life and Letters of Ralegh, vol. ii, p. 321.| Ralegh writes to him, from that ‘Bloody Tower’ which he was about to turn into a literary shrine for all generations of Englishmen to come, by composing in it a noble ‘History of the World’—beseeching him to supply a desolate prisoner with historical materials. |MS. Julius C. iii, fol. 204.| The Earl of Arundel writes to him from Padua, begging that he would compile ‘the story of my ancestors.’ |Ib., fol. 320.| The Earl of Dorset entreats him to make out a list of the gifts which some early Sackville had piously bestowed upon the 88Church—not, however, with the smallest intention of himself increasing them. And, anon, there comes to Sir Robert, from a third great peer, the second of the Cecil Earls of Salisbury, an entreaty—expressed in terms so urgent that one might call it a supplication—‘Permit me, I pray you, to see my Lord of Northampton’s letters.... |Salisbury to Cotton, in MS. Cott., Julius C., iii.| I will return them unread, and unseen, by anybody,’ save himself. And then the Secretary of State writes to him in an impetuous hurry which made his letter scarcely legible:—‘If you be not here’ [i. e. at the Council Chamber] ‘with those precedents for which there is present use, we are all undone. |MS. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 57.| For His Majesty doth so chide, that I dare not come in his sight.’

Along with this busy correspondence—of which, in these brief sentences I have given the reader but a very inadequate and scanty sample—the surviving records of these years of comparative retirement supply us with abundant notices of the growth and of the sources, from time to time, of the Cottonian Library. It would be no unwelcome task to tell that story at length. It would, indeed, be but the paying, in very humble coin, of a debt of gratitude to a liberal benefactor. But within the compass of these pages so many careers have to be narrated that the due proportions of some of them—and even of one so interesting as Cotton’s—must needs be closely shorn. On this point it must, for the present, suffice to say that the acquisition of many Cottonian State Papers, and of such as carry on their face the most irrefragable marks of former official ownership, can be distinctly traced. The assertion is no hasty or inconsiderate one. It is founded on an acquaintance with the Cottonian MSS., which is now, I fear, thirty years old, and on the strength of which (when reading some recent assaults on the fair fame of their Collector), I 89have been tempted to put certain well-known lines into Sir Robert’s mouth:—

Were it not, however, for one pregnant circumstance in Sir Robert Cotton’s subsequent life, all this would have but a very meager attractiveness for nineteenth-century readers. The story of the growth of a great library has its charm, but the sphere of potency is of small dimension. Few but those who are themselves imbued with a spice of literary antiquarianism ever enter within the narrow circle. Just in like manner, that active literary and political correspondence—spreading from Exeter to Durham, and from Venice to Copenhagen—would nowadays have but a slender interest for anybody (not belonging to the scorned fraternity of Oldbuck and Dryasdust), were it not for that great war between King and Parliament, Cavalier and Roundhead, of which, in one sense, Cotton lived only long enough to see the gathering of forces, and the early skirmishes, but in which, nevertheless, he played a part second only to that played by Eliot and by Pym. His close connection with the Parliamentarian leaders of 1625–1629 lifts the whole story of the man out of the petty circuit of mere ‘curiosities of literature,’ into the broad arena of the hard-won liberties of England.

All students of the deeds done in that arena now know—and their knowledge is in no slight degree due to the persistent labours of a living writer—that the battle of the ‘Petition of Right’ was even a greater battle than Naseby 90or Marston Moor. They know that the marshalling of the forces which, at a period antecedent to that famous Petition, succeeded in winning a safe place on ‘the fleshy tables’ of the hearts of Englishmen for those political immunities it embodied—after the first written record had been vainly torn from the Council Book—was a feat of arms not less brilliant, in its way, than was that arraying of Ironsides, on much later days of the long strife, which resulted in ‘Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbued,’ and placed Worcester’s laureat wreath on the brow of Cromwell. There are many senses in which we have all of us (or nearly all) learnt to see the truth of the familiar words, ‘Peace hath her victories, not less renown’d than War,’ but in no sense have those words a deeper truth than when we simply invert Milton’s own application of them. By him they were pointed at something yet to be done, and which, as he hoped, might be done by Cromwell. Nowadays, the historian has good ground to point them at an earlier victory, won when the great soldier was but looking on at the parliamentary contest, which he could not much advance, and might very possibly have seriously impeded. The one thing which has transmuted Robert Cotton from the status of a dead antiquary into that of a living English worthy, is his close fellowship with Eliot, Rudyard, and Pym. His rights to a place amongst our national worthies is due—more than all else—to the fact that the services which he rendered in that strife of heroes were services which one man, and only one, throughout broad England had made himself capable of rendering. Cotton could no more have led the parliamentary phalanx, than he could have led the Ironsides. To stir men’s minds as Eliot or Pym could stir them was about as much in his power as it was to have invented logarithms, or to have written ‘Lear.’ 91But if he could not command the army, he could furnish the arsenal. At that day and under the then circumstances that service was priceless.

Sir Robert Cotton’s best and most memorable parliamentary service was rendered under Charles; not under James. But there is one incident in his public career which occurred just before the change in the wearers of the Crown that has a claim to mention, even in so brief a memoir as this.

Among the revenges wrought by the ‘whirligigs of time’ before James went to his grave, was the necessity laid upon him to direct a search for precedents how best to put a mark of disgrace on a Spanish Ambassador for misconduct in his office. The man selected by the Duke of Buckingham to make the search, and to report upon it, was Sir Robert Cotton. Some weeks before he had been chosen to draw up, in the name of both Houses of Parliament, a formal address to the King for the rupture of the Spanish match.

When Buckingham made that famous speech at the Conference of Lords and Commons on the relations between England and Spain, to which Cotton’s well-known Remonstrance of the treaties of Amity and Marriage of the Houses of Austria and Spain with the Kings of England,^[11] was to serve as a preface, he spoke with considerable force and incisiveness. |1624. 27 April.| His arguments were not hampered by many anxieties about consistency with his own antecedents. 92His words were chosen with a view to clinch his arguments to English minds rather than to spare Spanish susceptibilities. The ambassadors—there were then, I think, two of them—were furious at a degree of plain-speaking to which they had been little accustomed. They appealed to the King. They knew that the versatile favourite, once loved, was now dreaded. They tried to work on the King’s cowardice. The Duke, they told His Majesty, had plotted the calling of Parliament expressly to have a sure tool with which to keep him in control, should he prove refractory to the joint schemes of the Duke and Prince Charles. ‘They will confine your Majesty’s sacred person,’ said they, ‘to some place of pleasure, and transfer the regal power upon the Prince.’

The framing of such an accusation, writes Sir Robert, in the Report which he addressed to Buckingham on ‘Proceedings against Ambassadors have miscarried themselves,’ would, by the laws of the realm, amount to High Treason, had it been made by a subject. |Relation of Proceedings, &c.; MS. Lansd., 811, ff. 133–139.| He then adduces a long string of precedents for the treatment of offending envoys; advises that the Spaniards should first be immediately confined to their own abode; and should then, by the Speakers of both Houses of Parliament, in person, be exhorted and required to ‘make a fair discovery of the ground that led them so to inform the King.’

If, says Sir Robert, they refuse—‘as I believe they will’—then are they authors of the scandal, and His Majesty should be addressed to send a ‘letter of complaint to the King of Spain, requiring justice to be done according to the law of nations, which claim should the King of Spain refuse, the refusal would amount to a declaration of war.’ This advice was given by Cotton to the Duke on the 27th of April, 1624. Its author’s momentary favour with the 93favourite of the now fast-rising sun was destined (as we shall see presently) to be of extremely brief duration.

Pen-service of this sort was eminently congenial with Sir Robert Cotton’s powers. To his vast knowledge of precedents he added much acumen and just insight in their application. Though never admitted to the Privy Council as a sworn councillor of the Crown, his service as an adviser on several great emergencies was conspicuous.

And it did not stand alone. Small as were his natural gifts for oratory, Cotton’s earnestness in the strife of politics prompted him, more than once, to put aside his own sense of his disadvantages, and to endeavour himself to strike a good blow, with the weapons which he knew so well how to choose for others. |Cotton’s Speech in the Parliament at Oxford.| On one of these occasions he prepared a speech which proved very effective.

Curiously enough, whilst the best contemporary reports of that speech agree amongst themselves in substance; they differ as to the name of the speaker by whom it was actually uttered within the walls of the House of Commons. Internal evidence and external authority are also agreed that the speech, if not spoken, was at all events prepared by Sir Robert Cotton. On that point, all parties coincide. But according to one account, he both wrote and uttered it. According to another, he wrote it; but was prevented from the intended delivery,—either by an accidental absence from the House, or by some inward and unwaivable misgiving which led him at the eleventh hour to hand over the task to the able and well-accustomed tongue of his comrade Eliot.

If we turn, for help—in our strait—to the admirable biography of Eliot, by Mr. Forster, we shall find that its author rather accepts the doubt, than solves it. Inclining 94to the opinion that Sir John Eliot was the actual utterer, he thinks nevertheless that the best course is to ‘let the speech stand double and inseparable; a memorial of a fast friendship.’ It was the friendship, I may add, of two statesmen who fought a good fight, side by side; until one of them was violently torn out of the arena, and thrust into a dungeon, in the hope that slow disease might unstring the eloquent tongue which honours could not bribe, and terrors could not silence.

In Sir Robert’s posthumous tracts (as they were published by James Howell) this speech has been printed as unquestionably spoken by him who wrote it. But that publication—as I have had occasion to show already, in relation to the ‘Twenty-four Arguments’—carries no grain of authority. Spoken or simply composed by its author, the speech is alike memorable in English history, and in the personal life of the man himself.

The existence of the plague in London had led to the adjournment of the first Parliament of King Charles to Oxford. It was there, and on the 10th of August, 1625, that the speech which—whether it came from the lips of John Eliot or of Robert Cotton—made a deep impression on the House, was spoken. It gave the key-note to not a few speeches of a subsequent date, and it contains passages which, in the event, came to have on their face something of the stamp of prophecy.

Retrenchment in expenditure,—Parliamentary curb on Royal favourites,—No trust of a transcendent power to any one Minister,—Less lavishness in the bestowal of honours and dignities won by suit, or purchase, rather than by public meed,—Wary distrust of Spain,—Abolition of unjust monopolies and oppressive imposts;—these are amongst the earnest counsels which (whether it were as 95writer, or as speaker) Sir Robert Cotton impressed on his fellow-members in that memorable sitting at Oxford. Both the pith and the sting of the Speech may be found in its concluding words: ‘His Majesty hath ... wise, religious, and worthy servants.... In loyal duty, we offer our humble desires that he would be pleased to advise with them together; ... not with young and single counsel.’ Well would it have been for Charles, had he taken those simple words to heart, in good time.

To us, and now, there is a special interest in an incidental passage of this speech which relates to Somerset. The reader has seen how Count Gondomar’s secret testimony—just disinterred from Simancas—against Somerset, as well as against Cotton, has recently been dealt with by an eminent historian. |(See, also, heretofore, the foot-note to p. 73.)| It is worth our while to remember some other words on that subject spoken publicly in the Parliament at Oxford almost two centuries and a half agone. They were spoken in the ears of men whose eyes had looked with keen scrutiny into the Spanish envoy as well as into the English minister. Somerset was still living. Men who then sat in the Parliament Chamber knew every incident in his official life, and not a few incidents in his private life, as well as every charge by which—publicly or privately—he had been infamed. They knew, exactly, Sir Robert Cotton’s position towards the fallen minister. If we choose to suppose that Eliot was now speaking what Cotton wrote, the inference is unchanged. To those listeners Sir John and Sir Robert were known to be politically ‘double and inseparable.’

The facts being so, what is the course taken by the speaker when he finds occasion to remind the House of things that happened when ‘My Lord of Somerset stood in state of grace, and had the trust of the Signet Seal?’ 96Does he take a line of apology and use words of extenuation? Not a whit. In the presence of some of the wisest and ablest of English statesmen, he eulogises Somerset as an honest and unselfish minister of the Crown. He asserts, that the Earl had discovered ‘the double dealings’ of Spanish emissaries, and the dangers of the Spanish alliance; and had made some progress in dissuading even King James from putting faith in Spaniards. Then, winding up this episode, in order to pass to the topic of the hour, Cotton says: ‘Thus stood the effect of Somerset’s power with His Majesty, when the clouds of his misfortune fell upon him. What future advisers led to we may well remember. |MS. Lansd.,^[12] 491, fol. 195.| The marriage with Spain was renewed; Gondomar declared an honest man; Popery heartened; His Majesty’s forces in the Palatinate withdrawn; His Highness’s children stripped of their patrimony; our old and fast allies disheartened; and the King our now master exposed to so great a peril as no wise and faithful counsel would ever have advised.’

At Court, speech such as this was deeply resented, instead of being turned to profit. A curious little incident which occurred at the Coronation of Charles in the next winter testifies, characteristically, to the effect which it produced on the minds both of the new King and of his favourite.

At the date of that ceremony, Sir Robert’s close political connection with the future Parliamentary chiefs was but in its infancy. His views of public policy were fast ripening, and had borne fruit. His private friendships were more and more shaping themselves into accordance with his tendencies 97in politics. Amongst those whose intimacy he cultivated—besides that of Eliot and others who have been mentioned already—were Symonds D’Ewes, and John Selden. |Friends and Hospitalities.| It was at Cotton’s hospitable table, in Old Palace Yard, that the two men last named first made acquaintance with each other. Both were scholars; both were strongly imbued with the true antiquarian tinge; both had an extensive acquaintance with the black-letter lore of jurisprudence, as well as with the more elegant branches of archæology; and both, up to a certain point, had common aims in public life; yet they did not draw very near together. Selden’s more robust mind, and his wider sympathies, shocked some of the puritanic nicenesses of D’Ewes. Precisely the same remark would hold good of the relations between Cotton and D’Ewes. But a certain geniality of manners in Sir Robert, combined with his grandee-like openness of hand and mind, attracted his fellow-baronet in a degree which went some way towards vanquishing D’Ewes’ most ingrained scruples. |Harl. MS., as above.| ‘I had much more familiarity with Sir Robert Cotton, than with Master Selden,’ jots down Sir Symonds in his Autobiographic Diary, and then he adds: ‘Selden being a man exceedingly puffed up with the apprehension of his own abilities.’ That last sentence,—as the reader, perhaps, will agree with me in thinking,—may possibly tell a more veracious tale of the writer, than of the man whom it reproves.

Be that as it may, the dining-room in Old Palace Yard witnessed frequent meetings of many groups of visitors of whose tabletalk it would be delightful could we find as good a record as we have of the tabletalk in Bolt Court, or at Streatham Park; or even as we have of almost contemporary talk around the board at Hawthornden. Glorious old Ben himself was a frequent guest at Sir Robert Cotton’s 98table. Until late in James’ reign, Camden, when his growing infirmities permitted him to journey up from Chislehurst, would still be seen there, now and again. During the rare sessions of Parliament, many a famous member, as he left the House of Commons, would join the circle. And the high discourse about Greeks and Romans, about poetry and archæology, would be pleasantly varied, by the newest themes of politics, by occasional threnodies on the exorbitant power of court minions, but also by occasional and glowing anticipations of a better time to come.

At one of these festive meetings, occurring not long before the Coronation of Charles the First, the talk seems to have turned on the coming solemnity. The plague at this time was still in London, though it was fast abating. |Cotton and the Coronation of Charles I.| That circumstance was to abridge the ceremonies, in order to permit the Court to leave Westminster more quickly; but it was known that great attention had been given by the King, personally, when framing the programme, to the strict observance of ancient forms. D’Ewes was one of Sir Robert’s guests. Like his host, he had a great love for sight-seeing on public occasions. And they would both anticipate a special pleasure in witnessing the revival of certain coronation observances which had been pretermitted during two centuries. In regard to the coronation oath Cotton had been consulted, and he expected to be present, carrying in his hand his own famous copy of the Gospels known as the ‘Evangeliary of King Ethelstan.’ It was also expected that the watergate of Cotton House would be the King’s landing-place, and that he would cross the garden in order that he might enter the Palace more conveniently than he could from its usual stairs, then under repair, or in need of it. Sir Robert invited D’Ewes, with 99other of his guests—not privileged to claim places in Westminster Abbey on the great occasion—that at least they might see their new sovereign, as he passed to take his crown.

When the morning came D’Ewes was early in his visit, but, he found Cotton House already filled with ladies. The Earl Marshal had decorated the stairs to the river and the watergate very handsomely. Sir Robert had done his part by decorating his windows, and his garden, more handsomely still. But to the chagrin alike of the fair spectators and of their host, as they were standing, in all their bravery, from watergate to housedoor, to do respectful obeisance, the royal barge, by the King’s own commandment—given at the moment, but pre-arranged by Buckingham—was urged onward. To our amazement, writes Sir Symonds, ‘we saw the King’s barge pass to the ordinary stairs, belonging to the backyard of the Palace, where the landing was dirty ... and the incommodity was increased by the royal barge dashing into the ground and sticking fast, before it touched the causeway.’ |D’Ewes; in Harl. MS., 646, as before.| His Majesty, followed by the Favourite, had to leap across the mud,—certainly an unusual incident in a coronation show.

When Cotton—swallowing the mortification which he must have felt, on behalf of his bevy of fair visitors, if not on his own—presently showed himself in the Abbey, bearing the Evangeliary, he and it were contemptuously thrust aside.

As a straw tells the turn of the wind, this trivial incident points to a policy. The insults both within the Abbey and without, had been planned, by the King and Duke, in order to mark the royal indignation at the close fellowship of Cotton with Eliot and the other Parliamentary leaders. That the insults might be the more 100keenly felt, the Earl Marshal was left in ignorance of the plan. It is a help to the truthful portraiture of Charles, as well as to that of Buckingham, to note that to insult a group of English ladies was no drawback to the pleasure of putting a marked affront upon a political opponent. Perhaps, it increased the zest, from the probable near relationship of some among them to the offender.

But it is more important to note that another and graver intention in respect to Sir Robert Cotton had been already formed. It was in contemplation to do, in 1626, what was not really done until 1629. |Mede to Stuteville; MS. Harl., 383, 18 April, 1626.| Buckingham had advised the King to put the royal seals on the Cottonian Library. That done, he thought, there would surely be an end to the communication of formidable precedents for parliamentary warfare. More wary counsellors however interposed with wiser advice. A fitting pretext was lacking. Slenderness in the pretext would be no serious obstacle to action. But some excuse there must be. The project, though abandoned for the time, will be seen to have its value when considering, presently, the strange story which is told, in the Privy Council Book, of the ‘Proposition to bridle the impertinency of Parliaments,’ and when narrating the sequel of that high-handed act of power, which brought Cotton’s head—as yet scarcely gray—with sorrow to the grave.

Although, thus early in the reign of Charles, a court insult was inflicted upon Sir Robert Cotton, after a fashion the extreme silliness of which rather serves to set off the intended malignity than to cloke it, only a few months passed before his advice was called for in presence of the Council Board, on an important question of home policy. The question raised was that of an alteration of the coinage. 101The Privy Council was divided in opinion. There was a desire for the advice of statesmen who were not at the Board, but who were known to have studied a subject beset with many difficulties. Among these, Sir Robert Cotton was consulted. He appeared at the Council Table on the 2nd of September, 1626, and we have a report of his speech to the Lords, which from several points of view is notable. |MS. Lansd., ff. 141–152. (B. M.)^[13]| |Council Registers, James I, vols. v and vi, passim. (C. O.)| But a preliminary word or two needs to be said on what may seem the singularity that a man who, in 1625, was fighting zealously beside the Parliamentary patriots, should, in 1626, be speaking at the Council Table as a quasi-councillor of the Crown.

It might be sufficient to point attention to the obvious difference between questions affecting the liberty of the subject, and questions of mere administration, were this the only occasion—or were it a fair sample of the only class of occasions—in which Cotton appears as an unofficial Councillor. But the fact is otherwise. And it is best to be explained, partly, by the unsettled character of party connection during the political strife of Charles’ reign, as well as long afterwards, and partly by peculiarities belonging to the man himself. |Life of Sir John Eliot, vol. i, p 468.| There are not many statesmen, even of that period, of whom it could be said as the able biographer of Sir John Eliot says of Sir Robert Cotton: ‘He acted warmly with Eliot and with the patriots in the first Parliament of Charles. At the opening of the third, he was tendering counsel to the King, of which the obsequious forms 102have yet left no impression unfavourable to his uprightness and honour.’ The result is unusual. How came it to pass?

Perhaps the preceding pages may have already suggested to the reader’s mind more than one possible and plausible answer to this question. Here it may suffice to say that while Sir Robert Cotton was plainly at one with the Parliamentarian leaders in the main points of their civil policy, he never went to the extreme lengths of the puritanic faith, either in things secular, or in matters pertaining to Religion. On some religious questions he differed from them widely. In secular matters, a tyrannic Parliament would have been as little to his liking as a despotic king. Neither friend nor enemy—Gondomar excepted—ever called him a Puritan (or pretended-Puritan) in his lifetime, any more than they would have called him a Republican. His ultimate divergence was not cloaked. It was no bar to the entire respect, or to the love and close fellowship, of men like Eliot, just because it was frankly avowed, and had no selfish aim. Cotton,—had he lived long enough,—would probably have ranged himself, at last, with the Cavaliers, rather than with the Roundheads. He would have had Falkland’s misgivings, and Falkland’s sorrow, but I think he would not have lacked Falkland’s self-devotion also.

And, in another point, he resembled Lord Falkland. Both would have advised Charles to yield much of so-called ‘prerogative.’ Neither of them would have bade him to yield a grain of true royal honour. In later years, some words which Cotton wrote,—in 1627,—for the King’s eye may well have come back painfully into Charles’ memory:—‘To expiate the passion of the People,’ said Sir Robert, ‘with sacrifice of any of His 103Majesty’s servants, I have ever found to be no less fatal to the Master than to the Minister, in the end.’

The question of the Coinage, on which he was called into Council in September 1626, had caused no small measure of discussion whilst James was still on the throne. |The Advice given by Sir R. Cotton on Mint Affairs.| Many merchants of London had raised the old and hacknied cry of complaint against an alleged ‘vast transportation of gold and silver from England’ to the Continent. Others said that the complaint, if not groundless, was misdirected. The following Minute of the Privy Council will shew how the question stood in that early stage. It was drawn up in November, 1618.

‘Being by Your Majesty’s commandment to take into our consideration the state of the Mint and to advise of the way or means how to bring bullion more plentifully into the Kingdom, and to be coined there, as also how to stop the great exportation of treasure out of the Realm,—a matter of which the State hath been jealous: For our better information and Your Majesty’s satisfaction we thought it fit first to know from the Office of your Mint what quantity of gold and silver hath been there coined in the last seven years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and the seven years last past of Your Majesty. And we find that in the said seven years of the Queen there was coined in gold and silver of all sorts £948,713 sterling, whereas in the seven late years of Your Majesty’s reign there hath been coined of all sorts, in gold and silver, £1,603,998. So as, comparing the one with the other, there hath been coined of both species in the said seven years of Your Majesty’s reign £655,285 sterling, more than in the seven years aforesaid of the Queen, the difference being almost 104three parts to one. Next we required a certificate from the Goldsmiths of London of the Plate that hath been made in those years within the City of London; and it appeareth that there was made and stamped in their hall the last seven years of Queen Elizabeth of silver plate the worth of £22,187 more than in the seven later years of Your Majesty’s reign. But upon the whole matter we cannot find and do humbly certify the same unto Your Majesty as our opinion that there hath been of late any such vast transportation of gold and silver into France and the Low Countries as was supposed; neither that there is any such notorious diminution of treasure generally in the Kingdom—at the least of gold—since it is apparent that there hath been a far greater quantity in the total coined within these seven years last past than in the last seven years of the late Queen. Besides Your Majesty may be pleased to observe that the making of so much silver plate cannot be the principal cause of the decay of the Mint since there was more plate made in London [in] those last seven years of the Queen,—when there came more silver to be coined in the Mint,—than there hath been used of late years, when silver in the Mint hath been so scarce though Gold more plentiful.... In the mean time we do humbly offer ... that there is no necessity ... to raise your coin, either in the one kind or in the other. |Registers of Privy Council, as above, p. 46. (C. O.)| But rather that the same may draw with it many inconveniences; and because the noise thereof through the City of London and from thence to other parts of the Realm, as we understand, hath already done hurt and in some measure interrupted and distracted the course of general commerce, we think it very requisite ... that some signification be forthwith made from this Table 105time to raise your coins.’

The course thus recommended—and in the recommendation the Council seems to have been well nigh unanimous—was precisely the course James did not wish to take. The Council Books abound with proof how hard it was to dissuade the King from adopting this ‘intended project of enhancing the coin [i. e. by debasing the standard], though, as Cotton afterwards said at the Council Table, to do so would trench, both into the honour, the justice, and the profit’ [i. e. the real and ultimate profit] ‘of my royal Master very far.’

In his address at the Board, Sir Robert made an almost exhaustive examination of the history of the English Mint. He did it with much brevity and pith. His views about foreign trade are, of course, not free from the fallacies which were accepted as aphorisms by very nearly every statesman then living. But his advice on the immediate question at issue is marked by sound common sense, by insight and practical wisdom. |MS. Lansd., 811, ff. 148–152 (B. M.) [Compare the Report of Proceedings in the House of Commons, Feby. 1621. (Parl. Hist., vol. i, c. 1188–1194).]| His speech told, and he followed it up by framing, as Chairman of a Committee, (1) an Answer to the Propositions delivered by some Officers of the Mint; and (2) Certain General Rules collected concerning Money and Bullion out of the late Consultation at Court. Copies of both exist amongst the Harleian and Lansdowne MSS., and both, together with the Speech, are printed in the Posthuma (although not without some of the Editor’s characteristic inaccuracies).

The next question which it was Sir Robert’s task to discuss before the Privy Council was a much more momentous question than that of the Coinage. It was, potentially, both to Sovereign and to people, an issue of life or death.

106In January, 1628 [N. S.], he delivered, at the Board, the substance of the remarkable Discourse which has been more than once printed under the title, ‘The Danger wherein this Kingdom now Standeth, and the Remedy.’ |Discourse on the Calling of a Parliament. 1628. Jany.| The courtliness of its tone no more detracts from its incisiveness of stroke, than a jewelled hilt would detract from the cleaving sweep of a Damascus blade, when wielded by well-knit sinews. It led instantly to the calling of the Parliament. |MS. Lansd., 254, ff. 258, seqq.| But neither its essential and true loyalty to the King, nor the opportune service which it rendered to the country was to make the fortunes of its author any exception to those which—sooner or later—befell every councillor of Charles the First, who, in substance if not in form, was wont to put Country before King.

In that third Parliament of Charles Sir Robert himself had no seat. In the Parliament which preceded it he sat for Old Sarum, having lost his seat for Huntingdonshire. But he continued to be the active ally and the influential councillor of the leaders of opposition to strained prerogatives. When the Parliament assailed Bishops Neile and Laud, the inculpated prelates, it is said, threw upon Cotton as much of their anger as they well could have done had he led the assault in person.

The opportunity was not very far to seek. |The ‘Proposition to bridle Parliaments.’ 1629. October.| Not long after the dissolution in March, 1629, of that Parliament of the assembling of which Sir Robert Cotton’s patriotic effort had been the immediate occasion, and to some of the effective blows of which he had helped to give vigour, some courtier or other brought to Charles’ hands a political tract, in manuscript, and told him that copies of it were in the possession of several statesmen. Those—with one exception—who were then named to the King were men wont to be held in greater regard in the country than at 107Court. The pamphlet bore for its title: ‘The Proposicion for Your Majesties Service ... to secure your Estate and to bridle the impertinencie of Parliaments.’

The consequences of this small incident were destined to prove of large moment. The earliest mention we have of it occurs in a letter written by the Archbishop of York—himself a Privy Councillor—to Sir Henry Vane, in November, 1629: ‘The Vice-Chancellor,’ says Archbishop Harsnet, ‘was sent to Sir Robert Cotton to seal up his library, and to bring himself before the Lords of the Council.’ |Domest. Corresp., Charles I, vol. cli, § 24. (R. H.)| In the words that follow the Archbishop is evidently speaking from what he had been told, not from his personal knowledge. ‘There was found,’ he proceeds to say, ‘in his custody a pestilential tractate which he had fostered as a child, containing a project how a Prince may make himself an absolute tyrant. |Ib.| This pernicious device he had communicated to divers Lords.’

Charles was presently in intense excitement about the matter. Its next stage cannot be better or more briefly told, than in the words which the King himself addressed to his assembled Councillors—in unusual array, for they were twenty-one in number—and afterwards caused to be entered upon the Council Book:

‘This day His Majestie, sitting in Counsell, was pleased to imparte to the whole Boarde the cause for which the |[Council Register, vol. v, p. 495.]| Erles of Clare, Somerset, and Bedforde, Sir Robert Cotton, and sundry other persons of inferior qualitie, had bene lately restrained and examined by a speciall Committee appointed by him for that purpose, which cause was this:—

‘His Majestie declared that there came to his handes, by meere accedent, the coppie of a certain “Discourse” 108or “The Proposicion” (which was then, by his commandement, read at the Boarde), pretended to be written “for His Majesties service,” and bearing this title—”The Proposicion for Your Majestie’s Service conteineth twoe partes: |Proceedings against Sir Robert Cotton in the Privy Council.| The one to secure your Estate, and to bridle the impertinencie of Parlements; the other to encrease Your Majestie’s Revenue much more then it is.”

‘Now the meanes propounded in this Discourse for the effecting thereof are such as are fitter to be practised in a Turkish State then amongst Christians, being contrarie to the justice and mildnesse of His Majestie’s Government, and the synceritie of his intentions, and therefore cannot be otherwise taken then for a most scandalous invention, proceding from a pernitious dessein, both against His Majestie and the State, which, notwithstanding, the aforesaid persons had not onely read—and concealed the same from His Majestie and his Counsell—but also communicated and divulged it to others.

‘Whereupon His Majestie did farther declare that it is his pleasure that the aforesaid three Erles, and Sir Robert Cotton, shall answere this their offense in the Court of Star Chamber, to which ende they had alreadie bene summoned, and that now they shoulde be discharged and freed from their restraint and permitted to retourne to their severall houses, to the ende that they mighte have the better meanes to prepare themselves for their answere and defense.

‘And, lastly, he commanded that this his pleasure should be signified by the bearer unto them, who were then attending without,—having, for that purpose, bene sent for. His Majestie, having given this Order and direccion, rose from the Boarde, and when he was gone, the three Erles were called in severally and the Lorde 109Keeper signified to each of them His Majestie’s pleasure in that behalfe; shewing them, with all, how gratiously he had bene pleased to deale with them, both in the maner of the restraint, which was only during the time of the examination of the cause (a thing usuall and requisite specially in cases of that consequence), and in that they had bene committed to the custodie of eminent and honorable persons by whom they were treated according to their qualities; and lykewise in the discharge of them now from their restraint that they may have the better convenience and meanes to prepare themselves for the defense of their cause in that legall coursse by which His Majestie had thought fit to call them to an account and tryall.

‘The like was also signified by his Lordship to Sir Robert Cotton, who was further tolde that although it was His Majestie’s pleasure that his Studies’ [meaning, that is, his Library and Museum,] ‘shoulde, as yett, remaine shut up, yet he might enter into them and take such writtings wherof he shoulde have use, provided that he did it in the presence of a Clerke of the Counsell; |Council Register, Chas. I, vol. v, ff. 495, 496 (C. O.).| and whereas the Clerke attending hath the keyes of two of his Studies he might put a seconde lock on either of them so that neither dores might be opened, but by him and the said Clerke both together.’

A reader who now looks back on this singular transaction—and who has therefore the advantage of looking at it by the stern-lights of history,—will be likely to believe that the chief offence of the pamphlet lay (in a certain sense,) in its truth. |Character and Authorship of the ‘Proposition to bridle Parliaments.’| It was the much too frank exposition of a policy which clung very close to Charles’ heart, though he could ill afford—in 1629—to have it openly avowed. The undeniable fact that this ‘Proposition for 110Your Majesty’s Service’ was indeed fitter for the latitude of Constantinople, than for that of London, sounds but awkwardly on the royal lips, when connected with an assertion (in the same breath,) of the ‘justice and mildness’ of the King’s own government. The indictment which his Parliament brought against Charles,—and which History has endorsed,—could hardly be packed into briefer words than those which the King himself used that day at the Council Board. His notions of kingly rule, like his father’s, were in truth much better suited for the government of Turkey than for the government of England.

Sir Robert Cotton, however, had no more to do with the authorship of the ‘Proposition’ than had Charles himself. The author was Sir Robert Dudley. The time of its composition was at least fifteen years before the date of the imprisonment of Cotton and his companions in disfavour. The place of its birth was Florence. It cannot even be proved that Cotton had any personal knowledge of the fact that the offensive tract had been found in his own library. He had recently read it, indeed,—in common with Bedford, Clare, and Oliver Saint-John, and no doubt, like them, had read it with many surging thoughts,—but he had read it in a recent transcript, written by a clerk.

Of Robert Dudley’s motive in writing his ‘Proposition’ we have also no proof. But the presumptive and internal evidence is so strong, as to make proof almost superfluous. The tract bears witness, between the lines, that it was composed to win the favour—or at least to arrest the despoiling hand—of King James. And there is hardly a suggestion in it which might not be backed by some parallel passage in the writings, or the speeches, of James himself, when expatiating on kingly prerogatives in 111some mood of mind a little more foolish than usual, or when striving—only too successfully—to train up his successor to follow in his own path. It seems like an irony of Fate to find that (in all probability,—for here again the proof is not quite clinching,) the King’s informer, against Cotton and the other offenders, was Wentworth, who, not many years after 1629, was to sum up views of policy much akin to Robert Dudley’s in the memorable word ‘Thorough.’

Cotton himself believed that this apparently trivial incident cost him his life. He said not long before his death,—‘It has killed me.’ We shall probably never know whether Dudley’s tract had anything to do with bringing about in the mind of Wentworth that eventful change of political views which is known to have passed over it (about the time when the incriminated manuscript was sent so eagerly from hand to hand), and which, in a few years more, was to work his death also. But one can hardly avoid, in passing, a momentary thought on the curious possibility that a pamphlet, written at Florence, in the hope that it might save, for the writer, some wreck or remnant of a despoiled inheritance,—may have proved fatal alike to the close political friend of Eliot, and to the close political friend of Laud. A tract of such potency may well claim a few words about its contents. They bear in every line the stamp of mental energy, and also the stamp of moral recklessness.

Sir Robert Dudley knew well enough that a rooted dislike of Parliaments was, in James’s mind, combined with a besetting dread of them. He knew that, between hate and fear, a Parliament was like a nightmare, for ever crouching behind the royal pillow. It is the purpose of his tract to tell the King how to drive the nightmare 112away. He recommends, amongst other and minor measures, the erection of a strong fortress in all the chief towns of the Kingdom, to be manned by trained bands, and to be placed in such situations as shall command the high roads. In addition to these measures, your Majesty, he says, must set up a strict system of passports, for travellers. Nor is all this merely a new and more elaborate version of the old story of belling the cat. The writer of this counsel knows, perfectly, that already the King’s poverty is the Parliament’s power; and that to build fortresses and array soldiers needs a full purse, not an exhausted one. But he says,—as Wentworth said after him,—that soldiers can be set to work upon good hopes of the pay to come. A resolute King, he thinks, with resolute troops at his back, could do in England what had so often been done in Italy. He could tithe men’s estates. He could make salt and some other things of prime necessity a royal monopoly. He could set a tariff on dignities of honour. He could establish sumptuary laws, such as should make the vanity and jealousy of thriving nobodies—men with full pockets and blank pedigrees—willing contributors to the King’s Exchequer. He could buy up improvident leases of Crown lands, and resell them at a large profit.

The shortsightedness of such advice as this is now obvious enough. But advice quite as shortsighted and far less plausibly couched,—for the eyes that were to read it,—had been fruitful of result, when offered to Stuarts. Nor was the man who now offered it to Charles a mere clever talker. He was a man who had already acquitted himself with conspicuous ability in several spheres of action, lying widely apart.

Sir Robert Dudley possessed many splendid accomplishments. 113He had been educated by the same ripe scholar who afterwards became tutor to Prince Henry. At the age of one and twenty, he had put himself into the lists with Ralegh, as navigator and discoverer, by heading an expedition to the Oronoco. |The career of Sir Robert Dudley.| In the course of that expedition he had captured nine Spanish ships; one of them of twice his own strength. At three and twenty, he had fought, side by side with Ralegh, in the naval battle in the bay of Cadiz; had handled his ship with an ability which won the praise of his rivals; and had then fought, in the land attack, side by side with Essex. When his own unbridled passions and resentments gave a fatal opening for the equally unbridled cupidity of James, and of James’s courtiers, to despoil him of a great estate, and to drive him into exile, he showed that he knew how to snatch honour out of defeat. He laid the foundation of a new English trade with Italy and created—it is not saying too much—the maritime prosperity of Leghorn. He drained vast Italian marshes, and made corn to grow where corn had never grown before. The man who, in early life, had won fame at once as a navigator full of pluck and resource, and as an able soldier by sea and land:—and who, on attaining full manhood, had shown himself both a clever diplomatist and a great engineer;—did not go to his foreign grave before he had won literary fame with the pen, and scientific fame at the furnace of the chemist. He had, in its fullest measure, the versatility and the energy of his race. English family biography, I suppose, can scarcely show a stranger group of lives than the successive lives of the last four Dudleys of that line:—Edmund, the Minister of Henry VII, and author of The Tree of the Commonwealth; Northumberland, the subduer of Edward VI, and the murderer of Jane Grey; Leicester, the Favourite of 114Elizabeth; Sir Robert, the self-made exile, and the maker of Leghorn. Whilst English history, in its long course, can scarcely match the fatality which seems to have foredoomed powers of mind and strength of will, such as are rarely repeated in four successive generations, to teem with evil instead of good for England.

Such, in few words, was the career of the man, the forgotten production of whose pen was to shorten the life of a statesman whose only connection with it—so far as the evidence goes—lay in the fact that a copy chanced to turn up in his library; fell under the keen eye of a lawyer who thought that something might be made of it; and was then copied—probably by some clerk, who was in the habit of making transcripts for students to whom money was less precious than time.^[14] In some points of the story 115there is still considerable uncertainty. But so much as this seems to be established. How the tract came, at the first, into Sir Robert Cotton’s library there is no evidence whatever to shew.

It is not the least curious point in this transaction that the Earl of Somerset should have been mixed up with it. He had been released from the Tower almost eight years before (namely, on the 28th of January, 1622), but was prohibited from living near the Court. At first, he was ordered to restrict himself to one or other of two old mansions in Oxfordshire—Caversham and Grey’s Court. |Council Registers, James I, vol. v, pp. 230, 425 (C. O.).| Afterwards, his option was enlarged, by including, in the license, Aldenham, in Hertfordshire. It is evident that, after 116Buckingham’s death, he began to hope that a political career might be still possible for him. And statesmen like Bedford and Clare—as well as Cotton—kept up with him a correspondence.

More than once or twice, coming events had cast their preliminary shadows over Sir Robert, in relation to the very matter which so vexed his heart in the winter of 1629. ‘Sir Robert Cotton’s Library is threatened to be sealed up’ is a sentence which made its occasional appearance in news-letters, long before King Charles hurried down to the Council Chamber to vent his indignation on the handing about of Dudley’s ‘Proposition to bridle Parliaments.’

One cause of the rumour lay doubtless in the known enmity between Buckingham and the great antiquary. This enmity, on one occasion, brought Ben Jonson into peril. Ben was fond of visiting Cotton House. He liked the master, and he liked the table; and he was wont to meet at it men with whom he could exchange genial talk. On one such occasion, just a year before the Florence pamphlet incident, some verses went round the table at Cotton House, with the dessert. They began, ‘Enjoy thy bondage,’ and ended with the words ‘England’s ransom here doth lie.’ Only two months had then passed since Buckingham’s assassination, and these verses were, or were supposed to be, addressed to Felton. We can now imagine more than one reason why such lines may have been curiously glanced at, over Sir Robert’s table, without assuming that there was any triumphing over a fallen enemy; still less any approval of murder. But there seems to have been present one guest too many. |Domestic Corresp. Charles I, vol. cxix, § 33.| Some informer told the story at Whitehall, and Jonson found himself accused of being the author of the obnoxious verses. He cleared 117himself; but not, it seems, without some difficulty and annoyance.

The release from immediate restraint of the prisoner of November ’29 was no concession to any prompting of Charles’ own better nature. Fortunately for Sir Robert Cotton, his companions in the offence were peers. Their fellow-peers shewed, quietly but significantly, that continued restraint would need to be preceded by some open declaration of its cause. During the course of the proceedings which followed their release it was asserted—I do not know by whom—that not only had the ‘Proposition’ been copied, but that an ‘Answer’ to it had been either written, or drafted. And that the reply, like the original tract, would be found in Sir Robert’s library.

This somewhat inexplicable circumstance in the story is nowhere mentioned, I think, except in a Minute of the Privy Council. The Minute runs thus:—

‘A Warrant directed to Thomas Mewtas, Esq. ... and Laurence Whitaker, Esq. [Clerks of Council] autorising them to accompanie Sir Robert Cotton, Knight, to his house and assist him in searching amongst the papers in his studie or elsewhere, for certaine notes or draughtes for an answer to a “Proposicion” pretended to be made “for His Majesties Service” touching the securing of His Estate, and also to seeke diligently amongst his papers, and lykewise the trunkes and chambers of Mr. James, and [of] Flood, Sir Robert Cotton’s servant, as well for anie such notes, as also for coppies of the said “Proposicion,” and for other wrytings, of that nature, which may import prejudice to the government and His Majestie’s service.’ |Council Registers, Charles I; vol. 5, pp. 493, 495. 1629. Nov. 10. Whitehall. (C. O.).| The new search, it seems, had not the desired, or any important, result.

118A year passed away. The proceedings in the Star Chamber proved to be almost as fruitless, as had been the vain, but repeated, searches which wearied the legs and perplexed the minds of Clerks of Council and of Messengers of the Secretary’s office. |Domestic Corresp. Chas. I, clxvii, § 65, seqq. (R. H.)| But the locks and seals were still kept on the Cottonian Library. Sir Robert and his son (afterwards Sir Thomas) petitioned the King over and over again. But Charles had set his face as a flint, and would not listen. In vain he was told that the Manuscripts were perishing by neglect; and that, as they occupied some of the best rooms, the continued locking up made their owner to be like a prisoner, in his own house. In order to go into any one of them he had to send to Whitehall, to request the presence of a Clerk of the Council.

Under such circumstances it is not surprising that his friends noticed with anxiety his changed appearance. His ruddy countenance became sallow and haggard. It grew, says his associate D’Ewes, to be of ‘a blackish paleness near to the semblance and hue of a dead visage.’ His somewhat portly frame stooped and waned. Life had still some charms for him,—so long at least as he could hope even faintly, for an opportunity of returning, at last, to his beloved studies. He was told of the growing repute of a certain Dr. Frodsham, who combined (it seems) experiments at the retort and still of the chemist, with the clinical practice of the physician,—when he could get it. Sir Robert sent for him and desired that he would bring a certain restorative balsam, or other nostrum, that had become the talk of the town. The worthy practitioner preferred to send his answer in writing. With great frankness, he said to his correspondent: ‘I have now an extraordinary occasion for money.... Neither is it my accustomed manner to distil for any body, without 119some payment beforehand. So, noble Sir, if pleas you, send here, by this berer, £17 and 12s., for so much the druges will cum tow. I confes that way I worke is deare, yett must say, upon my life, that I will make’ [you] ‘as sound and able of body, as at thirty-five,—and’ [this] ‘within five weeks.’ |MS. Harl., 7002, fol. 318; H. Frodsam to Sir R. Cotton (B. M.).| But the eye for which this naïve epistle was meant was an eye keen enough to detect the difference between corn and chaff. |Ib.| ‘I did,’ replied Sir Robert, ‘expect something of fact, to make me confident; before I could venture either my trial or my purse.... Promises I have often met and rejected. Error of judgment must be, to me, of more loss than the money.’

By way of addition to the combined anxieties of failing health, and of a bitter grief, there came now to be heaped upon Cotton’s shoulders the heavier burden of a conspiracy to assail his moral character.

Large as had been his expenditure on his noble collections, and openhanded as was his manner of life and of giving, Sir Robert Cotton was still wealthy. Some persons who had benefited by his repeated generosity thought they saw an opening, in the summer of 1630, to increase the gain by a clever and lucrative plot. The method they took reads, nowadays, less like a real incident in English literary biography, than like one of those—

120The victim of this plot was now in his sixtieth year. Whatever may have been the sins of his youth, there was obvious risk in a contrivance to extort money by telling such a tale as that, about a man the fever of whose blood must needs have abated; even had he not been already broken down under cumulative weight of the sorrow and hunger of the heart. |The Conspiracy of Wilcox and Stevenson against Sir R. Cotton.| The intended victim, too, was a man with troops of friends. But the conspirators, it is evident, thought that Sir Robert’s known disgrace at Court would tell as a good counterpoise in their favour. A man already in circumstances of peril would, they thought, be likely to open his pursestrings rather than incur the burden of a new accusation.

On a June morning in 1630 Sir Robert Cotton received an urgent letter from an elderly woman—one Amphyllis Ferrers—who had the claim upon him of distant kinship, and upon whom, in that character, he had bestowed many kindnesses. The letter made a new appeal to his compassion; told him of the distresses of the writer’s daughter—married not long before to a needy man—and besought him to pay them a visit; that he might judge of their necessities with his own eyes. Both mother and daughter lived together in Westminster, at no great distance from Cotton House.

Sir Robert paid the invited visit; was told of various family plans connected with the recent marriage, and, amongst other things, of a pressing need for some household furniture. When the talk turned upon furniture, he was asked to look, himself, at an upstairs room, and form his own opinion about the request. Both mother and daughter went up with him; but the three had hardly entered the room, when a loud battering noise was heard on the other side of the thin wall which separated them 121from the neighbouring house. And, presently a still greater noise was heard from the rush of footsteps upon the stairs.

The daughter, it seems, was not in the plot. Her husband had ostentatiously ridden away from the door on the previous morning, to go into the country, for an absence of some days;—exactly like a hero in Boccaccio. At night, he quietly returned, and took up his abode, by preconcert with his neighbours, next door. In the morning he lay with those neighbours in ambush. When they all tumultuously rushed up stairs—into the man’s own abode—they were full of indignation at Sir Robert’s wantonness; but,—unfortunately for their story—in their eager haste they entered the room almost as soon as he himself had entered it, with his two companions. Nevertheless, they persisted in their accusation; permitting, however, when the first burst of virtuous wrath had somewhat subsided, the appearance of a sufficient indication that they were not wholly averse from listening to a reasonable proposal. There was a way, and one way only, in which that fierce wrath might be appeased. Sir Robert, however, was indignant in his turn. The purse of the intended victim remained stubbornly closed.

There is no need to pursue the unsavoury narrative. Nor would so much of the story have here been told, but for the suggestion which lies within it that the rapid breaking up of Sir Robert’s vigorous constitution was not perhaps due, quite exclusively,—as has been commonly believed^[15]—to the malicious privation inflicted upon him by King Charles. For though he was successful in extracting, from the chief accuser himself, a confession of the falsehood of the charge, and an acknowledgment that the object of the 122conspirators was to extort money, yet the matter brought him much toil and vexation of spirit. One of the latest acts of his life was to arrange the proofs of the conspiracy in due and formal array.^[16] |Cottonian Charters, &c., i, 3, seqq.; MS. Addit., 14049, ff. 21–43. (B. M.)| When he had done that, and had once again made an effort—as fruitless as the efforts which had been made before—for the recovery of his library, he seems to have prepared himself for death.

Sir Robert’s repeated efforts to regain his Library were not unseconded by friends powerful at Court. But the King’s stubbornness would not give way—till concession was too late. The Lord Privy Seal (the newly-appointed successor of Worcester, recently dead), was amongst those who interceded with Charles. |Cotton’s Death.| A little before Sir Robert’s death his Lordship sent to him John Rowland—one of his officers—to tell him that, at length, his mediation had been successful, and the King was reconciled to him. |Rowland, in Pref. to the Political Satire entitled Gondomar’s Transactions, &c.| Cotton answered, ‘You come too late. My heart is broken.’

Cotton, when he came to lie on the bed of death, had certain topics of reflection—of a secular sort—on which he might well look back with some measure of complacency. As a student of Antiquity he had been conspicuously successful. |Cotton’s Deathbed Reflections.| He had won the respect and reverence of every man in Europe who had proved himself competent to judge of such studies. And he had not been a selfish student. He had made his own researches and collections seed plots for Posterity. If, as a Statesman, he had missed his immediate aims more frequently than he had reached them, he 123had none the less rendered, on some salient occasions, brilliant public service. He had shewn, incontestably, that the true greatness of England lay near his heart.

One of his contemporaries presently said of him—when told of his death—‘If you could look at Sir Robert Cotton’s heart “My Library” would be found inscribed there;—just as Queen Mary said “Calais” was printed deeply on hers.’ But the character impressed on every volume of that large collection which he so loved is ‘England.’ To illustrate the history, and to enlighten the policy, of Englishmen was the object which made Cotton, from his youth, a Collector.

On the other hand, when the inevitable deathbed reflections passed from things secular to things sacred,—and also from Past to Future,—there was very little room for complacency of any sort. A few years before, when a better and more famous man than Cotton lay in like circumstances, this thought came into his mind:—‘Godly men, in time of extreme afflictions, did comfort themselves with the remembrance of their former life, in which they had glorified God. It is not so in me. I have no comfort that way. All things in my former life have been vain,—vain,—vain.’

Those words were among Sir Robert Cotton’s own early recollections. When he was sixteen years of age some of the dying words of Philip Sydney were repeated in almost every manor-house of England, and at many a cottage fireside. Those particular words came under his eye, at the most impressionable period of his life. The document which has handed them down to us was preserved by his care.^[17] Did the exact thought they embody, and the very 124words themselves, come into his mind, as they well might, when he, too, lay upon his deathbed?

Be that as it may, such words in Sir Robert’s mouth would have had a special fitness. And he knew it well. Happily, he also knew where to look for comfort. He found it, just as Philip Sydney—in common with many thousands among the nameless Englishmen who had passed away in the interval between 1586 and 1631—had found it before him. He could say, as Sydney said:—

Not long before he died, Cotton said to a friend (after a long conference which he had held with Dr. Oldisworth, a Divine who spent many hours, from day to day, at his bedside) such comfort as I would not want, to be the greatest monarch in the world.’ |The last Scene.| Bishop Williams—who passed the greater part of the last night in conversation with him—remarked, as he went his way in the morning, ‘I came to bring Sir Robert comfort, but I carry away more than I brought.’ To the last, however, the ruling passion of Cotton’s nature asserted itself. He could forgive his persecutors, but he could not shake off the memory of the bitterness of the persecution. Turning to Sir Henry Spelman, he said: ‘Tell the Lord Privy Seal, and the rest of the Council, that their so long detaining my books from me has been the cause of this mortal malady.’ Spelman gave his message, and the ‘Lord Privy Seal’ himself hastened to Sir Robert’s bedside to express his regrets. 125The interview was narrated to Charles, and presently the Earl of Dorset was sent, from the King himself. The new comforter came half an hour too late. The persecuted man had passed to his rest. He died, trusting in the one, only, all-sufficient, Saviour of sinful men. His death occurred on the 6th of May, 1631. |John Pory to Sir Thomas Puckering; MS. Harl., 7000, fol. 310.| His body was removed to Conington, and was interred with more than the usual demonstrations of respect. The inscription on his monument is printed at the end of this chapter.

When Lord Dorset, on his arrival at Cotton House with the royal message, found that Sir Robert was already dead he turned to the heir. If the Earl has been truly reported, the terms in which he expressed his master’s condolence and good wishes were ill-chosen: ‘To you, His Majesty commanded me to say that, as he loved your father, so he will continue his love to yourself.’ |Pory to Sir T. Puckering, as above.| The comfort of the promise could not have been great. Sir Thomas’ experiences of the rubs of life were, however, to come chiefly from the King’s opponents; not from the King.

His life was a quiet one, up to the time of the outbreak of Civil War. Until then, its most notable incidents grew out of the circumstance that it fell to his lot to serve as Sheriff of Huntingdonshire, during the busy year of ‘Shipmoney.’

Sir Thomas Cotton was in no danger of being tempted to follow the example of Hampden. The readiness with which he discharged the troublesome task of collecting the impost throughout his county probably laid the first foundation of a strong feeling of personal ill-will towards him, on the part of the lower class of the adherents of the Parliament, during subsequent years. He never ranged himself with the King’s party. Neither would he take any prominent 126part on the side of the Parliament. He had little taste for public life; and regarded the quarrel with the aloofness of spirit natural to a man with no dominant political convictions, and with a decided love for country sports and for the pleasures of domesticity.

He had sat in Parliament (for Marlow) during his father’s lifetime, and in his father’s company. His correspondence shows considerable talent. The extensive portion of that correspondence—in the years 1636 and 1637—which was imposed on him by the Shipmoney business, shews also considerable power of dealing with official details, little as he could have liked them. It exhibits an anxiety to acquit himself conscientiously of a difficult duty, and not to shirk any of the incidents of duty merely on account of their distastefulness. In the ‘Short Parliament’ of 1640 he sat as member for his own county. He does not seem to have sought for any seat in the memorable Parliament which followed.

His troubles began in 1644. Much to his disgust he was appointed to be one of the ‘Committee of Sequestrations’ for Huntingdonshire. The duty was one which any English gentleman might well have disliked without incurring the reproach either of idleness or of undue fastidiousness. Sir Thomas’ repugnance to the work was backed by a repugnance, not less keen, to those who would fain have been his fellows in its performance.

‘This County of Huntingdon’—so he writes not long after his own nomination to an ungenial office, which he refused to accept on the ground of an illness, that was far from being feigned for the occasion—‘is in an unhappy condition by Sequestrators. Only four or five men, of mean reputation and estate, are “Committees;” and they act (all of them) as Judges, Jury, and Executioners.’ His 127own experience was destined to become a pregnant comment on that pithy text.

His avoidance of all share in the task of punishing, by fine and imprisonment, those of his old friends and country neighbours who thought that the duty of loyalty to the Crown was still a duty, however glaring the faults of the man who, for the time, wore the Crown, was the primary offence given by Sir Thomas Cotton to the busy patriots who would fain have had him work with them as a fellow-sequestrator. His illness (as I have said) was doubtless real enough; but he also disliked the work, and took no pains to conceal his dislike. Medical advisers told him that Bedfordshire—where he also had property—was a better county than Huntingdonshire for a man who suffered from chronic ague and low fever. But Sir Thomas needed no adviser to tell him that, under the existing circumstances of the country and the times, Eyworth would be a much more satisfactory abode than Conington for a quiet-loving man who had other duties than those of a soldier, who abhorred civil war with all his soul, and who ardently desired such a solution of the current issues as would neither make the King a mere dependent on his Parliament, nor make the Parliament an absolute ruler over the kingdom. Sir Thomas went into Bedfordshire. Lady Cotton continued to abide at Conington. Very soon after his departure she received a summons, addressed to her husband, and couched exactly in these words: ‘You are assessed eight hundred pounds, according to an Ordinance of Parliament. |1643. 16 August.| The King and Parliament hath present use of these monies. Therefore, we pray you, send it up to us at Huntingdon on Saturday next.’ Before the receipt of this very summary ‘assessment’ many of Sir Thomas Cotton’s horses, with a good deal of farm produce 128and other property, had been already seized, by measures more summary still. Meanwhile Sir Thomas had committed no act of delinquency; he had simply removed himself into another county. Payment was refused.

The sequel of the story depicts, in small, what was then passing at large over much of the length and breadth of England. The farmers on the Conington estate were told, in the plainest of words, that if they did not pay their rents ‘to us at Huntingdon,’ their moveables would be seized and themselves treated as ‘delinquents.’ Execution, in those days, followed hard on process; and little difference was made, either in word or deed, at the farms and at the manor-house. On one morning, Lady Cotton was visited in her bedchamber—before she could dress—by five troopers, who, under her own eyes, broke open her drawers and trunks, and carried off what they thought meet. On another, one of Sir Thomas’ confidential servants received a similar visit; had his papers rifled in a like fashion, and his apparel stolen. At the stables and out-offices scarcely any three days passed, during the entire summer of 1643—from May to August—without some raid or other for plunder. For much of this there was scarcely the semblance or the pretext of a legal warrant. During those saturnalia of ‘liberty’ there was, virtually, no judge in England, and not a few men did whatsoever seemed good in their own eyes.

Sir Thomas Cotton was old enough to remember the early stages of the long conflict of which—in 1643—this was seemingly the upshot. In the Parliament at Oxford he had sat beside his father and his father’s friends. His correspondence at this time—so far as it appears to have survived—deals merely with the passing events. It contains, 129I think, no disclosure of any reflections which may have crossed his mind on the principles which underlay them. He was probably shrewd enough to see already that the grossness of the current abuses of popular power carried with it no scintilla of valid blame upon the first leaders in that conflict—the real issues of which were still far off. What he, in common with so many of the best gentlemen in England, was now smarting under was the consequence rather of the royal triumphs of Charles’ earlier years, than of the royal defeats of his later years. Had the policy of Robert Cotton and of John Eliot prevailed a quarter of a century sooner, there would (very probably) have been no county committees of sequestrators; no political scaffolds at Whitehall; no ruling of England by brute force under artificers suddenly transformed into generals; no wholesale massacres in Ireland, fraught with mischief for the whole empire during centuries to come.

Be that however as it may, things were not yet at so bad a pass, but that a curb could, now and then, be put on the necks of such busy patriots as those who sat in perpetual Committee at Huntingdon. Redress was impossible; seeing that the plunder was dissipated almost as fast as it was made. But, in Sir Thomas Cotton’s case, it was found practicable to put a check on its progress. He invoked the aid of a powerful friend, Henry, Earl of Manchester, who represented the authority of the Parliament in Huntingdonshire. The Earl summoned the Sequestrators to show cause for their raids on Conington. He held a court. The new functionaries were brought—after some ineffectual bluster—to confess that they knew of no act done by Cotton which brought 130him within purview of the Parliamentary Ordinance, nor of any other legal cause to subject him to sequestration. As the words of confession were on the lips of one active Committee-man, another functionary blurted out—most felicitously—‘You are wrong. |Proceedings in the Sequestration of the Estate of Sir T. Cotton; MS. Addit., 5012, ff. 34, seqq.| Master Serjeant Wilde wished it should be done.’ And, in the sequel, ‘Master Serjeant’ proved to be strong enough to protract the inquiry, and even to procure its adjournment to London; though his attempt to maintain the sequestration—on a plea the falsehood of which was conclusively proved—came at last to be entirely foiled.

When Sir Thomas Cotton came to sum up his losses he found that they amounted to more than four thousand pounds (in the money of that day). |Ib., ff. 71, seqq.| ‘They have had,’ he wrote, ‘£1500, in money; besides eleven horses, worth £140; Billeting at Conington, Eyworth, and other places, which came to £100; spoil made at Sawtrey and at St. Germans which £300 will not make good; and besides the decay of my rents to an amount of at least £600 a-year; ... and now the layers and taxes will take up the whole of Ladyday’s rent.’ |Ib., 74.| Meanwhile his unlucky tenants, in Huntingdonshire alone, had been deprived of a hundred and ninety horses, and their farms had been stripped both of provisions and of forage.

By way of pleasant diversity to his troubles in Huntingdonshire and Bedfordshire Sir Thomas received, presently, a letter from John Selden—the old and warmly-attached friend of his family—warning him that the capabilities of Cotton House in London had caught the eye of certain other Committee-men, and had made a deep impression on them. |The Attempt to seize on Cotton House.| They saw that it would do capitally both as a lodging house for the entertainment of distinguished strangers who might come to Westminster, to wait on the 131Parliament, and as a State prison for very eminent delinquents. These watchful Committee-men were also members of the Council of State; and the time had now come when King James’ sarcastic and well-remembered jest—‘Bring me sax chairs, for I see sax kings approaching’—was turning itself into a very awkward fact. These Committee-men, too, (like their humbler fellows at Huntingdon,) had their Serjeant at hand to give them advice on elastic points of law. ‘Serjeant Dendy,’ wrote Selden, ‘fairly told me that the Committee and Council were informed that, by the Patent under which you claim, it was provided that your interest [in Cotton House] should cease, during the time of the Parliament.’ |Selden to Sir T. Cotton; in an Appendix to Cotton MSS. marked ‘16. l.’ fol. 50 (B. M.)| Certainly, an awkward clause to appear in a man’s lease, in days when a Parliament, beginning its ‘time’ in 1641 had not quite ended it until 1660. This claim of the Council of State proved, in the sequel, to have in it no more of real validity than had that other claim to procure the Conington rents to be paid ‘to us at Huntingdon’; but, like that, it gave Sir Thomas Cotton a good deal of annoyance before he succeeded in getting quit of it.

It is much to his honour that petty but cumulative misfortunes like these did not sour Sir Thomas Cotton’s temper. When quieter times came, he showed himself the worthy son of his eminent father, both by the improvement of his library, at considerable charge, and by the liberality with which he lent his choicest manuscripts, and, in many ways, made them and his other collections serviceable to literature. The still extant acknowledgments of service of this sort from historians and great scholars are very numerous.^[19]

132By his first marriage with Margaret Howard, daughter of William Lord Howard of Naworth, Sir Thomas had one son and two daughters. By his second marriage with Alice Constable he had four sons, two of whom died without issue. Alice was the daughter and sole heir of Sir John Constable of Dromondley in Yorkshire, and the relict of Edmund Anderson of Eyworth and of Stratton in Bedfordshire, and she brought with her a considerable dowry.

Sir John Cotton, the eldest son of the first marriage, 133sat in Parliament for the borough of Huntingdon in the reign of Charles the Second, and for Huntingdonshire in that of James the Second. But he took no prominent part in public affairs. Like his father he was twice married. And his first wife became step-daughter as well as daughter-in-law to his father, being Dorothy, daughter and heir of Edmund Anderson of Eyworth above mentioned. His second wife was Elizabeth Honywood. He seems to have resembled his father both in his tastes for a quiet country life, and in the liberality with which he allowed (on reasonable cause and to proper persons) access to his library. Nor did Sir John, any more than Sir Thomas, escape animadversion, when he allowed himself to form his own judgment of the fitness or the timeliness of any particular application. |Autobiog. and Corresp., vol. ii, p. 40.| |History of the Reformation, vol. iii, Introd., p. 8. (Edit. of 1714.)| Caustic Symonds D’Ewes writes down Sir Thomas Cotton as ‘unworthy to be master of so inestimable a library.’ Caustic Bishop Burnet writes in his turn of Sir John Cotton: ‘A great Prelate had possessed him with such prejudices against me that ... he desired to be excused’ [from granting Burnet admittance to the Cottonian Library] ‘unless the Archbishop of Canterbury or a Secretary of State would recommend me as a person fit to have access.’ Against strictures such as these, it were easy, but is not needful, to adduce a score of acknowledgments of deep obligation, from writers more eminent by far than either D’Ewes or Burnet.

The eldest son (also John) of Sir John Cotton, by his wife Dorothy, did not live to inherit either the famous library or the ancestral estates. He died in 1681, and his later days seem to have been marked by some stormy incidents. In one point, his troubles resembled those which disturbed the last year of his great-grandfather’s life;—in so far as that they were caused by a lady. But whereas 134Sir Robert had the lady thrust upon him, to suit the purposes of other men, the misfortunes of his great-grandson appear to have grown out of an ardent but illicit passion—as ardently, and not less illicitly, returned by its object. Some scraps of their correspondence which have chanced to be preserved read, after two centuries of dusty repose, as if they were still all aflame with that fierce love which an experienced poet describes as ‘passion’s essence.’^[20]

Sir John Cotton survived till nearly the close of the seventeenth century. He was succeeded in the baronetcy and estates by John, the son of the last-mentioned John Cotton, who had married Frances, daughter and heir of Sir George Downing of East Hatley in Cambridgeshire. Sir John, fourth baronet, married Elizabeth Herbert, one of the grand-daughters of Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. Like his ancestors of many generations, this Sir John Cotton sat in Parliament for Huntingdonshire. His chief claim to honourable memory is that he settled the Cottonian Library on the British nation for ever, and thus made its founder, Sir Robert, the virtual and first Founder of the British Museum. This was done by Act of Parliament, in the year 1700.

135This eminent public benefactor died, in 1731, without surviving issue. The baronetcy then reverted to Robert the eldest son of the second marriage of the first Sir John Cotton, grandson of the Founder. From Sir Robert, fifth baronet, the dignity came, in 1749, to a fourth ‘John Cotton’ who then became sixth baronet and who was the last surviving male heir of his honoured line.

Sir John had lost his only son—a fifth John—many years before his accession to the baronetcy, which, on his own death (27 March, 1752), became extinct. Conington had long previously passed to a younger son of Sir Thomas Cotton, second baronet; as shown in the following—

138The reader who glances at this pedigree will notice that some of the Cottons of 1600–1750 were as fortunate in getting heiress-wives as had been their foregoers of preceding centuries. But their possessions were scattered almost as rapidly as they had been augmented. Conington, which was the most valued possession of Sir Robert, was less prized by his descendants. The Council Books show that some of its appendant manors and members—notably Glatton and Hulme—gave to the Founder himself a good deal of trouble. The Sequestration Books show the anxieties and losses which the busy Parliamentarians of Huntingdonshire inflicted on his next successor. Other circumstances tended also to bring the place into disfavour with owners who had a choice of seats. It lay so close to the great northern road, as to be exposed to undue demands alike from the movement of troops and from the tramping of professional vagrants. Nor was it less exposed, from its situation, to injuries by great floods. |Desertion of the old Seat of Conington.| Long before the extinction of the male line, Conington was deserted, in favour of more attractive abodes in southern counties. We learn from a passage in Stukeley’s Itinerary that the house was fast becoming a ruin, even in the reign of George the First; although it had been solidly rebuilt by Sir Robert himself.

‘I thought it,’ writes that antiquary, ‘a piety to turn half a mile out of the road, to visit Conington the seat of the noble Sir Robert Cotton,—where he and Camden have often sat in council upon the Antiquities of Britain, and where he had a choice collection of Roman inscriptions picked up from all parts of the kingdom. I was concerned to see a stately old house of hewn stone, large and handsome, already falling into ruin.’^[22]

139By the Statute which established the Cotton Library as a national institution, it was enacted as follows: ‘The Cottonian Library ... shall be kept and preserved, in the name and family of the Cottons, for public use and advantage. |The Establishment Act of 1700.| And therefore, according to the desire of the said Sir John Cotton, and at his request, the said Mansion House, ... and also all the said Library, ... together with all the Coins, Medals, and other rarities, ... shall be vested in Trustees ... with a perpetual succession.’ The first Trustees were the Lord Chancellor Somers, Mr. Speaker Harley (afterwards Earl of Oxford), and the Lord Chief Justice, ex officio; together with Sir Robert Cotton, of Hatley St. George, Cambridgeshire; Philip Cotton, of Conington; Robert Cotton of Gedding, in Cambridgeshire, and William Hanbury, of the Inner Temple. |12 & 13 Will. III, c. 7.| It was provided that on the decease of any one of the four family trustees the heir male, for the time being, of Sir Robert Cotton, the founder, should appoint a successor.

The furious party-spirit which at this time divided the country into hostile camps, the leaders of which were at any moment ready to fly at each other’s throats, was eminently unfavourable both to the guardianship and to the growth of the new institution; as it was, indeed, to all matters of learning or of mental culture. Hardly seven years had passed before it was found necessary to pass ‘An Act for the better securing of Her Majesty’s purchase of Cotton House in Westminster.’

This Act recites that since the preceding enactment of 1700 ‘very little had been done in pursuance thereof to make the said Library useful to the Public, except what had been lately done at Her Majesty’s charge;’ and that the place wherein the Library then was, being ‘a narrow little damp room, was improper for preserving the books 140and papers.’ The Act then proceeds to declare that an agreement had been made for the purchase of Cotton House for £4,500, ‘to the intent that it might be in Her Majesty’s power to make this most valuable collection useful to her own subjects, and to all learned strangers.’

Within five years, however, this unfortunate Library had to be removed from Cotton House to Essex House, in the Strand (1712); and thence again, in 1730, to Ashburnham House, at Westminster (already containing the Royal collection), where it had not long been lodged, when the fire occurred by which it was so seriously injured. |The Fire at Ashburnham House.| The account which the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry gave to the Public, shortly after the occurrence of this calamity, runs thus:

‘On Saturday morning, October 23, 1731, a great smoke was perceived by Dr. Bentley, and the rest of the family at Ashburnham House, which soon after broke out into a flame. It began from a wooden mantel-tree taking fire which lay across a stove-chimney that was under the room where the MSS. of the Royal and Cottonian Libraries were lodged, and was communicated to that room by the wainscoat and by pieces of timber, that stood perpendicularly upon each end of the mantel-tree.’

‘They were in hope, at first,’ continues the Committee, ‘to put a stop to the fire by throwing water upon the pieces of timber and wainscoat, ... and therefore did not begin to remove the books so soon as they otherwise would have done. But, the fire prevailing, Mr. Casley, the Deputy Librarian, took care in the first place to remove the famous Alexandrian MS. and the books under the head of Augustus’ [twelve of the Cottonian presses, it will be remembered, were adorned by the heads of the twelve Cæsars, whence the still existing designations or press-marks, 141as for instance, that of the famous Evangeliary of King Ethelstan, Nero D. vi, mentioned on page 132] ‘in the Cottonian Library, as being esteemed the most valuable amongst the collection. Several entire presses, with the books in them, were also removed; but ... several of the backs of the presses being already on fire, they were obliged to be broke open, and the books, as many as could be, thrown out of the windows.’ All the MSS. that were saved, and the remains of what been burnt, were removed to the Dormitory of Westminster School.

At the time of this disastrous fire, the number of MS. volumes was 958. Of this number 114 were reported to be ‘lost, burnt, or entirely spoiled; and 98 damaged so as to be defective.’ Mr. Speaker Onslow took immediate measures, in conjunction with Dr. Bentley and Mr. Casley, for the examination of the burnt MSS., and for the repair of such as were then deemed alone reparable. Three months afterwards the Record Clerk to whom the task was more particularly committed, thus reports his progress: ‘One hundred and upwards,’ he says, ‘being volumes of Letters and State Papers, have been quite taken to pieces, marked, and bound again.’ |Report of the Committee appointed to view the Cottonian Library (1732), pp. 11–15; and Casley’s Appendix thereto.| But he laments that ‘there having no way hitherto been found out to extend vellum and parchment that has been shrivelled up and contracted by fire to its former dimensions, part of several of the vellum MSS. must remain not legible, unless the desideratum can be supplied.’

For nearly a century some of the most precious of the injured MSS. remained as the fire had left them. But in 1824, by the care of Mr. Forshall, the then Keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum, a commencement was made towards their restoration, which his successor, Sir F. Madden, zealously and successfully continued. Nearly 142three hundred volumes have been repaired, and more or less completely restored, (a considerable number of which were previously regarded as beyond all hope of recovery) to a state of legibility.^[23]

The calamity of 1731 brought about what may, in a sense, be termed a partial compensation, by inducing Major Arthur Edwards to make an important bequest, with the view of precluding its recurrence. |The bequest of Arthur Edwards.| Owing to the protraction of a life interest in the legacy—the terms of which will be cited in describing that eventual Act of Incorporation which created the British Museum—it did not become available until other arrangements had made its application to building purposes needless. It was, consequently, and in pursuance of the Testator’s contingent instructions, appropriated to the purchase of books in the manner, and with results, which will be spoken of in a subsequent chapter. Major Edwards also bequeathed his own collection of about 2,000 volumes of printed books, by way of addition to the Cottonian Library of MSS. These, however, were not actually incorporated with the Museum collections until the year 1769.

For several years, Bentley conjoined the Keepership of the Cottonian with that of the Royal Library. His predecessors in the office were Dr. Thomas Smith (hitherto the only biographer of the Founder,) and William Hanbury, who had married a descendant of the Founder. |The Keepers of the Cottonian Library.| Dr. Smith was less eminent as a scholar—though his learning was great—but far more estimable as a man, than was his successor in the 143Keepership, the imperious and covetous Master of Trinity. For conscience sake, Smith had given up both a good fellowship and a good living, at the Revolution. Literature profited by the loss of Divinity. He died in May, 1710. Hanbury—by a very undesirable plurality—was a Trustee as well as Keeper. That he was not, in either capacity, strictly faithful to the spirit of the Trust confided to him seems to be established by incidents which I find recorded in the MS. Diary of Humphrey Wanley. The reader will observe that it is possible to reconcile Wanley’s statement with the supposition that the MSS. alienated had never actually been made part of the Cottonian Library, though it is as plain as sunlight that a really faithful trustee would have made them part of it. As it turned out, the sale of them did no actual and eventual mischief. On December 2nd, 1724, says Wanley, ‘I had a conversation with Mr. Hanbury, who owned that he hath still in his possession many original and valuable papers given him by his wife’s brother, Sir John Cotton, which now lie in different places. These papers and whatever else happens to be among them—as books, rolls, &c.—he hath agreed to put into my hands for my Lord’s [Oxford’s] use. |Wanley’s Diary, MS., ii, 40 (B.M.).| I have promised that he shall be very well paid and considered for the same.’

Wanley had already recorded a previous visit in which Hanbury had delivered ‘for my Lord Oxford’s use, a small but curious parcel of old letters,’ adding: ‘I believe he expects a gratuity for them.’ On the last day of December he received another parcel; and on the 4th January, 1725, he again writes: ‘Mr. Hanbury gave me another parcel of letters written to Sir Robert Cotton.’

Without endorsing the violent diatribe of Lord Oxford (the second of the Harleian Earls) against Hanbury’s 144successor—as the almost wilful destroyer of part of the Cotton MSS.—it must be admitted that there is conclusive evidence that neglect of duty on Dr. Bentley’s part was a moving agent in the disaster. Under his nominal keepership the practical duties of Cottonian Librarian were discharged by an industrious and otherwise meritorious deputy, David Casley.

There were many projects for making Sir Robert Cotton’s noble collections, both in literature and antiquities, the foundation of a ‘British Museum,’ before a feasible and successful project was hit upon. |Sloane to Charlett, 7 April, 1707. (Bodleian Library, Oxford).| It is curious to note that one of these schemes embraced, as the groundwork of the projected national Museum, the collections of Sir Robert Cotton, of Prince Henry, and of Lord Arundel; and that some particulars of the plan were narrated—to a country correspondent—by Sir Hans Sloane, almost fifty years before his own conditional bequest gave occasion and means for the eventual union of the collections so spoken of with the vast gatherings of all kinds, in literature and in science, to the procuring of which so large a portion of his own useful and laborious life was to be devoted.

When that occasion came, two of the then Cottonian Trustees framed a Petition to Parliament in which they expressed their acknowledgments for ‘seasonable and necessary care’ of the Cotton Library. They alleged that it had remained ‘almost useless’ to the Public, during many years, for want of a fixed and convenient building to receive it; that it had been exposed to many dangers by frequent removals, and had once run the hazard of ‘a total destruction by fire.’ If, said they, the loss which the Public then sustained proved to be less than had been feared, the Public owed the obligation ‘to a great member 145of this House’ [of Commons] ‘who powerfully interposed and assisted in its preservation.’ The allusion is to the Right Hon. Arthur Onslow, the then Speaker, who afterwards became one of the first Trustees of the Museum established by the Act of 1753.

The Petitioners proceed to state that their most earnest wishes are accomplished by seeing a Library, famed throughout Europe, with the generous gifts of Major Edwards annexed thereto, placed out of all further dangers from neglect, and that they rejoice to perceive that the Museum of their own Founder is about to be enlarged by other rare and valuable collections. ‘We are,’ say they, ‘fully persuaded that an edifice raised upon such a stately plan will, by degrees, be stored with benefactions and become a common Cabinet for preserving with safety all curiosities and whatsoever is choice or excellent in its kind. Moreover, being a new institution for the service of the learned world it will be an honour to the Nation, an ornament long wanted in this great city, and a distinguished event in the history of our times.’ |Heretofore, p. 3.| Then follows the passage which I have prefixed, by way of motto, to this first division of the volume now in the reader’s hands.

When these Petitioners went on to state to Parliament that ‘no expression of gratitude can be too great ... for doing honour to the memory of Sir Robert Cotton,’ their assertion gave rise to no utterance of hostile feeling. |Recent Charges against the character and fame of Sir R. Cotton.| They were not even charged with undue laudation of their ancestor. People who at that time troubled themselves to think of such matters at all, were agreed in regarding Sir Robert Cotton as unquestionably one of the worthies of England. Nowadays—as I have had occasion to show 146already—there are many gainsayers. A distinguished historian (Mr. Gardiner) asperses Cotton’s character both for statesmanship and for truthfulness; whilst a distinguished archæologist (Mr. Brewer) charges him with embezzling records.

The first charge has been partly met, in these pages, by the simple apposition and collation of contemporary evidence. The reader has his choice between the cumulative testimony of several English peers and statesmen; and the unsupported testimony of one foreign diplomatist, who made it his boast to be the enemy of Englishmen, and whose hostility was graduated in tolerably exact accordance with the qualities and the deeds which have made England proud of them. The home witnesses gave their testimony whilst the events were still fresh in men’s minds. They gave it in broad daylight, and with open doors. The foreign witness put his evidence into a secret dispatch, to be seen by no human eye, out of the Spanish Cabinet, until our own historian disinterred it, at Simancas, two centuries and a half after date. Nor is this quite all.

If Gondomar’s account be true, not only was Sir Robert Cotton’s life as a statesman a protracted lie, but his duplicity was so superbly cloaked as to deceive the most keen-sighted of his contemporaries. The men who sat habitually at his board in his days of health, and who ministered at his bedside in all the offices of tender friendship in his days of sickness and of death, were all wrong about his character. |A Discours wether yt be fitt for Inglande to make peace with Spaine. MS. Cott. Vespas. C. xiii, ff. 160, seqq. (B. M.).| And there is this other little fact to boot: Sir Robert Cotton began his public life by as open a declaration of anti-Spanish policy in relation to the great question of the Netherlands as ever came from the lips of our Ralegh. He ended his public life with as staunch an adherence to the principles, both in Church and State, 147which the rulers of Spain abhorred as that which had been shown by Ralegh on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, or by Eliot in the dungeon of the Tower of London. Meanwhile, just in the mid-channel of his career, and in the prime of his faculties, Sir Robert Cotton threw himself, gratuitously, at the feet of Gondomar. He humbly asked leave to take Spanish service in the guise of a political slave. The historian’s proposition is a bold one. And its evidence needs to be cogent. English readers now know quite enough about Gondomar to judge whether or not his sole testimony is sufficient to damn the fame of such a man as Cotton;—to degrade him from the rank of an English worthy;—to brand him as a criminal virtually convicted of apostacy in religion, and of treason to his avowed convictions in politics?^[24]

148From the nature of things the second charge cannot be so directly, so compactly, or so effectively met. Almost a third of the manuscripts which form the most important section of the Cotton Library consist of, or contain, Papers of State. Of these a very considerable proportion once belonged to the State. How came they to pass into the hands of Sir Robert Cotton?

By Mr. Brewer the question has been answered, unhesitatingly and exhaustively. Large portions of the Diplomatic Correspondence of Henry the Eighth were, he says, ‘carried off in 1614, if not before, by Sir Robert Cotton.... The original bundles appear to have been broken up under the keepership of Agarde, when the Treasury of the Exchequer was rifled of its most precious contents to augment the collections of Sir R. Cotton.... |Calendar of the State Papers; Reign of Henry VIII, Pref., pp. viii, ix.| For the early years of Henry, his [Sir Robert’s] collections are more numerous, and even more interesting, than the documents in the English, the French, or the Spanish Archives. They are equally authentic.... By what fraud or negligence they found their way into the possession of Sir Robert Cotton it is not for me to inquire.’

No writer can be better qualified to speak with authority on such a topic as this than is Mr. Brewer. Familiar with State Papers and with records of all kinds for a very long period, he has won the deep respect of all students of our history by the uses to which his knowledge has been applied. But the ablest writer will sometimes write 149hastily. The most impartial inquirer will now and then reach a conclusion by overleaping part of the evidence.

The sweeping passage which I have quoted, like other passages in Mr. Riley’s preface to Liber Custumarum, previously noticed, leaves altogether out of view three or four whole classes of testimony—chains not links—having a vital bearing on the issue. For example—

I. It disregards the fact that certain bundles of State letters and papers were given by the King’s order to Sir Robert Cotton, during the reign of James the First. These, indeed, were commanded to be ‘subscriptions and signatures of Princes and great men, attached to letters otherwise unimportant.’ But who is to tell us what was the estimate of ‘importance’ in papers of State formed, two centuries and a half ago, by James, who gave the order, or by Sir Thomas Wilson, who received it?

II. It disregards the fact that long before, as well as long after, that known order of 1618, Sir Robert’s possession of papers once the property of the Government was so published and so recognized as to imply, by fair induction, that the possession must have been—as far as he was concerned—a lawful one. In his own writings, he iterates and reiterates reference to national documents then in his own collection. His references are specific and minute. Secretaries of State write to him, asking leave to inspect original Treaties (sometimes in order to lay them before the King in person) and promising to return them promptly. |Domestic Corresp., as above, 1621, March; and passim; also Council Books (C. O.).| Law Officers of the Crown desire him kindly to afford them opportunities for collating public instruments, preserved at Cotton House, with public instruments still in the repositories of the Crown.

III. It leaves out of sight the fact that in the correspondence of Sir Edward Coke with Sir Robert Cotton 150there is a passage which also implies—though it does not expressly assert—that Sir Robert had received from King James a permission to select records, of some kind or other, from the Tower of London, anterior to the qualified permission, |Sir E. Coke to Sir R. Cotton; MS. Cott. Julius, ciii (Undated; probably 1612). (B. M.)| above mentioned, given in 1618, to select ‘autographs’ from the Paper Office;

IV. It disregards that strong implication of a lawful possession—so far as Sir Robert Cotton, individually, is concerned—which necessarily arises out of the fact that at two several periods the Cottonian Library was under the sole control and custody of Crown officials; |Registers of Privy Council, 1616; 1629; 1630; passim (C. O.)| that it remained under such control for an aggregate period of more than two years; that Cotton’s bitter enemies were then at the head of affairs; that in 1630 a Royal Commission was actually issued |Signs Manual, Charles I, vol. xii, § 15 (R. H.).| ‘to search what Records or other Papers of State in the custody of Sir Robert Cotton properly belong to His Majesty, and thereof to certify;’ and that the existing Cottonian MSS., together with those burned in 1732, were, one year after the issue of that Commission, restored by the Crown to Sir Robert Cotton’s heirs;

V. It overlooks the circumstance, vital to the issue now raised, that amongst the MSS. which most indubitably were once Crown property many can still be minutely traced from possessor to possessor, prior to their reception into the Cottonian Library;

And VI. It disregards the fact, hardly less important, that a patriotic statesman conversant both with the arcana of government at large, and with the special arcana of the State Paper Office and Secretary’s offices, under King James the First and King Charles the First, might have cogent reasons for believing that some important classes of State Papers would be likely to remain much more truly 151and enduringly the property of the English nation if stored up at Cotton House—even had no ‘British Museum’ ever been created—than if stored up at Whitehall.

Inferences and implications such as these are far from amounting to conclusive proof. But most readers, I think, will assent to the assertion that, cumulatively, they amount to a very strong presumption indeed that the stigma which has been impressed on Sir Robert Cotton’s memory is both precipitate and unjust. Precipitate it plainly is, for a confident verdict has virtually been pronounced—upon a grave issue,—before hearing any evidence for the accused. Unjust I, for one, cannot but think it, inasmuch as circumstances which at most are but grounds of mere suspicion of the greater offence charged, have been so huddled up with proofs of a minor and (comparatively) venial offence, that readers giving but ordinary attention to the allegations and their respective evidence are almost certain to be misled.

For, undoubtedly, Sir Robert Cotton stands convicted of dealing, more than once, with manuscripts which he had borrowed very much as though they had been manuscripts which he possessed. Mr. Riley’s testimony is, on this point, conclusive. An independent witness, Dr. Sedgwick Saunders, the able Chairman of the Library Committee of the Corporation of London, tells me that both the returned MS. of Liber Custumarum, and also that of Liber Legum Antiquorum, bear as unmistakable marks of a claim to ownership on Sir Robert’s part, as those of which the return was refused.

To such proofs as these I can myself add a new instance. Archbishop Laud had procured, from the Principal and Fellows of St. John’s, the loan to Sir Robert Cotton of a 152certain ancient Beda MS. of great value. Many years passed, and the MS. had not returned to St. John’s. The Fellows cast severe blame on their eminent benefactor. |Archbp. Laud to Sir R. Cotton, MS. Cott. Julius C., iii, f. 232.| Laud had to petition his friend Cotton for the return of Beda, in terms almost pathetic; and he was so doubtful whether pathos would suffice that he added bribe to entreaty. If, he said, ‘anything of worth in like kind come to my hands, I will freely give it you in recompense.’

The reader has seen the abounding proofs of that generous furtherance of every kind of literary effort which Cotton gave, throughout life, with an ungrudging heart and an open hand. |Bolton to Camden; MS. Harl., 7002, f. 396.| Sir Robert’s openness made his library—to use the words of an eminent contemporary—the ‘Common treasury’ of English antiquities. The reader now sees also the drawback. It remains for him to strike a true balance; and to strike it with justice, but also with charity.

‘Death never makes such effectual demonstration of his power, as when he singles out the man who occupies the largest place in public estimation;—as when he seizes upon him whose loss is felt, by thousands, with all the tenderness of a family bereavement;—puts a sudden arrest, ... before the infirmities of age had withdrawn him from the labours of usefulness;— ... and sends the fearful report of this his achievement through the streets of the city, where it runs, in appalling whispers, among the multitude.’—

Life of Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James I, and virtual Founder of the ‘Royal Library.’—Its Augmentors and its Librarians.—Acquisition of the Library of the Theyers.—Incorporation with the Collections of Cotton and of Sloane.

Henry, Prince of Scotland, and afterwards of Wales, was born at Stirling Castle on the 19th of February, 1594. King James had married Anne of Denmark more than four years before the Prince’s birth, but a certain grotesqueness which had marked some of the characteristic circumstances of the marriage in Norway (in 1589) was not without its counterpart among the incidents that came to be attendant on the subsequent event at home. One 154of these incidents is thus narrated in the quaint narrative of a Scottish courtier who made it his business to chronicle the movements of the Court with newsmanlike fidelity:—‘Because the chappell royal was ruinous and too little, the King concluded that the old chappell should be utterly rased, and a new [one] erected in the same place that should be more large, long, and glorious, to entertain the great number of strangers’ who were expected to be present at the baptism. The interval demanded for the restoration of this decayed chapel at Stirling entailed an unusual delay between the child’s birth and his baptism, but it gratified the King by enabling him to send invitations far and wide. Had all of them met with acceptance they would have resulted in the presence of a cloud of witnesses, such as had rarely been seen in Scotland upon any the most famous occasion of courtly rejoicing.

For the presence of two guests in particular James was anxious. He wished to see an ambassador extraordinary from the Court of Elizabeth, and another from that of Henry the Fourth. Henry would not gratify his wish, and the omission was much resented. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was ostentatiously swift to comply, but her willingness was well nigh defeated by one of the common accidents of life. She had fixed her choice on the brilliant Earl of Cumberland, whose love of magnificence was scarcely less prominent than was his love of adventure. He could grace a royal festivity, as conspicuously as he could lead a band of eager soldiers, or a crew of daring navigators. Just as the Earl’s costly preparations for his embassy were completed, he fell sick. Some days were lost in the hope of his speedy recovery, but the Queen was soon obliged to nominate the Earl of Sussex in his stead. Sussex had then to make preparations in turn. The day 155fixed for the ceremony in Scotland had to be more than twice postponed, in order to ensure his presence. In all, more than six months elapsed before the babe was really baptized. We will hope that the Court Chronicler exaggerates a little when he tells us that ‘the time intervening was spent in magnificent banquetting and revelling.’ |True Reportarie of the baptisme of the Prince of Scotland, MS. Addit., 5795 (B. M.).| If so, the potations at Stirling must have vied with those of Elsinore.

When the long-expected day arrived (30 August, 1594) the child lay ‘on a bed of estate richly decored ... with the story of Hercules.’ The old Countess of Mar lifted him into the arms of Lennox, and by him the babe was transferred to those of the English ambassador who held him during baptism. Then Patrick Galloway, we are told, learnedly entreated upon a text from the 21st chapter of Genesis.

The Bishop of Aberdeen taught, in his turn, upon the Sacrament of Baptism—first in the vulgar tongue and then in Latin—and his discourse was followed by the twenty-first Psalm, ‘sung to the great delectation of the noble auditory,’ and also by a panegyric upon the Prince, delivered in Latin verse, from the pulpit. Then came a banquet, at which ‘six gallant dames’ had the cruel task assigned them of performing ‘a silent comedy.’ To the banquet succeeded a ‘desart of sugar,’ drawn in upon a triumphal chariot. The original programme had provided that this richly-laden chariot should be drawn by a lion, for whose due tameness the projector had pledged himself. But to King James a lion, like a sword, was at all times an unpleasant object. He said that it would affright the ladies, and that ‘a black-moore’ would be a more safe propeller. Banquet and dessert together lasted from eight o’clock in the evening until three of the following morning. 156At intervals, the cannon of Stirling Castle roared, until, says our chronicler, ‘the earth trembled therewith.’

Thus was ushered in a brief but remarkable life. It lasted less than nineteen years. |Ibid., pp. 6–17, verso.| Then to the cradle which had been so richly emblazoned with the labours of Hercules, in all the colours of embroidery, there succeeded the hearse of black velvet thickly set with its plumes of sombre feathers. One half, however, of those nineteen years that stood between cradle and hearse were years passed upon an arena to which the course of events had given almost world-wide importance and conspicuousness. The Prince’s career was, by the necessity of his position still more than by reason of his youth, a career of promise, not of performance. But every year which passed after the removal from Scotland seems to have intensified the promise in the eyes of those who watched it, as well as to have deepened a conviction in the minds of nearly all thoughtful bystanders that to a grand ambition there were about to be proffered, in God’s due time, means and appliances more than usually large, and a grand field of action. So it seemed to human expectation. And because, in those long-past years, it reasonably seemed so, there is still somewhat of a real human interest attaching to incidents which, otherwise, would be trivial and barren.

Early Dissentions at Court.

One unhappy circumstance which occurred before Henry was eighteen months old testified to the existence, even at that date, of unhappy domestic relations of the kind which on many subsequent occasions brought bitterness into his daily life. Queen Anne was deprived of the care of her child very soon after his baptism. The Earl of Mar was appointed to be his governor, and the Earl’s mother assumed that place in the upbringing of the royal infant which, in 157most cases, custom no less than nature would have assigned to the Queen herself. Her natural resentment brought about more than one angry discussion at Court. After one of those scenes of turbulence, James gave to Mar, in writing, this characteristic command: ‘Because in the surety of my son consisteth my surety, I have concredited unto you the charge of his keeping.... This I command you out of my own mouth, being in the company of those I like. Otherwise, for [i. e. notwithstanding] any charge or necessity that can come from me, you shall not deliver him.’

In 1599, Adam Newton became Prince Henry’s tutor; and the choice seems to have been a happy one. The boy had a most towardly inclination to learn. The tutor had both a genuine love of letters and a real delight in teaching. He had also the wisdom which shuns extremes. Under Newton’s care the child remained, in spite of an obliging offer from Pope Clement the Eighth to have him educated at Rome under the papal eye.

At the death of Elizabeth, and after receiving the news of his own proclamation as her successor, the delighted father wrote to his son—then just entering on his tenth year—a letter which depicts its writer in a way as lifelike as does the warrant addressed to Mar. |James’ Letter to Prince Henry on the Accession to the English Crown.| I quote it, literally, from the hurriedly-written original, as it now lies before me: ‘My Sonne, That I see you not before my pairting, impute it to this greate occasion, quhairin tyme is so precious. But that I^[25] shall, by Goddes grace, shortlie 158be recompenced by your cumming to me shortlie, and continuall residence with me ever after. Lett not this news make you proude or insolent. For a Kings sonne and heire was ye before, and na maire are ye yett. The augmentation that is heirby lyke to fall unto you is but in caires and heavie burthens. Be therefore merrie, but not insolent. Keepe a greatness, but sine fastu. Be resolute, but not willfull. Keeye your kyndness, but in honorable sorte. Choose none to be your play fellowis but thaime that are well-borne. And above all things, give never good countenance to any but according as ye shall be informed that thay are in estimation with me. Looke upon all Englishmen that shall cum to visit you as among youre loving subjects; not with that ceremonie as towardis straingers, and yett with such hartines as at this tyme they deserve.’ And so forth. For, notwithstanding the King’s haste to set out on his journey, his pen ran on. But all his advice is in one strain. The variations are for ornament. In me, he says (only not so briefly), you see a model king. Mould yourself after that pattern, and you will be a model prince. ‘I send you my booke,’ he adds—referring to Βασιλικον δωρον— ... ‘ye must level everie mannis opinions or advices unto you, as ye finde thaime agree or discorde with the rules thaire sett down.’ Near as they commonly were in person, in the after years, James still found occasion to write to Henry a good many letters. This one theme runs through them all. But no amount of hortatory discourse could hinder the new metal from overrunning the worn and antiquated mould.

Prince Henry came into England in the June of 1603. He was invested with the Garter on the 2nd of July at Windsor. Sir Thomas Chaloner (son of Elizabeth’s well-known ambassador to the Emperor) succeeded Mar in 159the office of Governor. He was a man of many accomplishments, and had a strong bias for some of the physical sciences. But it does not seem that he possessed that force of character which in the elder Sir Thomas Chaloner was a conspicuous quality.

From a very early age, Henry showed that in him were combined in happy proportions a strong relish for the pleasures of literature with a relish not less keen for the pursuits and employments of an active and out-of-doors life. He could enjoy books thoroughly, without being absorbed by them. He had a manly delight in field sports, without falling under the temptation to become a slave to his pastime. If in anything his enjoyments tended to excess, as he grew towards maturity, it was seen in his devotion to warlike exercises. So that even the excess testified to that real manliness of spirit which keeps the body in subjection, instead of pampering its pleasures and its aptitudes. He seems to have learnt, unusually early in life, that the natural instincts of youth will have their truest gratification, and will retain their fullest zest, when made, by deliberate choice, steps towards a conscious fitness for the duties of manhood. Alike in what we have from his own pen, and in the testimonies of those who were the closest observers of his brief career, we see evidence that he had formed a due estimate of the responsibilities that, to human view, lay close before him. Of his thoughts about kingship we possess only fragments. Of his father’s thoughts on that subject we enjoy an exhaustive exposition. The contrast in the thinking is curiously significant.

Some of the best known anecdotes of Henry’s life exhibit the interest he felt in naval matters. That tendency may, perhaps, have taken its birth in a London 160incident of March, 1604. The Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, was then in the flush of Court favour. The Prince had been but for a few months in England, and his sight-seeing had not, as yet, included the baptism^[26] of a ship. |Origin of Henry’s interest in Naval affairs.| The Admiral prepared that novelty to please him. It was at the Tower that the Prince first examined the ‘Disdain’ (15 March, 1604). Whether at the same time he made his first acquaintance with the most famous inhabitant of the Tower is matter of mere conjecture. |Life of Pett, MS. Harl., vol. 6279 (B. M.). (Cited by Birch, p. 39.)| Ralegh, at all events, was there^[27] on the day when Phineas Pett moored his new vessel off Tower Wharf, for the Prince’s delight. Before any long time had passed, Ralegh was busy in the composition of a Discourse of a maritimal voyage, and of the passages and incidents therein, with a like object. The acquaintance, however began, was improved with every passing year. Of the many hopes which came to a sudden end eight years afterwards, few, it is probable, were more sanguine or more far-reaching than those of the King’s keenly watched and dreaded prisoner. |Henry and Ralegh.| For England, Ralegh saw in Prince Henry a wise and brave king to come. For himself, he saw not only a generous friend, but a man who might be the means of giving shape and substance to many patriotic schemes with which a brain that could not be imprisoned had long been teeming.

There is evidence that on more than one topic of public policy Ralegh’s counsel made a deep impression on Henry. One instance of it will be seen presently. But apart altogether from such positive results as admit of 161testimony, their intercourse is memorable. It must have been by virtue of some congeniality of nature that a youth in Henry’s position so quickly leapt—across many obstacles—to an appreciation, alike of the circumstances and of the character of Ralegh, which still commends itself to those who have looked into them most searchingly. The estimate has been many times confirmed by the investigations of history, long afterwards, but it was strongly opposed to the broad current of contemporary opinion. A heart larger than the average may have its divinations, as well as the intellect that is more acute and better furnished than the average.

But the generous heart is often allied with a hasty temper. The impression made on the Prince by Ralegh’s writings on naval matters had, amongst other results, that of increasing both his interest in the management of the royal dockyards, and his familiar intercourse with Phineas Pett. Pett was master shipwright at Chatham, and, as we have seen, the designer of the prince’s first vessel Disdain. |1608. April. See Chap. ii, pp. 62, 63.| When Sir Robert Cotton had induced the King to issue that Commission of Inquiry into the Navy, of the results of which some account has been given in the preceding Chapter, Pett was one of the persons whose official doings were brought into question. Henry took a warm interest in the inquiry and testified openly his anxiety on Pett’s behalf. A specific charge about an alleged disproportion between timber paid for and the vessels built therewith was investigated at Woolwich. Both the King and the Prince were present. Henry stood by Pett’s side. |MS. Life of Phineas Pett, in MS. Harl. 6279 (B. M.) p. 45.| When the evidence was seen to disprove the charge, the Prince cried with a loud voice—disregarding alike the royal presence and the forms of law—‘Where be now those perjured fellows that dare thus 162abuse His Majesty with false informations? Do they not worthily deserve hanging?’

The warmth of Henry’s friendship seems to have suffered little diminution by the absence of its objects. |Henry’s foreign Correspondence.| When his friends went to far-off countries he encouraged them to be active correspondents by setting them a good example. He welcomed all sorts of real and worthy information. About the government and affairs of foreign countries his curiosity was insatiable. When important letters came to him he not only read them with care but made abstracts of their contents. When the labour-loving Lord Treasurer Salisbury noticed, with regret, in his son Cranborne certain indications of a turn towards indolence, it was by an appeal to Prince Henry’s example that he strove to correct the failing. Henry evinced eagerness to learn by all methods. Books, letters, conversation, personal insight into notable things and new inventions,—were alike acceptable to him.

In April, 1609, the death of John, Lord Lumley, without issue, enabled the Prince to gratify his love of books by purchasing a Library which probably was more valuable than any other collection then existing in England, with the exception of that of Sir Robert Cotton.

Thirty years before, Lord Lumley had inherited the fine library of his father-in-law, Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, who had been a collector of choice manuscripts at a time when the reckless dispersion of monastic treasures impoverished the nation, but gave, here and there, golden opportunities to openhanded private men. When the estates of the Fitzalans came to Lumley—in virtue of an entail made by the Earl of Arundel during Lady Lumley’s lifetime—the splendid succession had lost its best charm. The wife who had thus enriched him was 163dead, and he was childless. His wife’s sister, the Duchess of Norfolk, was also dead, but had left a son. |Muniments at Norf. House (Sussex, Box 7), as cited in Tierney’s Arundel, p. 19.| Lumley sold his life interest in the broad lands, and forests, and in the famous castle of Arundel, to the next heir, but he kept the library and found one of the chief pleasures of his remaining term of life in liberally augmenting it. Henry’s first care, after his purchase, was to have a careful catalogue made of the collection. And he soon gave evidence that he had bought the books for use; not for show. |Privy Purse Book; in Domestic Correspondence, James I, vol. lvii, § 87, p. 4. (R. H.)| He also made many important additions, from time to time, during his three years’ ownership.

Perhaps the most festive days of that brief span were the sixth of January, 1610, and the sixth of June of the same year, on both of which Whitehall again witnessed a gay tournament. |The Tournaments of 1610.| On twelfth-day, at the head of a band of knights which included Lennox, Arundel, Southampton, Hay, Sir Thomas Somerset, and Sir Richard Preston, Henry kept his barriers against fifty-six assailants, and before a brilliant court, for whose pleasure the long mimic fight was diversified by the gay devices of Inigo Jones, and the graceful verses of Ben Jonson. Next day the jousting was followed by a banquet not less splendid. |Chronicle of England, p. 898. The Speeches at Prince Henries Barriers; and Oberon, a Masque. (Jonson’s Works, vol. v, pp. 965–974, 1st edit.)| At Whitehall,—as at Stirling sixteen years before,—the banquetting lasted seven hours, but it was enlivened by a comedy in which the ladies were not condemned to silence. In the following June, Henry’s creation as Prince of Wales was celebrated by tiltings on a more extensive scale, as well as by masques and dances, and by an elaborate naval battle upon the Thames. But the prince himself seems to have taken more pleasure in witnessing from time to time, at Woolwich or at Chatham, the launching of real ships fitted for real warfare. Nor are indications wanting that during his ponderings on the many advices which he 164received of the course of public events in Europe, he had occasional presentiments that a crisis was drawing near which would make the adoption of a warlike policy to be alike the duty of the King, and the recognized interest of the nation.

Be that as it may, the broad contrasts of character which existed between the wearer of the crown and its heir apparent became increasingly obvious during the long negotiations and correspondence about the projects of marriage for the prince himself and for his sister. |The projects for Royal Marriages.| |1611–1612.| Something, indeed, of the difference in character between James and Henry was indicated when, in 1611, the prince directed Ralegh to draw up, in his prison, a paper of advice on the scheme of a double marriage with Savoy and on the relations between Savoy and Spain. It came out more forcibly when, on occasion of the proposal from France for his own marriage with Christina (the elder sister of Henrietta Maria), he wrote to his father in these words: ‘The cause which first induced your Majesty to proceed in this proposition by your Ambassador was the hope which the Duke of Bouillon gave your Majesty of breaking their other match with Spain. If the continuance of this treaty hold only upon that hope, and not upon any desire to effect a match with the second daughter, in my weak opinion I hold that it stands more with your Majesty’s honour to stay your Ambassador from moving it any more than to go on with it. Because no great negotiation should be grounded upon a ground that is very unsure and uncertain, and depends upon their wills who were the first causers of the contrary.’ For this letter the Prince was rebuked. Two months afterwards, it was found indispensable to desire him to express again his opinion upon a new stage of the negotiation. He did so in words to which the events of 165the next few years were destined to give significance. I quote from the original letter, preserved (with a large mass of other letters from the same hand) amongst the Harleian MSS.^[28]

‘As for the exercise of the princess’ religion,’ wrote Henry, on the 5th of October, 1612, ‘your Majesty may be pleased to make your Ambassador give a peremptory answer that you will never agree to give her greater liberty in the exercise of it than that which is agreed with the Savoyeard, which is—to use his own word—privatemente; or, as Sir Henry Wotton did expound it, “in her most private and secret chamber.”’ Then he touches on the delicate question of dowry, and the relative preferability of the alliance proffered by France and that proffered by Savoy; adding,—with an obvious mental reference, I think, to the advice given him by Ralegh in the preceding year,—these pregnant words: ‘If your Majesty will respect rather which of these two will give the greatest contentment to the general body of the Protestants abroad, then I am of opinion that you will sooner incline to France than to Savoy.’

The writer then hints a fear that he may, unwittingly, have incurred a renewal of the paternal displeasure which some expressions of opinion in his former letter on the same subject had excited. Let his father kindly remember, he entreats, that his own special part in the business,—‘which is to be in love with any of them, is not yet at hand.’

Death, not love-making, was at hand. One month afterwards, 166the arm that penned this letter was stretched out,—still and rigid.

The Prince was seized with sudden illness on the 10th of October, five days after its date. |Death. 1612. November.| The first appearances were such as are wont to follow upon a great chill, after excessive exercise—to which Henry was always prone. In spite of much pain and some alarming symptoms, he persisted in removing from Richmond to St. James’ on the 16th, in order to receive the Elector Palatine, soon to become the husband of his sister. Within very few days it was apparent that his illness was of the most serious nature. He left his apartment at St. James’ on the morning of the 25th, to hear a sermon at the Chapel Royal. The text was from the fourteenth of Job, ‘Man, that is born of a woman, is of short continuance.’ Afterwards he dined with the King, but was obliged to take his leave, being seized with faintness and shivering fits. These continued to recur, at brief intervals, until his death, on the evening of the sixth of November. Almost the only snatch of quiet sleep which he could obtain followed upon the administration of a cordial, prepared for him in the Tower by Ralegh, at the Queen’s earnest request. It was not given until the morning of the last day.

Henry died calmly, but under total exhaustion. For many hours before his death he was unconscious, as well as speechless. The last words to which he responded were those of Archbishop Abbot:—‘In sign of your faith and hope in the blessed Resurrection, give us, for our comfort, a sign by the lifting up of your hands.’ Henry raised both hands, clasped together. It was his last conscious act.

Here, to human ken, was a life all seed-time. The 167harvest belonged to the things unseen. Contemporaries who had treasured up, in memory, many of those small matters which serve to mark character, were wont sometimes to draw contrasts between the prince and his brother. And many have been the speculations—natural though unfruitful—as to the altered course of English history, had Henry lived to ascend the throne. One fact, observable in the correspondence and documentary history of the times, will always retain a certain interest. Some of those who were to rank among the staunchest opponents of Charles were men who thought highly of Henry’s abilities to rule, and who held his memory in affectionate reverence.

Henry had died intestate. The library which he had purchased from the Executors of Lord Lumley fell to the disposal of the King. The greater part of it went to augment the remains of the old royal library of England, portions of which had been scattered during James’ reign, as well as before it. By that disposal of a collection, in which the prince had taken not a little delight during his brief possession, he became virtually, and in the event, a co-founder of the British Museum.

The library remained at St. James’ under the charge, for a time, of the prince’s librarian, Edward Wright. The relics of the royal collection at Whitehall were then in the keeping of the eminent scholar and theologian, Patrick Young. Eventually they too were brought to St. James’, and Young took the entire charge. It was by his exertions that the combined collection was augmented by a valuable part of the library of Isaac Casaubon. |Roe, Negotiations, pp. 335; 618.| It was to his hands that Sir Thomas Roe delivered the ‘Alexandrian Manuscript’ of the Greek Bible, the precious gift to King Charles of Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople.

Young survived until 1652, but he was deprived of his 168office in 1648. In that turbulent time the library narrowly escaped two perils. Some of the soldiers of the triumphant party sought to disperse it, piecemeal, for their individual profit. Some of the leaders of that party formed a scheme to export it to the Continent for a like purpose. It stands to the credit of a somewhat fanatical partisan—Hugh Peters, one of the many men who are doomed to play in history the part of scapegoats, whatever their own sins may have really been—that his hasty assumption of librarianship (1648) saved the library from the first danger. |Comp. Order-Book of Council of State, vol. v, p. 454, and vol. xxiv, p. 604. (R. H.)| A like act on the part of Bulstrode Whitelocke, in the following year (July, 1649), saved it from the second. Probably, it was at his instance that the Council of State made or designed to make it a Public Library. |Whitelocke’s Embassy to Sweden, vol. i, p. 273. (Reeve’s edit.)| Four years afterwards, Whitelocke held at Stockholm a curious conversation with Queen Christina about its manuscript treasures, of some of which, he tells us, she was anxious to possess transcripts.

Under the Commonwealth, the librarianship had been combined, first with the keepership of the Great Seal, and then with an Embassy to Sweden. Under the Restoration, it was held in plurality with an active commission in the Royal Navy. |Acquisition of the Theyer Library.| Charles II, however, caused some valuable additions to be made to the library. Of these the most important was the manuscript collection which had belonged, successively, to John and Charles Theyer. The sum given was £560. The collection came to St. James’ Palace in 1678. It was rich in historical manuscripts and in the curiosities of mediæval science. It embraced many of the treasured book-possessions of a long line of Abbots and Priors of Llanthony,^[29] and the common-place-books of Archbishop Cranmer.

169At Charles the Second’s death the number of works in the royal collection had increased to more than ten thousand. No doubt, in that reign, the books could have brought against their owner the pithy complaint to which Petrarch gave expression, on behalf of some of their fellows, at an earlier day: ‘Thou hast many books tied in chains which, if they could break away and speak, would bring thee to the judgment of a private prison.... |Petrarch, De remediis utriusque fortunæ.| They would weep to think that one man—ostentatious of a possession for which he hath no use—should own a host of those precious things that many a passionate student doth wholly lack.’

No true lover of books, for their own sake, indeed, was ever to possess that rich collection, until it passed into the ownership of the nation. Its entail, so to speak, as a heirloom of the Crown, was cut off, just as it was about to pass into the hands of the one English King who alone, of all the Monarchs since Charles the First, cared about books. That it should pass to the Nation had been proposed by Richard Bentley, when himself royal librarian, sixty years before the proposal became a fact. ‘’Tis easy to foresee,’ said Bentley, ‘how much the glory of our Nation will be advanced by erecting a Free Library of all sorts of books.’ In his day, he saw no way to such an establishment, otherwise than by transfer of the royal collection.

There is a reasonable, perhaps it might be said a strong, 170probability that when Bentley gave expression to this wish, at the close of the seventeenth century, he was unconsciously reviving one among many projects for the public good which had been temporarily buried in the grave of Prince Henry. For under the Commonwealth, the Library at St. James’ had been ‘Public’ rather in name than in fact.

When the time came, the number of volumes of the Royal Collection which remained to be incorporated with the Museum of Sloane and with the Library of Sir Robert Cotton was somewhat more than twelve thousand. The number of separate works—printed and manuscript together—probably exceeded fifteen thousand.

Amongst the acquisitions so gained by the nation the first place of honour belongs to the Codex Alexandrinus. It stands, by the common consent of biblical palæographers, in a class of manuscripts of the Holy Scriptures into which only two or three other codices in the world can claim to be admitted. Of early English chronicles there is a long series which to their intrinsic interest as primary materials of our history add the ancillary interest of having been transcribed—sometimes of having been composed—expressly for presentation to the reigning Monarch. Here also, among a host of other literary curiosities, is the group of romances which John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, caused to be compiled for Margaret of Anjou; and the autograph Basilicon, written for Prince Henry. Among the innumerable printed treasures are choice books which accrued as presentation copies to the sovereigns of the House of Tudor, beginning with a superb series of illuminated books on vellum, from the press of Anthony Verard of Paris, given to Henry the Seventh. For large as had been the losses sustained by the original 171royal library, and truly as it may be said that Prince Henry’s acquisitions amounted virtually to its re-foundation, many of the finest books of long anterior date had survived their varied perils. And some others have rejoined, from time to time, their old companions, after long absence.

The royal collection has also an adventitious interest—in addition to the main one—from another point of view. It includes results of the strong-handed confiscations of our kings, as well as of the purchases they made, and the gifts they received. Both the royal manuscripts and the royal printed books contain many memorials of careers in which our poets no less than our historians have found, and are likely to find, an undying charm.

‘The English nobles are high-spirited, active, educated men, born to wealth and power, who have run through every country and have kept, in every country, the best company; have seen every secret of art and nature; and—when men of any ability or ambition—have been consulted in the conduct of every important action. You cannot wield great agencies without lending yourself to them. When it happens that the spirit of the Earl meets his rank and his duties, we have the best examples.... These are the men who make England that strong-box and Museum it is; who gather and protect works of art, dragged from amidst burning cities and revolutionary countries, and brought hither, out of all the world.... When I saw that, besides deer and pheasants, these men have preserved Arundel Marbles, Townley Galleries, Howard and Spencer Libraries, Warwick and Portland Vases, Saxon Manuscripts, Monastic Architectures, and Millenial Trees, I pardoned their high park-fences.’—

Political Exile and Foreign Travel under Elizabeth, and under James.—Life of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel.—The Consolations of Connoisseurship.—Vicissitudes of the Arundel Museum.—The gifts of Henry Howard to the Royal Society.

The Collector of the Arundel Marbles and Founder of the Arundel Library was the great-grandson of that twenty-first Earl of Arundel (Henry Fitzalan) by whom had been collected the choicest portion of the library which passed, in 1609, from the possession of John, Lord Lumley, to that of Henry, Prince of Wales. |chap. iii, p. 162| 173That Earl had profited by the opportunities which the dissolution of the monasteries presented so abundantly to collectors at home. The new Earl profited, in his turn, by larger and far more varied opportunities, offered to him during a long course of travel abroad. For himself, his travels ripened and expanded a somewhat crude and irregular education. He attained, at length, and in a much greater degree (as it seems) than any of his contemporaries, to that liberal culture which enabled him to appreciate, and to teach his countrymen to appreciate, the arts from which Greece and Italy had derived so much of their glory; whilst in England those arts had, as yet, done very little either to enhance the enjoyments and consolations of human life, or to call into action powers and aptitudes which had long lain dormant. It is not claiming too much for the Earl of Arundel to say that of whatever, upon a fair estimate, England may be thought to owe to its successful cultivation of the Arts of Design, he was the first conspicuous promoter. Nor is his rank as a pioneer in the encouragement of the systematic study of archæology—a study so fruitful of far-reaching result—less eminent.

He may also be regarded as setting, by the course he took with his own children, the fashion of foreign travel, as a necessary complement of the education of men of rank and social position. The example became very influential, and in a sphere far broader than the artistic one. Under Elizabeth, the Englishmen best known on the Continent had been political exiles. Most of them were men self-banished. Many of them passed their lives in defaming and plotting against the country they had left. The jealous restrictions upon the liberty of travel imposed by the Government rarely kept at home the men of mischief, but were probably much more successful in confining men 174whose free movements would have been fruitful in good alike to the countries they visited and to their own. The altered circumstances which ensued upon the accession of James notoriously gave facilities to wider Continental intercourse; and it was by men who followed very much in Lord Arundel’s track that some of the best social results of that intercourse were won.

Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, Surrey, and Norfolk, was twentieth in lineal descent from that William de Albini who, in the year 1139, had acquired the Castle and Earldom of Arundel by virtue of his marriage with the widow of King Henry the First. He was born at Finchingfield, in Essex, in 1585,—a date which nearly marks the period of lowest depression in the strangely varied fortunes of an illustrious family. |Thomas, D. of Norfolk to his son Philip, &c., MS. Harl., 787.| Philip, Earl of Arundel, the father of Earl Thomas, was already in the Tower, and was experiencing, in great bitterness, the truth of words written to him by his own father, when in like circumstances:—‘Look into all Chronicles, and you shall find that, in the end, high degree brings heaps of cares, toils in the State, and most commonly (in the end) utter overthrow.’ Before Thomas Howard had reached his fifth year his mother—co-heiress of the ‘Dacres of the North’—had to write to the Lord Treasury Burghley: ‘Extremytye inforceth me to crave succour,’ and to illustrate her assertion by a detail of miseries.

The hopes with which the Stuart accession was naturally anticipated by all the Howards, were by some of them more than realized, but the heir of Arundel was not of that number. He was, indeed, restored in blood to such honours as his father, Earl Philip, had enjoyed, and also to the baronies forfeited by his grandfather, Thomas, 175Duke of Norfolk, in 1572. But the dignities were restored without the lands. His nearest relations profited by their influence at Court to obtain grants of his chief ancestral estates. The Earls of Nottingham, Northampton,^[30] and Suffolk had each of them a share in the spoil;—salving their consciences, probably, by the reflection that, despite his poverty, their young kinsman had made a great marriage. For his alliance, in 1606, with Lady Aletheia Talbot, daughter and co-heir of Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury, had already brought to him considerable means in hand, and a vast estate in prospect. The marriage, in higher respects, was also a happy one. But a natural and eager desire to recover what his father had forfeited cast much anxiety over years otherwise felicitous. He could not regain even Arundel House in London, until he had paid £4000 for it to the Earl of Nottingham.

Lord Arundel made his first appearance at Court in 1605. In May, 1611, he was created a Knight of the Garter. Thirteen years of James’ reign had passed before the Earl was admitted to the Privy Council. This honour was conferred upon him in July, 1616. Five years more were to pass before his restoration to his hereditary office 176of Earl Marshal of England, although he had been made one of six Commissioners for the discharge of its duties in October, 1616. The baton was at length (29th August, 1621) delivered to him at Theobalds. |Domestic Corresp., James I, 1621, 21 July. (R. H.)| ‘The King,’ wrote John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, when communicating the news, ‘would have given him £2000 a year pension withal, but—whatsoever the reason was—he would accept but the ordinary fee, which is twenty pounds per annum.’ It is plain, however, that this assertion was an error. According to the ancient constitution of the Earl Marshal’s office there were certain fees accruing from it which were now, under new regulations, to cease. The question arose, Shall the Earl Marshal be compensated by pension, or (according to a pernicious fashion of the age) by the grant, or lease, of a customs duty upon some largely vended commodity? |Minutes of Correspondence in Sec. Conway’s Letter Book; (R. H.) and Council Books (C. O.).| The ‘impost of currants’ was eventually fixed upon. But the Earl had subsequent occasion to adduce evidence before a Committee of the Privy Council, that the rent paid to the King sometimes exceeded the aggregate duty collected from the merchants.^[31]

There is some uncertainty as to the date of the earliest of Lord Arundel’s many visits to the Continent. According to Sir Edward Walker, he was in Italy in 1609. But that statement is open to doubt. There is proof that in 1612 he passed some time in Florence and in Siena. With 177Siena, as a place of residence, he was especially delighted. Of the foundation of his collections—to which his Italian journeys largely contributed—there are no distinct records until the following year.

The tour of 1613, followed immediately upon the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth with Frederick, Count Palatine of the Rhine. The royal pair were escorted into Germany by both Lord and Lady Arundel, who soon left the Rhine country on a new visit to Italy, and remained there until nearly the close of 1614. |Beginnings of the Arundelian Collections.| During that long residence the Earl established a wide intercourse with the most distinguished artists and archæologists of Italy, and made extensive purchases. The fame of his princely tastes was spread abroad. It soon became notorious that by this open-handed collector marbles, vases, coins, gems, manuscripts, pictures, were received with equal welcome. And from this time onwards many passages occur in his correspondence which indicate the keen and minute interest he took in the researches of the agents who, in various parts of the Continent, were busy on his behalf. The pursuit did not lack the special zest of home rivalry, as will be seen hereafter.

Not the least singular incident in the early part of Lord Arundel’s life was his commitment to the Tower, at a moment when his favour with King James was at its height.

In one of the many impassioned parliamentary debates which occurred during the session of 1621 an allusion was made by Lord Spencer to the unhappy fate of two famous ancestors of the Earl of Arundel, and it was made in a way which induced the Earl to utter an unwise and unjust retort. The matter immediately under discussion was a 178very small one, but it had grown out of the exciting question of monopolies, and it was mixed up with the yet more exciting question of the overweening powers entrusted by the King to Buckingham. In the course of an examination at the bar of the House of Lords about the grant of a patent for licensing inns, Sir Henry Yelverton had made a furious attack upon the Duke. The attack was still more an insult to the House, than to the King’s favourite, and it had been repeated. It was proposed, on a subsequent day, to call Yelverton to the bar for the third time, in order to see if he would then offer the apology which before he had refused. Arundel opposed the motion. ‘We have his words; we need hear no more,’ he said. Lord Spencer rose to answer: ‘I remember that two of the Earl’s ancestors—the Earl of Surrey, and the Duke of Norfolk, were unjustly condemned to death, without being heard.’ The implied parallel was a silly one, but its weakness and irrelevancy did not restrain Arundel’s anger. ‘My Lords,’ said he, ‘I do acknowledge that my ancestors have suffered. It may be for doing the king and the country good service; and at such time, perhaps, as when the ancestors of the Lord that spake last kept sheep.’ The speaker failed to see that by using such words he had committed exactly the same offence as that for which he had, but a moment before, censured the late Attorney-General, and had moved the House to punish him. On all sides, he was advised to apologise. He resisted all entreaty. When committed to the Tower, he still refused submission. Both the King and the Prince of Wales had to intercede for him with the House before he could regain his liberty.

With rare exception, the public incidents of Lord 179Arundel’s life during the remainder of the reign of James are such as offer little interest, save as illustrations of character. In that respect, many of them testify to the failing which appears so strikingly in the story of the quarrel with Lord Spencer. Some noble qualities lost part of their real lustre when pride was so plainly seen in their company. All that was best in Lord Arundel revolted at the grossness of the Stuart court. He often increased his own disgust by contrasting what he saw at Whitehall with the memories of his youth. His office of Earl Marshal precluded him from very long absences. Sometimes, when forced to mingle with courtiers for whose society he had little liking, he rebuked their want of dignity by exaggerating his own dignity into haughtiness. Against failings of this kind we have to set many merits, and amongst them a merit eminently rare in that age. Arundel was free from covetousness—save in that special sense in which covetousness, it may be feared, cleaves to all ‘collectorship.’

In 1622 some anxiety was occasioned to Lord Arundel by a singular adventure which befell his wife during her residence in the Venetian territory, whither (in the course of a long Italian tour) she had gone to watch over the education of their sons; little anticipating, it may well be supposed, that her name and that of Lord Arundel, would be made to figure in Venetian records in connection with the strange story of the conspirator Antonio Foscarini.

After making some stay in Venice, Lady Arundel had taken a villa on the Brenta, about ten miles from the City.

In April, 1622, she was on her way from this villa to the Mocenigo Palace, her residence in Venice, when she was met by the Secretary of Sir Henry Wotton, English ambassador to the Republic. The secretary said that he was sent by the ambassador to inform her that the Venetian Senate 180had resolved to command her ladyship to leave their city and territory within a few days, on the ground of a discovery that Foscarini had carried on some of his traitorous intrigues with foreign ministers—and more especially with those of the Pope and Emperor—at her house. |1622, April.| To this the messenger added, that it was Sir Henry Wotton’s most earnest advice that Lady Arundel should not return to Venice, but should remain at Dolo, until she heard from him again. Having listened to this strange communication in private, she desired the secretary to repeat it in the presence of some of the persons who attended her. Then she hastened to the ambassador’s house at Venice. Her interview with Wotton is thus, in substance, narrated by Lord Arundel, when telling the story to his friend the Earl of Carlisle, then ambassador to the Court of France.

‘Lady Arundel went immediately to my Lord Ambassador [Wotton], telling him she came to hear from his own mouth what she had heard from his servant’s.’ When Sir Henry had repeated the statement of his secretary, the Lady asked him how long the accusation and the resolution of the Senate had been known to him. He replied that reports of the alleged intercourse with Foscarini had reached him some fifteen days before, or more; but that of the resolution of the Senate he had heard only on that morning. ‘She asked him why he did never let her understand of the report all that time? He said because she spake not to him of it.’ To Lady Arundel’s pithy rejoinder that it would have been hard for her to speak of a matter of which she had never heard the least rumour until that day, and to her further protestation that she had not even seen Foscarini since the time of his visit to England, some years earlier, Sir Henry replied, ‘I believe there was no such matter;’ but he refused to disclose the name 181of the person who had first spoken to him of the accusation. To his renewed advice that her ladyship should not stir farther in the matter, she declined to accede. |MS. Addit., 4176, § 156. (B. M.)| It concerned her honour, and her husband’s honour, she said, to have public conference with the Doge and Council without delay. From carrying out this resolve the ambassador found it impossible to dissuade her.

That conference took place on the following day with the remarkable result of a public declaration by the Doge that no mention had ever been made of Lady Arundel’s name, or of the name of any person nearly or remotely connected with her, either at any stage of the proceedings against Foscarini, or in any of the discussions which had arisen out of his conspiracy.

When the audience given to Lady Arundel by the Doge had been made the subject of a communication to the Senate, that body instructed the Venetian Ambassador in England to confer with Lord Arundel. |Deliberations of the Senate of Venice; printed by Hardy, in Report on Venetian Archives, pp. 78–84 (1866).| ‘You are,’ said they, ‘to speak to the Earl Marshal in such strong and earnest language that he may retain no doubt of the invalidity of the report, and may remain perfectly convinced of the esteem and cordial affection entertained towards him by the Republic; augmented as such feelings are by the open and dignified mode of life led here by the Countess, and in which she hastens the education of her sons in the sciences to make them—as they will become—faithful imitators of their meritorious father and their ancestors.’

Sir Henry Wotton’s motive in the strange part taken by him in this incident is nowhere disclosed. He had to listen to several indirect reproofs, both from the Doge and from the Senate, which were none the less incisive on account of the courtly language in which they were couched.

182Two years afterwards, the Earl was himself hastily summoned to the Continent to attend the death-bed of his eldest son, James, Lord Maltravers, who is described by a contemporary writer as a ‘gentleman of rare wit and extraordinary expectation.’ |Death of Arundel’s eldest son.| The Countess and her two elder sons, James and Henry, were then returning from Italy to England. |Royal license to travel, July, 1624.| They passed through Belgium in order to visit the Queen of Bohemia. Whilst at Ghent, upon the journey, Lord Maltravers was seized with the smallpox. He died in that city in July, 1624. The affliction was acutely felt. |Domestic Corresp. James I, vol. cxlix, § 67; vol. clii, § 55.| ‘My sorrow makes me incapable of this world’s affairs,’ wrote the Earl to one of his political correspondents, in the autumn of the year. To the outer world, reserved manners and a stately demeanour often gave a very false impression of the man himself. Throughout his life, Arundel’s affectionate nature was so evinced in his deeds, and in his domestic intercourse, as to stand in little need of illustration from his words. Mainly, as it seems, to this characteristic quality he was soon to owe a second imprisonment in the Tower of London.

The new Lord Maltravers shortly after his return to England fell in love with the Lady Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of Esme, Duke of Lennox. Arundel had formed other wishes and plans for the son who was now his heir, and there is evidence that he was reluctant to give his consent to the prosecution of the suit. Nor did the kinship of the prospective bride with King Charles appear to him, it seems, at all an inviting circumstance in the matter. So long as Buckingham stood at the helm of affairs Arundel was likely to have a very small share in the new king’s affections, so that pride and policy as well as inclination stood in the way of his approval. He knew also that it was Charles’ eager wish that his kinswoman should marry 183Lord Lorne, the eldest son of the Earl of Argyle. But the young lover was ardent, and his entreaties unintermitting. At length, we are told, he not only wrung from the Earl the words ‘You may try your fortune with the lady that you seem to love so well,’ but prevailed upon him to confer paternally on the subject with the lady’s aunt and guardian, the Duchess of Richmond. Maltravers, meanwhile, had resolved to incur no risk of defeat by waiting for a royal assent to his marriage. He had long before won his cause with the lady, but had kept the secret. Two passionate lovers^[32] went gravely through the ceremony of a formal introduction to each other.

Maltravers then induced her to consent to a private marriage. When Lord Arundel was informed of the fact he immediately disclosed his knowledge to the King, and besought pardon for the culprits. But Charles’ wrath was unbounded. He placed the new-married pair under restraint in London. He committed Arundel himself to the Tower. He commanded Lady Arundel to remain at Horsley, in Surrey, a seat belonging to the Dowager Countess, her mother-in-law.

When Lord Arundel was thus imprisoned Parliament was sitting. The Lords declared his arrest to be an infringement of their privileges. The King replied that ‘the Earl of Arundel is restrained for a misdemeanour which is personal to the King’s Majesty, and has no relation to matters of Parliament.’ The Lords still insisted that it was the Earl’s unquestionable right ‘to be admitted to come, sit, and serve in Parliament.’ Charles released Arundel from the Tower, and then confined him to 184Horsley. Royal evasion did but provoke increased earnestness and firmness from the Peers. At length they resolved that they would suspend public business until the Earl presented himself in his place. |Secretary Conway’s Letter Book, pp. 251 seqq. (R. H.)| Nearly three months had been spent in debate and altercation before Secretary Conway was directed to write to Arundel in these terms: ‘It is the King’s pleasure that you come to the Parliament, but not to the Court.’

The sequel of the story, as it tells itself in the State Papers, affords an early and eminent illustration of the qualities in Charles the First which, as they ripened, brought about his ruin. The King resolved that his concession should as far as was possible be retracted. Directly the sitting of Parliament was suspended, the King commanded Conway to apprise the Earl that his restraint to Horsley was renewed, ‘as before the Earl’s leave to come to Parliament.’ |Domestic Corresp., Charles I, vol. xxxv, p. 16 (R. H.).| Arundel on his part made courtly and even lavish declarations of submission. ‘I desire to implore the King’s grace by the humblest and best ways I can.’ This was written in September, 1626. Whenever it was indispensable that he should obtain leave to visit the capital a petition had to be prepared. In March, 1627, he writes: ‘The King has limited my stay in London until the 12th of March. I will obey, but I beg you to represent to His Majesty that I have necessary business to transact ... and that I have so carried myself as to shew my desire to give His Majesty no distastes. If now, after a year has passed, the King will dissolve this cloud, and leave me to my own liberty, I will hold myself to be most free when living in such place and manner as may be most to His Majesty’s liking.’ It was all in vain. Another whole year passes. Arundel has still to write: ‘I beseech the King to give life to my just desires, and after two 185years of heavy disfavour to grant me the happiness to kiss his hands and to attend him in my place.’ To this humble representation and entreaty it was replied by Secretary Conway: ‘His Majesty’s answer is that the Earl has not so far appeased the exceptions which the King has taken against unkindness conceived, as yet to take off his disfavour. |Ibid., vol. lvi, p. 86; vol. xcv, pp. 51, 85, &c. Conway’s Letter Book, pp. 295, &c. (R. H.)| As for the Earl’s proffered duty and carriage in the King’s service, the King will judge of that as he shall find occasion.’

He found occasion ere long; but not until after Buckingham’s death. Arundel rendered useful service, on some conspicuous occasions, both at home and abroad. If his successive diplomatic missions to Holland in 1632, and to Ratisbon in 1638, on the affairs of the Palatinate, failed of their main object, it was from no miscarriage of the ambassador. In the unostentatious labours of the Council Board he took during a long series of years a very honourable share. And it is much to his honour that by the men to whom the chief scandals of a disastrous reign are mainly ascribable, Arundel was, almost uniformly, both disliked and feared.

As Lord High Steward of England, Arundel had to preside at the trial of the Earl of Strafford. He acquitted himself of an arduous task with eminent ability, and with an impartiality which won respect, alike from the managers of the impeachment and from the friends of the doomed statesman. The only person who expressed dissatisfaction with Arundel’s conduct on that critical occasion was the King. The historians who have most deeply and acutely scanned the details of that most memorable of all our State Trials are agreed that in order to have satisfied Charles, the Earl of Arundel must have betrayed the duty of his high office.

186Shortly after the trial of Strafford, it became Arundel’s duty as Earl Marshal to attend the mother of the queen (Mary of Medicis), on her return to Holland; and he received the King’s license to remain beyond the seas during his pleasure. |Latest Employments.| He returned however to England in October of the same year. |Rushworth, vol. iv, pp. 317, 318.| In the following February, a similar ceremonial mission was his last official employment. He then conducted Queen Henrietta Maria on her journey into France, and took his own last farewell of England. |1642. February.| It was an unconscious farewell. |Sir E. Walker, in MS. Harl., as before.| Nor does his departure appear to have been dictated by any desire to shrink from sacrifices on behalf of the cause with which—whether rightly or wrongly—all his personal sympathies, as well as the political views of his whole life, were bound up. At the hands of the first Stuart he had met with capricious favour, and with enduring injustice. By the second, during several years, he was treated with marked and causeless indignity; and then, during several other years, rewarded grudgingly for zealous service. In exile, his contributions in support of the royal cause were upon a scale which impoverished both himself and his family.^[33]

Such a fact is a conclusive proof of magnanimity of spirit, whatever may be thought of its bearings in regard to political insight. |Colonizing Efforts of Lord Arundel.| Opinion is less likely to differ with respect to exertions of quite another order which occasionally occupied Lord Arundel’s mind and energies during at least twenty years of his political life.

One of the best known incidents in his varied career is 187also one of its most honourable incidents. His friendship for Ralegh grew out of a deep interest in colonization. And the calamitous issue of that famous voyage to Guiana in 1617 which Arundel had promoted was very far from inducing him to abandon the earnest advocacy of a resumption, in subsequent years, of the enterprise which Ralegh had had so much at heart. His efforts were more than once repeated, but the same influences which ruined Ralegh foiled the exertions of Arundel and of those who worked with him.

He then turned his attention towards the wide field of colonial enterprise which presented itself in New England. From the autumn of 1620 until the summer of 1635 he, from time to time, actively supported the endeavours of the ‘Council for the Planting of New England.’ |Proclamation Book, May 15, 1620. (R. H.)| The Minute in which that Council summed up the causes which induced it, at the date last-named, to resign its charter is an instructive one. |Surrender of the New England Charter.| It expresses, in few words, the views of Lord Arundel and of his ablest fellows at the board:—‘We have found,’ say the Councillors, in their final Minute, ‘that our endeavours to advance the plantation of New England have been attended with frequent troubles and great disappointments. We have been deprived of near friends and faithful servants employed in that work. We have been assaulted with sharp litigious questions before the Privy Council by the Virginia Company, who had complained to Parliament that our Plantation was a grievance.’ They proceed to say that a promising settlement which had been established, under the governorship of Captain Gorges in Massachusetts Bay, had been violently broken up by a body of speculative intruders who, without the knowledge of the Council of New England, had found means to obtain a royal ‘grant of some three thousand 188miles of the sea-coast.’ Finding it by far too great a task, for their means, to restore what had thus been brought to ruin, Arundel, and his fellow-councillors were constrained to resign their charter.

Four years later the Earl formed an elaborate plan for the colonization of Madagascar. But the events of 1639–40 soon made its effectual prosecution hopeless.

The latest notice we have of the Earl of Arundel, from the hand of any eminent contemporary, occurs in the Diary of John Evelyn, and is dated six months before the Earl’s death. |Death at Padua, 1646.| In June of the preceding year (1645) Evelyn had paid a visit to Lord Arundel at his house in Padua, and had then accompanied him to a famous garden in that city known as the ‘Garden of Mantua.’ |Evelyn, Diary, vol. 1, p. 212.| They had also explored together some ancient ruins lying near the Palace of Foscari all’ Arena. When Evelyn renewed his visit in March, 1646, the Earl was no longer able to leave the house. |Ibid., pp. 218, 219.| ‘I took my leave of him,’ says the diarist, ‘in his bed, where I left that great and excellent man in tears, on some private discourse of crosses that had befallen his family, particularly the undutifulness of his grandson, Philip, turning Dominican friar; and the misery of his country, now embroiled in civil war. He caused his gentleman to give me directions, written with his own hand, what curiosities I should inquire after in my journey; and so—enjoyning me to write sometimes to him—I departed.’ The Earl died at Padua on the 24th September, 1646, having entered into the sixty-second year of his age. In compliance with the directions of his Will his remains were brought to England and buried at Arundel.

It remains only to add a few particulars of the character 189and sources of the splendid collections which the Earl of Arundel, by the persistent labours and the lavish expenditure of more than thirty years, had amassed. The surviving materials for such an account are, however, very fragmentary. |Notices of the Arundelian Collections.| Those which are of chief interest occur in the correspondence which passed between the Earl and Sir Thomas Roe during the embassy of that eminent diplomatist to the Ottoman Porte in the years 1626–1628.

The Earl’s zeal as a collector, and the public attention which his personal successes in that character during his Italian travels had soon attracted, naturally excited a like ambition on the part of several of his contemporaries. Conspicuous in this respect were his brother-in-law the Earl of Pembroke, and his political rival and enemy the Duke of Buckingham. Arundel’s success in amassing many fine pictures had, in like manner, already attracted the attention of Prince Charles to that peculiarly fascinating branch of collectorship.

When Sir Thomas Roe set out for Constantinople he was charged with commissions to search for antiquities on Buckingham’s behalf, as well as on Lord Arundel’s. He was himself a novice in such inquiries. He had to encounter excessive difficulties from the jealousy, and sometimes the dishonesty, of the Turkish and other agents whom he was obliged to employ. Most of them were stubborn in their belief that a search for old marbles did but mask the pursuit of buried treasure of greater currency. And to difficulties of this sort was added a standing fear that every service rendered to the Earl Marshal might be esteemed an offence to the powerful favourite at Whitehall.

To an urgent letter which he had received from Arundel just as he was embarking, Sir Thomas replied, from Constantinople, in January, 1622. ‘I moved our Consul, Richard 190Milward, at Scio, whom I found prepared and ready,’ he reports. ‘We conferred about “the Maid of Smirna” which he cannot yet obteyne, without an especiall command [from the Porte]. I brought with mee from Messina the Bishop of Andre, one of the islands of the Arches, a man of good learning and great experience in these parts. Hee assured mee that the search after old and good authors was utterly vaine.... The last French ambassador had the last gleanings. Only of some few he gave mee notice as of an old Tertullian, and a piece of Chrisostome ... which may be procured to be copied, but not the originall.... Concerning antiquities in marbles, there are many in divers parts, but especially at Delphos, unesteemed here, and, I doubt not, easy to be procured for the charge of digging and fetching, which must be purposely undertaken. It is supposed that many statues are buried to secure them from the envy of the Turks, and that, leave obteyned, [they] would come to light, which I will endeavour as soon as I am warm here.’ After mentioning that he had already procured some coins, he adds, with amusing naïveté, ‘I have also a stone, taken out of the old pallace of Priam in Troy, cutt in horned shape, but because I neither can tell of what it is, nor hath it any other bewty but only the antiquity and truth of being a peece of that ruined and famous building, I will not presume to send it you. |Sir T. Roe to Lord Arundel, 27 Jan., 1621 [O. S.]; Negotiations, p. 16.| Yet I have delivered it to the same messenger, that your Lordship may see it and throw it away.’

Two years afterwards the ambassador has to tell Lord Arundel a mingled story of failure and success: ‘The command you required for the Greeke to be sent into Morea I have sollicitted [of] two viziers, one after the other, butt they both rejected mee and gave answere, that it was no tyme to graunt such priviledges. Neare to the 191port they have not so great doubt and therefore I have prevailed with another, and [have] sent Mr. Markham, assisted with a letter from the Caplen Bassa, whose jurisdiction extends to all the islands and sea-ports.... On Asia side, about Troy, Zizicum, and all the way to Aleppo, are innumerable pillars, statues, and tombstones of marble, with inscriptions in Greeke. |Ibid., 10 May, 1623, Negotiations, p. 154.| These may be fetcht at charge, and secrettly; butt yf wee ask leave it cannot be obteyned; therefore Mr. Markham will use discretion rather then power, and so the Turks will bring them for their proffitt.’

Roe’s report encouraged Lord Arundel to send an agent, named Petty, on a special exploring mission into various parts of the Ottoman Empire. The agent thus selected was eminently fitted for his task, and showed himself to be a man of untiring industry. Very soon after Petty’s arrival at Constantinople, Sir Thomas Roe wrote to the Duke of Buckingham an account of his successful researches, and he prefaced it with an acknowledgement that ‘by conference with Mr. Petty, sent hither by my Lord of Arundell, I have somewhat bettered my sckill in such figures. We have searched all this cyttye,’ he proceeds to say, ‘and found nothing but upon one gate, called anciently Porta Aurea, built by Constantine, bewtifyed with two mighty pillars, and upon the sides and over it, twelve tables of fine marble cutt into historyes,—some of a very great relevo, sett into the wall with small pillars as supporters. Most of the figures are equall; some above the life some less. |Roe to the Duke of Buckingham, 11 May, 1625, Negotiations, pp. 386–7.| They are—in my eye—extremely decayed, but Mr. Petty doth so prayse them, as that he hath not seene much better in the great and costly collections of Italye.... The fower to which I have most affection ... are both brave and sweete.... The 192relevo so high that they are almost statues, and doe but seeme to sticke to the ground.’

In October of the same year Sir Thomas sent an elaborate account to the Earl of Arundel of the progress made by Petty, and of his own exertions to provide him with every possible facility. |The proposed partition of ancient marbles between Arundel and Buckingham.| He told the Earl of the difficulty of his own position towards the Duke of Buckingham, and besought him to admit of an arrangement by which the product of the joint exertions of ambassador and agent should be divided between the competitors. Petty, he reports, ‘hath visited Pergamo, Samos, Ephesus, and some other places, where he hath made your Lordship great provisions.... I have given him forceable commands, and letters of recommendation from the Patriarch. I have bene free and open to him in whatsoever I knewe, and so I will continue for your Lordship’s command. But your Lordship knowing that I have received the like from the Duke of Buckingham, and engaged my word to doe him service hee might judge it want of witt, or will, or creditt, if Mr. Petty, who could doe nothing but by mee, should take all things before or from mee. Therefore to avoid all emulation, and that I might stand clear before two so great and honourable patrons, I thought I had made agreement with him for all our advantages. Therefore we resolved to take down those sixe mentioned relevos on Porta Aurea, and I proceeded so far as I offered 600 dollars for four of them, to bee divided between his Grace and your Lordship by lotts. And if your Lordship liked not the price, Mr. Petty had his choice to forsake them. But now, I perceave, he hath entitled your Lordship to them all by some right that, if I could gett them, it were an injury to divide them.... But I am sorry wee strive for the shadowe. Your Lordship may beleeve an honest man, and 193your servant, I have tried the bassa,—the capteyne of the Castle,—the overseer of the Grand Signor’s works,—the soldiours that make that watch,—and none of them dare meddle. They [the sculptures] stand between two mighty pillars of marble, on other tables of marble supported with less pillars, uppon the cheife port of the Citty, the entrance by the Castle called “The Seaven Towres,” which was never opened since the Greeke Emperour lost it, but a counterscarfe and another wall built before it.... There is butt one way left in the world, which I will practice.... |Roe to Arundel, 30 Oct, 1625; Negotiations, pp. 444–446.| If I gett them not, I will pronounce [that] no man, no ambassadour, shall ever bee able to doe it;—except, also, the Grand Signor, for want, will sell the Castle.’

Just before the date of this letter Petty had suffered shipwreck on the coast of Asia, when returning from Samos. Together with his papers and personal baggage, he lost the fruits of long and successful researches. But his inexhaustible energies enabled him to recover what, to the men about him, seemed to have hopelessly perished. He found means to raise the buried marbles from the wreck. |Ibid., 7 April, 1626, p. 495.| ‘There was never man,’ wrote Sir Thomas Roe, with the frank admiration of a congenial spirit, ‘so fitted to an employment; that encounters all accidents with so unwearied patience; eates with Greekes on their worst dayes; lyes with fishermen on plancks, at the best; is all thinges to all men, that he may obteyne his ends, which are your Lordship’s service.’

To Dr. Goade, one of the chaplains of Archbishop Abbot, Sir Thomas Roe continued the narrative of Petty’s zealous researches, and of the success which attended them. ‘By my means,’ he wrote, ‘Mr. Petty had admittance into the best library known of Greece, where are loades of old 194manuscripts, and hee used so fine arte, with the helpe of some of my servants, that hee conveyed away twenty two. I thought I should have had my share, but hee was for himselfe. Hee is a good chooser; saw all, or most, and tooke, I thincke, those that were and wilbe of greate esteeme. Hee speaketh sparingly of such a bootye, but could not conteyne sometyme to discover with joy his treasure.... I meant to have a review of that librarye, but hee gave it such a blow under my trust that, since, it hath been locked up under two keys, whereof one kept by the townsmen that have interest or oversight of the monastery, so that I could do no good.... |Ib., p. 500.| My hope is to deale with the Patriarch, and not to trust to myselfe, and to chances.’

In November, 1626, Sir Thomas further informed the Duke of Buckingham that ‘Mr. Petty hath raked together two hundred peices [of sculpture], all broken, or few [of them] entyre.... Hee had this advantage, that hee went himselfe into all the islands, and tooke all he saw, and is now gon to Athens.’ |Ib., p. 570; comp. pp. 619; 647; 692, and 764.| In subsequent letters and despatches the diplomatist returns often to this unofficial branch of his duties, and makes it very apparent that Petty’s zeal had, for a time, spoiled the market of the agents who followed in his track.

Lord Arundel was not less ably served by the factors and representatives whom he employed in Italy, in Germany, and in the Netherlands. But the story is far too long to be told in detail. |MSS. at Norfolk House; printed, in Tierney’s Arundel, p. 489.| Their success in collecting choice pictures and other works of art was so conspicuous that when one of them had an interview with Rubens at Antwerp, to give a commission from Lord Arundel, the great painter—himself, it will be remembered, an eminent collector also—said to him: ‘I regard the Earl in the light of an evangelist to the world of art, and as the great supporter 195of our profession.’ In these artistic commissions and researches William Trumbull, Edward Norgate, Sir John Borough, and Sir Isaac Wake, especially distinguished themselves. Their correspondence with Lord Arundel is spread over a long series of years, and it abounds with curious illustrations of ‘the world of art,’ as it lived and moved in the earlier part of the seventeenth century.

Among those entire collections which the Earl purchased in bulk, two are more particularly notable—the museum, namely, of Daniel Nice, and the library of the family of Pirckheimer of Nuremberg.

Nice’s Museum was especially rich in medals and gems. |Evelyn to Pepys; Diary and Corresp., vol. iii, p. 300.| If Evelyn’s information about the circumstances of that acquisition was accurate, it cost the Earl the sum—enormous, at that date—of ten thousand pounds. I cannot, however, but suspect that into that statement some error of figures has crept.

The acquisition of the Pirckheimer Library was made by the Earl himself, during his diplomatic mission into Germany on the affairs of the Palatinate. In this collection some of the choicest of the Arundelian MSS. which now enrich the British Museum were comprised. Its foundation had been laid more than a hundred and thirty years before the date of the Earl’s purchase. But part of the library of the first founder had passed into the possession of the City of Nuremberg. The collection which Lord Arundel acquired was rich both in classical manuscripts and in the materials of mediæval history.

The liberality with which these varied treasures, as they successively arrived in London, were made accessible to scholars was in harmony with the open-handedness by means of which they had been amassed. For a few years Arundel House was itself an anticipatory ‘British Museum.’ 196Then came the civil war. But the injury which the Arundel collections sustained from the insecurity and commotions of a turbulent time is very insignificant, in comparison with that sustained, after the Restoration, through the ignorance and the indolence of an unworthy inheritor.

The immediate heir and successor of Earl Thomas survived his father less than six years. He died at Arundel House in April, 1652, leaving several sons, of whom the two eldest, Thomas and Henry, became successively Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk. The first of these was restored to the dukedom in 1660. But the whole of his life, after attaining manhood, was passed in Italy and under the heavy affliction of impaired mental faculties, following upon an attack of brain-fever which had seized him at Padua, in 1645. He never recovered, but died in the city in which the disease had stricken him, lingering until the year 1677. It was in consequence of this calamity that the inheritance of a large portion of the Arundelian collections, and also the possession of Arundel House in London, passed from Earl Henry-Frederick to his second son, Henry.

We learn from many passages both in the Diary and in the Letters of John Evelyn that, under the new owner, Arundel House and its contents were so neglected as, at times, to lie at the mercy of a crowd of rapacious parasites. In one place he speaks of the mansion as being infested by ‘painters, panders, and misses.’ In another he describes the library as suffering by repeated depredations. He remonstrated with the owner, and at length obtained from him a gift of the library for the newly-founded Royal Society, and a gift of part of the marbles for the University of Oxford. In his Diary he thus narrates 197the circumstances under which these benefactions were made:—

Having mentioned that on the destruction of the meeting-place of the Royal Society, its members ‘were invited by Mr. Howard to sit at Arundel House in the Strand,’ he proceeds to say that Mr. Howard, ‘at my instigation, likewise bestowed on the Society that noble library which his grandfather especially, and his ancestors, had collected. This gentleman had so little inclination to books that it was the preservation of them from embezzlement.’ |Evelyn, Diary, &c., vol. ii, p. 20.| Elsewhere he says that not a few books had actually been lost before, by his interference, the bulk of the collection was thus saved. The gift to the Royal Society was made at the close of the year 1666.

In September of the following year this entry occurs in the same Diary:—‘[I went] to London, on the 19th, with Mr. Henry Howard of Norfolk, of whom I obtained the gift of his Arundelian Marbles,—those celebrated and famous inscriptions, Greek and Latin, gathered with so much cost and industry from Greece by his illustrious grandfather the magnificent Earl of Arundel.... When I saw these precious monuments miserably neglected, and scattered up and down about the garden and other parts of Arundel House, and how exceedingly the corrosive air of London impaired them, I procured him to bestow them on the University of Oxford. This he was pleased to grant me, and now gave me the key of the gallery, with leave to mark all those stones, urns, altars, &c., and whatever I found had inscriptions on them, that were not statues. This I did, and getting them removed and piled together, with those which were encrusted in the garden-walls, I sent immediately letters to the Vice-Chancellor of what I had procured.’ |Ib., p. 29. (edit. 1850.)| On the 8th of October he records a visit 198from the President of Trinity, ‘to thank me, in the name of the Vice-Chancellor and the whole University, and to receive my directions what was to be done to show their gratitude to Mr. Howard.’

Ten months later, Evelyn records that he was called to London to wait upon the Duke of Norfolk. The Duke, he says, ‘having, at my sole request, bestowed the Arundelian Library on the Royal Society, sent to me to take charge of the books and remove them.... Many of these books had been presented by Popes, Cardinals, and great persons, to the Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk; and the late magnificent Earl of Arundel bought a noble library in Germany which is in this collection. |Ib., pp. 122, 123.| I should not, for the honour I bear the family, have persuaded the Duke to part with these, had I not seen how negligent he was of them; suffering the priests and everybody to carry away and dispose of what they pleased, so that abundance of rare things are irrecoverably gone.’

A curious narrative communicated, almost a century afterwards, to the Society of Antiquaries, by James Theobald, proves that in this respect the gallery of antiquities—notwithstanding the noble benefaction to Oxford—was even more unfortunate than the library of books. At the time when these gifts were obtained for Oxford and for the Royal Society, another extensive portion of the original collections had already passed into the possession of William Howard, Viscount Stafford, and had been removed to Stafford House. Lord Stafford was a younger son of the collector, and appears to have received the choice artistic treasures which long adorned his town residence by the gift of his mother. |Dispersion of part of the Arundel Marbles.| According to Evelyn, Lady Arundel also ‘scattered and squandered away innumerable other 199rarities, ... whilst my Lord was in Italy.’ But in this instance he appears to speak by hearsay, rather than from personal knowledge. Tierney, the able and painstaking historian of the family, asserts that its records contain no proof whatever of the justice of the charge. |History of Arundel, p. 509.| And he traces the origin of Evelyn’s statement to a passage in one of the letters of Francis Junius, in which it is said of Lady Arundel that she ‘carried over a vast treasure of rarities, and convaighed them away out of England.’ Even to Junius, notwithstanding his connection with the family, the charge may have come but as a rumour.

Be that as it may, the subsequent dispersion of many treasures of art which the Earl had collected with such unwearied pains and lavish expenditure is unquestionable.

Lord Henry Howard, it has been shown, excepted the ‘statues’ from his gift to the University. They remained at Arundel House, but so little care was bestowed upon their preservation that when the same owner afterwards obtained an Act of Parliament empowering him to build streets on part of the site of Arundel House and Gardens, many of these statues were broken by the throwing upon or near them of heaps of rubbish from the excavations made, in the years 1678 and 1679, for the new buildings. These broken statues and fragments retained beauty enough to attract from time to time the admiration of educated eyes when such eyes chanced to fall upon them. Those which long adorned the seat of the Earls of Pomfret, at Easton Neston, in Oxfordshire, were purchased by Sir William Fermor, and were given to the University of Oxford by one of his descendants. Others which are, or were, at Fawley Court, near Henley, were purchased by Mr. 200Freeman. Others, again, were bought by Edmund Waller, the poet, for the decoration of Beaconsfield.

Still more strange was the fate which befell certain other marbles which Lord Henry (by that time Duke of Norfolk) caused to be removed from Arundel House to a piece of waste ground belonging to the manor of Kennington. These the owner seems to have regarded as little better than lumber. It is therefore the less surprising that his servants took so little care of them as to suffer them to be buried, in their turn, beneath rubbish which had been brought to Kennington from St. Paul’s, during the rebuilding of that cathedral. By-and-bye, precious marbles, excavated amidst so many difficulties arising from Turkish barbarism in Asia Minor, had to be re-excavated in England. Many years after their second burial, some rumour of the circumstance came to the knowledge of the Earl of Burlington, and by his efforts and care something was recovered. But the researches then made were, in some way, interrupted. They were afterwards resumed by Lord Petre. |Narrative by Theobald; printed in Anecdotes of Howard Family, pp. 101–120.| ‘After six days’ of excavation and search, says an eye-witness, ‘just as the workmen were going to give over, they fell upon something which gave them hopes. Upon further opening the ground they discovered six statues, ... some of a colossal size, the drapery of which was thought to be exceeding fine.’ These went eventually to Worksop.

Some Arundelian marbles were, it is said, converted into rollers for bowling-greens. The fragments of others lie in or beneath the foundations of the houses in Norfolk Street and the streets adjacent.

The Stafford-House portion of the collections—which included pictures, drawings, vases, medals, and many miscellaneous antiquities of great curiosity—was sold by auction 201in 1720. At the prices of that day the sale produced no less a sum than £8852.

The Arundelian cabinet of cameos and intaglios, now so famous under the name of ‘The Marlborough Gems,’ was offered to the Trustees of the British Museum for sale, at an early period in the history of the institution. The price asked by the then possessor, the Duchess Dowager of Norfolk, was £10,000. But at that time the funds of the nascent institution were inadequate to the purchase.

It affords conspicuous proof of the marvellous success which had attended Lord Arundel’s researches to find that the remnants, so to speak, of his collections retain an almost inestimable value, after so many losses and loppings. They are virtually priceless, even if we leave out of view all that is now private property.

When the Arundelian MSS. were transferred, in the years 1831 and 1832, to the British Museum, their money value—for the purposes of the exchange as between the Royal Society and the Museum Trustees—was estimated (according to the historian of the Royal Society) at the sum of £3559. |Weld, History of the Royal Society, vol. ii, pp. 448, 449.| This sum was given by the Trustees, partly in money, and partly in printed books of which the Museum possessed two or more than two copies. The whole of the money received by the Royal Society was expended by its Council in the purchase of other printed books. So that both Libraries were benefited by the exchange.

It may deserve remark that a somewhat similar transfer had been contemplated and discussed during the lifetime of the original donor. The project, at that period, was to make an exchange between the Royal Society and the University of Oxford. The University induced Evelyn 202to recommend Lord Henry Howard to sanction an exchange of such MSS. ‘as concern the civil law, theology, and other scholastic learning, for mathematical, philosophical, and such other books as may prove most useful to the design and institution of the Society.’ |Evelyn to Howard; 14 March, 1669.| But at that time, after much conference, it was otherwise determined.

The heraldical and genealogical books belonging to the original Arundel Library were given, at the date of the first transfer of the bulk of the collection to the Royal Society, to the Heralds’ College. They still form an important part of the College Library, and they include valuable materials for the history of the family of Howard.

‘Whether this man ever had any determined view besides that of raising his family is, I believe, a problematical question in the world. My opinion is that he never had any other.... Oxford fled from Court covered with shame, the object of the derision of the Whigs and of the indignation of the Tories.’—Bolingbroke, Letter to Sir W. Wyndham.

The Harley Family.—Parliamentary and Official Career of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford.—The Party Conflicts under Queen Anne.—Robert Harley and Jonathan Swift.—Harley and the Court of the Stuarts.—Did Harley conspire to restore the Pretender?—History of the Harleian Library.—The Life and Correspondence of Humphrey Wanley.

Robert Harley was the eldest son of Sir Edward Harley, of Brampton Bryan, in Herefordshire, by his second wife, Abigail, daughter of Nathaniel Stephens, of Essington, in Gloucestershire. He was born at his father’s town-house in Bow Street, Covent Garden, in the year 1661.

The Harleys had been a family of considerable note in Herefordshire during several centuries. Many generations of them had sat in the House of Commons, sometimes for boroughs, but not infrequently for their county. Sir Edward 204sided with the Parliamentarians during the Civil Wars. He was, however, one of those moderate statesmen who, in the words of a once-celebrated clerical adherent and martyr of their party, Christopher Love, judged it ‘an ill way to cure the body politic, by cutting off the political head.’ In due time he also became one of those ‘secluded members’ of the Long Parliament who published the ‘Remonstrance’ of 1656, and who were then as strenuous—though far less successful—in opposing what they deemed to be the tyranny of the Protector, as they had formerly been in opposing the tyranny of the King. Sir Edward Harley promoted the restoration of Charles the Second, and sat in all the Parliaments of that reign. He distinguished himself as a defender of liberty of conscience in unpropitious times; and he won, in a high degree, the respect of men who sat beside him in the House of Commons, but were rarely counted with him upon a division.

The first public act of Robert Harley of which a record has been kept is his appearance with his father, in 1688, at the head of an armed band of tenantry and retainers, assembled in Herefordshire to support the cause of the Prince of Orange, when the news had come of the Prince’s arrival in Torbay.

In the first Parliament of William and Mary Robert Harley sat for Tregony. To the second he was returned by the burgesses of New Radnor. The first reported words of his which appear in the debates were spoken in the course of a discussion upon the heads of a ‘Bill of Indemnity.’ ‘I think,’ said he on this occasion, ‘that the King in his message has led us. He shews us how to proceed for satisfaction of justice. There is a crime [of which] God says, He will not pardon it. |Grey’s Debates, vol. ix, p. 247.| ’Tis the shedding of innocent blood. A gentleman said that the West was “a 205shambles.” What made that shambles? It began in law. It was a common discourse among the Ministers that “the King cannot have justice.”’ The debate on the Bill of Indemnity of 1690 may be looked upon as, in some sort, the foreshadowing of a long spell of political conflict, in which Robert Harley was to take a conspicuous share. Twenty seven years afterwards the strife of parties was to enter on a new stage. Some of the men who acted as the political Mentors of the new member of 1689–90 were to live long enough to clamour for his execution as a traitor, and, on their failure to produce any adequate proof that he was guilty, were to console themselves by insisting on his exclusion from the ‘Act of Grace’ of 1717.

Harley won his earliest distinctions in political life by assiduous, patient, and even drudging labour on questions of finance. |MS. Harl. 7524, f. 139, seqq.| During six years, at least, he worked zealously as one of the ‘Commissioners for stating the Public Accounts of the Kingdom.’ In parliamentary debates on the public establishments and expenditure he took a considerable share. As a speaker he had no brilliancy. His usual tone and manner, we are told, were somewhat listless and drawling. But occasionally he would speak with a certain pith and incisiveness. |Grey’s Debates, vol. x, p. 268.| Thus, in November, 1692, in a discussion on naval affairs, he said—‘We have had a glorious victory at sea. But although we have had the honour, the enemy has had the profit. They take our merchant ships.’ Again, in the following year, when supporting the Bill for more frequent Parliaments, he spoke thus:—‘A standing Parliament can never be a true representative. Men are much altered after they have been here some time. They are no longer the same men that were sent up to us.’

Of the truth of that saying, in one of its senses, Harley 206became himself a salient instance. Bred a Whig, and during his early years acting commonly with the Whigs, his party ties were gradually relaxed. By temper and mental constitution he was always inclined to moderate measures. As the party waxed fiercer and fiercer, and as its policy came to be more and more obviously the weapon of its hatreds, Harley soon lay open to the reproach of being a trimmer. The growing breach became evident enough in the course of the debates on the treason of Sir John Fenwick, in November, 1696. |His Speech on the attainder of Fenwick.| He then argued, with force and earnestness, that atrocity in a crime is no justification or excuse for violence and unscrupulousness in a prosecutor. Some of his applications of that sound doctrine are very questionable. But it is to his honour that he preached moderation with consistency. He did not bend it to the exigencies of the party he was approaching, any more than to those of the party from which he was gradually withdrawing himself.

Meanwhile he had signalised his powers in another way. By long study he had acquired a considerable knowledge of parliamentary law and precedent. He had taken his full share in the work of committees. In February, 1701, he was proposed for the Speakership, in opposition to Sir Thomas Littleton. He had a large body of supporters, nor were they found exclusively in the Tory ranks. The King sent for Littleton, and told him that he thought it would be for the public service that he should give way to the choice of Mr. Harley in his stead. But the election was carried by a majority of only four votes. ‘It is a great encouragement to his party,’ wrote Townshend to Walpole, who was then in the country, ‘and no small mortification to the Whigs.’ Harley retained the Speakership 207until the third session of the first Parliament of Queen Anne.

Whatever may have been the ‘mortification of the Whigs’ at his elevation, it is certain that at this time Harley laboured zealously for the establishment of the Protestant succession to the throne. |Harley and the Act of Succession.| |1701. March.| In the preparation, facilitating, and passing of that measure he took so influential a part that, afterwards, he was able to say, in the face of his opponents, when they were most numerous and most embittered, ‘I had the largest hand in settling the succession of the House of Hanover.’ The assertion met with no denial.

It is evident, too, that the qualities for which he was already reviled by extreme partisans on both sides were—in their measure—real qualifications, both for the office of Speaker and for the special task of that day. The party leaders who were then most eagerly followed were men bent on crushing their adversaries as well as conquering them. It was inevitable that by such men Harley’s moderation towards opponents should be regarded as more cajolery. And of that unhappy quality he was destined, at a later day, to acquire but too much.

On the 27th of April, 1704, Mr. Speaker Harley was sworn of the Privy Council. On the 18th of May he received the seals as one of the Principal Secretaries of State. |Privy Council Register, Anne, vol. ii, p. 102.| He had scarcely entered on the duties of his office before he was busied with precautionary measures in Scotland against an anticipated Jacobite insurrection, as well as with a large share of the foreign correspondence. But just at that busy time he found means to begin—though he could not then complete—an act of charity which is memorable both on the recipient’s account and on the score of some 208well-known political consequences which eventually grew thereout.

At the time when Harley became a member of the Godolphin administration Daniel De Foe lay in Newgate, under a conviction for seditious libel, committed in the publication of his famous tract, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. |Harley’s protection of De Foe, 1704.| The new Secretary sent a confidential person to the prison with instructions to visit De Foe, and to ask him, in the Minister’s name, ‘What can I do for you?’ De Foe’s characteristic reply must be given in his own words:—‘In return for this kind and generous message I immediately took pen and ink, and writ the story of the blind man in the Gospel, ... to whom our blessed Lord put the question, “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” who—as if he had made it strange that such a question should be asked, or as if he had said, “Lord, dost thou see that I am blind, and yet ask me what thou shalt do for me?”—my answer is plain in my misery, “Lord that I may receive my sight.” I needed not to make the application.’

De Foe then adds:—‘From this time, as I learned afterwards, this noble person made it his business to have my case represented to Her Majesty, and methods taken for my deliverance.’ But the bigots who had caused a malicious prosecution succeeded in delaying the successful issue of the Secretary’s efforts during four months. With Harley the sufferer had had no previous acquaintance. The one designation under which he ever afterwards spoke of him was ‘my first benefactor.’ And the gratitude was lifelong.

In part, Harley owed his new office to the personal credit which he had won with the Queen during his 209Speakership; and in part, also, to the friendship of Marlborough. On receiving the news of his appointment the Duke wrote to him, from the Camp:—‘I am sensible of the advantage I shall reap by it, in having so good a friend near Her Majesty’s person to present in the truest light my faithful endeavours for her service.’ |Marlborough to Harley; 13 June, 1704.| But their intercourse, if it ever attained to true cordiality at all, was cordial for a very short time. Brief confidence was followed by long distrust. Harley strove to strengthen himself by the use of channels of Court influence which were utterly inimical to the Marlborough connection. His efforts to make himself independent of that connection did not, however, lessen the prodigality of his assurances of friendship and fidelity.

His political position thus became that of a man who was exposed to the attacks of many bitter enemies among the statesmen with whom he had begun his career, without being able to rely upon any hearty support from those with whom he now shared the conduct of affairs. He might count, indeed, on assailants from the ranks both of the extreme Whigs and the extreme Tories, whilst from most of his own colleagues of the intermediate party he would have to meet the greater danger of a lukewarm defence. In such a position the attack was not likely to be long waited for.

Easiness of nature, and a tendency to alternate fits of close application with fits of indolence, always characterised him. And those qualities had an incidental consequence which opened to his opponents a tempting opportunity. Harley was habitually less careful of official papers than it behoved a Secretary of State to be.^[34] He was also at all times prone to place a premature and undue confidence in 210his dependants. In 1707, William Gregg, one of the clerks in his office, abused his confidence by secretly copying some letters of the highest importance and by selling the copies to the Court of France.

The treachery was discovered by the Secretary himself, and such steps were taken to lessen the mischief as the case admitted. Much excitement naturally followed upon the publicity of the crime. The least scrupulous of Harley’s enemies conceived a hope that the traitor who had served the public enemy for a bribe might also be tempted to ruin his master for another and greater bribe. Means were found to convey to Gregg strong assurances of a certain escape, and of a wealthy exile, if he would but declare that he had copied the despatches, and forwarded the transcripts, by the Secretary’s direction. Pending the attempt, they circulated throughout the country a report that such a declaration had actually been made, and that the Secretary was to be impeached. But the clerk, instead of betraying his master, exposed his temptors. |Appendix to Gregg’s Trial, &c., in State Trials, vol. xii, pp. 694 seqq.| His first emphatic declaration of Harley’s innocence was repeated immediately before his death in these words:—‘As I shall answer it before the judgment seat of Christ, the gentleman aforesaid [i. e. Harley] was not privy to my writing to France, neither directly nor indirectly.’

Harley himself, and also his nearest friends, were wont to speak of this affair as one that had brought his life into real peril. It is certain that the incident and its consequences helped materially to make his continuance in office impossible. But he struggled hard.

Meanwhile, the dissensions in the Ministry were daily increasing. |Dismissed from Office. Feb., 1708.| They became so bitter as to lead to personal altercations at the Council Board, even when the Queen herself was present. On one such occasion (February, 2111708) Godolphin and Marlborough went together to the Queen a little before the hour at which a Cabinet Council had been summoned. They told her they must quit her service, since they saw that she was resolved not to part with Harley. ‘She seemed,’ says Bishop Burnet, ‘not much concerned at the Lord Godolphin’s offering to lay down; and it was believed to be a part of Harley’s new scheme to remove him. But she was much touched with the Duke of Marlborough’s offering to quit, and studied, with some soft expressions, to divert him from that resolution; but he was firm; and she did not yield to them.’ |Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. v, pp. 343, 344 (edit. 1823).| So they both went away, without attending the Council, ‘to the wonder of the whole Court.’

When the Council met, it became part of Harley’s duty as Secretary to deliver to the Queen a memorial relating to the conduct of the war. The Duke of Somerset rose, as the Secretary was about to read it, and with the words ‘If Your Majesty suffers that fellow’ (pointing to Harley) ‘to treat affairs of the war without the General’s advice, I cannot serve you,’ abruptly left the Council. |Swift to Archbishop King, 12 Feb. 1708. Comp. Burnet, as above.| ‘The rest,’ according to Burnet, ‘looked so cold and sullen that the Cabinet Council was soon at an end.’

Whilst a result which—for the time—had thus become so plainly inevitable, remained still doubtful, Harley had imposed on himself the humiliating task of assuring the Duke of Marlborough of the honesty of his former professions of attachment. |Harley’s dismissal from the Secretaryship. Feb., 1708.| ‘I have never writ anything to you,’ said he, ‘but what I really thought and intended.’ And then he went on to say:—‘I have for near two years seen the storm coming upon me, and now I find I am to be sacrificed to sly insinuations and groundless jealousies.’ These words were written in September, 1707. On the 21210th of February in the following year, Marlborough had, at length, the satisfaction of writing from St. James’ to a foreign correspondent:—‘Mr. Secretary Harley has this afternoon given up the seals of office to the Queen. Between ourselves he richly deserves what has befallen him.’^[35] |Marlborough to Count Wratislaw, 10 Feb., 1708.| Among the two or three friends who went out with Harley was Henry St. John.

For the next two years and a half, Harley’s principal occupation was to prepare the way for a return, in kind, of the defeat thus inflicted upon him. |The intrigue against the Godolphin Ministry. 1708–1710.| Some of the steps by which he achieved his end are among the most familiar portions of our political history. But from the necessities of the case it has been, and probably it must continue to be, one of those portions in which the basis of truth can scarcely, by any researches that are now possible, be separated from the large admixture of falsehood built thereon by party animosities.

His own correspondence shows that strong hopes of success in the effort were entertained within eight months of his dismissal. It shows also that the channel employed, unsuccessfully, in 1708, was that which became an effectual one in 1710.

213Early in October, Harley received from the Court an unsigned letter in which these passages occur:—‘The Queen stands her ground and refuses to enter into any capitulation with the [Whig Lords]. She has not hitherto consented to offer or hear of any terms. The Lord T[reasure]r desired she might allow him to treat with ’em, and the Duke of S[omerse]t was employed to persuade her, but she was inflexible. The Lord Treasurer offered to resign the Staff, but she would neither take the Staff nor advice from him, and he went to Newmarket without getting any powers or leave to treat.... |Harley Corresp. in MS. Harl. 7526, f. 237.| Your friend cannot answer for the event.... I will add no more but that your friend thinks your being here is very necessary, and that Her Majesty ... would be the better of assistance and good advice.’

It was not, however, until the 8th of August, 1710, that the Godolphin Ministry was dismissed. Two days afterwards, Harley was made Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Treasury being put into commission.

He entered upon that office amidst enormous obstacles. His enemies were unable to deny that his exertions to overcome the difficulties in his path were marked by financial ability, and by a large measure of temporary success. But as little can it be denied that the immediate triumph laid the groundwork of public troubles to come.

His own account of the situation of affairs, and of the methods taken to improve it, must, of course, be read with the due allowance. The pith of it lies in these sentences:—‘The army was in the field. There was no money in the Treasury. None of the remitters would contract again. The Bank had recently refused to lend the Lord Treasurer Godolphin a hundred thousand pounds. The Army and Navy Services were in debt nearly eleven millions. The 214Civil List owed £600,000. The annual deficit was, at least, a hundred and twenty-four thousand pounds. The new Commissioners of the Treasury, nevertheless, made provision, within a few days of their appointment, for paying the Army by the greatest remittance that was ever known. |Letter to the Queen, June 9, 1714. (Parl. Hist., vol. vii, App.)| When Parliament met, on the 27th of November, funds had been prepared for the service of the year, and a plan was submitted for easing the nation of nine millions of debt.’

Harley was scarcely warm in his new office before he made the acquaintance of Swift, then full of ambitious though vague schemes for the future, and very angry with the leaders of the Whig party for the coolness with which his proffers, both of counsel and of service, had lately been received.

At the time of his introduction to Harley, Swift’s immediate business in London consisted in soliciting from the Government a remission of first-fruits to the clergy of Ireland. His nominal colleagues in that trust were the Bishops of Ossory and Killaloe, but the whole weight of the negotiations rested upon Swift’s shoulders. His treatment of it soon displayed his parts. The Minister saw that he was both able and willing to render efficient political service. To the intercourse so begun we owe a life-like portraiture of Harley, under all his aspects, and in every mood of mind. Nor is the depicter himself anywhere seen under stronger light than in those passages of his journal which narrate, from day to day, the rise and fall of the Government founded on the unstable alliance between Harley and St. John.

Of their first interview Swift notes:—‘I was brought privately to Mr. Harley, who received me with the greatest respect and kindness imaginable.’ Of the second:—‘We 215were two hours alone.... He read a memorial I had drawn up, and put it into his pocket to show the Queen; told me the measures he would take, ... told me he must bring Mr. St. John and me acquainted; and spoke so many things of personal kindness and esteem for me, that I am inclined half to believe what some friends have told me, that he would do everything to bring me over.’ |Journal to Stella; in Works, 2nd Edit., vol. ii, pp. 33; 37; 80.| When the promised interview with Secretary St. John comes to be diarized in its turn:—‘He told me,’ says Swift, ‘among other things, that Mr. Harley complained he could keep nothing from me, I had the way so much of getting into him.’ I knew that was a refinement.... It is hard to see these great men using me like one who was their betters, and the puppies with you in Ireland hardly regarding me.’ Not many weeks had passed before Swift’s pen was at work in defence of the measures of the Government with an energy, a practical and versatile ability, of which, up to that date, there had been scarcely an example, brilliant as was the roll of contemporary writers who had taken sides in the political strife. Swift’s defects, as well as his merits, armed him for his task.

Nor had he been long engaged upon it before he marked, very distinctly, the character both of the rewards to which he aspired, and of the personal independence which he was determined to maintain, in his own fashion.

One day, as he took his leave of Harley, after dining with him, the Minister placed in his hand a fifty pound note. He returned it angrily. And he met Harley’s next invitation by a refusal. Then comes this entry in his diary:—‘I was this morning early with Mr. Lewis, of the Secretary’s office, and saw a letter Mr. Harley had sent to him desiring to be reconciled; but I was deaf to all entreaties, and have desired Lewis to go to him and let 216him know I expect further satisfaction. If we let these great Ministers pretend too much there will be no governing them. He promises to make me easy if I will but come and see him. But I will not, and he shall do it by message, or I will cast him off.’ |Journal to Stella, p. 169.| The desired concession was made, and in a day or two we find our journalist recording, characteristically enough, that he ‘sent Mr. Harley into the House to call the Secretary [St. John], to let him know I would not dine with him if he dined late.’ And then:—‘I have taken Mr. Harley into favour again.... I will cease to visit him after dinner, for he dines too late for my head.... |Ib., pp. 178; 182.| They call me nothing but “Jonathan,” and I said I believed they would leave me Jonathan as they found me, and that I never knew a Ministry do anything for those whom they make companions of their pleasures.’

Swift was one of the first bystanders who took note of the seeds of dissension which were already growing up between Harley and St. John, and who foresaw the coming parallel between the fate of the new Government and that of its predecessor. On the 4th of March, 1711, he wrote:—‘We must have a Peace, let it be a bad or a good one; though nobody dares talk of it. The nearer I look upon things the worse I like them. I believe the Confederacy will soon break to pieces, and our factions at home increase. The Ministry is upon a very narrow bottom, and stands like an isthmus between the Whigs on one side, and the violent Tories on the other. They are able seamen, but the tempest is too great, the ship too rotten, and the crew all against them.... |Ib., p. 196.| Your Duchess of Somerset, who now has the key, is a most insinuating woman, and I believe they [the Whigs] will endeavour to play the same game that has been played against them.’

217The game was suddenly interrupted, though only for a while. An attempt to assassinate Harley gave him a renewed hold upon power and popularity. But its unexpected consequences embittered the jealousies which already menaced his administration with ruin.

Antoine de Guiscard was a French adventurer, whose private life had been marked by great profligacy. He had taken an obscure part in the insurrection of the Cevennes—rather as a recruiting agent than as a combatant. In that character he had met with encouragement to raise a refugee regiment in England. Hopes had also been held out to him that a British auxiliary contingent would be landed on the southern coast of France. In the course, however, of some preliminary inquiries into the position of the insurrectionists, it was found that such an invasion would have little chance of any useful result, and the project was abandoned. Meanwhile, a pension of £400 a year had been bestowed on the emissary.

But ere long it was discovered that Guiscard had profited by opportunities, afforded him in the course of the discussions about the proposed expedition, to make himself conversant with many particulars of military and naval affairs, and that it was his habit to send advices into France. Some of his letters were seized. Their writer was arrested on the 8th of March, 1711, and was taken, immediately, before a Committee of the Privy Council.

When examined as to his illicit intercourse with France he persisted in mere denials. At length, one of his letters was shown to him by Harley, and he was closely pressed as to his motives in writing it. He then addressed himself to Secretary St. John, and begged permission to speak with him apart. The Secretary answered, ‘You are here before the Council as a criminal. Whatever you may have to say 218must be said to all of us.’ The man persisted in refusing to reply to any further questions, unless his request was granted. Seeing that nothing more could then be obtained from him, the Lord President rose to ring the bell for a messenger, that the prisoner might be removed in custody.

At that moment the prisoner pulled a penknife from his pocket, turned towards Harley, near to whom he stood, and stabbed him in the breast. He repeated the stroke, and then rushed towards St. John. But between the prisoner and the Secretary there stood a small table, over which he stumbled. St. John drew his sword, and, with the words ‘The villain has killed Mr. Harley,’ struck at him, as did also the Duke of Ormond and the Duke of Newcastle. Lord Powlett cried out ‘Do not kill him.’ Presently the assassin was in the hands of several messengers, with whom, notwithstanding his wounds, he struggled so desperately that more than one of them received severe injuries. When at length overpowered, he said to Ormond, ‘My Lord, why do you not despatch me?’ ‘That,’ replied the Duke, ‘is not the work of gentlemen. ’Tis another man’s business.’

Harley’s wound was so severe that for several days there was a belief that it would prove mortal. It entailed a lingering illness.^[36] Before his recovery, his assailant died in 219prison. The coroner’s inquest ascribed Guiscard’s death to bruises received from one of the messengers who strove to bind him, but Swift tells us that he died of the sword-wounds.

That keen observer had seen, long before this attempted assassination, the latent personal jealousies between Harley and St. John. |Harley becomes Lord High Treasurer.| He had recognised in those jealousies the gravest peril of Harley’s government. Guiscard’s crime had now made Harley the most popular man in the country, and it had doubled his favour with the Queen. On his recovery, he received the congratulations of the House of Commons, expressed with more than usual emphasis. |Journals of H. of Commons, 1711. 27 April.| By the Queen he was raised to the peerage (24 May, 1711) as Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer. Five days afterwards (29 May) he was made Lord High Treasurer. |Council Register, Anne, vol. v, p. 249.| His elevation intensified the jealousy of St. John into something which already closely resembled hatred, although years were to elapse before the mask could be quite thrown aside. It is amusing to read the philosophical reflection with which the Secretary sent the news to Lord Ossory:—‘Our friend Mr. Harley is now Earl of Oxford and High Treasurer. This great advancement is what the labour he has gone through, the danger he has run, and the services he has performed, seem to deserve. |St. John to Lord Ossory; 1711, 12 June (Corresp. i, 148).| But he stands on slippery ground, and envy is always near the great to fling up their heels on the least trip which they make.’

The Earl of Oxford had not long obtained the Treasurer’s staff before he received some characteristic exhortations from the Jacobite section of his Tory supporters of the 220use which he ought to make of it. Atterbury came to him, on the part of some of the Treasurer’s ‘particular friends,’ to acquaint him how uneasy they were that he had neither dissolved the Parliament, nor removed from office nearly so many Whigs as those particular friends wished to see removed. ‘I know very well,’ replied the Earl, ‘the men from whom that message comes, and I am also very sensible of the difficulties I have to struggle with. If, in addition, I must communicate all my measures, it will be necessary for me to assure Her Majesty that I can no longer do her any service.’

These hot-headed politicians had already formed their famous ‘October Club.’ They were about a hundred and fifty in number, and for a few months their proceedings made a great noise. The Treasurer found means to deal with them in a more effectual fashion than that in which they had endeavoured to deal with the administration. ‘By silent, quiet steps, in a little time,’ says a writer who watched the process and aided it, ‘he so effectually separated these gentlemen, that in less than six months the name of “October Club” was forgotten in the world.... |De Foe, Secret History of the White Staff.| With so much address was this attempt overthrown, that he lost not the men, though he put them by their design.’

Those brief sentences indicate, I think, the fatality of the position in which Oxford now placed himself. He had ardently desired to gain the control of affairs, at a period of exceptional difficulty. And, at the best, his capacity and energies would have been barely equal to the task in times of exceptional ease. Some of the very qualities, both of mind and heart, which made him beloved by those who lived with him, weakened him as a statesman. He was surrounded by adepts in political intrigue, some of whom 221combined with an experience not less than his own, far greater powers of mind, an unbending will, and an utter unscrupulousness as to the use of means. He vainly flattered himself that he could beat these men at their own weapons. His temporary success laid a foundation for his eventual ruin.

To gain the aid of the Jacobite Tories in Parliament he held out hopes which it was never his intention to realise. He carried on an indirect correspondence with the Stuart Court in a way sufficiently adroit to induce that Court to instruct its adherents to support the negotiations for the Peace with France. He would commit himself to nothing until Peace was made. The conclusion of a Peace was the one measure on which he was firmly bent. He had contended that the true interests of Britain demanded the ending of an exhausting war many years before. And whatever the demerits and shortcomings of the Treaty of Utrecht, it had at least the merit of making the quiet succession of the House of Hanover possible.

In March, 1713, the French agent in England, the Abbé Gautier, wrote to the Marquis de Torcy an account of an interview he had obtained with the Lord Treasurer:—‘M. Vanderberg’ [i. e. Lord Oxford], he says, ‘sent for me, seven or eight days ago, to tell me something of importance. Indeed, he opened his mind to me, making me acquainted with his feelings towards Montgourlin [i. e. the Pretender], and the desire he had to do him service, as soon as the Peace shall be concluded.... It will not be difficult, because the Queen is of his opinion. But, in the mean time, it is essential that Montgourlin should make up his mind; that he should declare that it is not his intention to continue to reside where he now is. He must say, publicly, and especially before his family, that when the Peace 222is made he means to travel in Italy, in Switzerland, in Bavaria, even in Spain. |Gautier to De Torcy; 1713, March. [Printed in Edin. Review, from notes of Mackintosh.]| This is to be done, that it may be believed in England that his choice of a residence is not dictated by a mere desire to be near his relatives, and to be close at hand should measures have to be taken on an emergency.’

After the communication of this statement to the Pretender he made repeated attempts to enter into correspondence with Queen Anne. By Oxford these attempts were uniformly and effectually foiled.

To the insincerity of Oxford’s advances—such as they were—to the Jacobite emissaries, there can be no witness more competent, none more unexceptionable, than the Duke of Berwick. His testimony runs thus:—‘We wrote,’ he says, ‘to all the Jacobites to support the government; a step which had no small share in giving to the Court party so large a majority in the House of Commons that it carried everything its own way.... After the Peace, the Treasurer spoke with not a whit more of clearness or precision than before it.... |Mémoires du Maréchal Duc de Berwick (in Petitot’s Collection, tom. lxvi, pp. 219 seqq.)| He was merely keeping us in play; and it was very difficult to find a remedy. To have broken with him would have spoiled all; for he had the reins in his hand. He governed the Queen at his will.’ |Ib., pp. 224, 225.| In all his advances, adds the Duke, in another passage, ‘Oxford’s only motive had been to win over Jacobites to side with the Tories, and to get a sanction for the Peace.’

Whilst these intrigues were still in action, one, at least, of the Jacobite agents was clear-sighted enough to detect the secret of the Treasurer’s scheme. |Original in Nairne MSS., vol. 4. (Macpherson, Original Pagers, vol. ii, p. 269.)| A confidential agent of the Earl of Middleton, Secretary to the Pretender, wrote in February, 1712—‘[The Earl of Oxford] is entirely a friend to [the Elector of Hanover], notwithstanding the disobliging measures that spark has taken.... 223[Oxford’s] head is set on shewing that he is above resentment, and that he [the Elector] has been put into a wrong way.’

In matters of Church policy at home the Earl followed like indirect courses, and with the like result—a momentary success which prepared the way for final defeat.

No measure could possibly be more repugnant to Oxford’s declared convictions than the famous ‘Bill against Occasional Conformity,’ brought into the House of Lords by the Earl of Nottingham, at the close of the year 1711. It was part of a policy to which his very nature was antagonistic. But he was in vain entreated, by men who had been his life-long adherents, to oppose it. The passage of that Bill was the price, and, as it seems, the only price for which Nottingham and his band of followers would give their support to the foreign policy of the Government.

The growth of the internal dissensions in the administration kept pace with the growth of its external perils. Personal objects of the pettiest kind were made occasions of quarrel. In the summer of 1712, St. John, who had set his heart on the restoration in himself of that family Earldom of Bolingbroke which in the previous year had become extinct on the death of a distant relative, was made a Viscount. On the announcement of his creation he burst into open menaces of vengeance against the Treasurer, and renewed them with greater violence towards the close of the year, when he found himself excluded from another coveted dignity. An election of Knights of the Garter made, to use Lord Oxford’s own words about it, ‘a new disturbance which is too well remembered.’ Just as the breach with Bolingbroke had become plainly irreconcilable, the Treasurer found a new and equally bitter enemy in another old friend. He defeated a rapacious attempt made by Lady 224Masham on the Treasury. The first offence in that kind would never have been forgiven. But ere long it was repeated.

In both Houses of Parliament, Oxford’s veiled and vacillating policy was fast alienating men who had long supported him, and who to the last retained more confidence in him than in his brilliant rival. The crisis, however, was brought about, not by the increased strength of Parliamentary opposition, but by bed-chamber intrigues, such as those which he had himself stooped to employ six years before against Godolphin and Marlborough.

Meanwhile the Minister played into the hands of his opponents by exhibiting great irresolution. He dallied and procrastinated with urgent business. He relaxed in his attention to the Queen. At an unwary moment he even gave her personal offence, the results of which were none the less bitter for the absence of design. He showed more concern about comparatively distant perils than about those which were close at hand.

At the beginning of 1714 the best informed of the Jacobites had become fully convinced that Oxford was their enemy. They saw, to repeat the words of the Duke of Berwick, that he had been only keeping them in play. |Oxford’s correspondence with the Court of Hanover.| But at the Court of Hanover he was far from being regarded as an assured friend. Over-subtlety had been rewarded with almost universal distrust.

When in April of that year he sent to Hanover renewed protestations of fidelity, expressed in terms of unusual energy, they were looked upon by some of the Elector’s advisers as mere professions.^[37] If now read side by side 225with contemporary documents, drawn up by secret emissaries of the Pretender, they acquire a stamp of sincerity which it is hard to doubt.

To Baron Wassenaer Duyvenworde Lord Oxford wrote thus:—‘I do in the most solemn manner assure you that, next to the Queen, I am entirely and unalterably devoted to the interests of His Electoral Highness of Hanover.... I am ready to give him all the proofs of my attachment to his interest, and to set in a true light the state of this country; for it will be very unfortunate for so great a Prince to be only Prince over a party, which can never last long in England.’ He then goes on to add that the one thing which would, under existing circumstances, imperil the Hanover succession is the sending into England of any member of that family without the Queen’s consent. Such an act would, in his judgment, ‘change the dispute to the Crown and the Successor, whereas now it is between the House of Hanover and the Popish Pretender.’

He repeated the advice in another and not less urgent letter, after the occurrence of the visit made to the Lord Chancellor Harcourt by the Hanoverian Resident, to ask for a writ of summons for the Duke of Cambridge. But he also advised Queen Anne to consent to the issue of such a writ. He was opposed by a majority of his colleagues, under the leadership of Bolingbroke, as well as by the persistent unwillingness of the Queen herself.

It is instructive to read the comments on the political situation in England at this moment, of a German diplomatist 226resident in London (as Minister from the Elector Palatine) who was devotedly attached to the Hanoverian succession.

‘Some people,’ wrote Baron von Steinghengs to Count von der Schulenberg, on the 12th of May, ‘have been at work for a whole year to deprive the Lord Treasurer of the conduct of public affairs. I have been aware, almost from the beginning, of the different channels which have been made use of to carry this point. But I should never have expected that they would fire the mine before the end of this session, and I am much mistaken if the authors have not reason one day to regret their over-haste. For I do not know my man, if he does not cut out a good deal of work for them, particularly if a certain intrigue which is on the tapis succeeds. As for the rest, you may rely upon his sentiments; and he never succeeded in persuading those who doubted them more than by his declaration made in a full House on the 16th of last month on the question of danger to the Protestant succession, having in it given much greater hold upon himself than there was any need for, if he was not acting in good faith.... The party of the Hanoverian Tories has visibly been strengthened by it.’ |Von Steinghengs to Count von der Schulenberg, May 1
12 1714 (in Kemble’s State Papers, p. 493).| And to this the writer adds, in a postscript, ‘It is of extreme importance both for the Whigs and for the House of Hanover to take steps to keep him there, and to engage him by some sort of political confidence to be assured of his fortunes under that House.’ In another letter to the same correspondent, Baron von Steinghengs notes a fact which by many of our historians has been too much neglected. |Same to same, June 14 (Kemble, p. 507).| ‘To make the English Ministry,’ he wrote, ‘alone responsible ... for the exorbitant power which the Peace of Utrecht has given to France is ... to ignore entirely the incredible obstacles which the enemies 227of that Ministry threw, both at home and abroad, in the way of making the Peace such as it might have been.’

But although ‘the mine was fired’ before the end of May, July had nearly ended before the effectual explosion came. |Oxford’s Dismissal and the Queen’s Death. 1714, July 27, August 1.| Bolingbroke’s triumph lasted exactly four days. ‘The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday. The Queen died on Sunday. What a world is this! And how does Fortune banter us!... I have lost all by the death of the Queen, but my spirit.’ Such were the words in which Bolingbroke announced to Swift his victory,—and its futility. In a few more days the spirit vanished, like the triumph. The victor was a fugitive.

Bolingbroke’s hatred to Oxford lasted to the close of his life. He survived his old comrade twenty-seven years. The final year of that long period brought no relenting thought, no spark of charitable feeling.

To the question ‘Did Lord Oxford, during his tenure of office, conspire to enthrone the Pretender?’ it ought always to have been a sufficient answer that there was, as yet, not a tittle of evidence of any such conspiracy on his part. That accusation had never any support beyond surmise and conjecture. Men who were in possession of every imaginable resource and appliance to back their search failed to adduce even a shadow of evidence in proof of the charge they would fain have fastened upon him. And in 1869 the matter still stands, in the main, where it stood in 1717.

After many examinations of the most secret correspondence of the Stuarts and their adherents, and after the publishing of extensive selections from it—made at intervals which spread over eighty years,—not a scrap of direct and 228valid testimony has been found to sustain the charge. Every passage, save one, which bears at all on Oxford’s intercourse with Jacobite emissaries, up to the year 1715, tends to show that what they asserted about his intentions on the Pretender’s behalf was built on wishes, hopes, and guesses—on anything rather than knowledge. Every passage, save one, tends to show that he was using the Jacobites for his own purposes, without the least idea of aiding theirs. Every passage, save one, is in entire harmony with the terms of that incompatible charge by means of which Bolingbroke justified to himself his life-long hostility, when writing the Letter to Sir William Wyndham. The significance of that charge, coming from such a source, can scarcely be exaggerated. ‘Oxford would not,’ wrote Bolingbroke, ‘or he could not, act with us, and he resolved that we should not act without him, as long as he could hinder it.... At the Queen’s death, he hoped ... to deliver us up, bound as it were, hand and foot, to our adversaries. On the foundation of this merit he flattered himself that he had gained some of the Whigs, and softened, at least, the rest of the party to him. |Bolingbroke, Letter to Sir W. Wyndham.| By his secret negotiations at Hanover, he took it for granted that he was not only reconciled to that Court, but that he should, under his present Majesty’s reign, have as much credit as he had enjoyed under that of the Queen.’

The solitary passage in the correspondence of the Jacobite agents which goes directly to the issue is the assertion made by Gautier, in a letter to De Torcy, that Oxford said to him, in December, 1713, ‘As long as I live, England shall not be governed by a German.’ In that notable statement lies the pith of a mass of letters which report the hopes, beliefs, conjectures, and imaginings, of their respective writers, as to what Lord Oxford would do for the Pretender,—whenever 229that prince could be brought to change, or, at least, to disguise his religion.

Oxford was present, as a Privy Councillor, at the proclamation of King George the First. |Oxford’s reception by George I.| It was noted by some of the bystanders that his demeanour was buoyant and joyous. When the King reached Greenwich, the Earl went thither with more than usual pomp and retinue. He was received with marked coldness, if not with open contempt.

There is little need, in a sketch of this kind, to tell, at length, the story of an impeachment which was stretched over two years, and had no result save that of breaking down, by two years of imprisonment, the health of the defeated statesman. Few and brief words on that head will suffice.

Out of twenty-two articles of impeachment, fourteen accuse the Earl of Oxford of betrayal of duty, either in the conduct of the negotiations for Peace, or in instructions given for handling the British Army—pending those negotiations—in such a way as to injure the common cause of the Allies, by promoting the conclusion of a treaty ‘on terms fatal to the interests of the Kingdom.’ |1715. June 24.| The fifteenth article charges him with inserting false statements in the Queen’s Speeches and Messages to Parliament; the sixteenth with improperly advising the Queen to make a creation of Peers. |State Trials, vol. xv, Coll. 1052, seqq.| Other articles allege misconduct in the management of an expedition to Canada; the appropriation of sums of ‘Secret Service Money’ to corrupt purposes; and treasonable intercourse with ‘Irish Papists.’

Whilst these charges were still in preparation the Venetian Resident in London wrote a despatch to his 230Senate in which we have an interesting glimpse, behind the curtain, at the process:—‘The Whigs,’ he says, ‘seek to annihilate the Tories utterly, and to place them under the yoke. They want to impeach even the Duke of Shrewsbury.’... After enlarging on nascent dissensions amongst the Whigs themselves, as to the lengths to which they might safely carry their party resentments, he proceeds to assert that the more cautious men among them ‘have now, when it is well nigh too late, become aware that the Tory party, recently dominant, was a mixed party. |Correspondence of Joseph Querini; from extracts by T. D. Hardy, in Report on Archives of Venice, pp. 98, 99.| Some were in favour of the Pretender; some for the House of Hanover. Had His Majesty made this distinction on his accession to the Crown he would have excluded the former, but not the latter. By favouring the Whigs alone, he lost all the others at once.’ In brief, George the First had made himself exactly what Oxford had warned him against becoming, the ‘King of a party.’

When the Earl at length appeared before his peers to answer to his impeachment, he began by denying ‘that at any time or place in the course of those negotiations,’ now incriminated, ‘he conferred unlawfully or without due authority with any emissaries of France.’ He affirmed that he neither promoted nor advised any private, separate, or unjustifiable negotiation, and that he himself had no knowledge ‘that any negotiation relating to Peace was carried on without communication to the Allies.’

On the specific charge that he had traitorously given up Tournay to France, his defence is twofold:—‘I used my best offices,’ he asserts, ‘to preserve that town and fortress to the States General. I believe that at this time they are continued to the States General as part of their barrier.’ And then he adds:—‘But I deny that for a Privy Councillor and Minister of State to advise the yielding of any town, 231fort, or territory, upon the conclusion of a Peace, is, or can be, High Treason by any law of this realm.’

On the whole matter of the Peace, he asserts that ‘its terms and preliminaries were communicated to Parliament. They were agreed on with the concurrence of Parliament. The Definitive Treaty was afterwards approved of by both Houses. Solemn thanks were rendered to God for it in all our churches and also in the churches of the United Provinces. Her Majesty received upon its conclusion the hearty and unfeigned thanks of her people from all parts of her dominions.’

It might well have been thought that even in those evil days it would be difficult to induce a Committee of partisans to report to the House of Commons that ‘large sums issued for the service of the war were received by the Earl of Oxford, and applied to his Lordship’s private use,’ without the possession of some plausible show of proof. There was not so much as a decent presumption, or colourable inference, to back the assertion. When the matter came to be probed, it appeared that a royal gift of £13,000 had been received by the Earl in what were known as ‘tin tallies,’ and that the sum had been a charge upon the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall.

Probably few politicians have owed quite so large a debt of gratitude to their enemies as that incurred by the Earl of Oxford. His ministry at home had been marked by weaknesses which went perilously near the edge of public calamity. The Peace which was its characteristic achievement abroad had brought with it many real blessings, but they were won at the cost of a large sacrifice of national pride, if not also by some sacrifice of national honour. The wild excesses of his adversaries now gave back to the obnoxious 232Minister the strength of his best days. |Oxford’s behaviour under trial.| When Pope wrote of him, ‘The utmost weight of ministerial power and popular hatred were almost worth bearing for the glory of so dauntless a conduct as he has shown under it,’ the praise came from a pen which is known to have been employed, now and again, to flatter the great. But it was no flatterer who wrote to Oxford himself—‘Your intrepid behaviour under this prosecution astonishes every one but me, who know you so well, and how little it is in the power of human actions or events to discompose you. I have seen your Lordship labouring under great difficulties and exposed to great dangers, and overcoming both, by the providence of God, and your own wisdom and courage.’ Those words came from one of the shrewdest and most acute observers of human character that have ever lived. They were written after a close and daily intimacy of four eventful years. Oxford, in his day of power, had disappointed Swift of some cherished hopes, which now could never be renewed. The praise of Swift must have been sincere. |Swift’s Correspondence, in Works, by Scott, vol. xvi, pp. 232, 233.| When such a writer, at such a time, goes on to add—‘You suffer for having preserved your country, and for having been the great instrument, under God, of his present Majesty’s peaceable accession to the throne;—this I know, and this your enemies know’—the most prepossessed reader cannot but feel that the absence from the two and twenty articles of impeachment of any charge of plotting against the Hanover succession is alike intelligible and significant.

When Oxford’s imprisonment could be no longer protracted without a trial, the two Houses of Parliament were unable to agree as to the mode of proceeding. It was obvious on all sides that the charge of ‘treason’ would fail. The Lords declared that on the articles imputing 233treason judgment must be given, before the articles imputing ‘other high crimes and misdemeanours’ could be entered upon. They declared that the attempt of the Commons to mix up the two was ‘a new and unjustifiable proceeding.’ |Lords’ Journals, vol. xx, p. 515, seqq. Commons’ Journals, vol. xviii.| The Commons refused to adduce evidence on the charge of treason, and to take the issue upon that.

On the first of July, 1717, the Earl was brought to the bar to hear from the Lord High Steward a declaration that ‘Robert, Earl of Oxford, is, by the unanimous vote of all the Lords present, acquitted of the articles of impeachment exhibited against him, by the House of Commons, for High Treason and other high crimes and misdemeanours, and that the said impeachment shall be and is hereby dismissed.’ Then the Steward said, ‘Lieutenant of the Tower, You are now to discharge your prisoner.’

On the third of July, the Earl resumed his seat as a peer of Parliament. On the fourth, the Commons resolved to address the King, beseeching him ‘to except Robert, Earl of Oxford, out of the Act of Grace which Your Majesty has been graciously pleased to promise from the throne, to the end the Commons may be at liberty to proceed against the said Earl in a parliamentary way.’ |Journals, vol. xviii, p. 617.| No such proceeding, of course, was taken or intended.

For several years to come Lord Oxford took part, from time to time, in the business of Parliament. He served often on Committees in these final years of his public life, just as he had done during his early years of apprenticeship in the Lower House. In the Lords, as in the Commons, he was listened to with especial deference on points of parliamentary law and privilege.

From time to time, also, the Jacobite agitators, both at home and abroad, made repeated appeals to him, direct or 234indirect, for countenance and help in their schemes. They had, it seems, a confident hope that the sufferings and the humiliation inflicted on him in the years 1715–1717 must have so entirely alienated him from the reigning House, as now, at all events, to have prepared him to be really their fellow-conspirator, on the first occurrence of a promising opportunity. |Alleged renewal of Correspondence with the Stuart Agents.| How far the Earl listened to such suggestions and persuasions is still, it will be seen, matter of great and curious uncertainty.^[38]

Lord Oxford’s private life was not less chequered by rapid alternations of sunshine and of gloom than was his political career. In August, 1713, he gratified a cherished desire by the marriage of his son Edward, Lord Harley, with the Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, daughter and heiress of John, Duke of Newcastle (who died in 1711). With what Lord Harley had already derived under the Duke’s will, this marriage brought him an estate then worth sixteen thousand pounds a year, and destined to increase enormously in value. Three months afterwards the Earl lost a dearly loved daughter, the Marchioness of Caermarthen, who died at the age of twenty-eight. It was of her that Swift wrote to him—‘I have sat down to think of every amiable quality that could enter into the composition of a lady, and could not single out one which she did not possess in as high a perfection as human nature is capable of. But as to your Lordship’s own particular, as it is an unconceivable misfortune to have lost such a daughter, so it is a possession which few can boast of to 235have had such a daughter. I have often said to your Lordship that “I never knew any one by many degrees so happy in their domestics as you;” and I affirm that you are so still, though not by so many degrees.... |Swift to Oxford; 21 Nov., 1713. (Works, vol. xvi, pp. 78–80.)| You began to be too happy for a mortal; much more happy than is usual with the dispensations of Providence long to continue.’

Under the sorrows both of public and of private life it was his wont to find a part of his habitual consolations in the use, as well as in the increase, of his splendid library. |History of the Harleian Library.| He began the work of collection in youth, and to add to his treasures was one of the matters which, at intervals, occupied his latest thoughts.

Among the famous Englishmen whose manuscripts passed, either wholly or partially, into the Harleian Library are to be counted Sir Thomas Smith; John Fox, the martyrologist; John Stowe, the historian; Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury; and Archbishop Sancroft. Among famous foreigners, Augustus Lomenie de Brienne; Peter Séguier, Chancellor of France; and Gerard John Vossius. Perhaps the most extensive of the prior collections which it had absorbed, in mass, was the assemblage of manuscripts that had been gathered by Sir Symonds D’Ewes, whose acquisitions included a rich series of the materials of English history.

The inquiries which led to the purchase of the D’Ewes’ Collection were the occasion of making fully known to Robert Harley a model librarian in the person of Humphrey Wanley. |Humphrey Wanley; his Life, Letters, and Journal.| The latter portion of Wanley’s life was wholly devoted to the service of the Harleian Library, and his employment there was a felicity, both for him and for it. His journal of the incidents which occurred during the growth of the collection given to his care is the most curious 236document in its kind which is known to exist. That journal illustrates the literary history and the manners of the time, not less amusingly than it exhibits the personal character of its writer, and the fidelity with which he worked at his task in life.

Wanley was the son of a country parson, little known to fame, but possessing some tincture of learning, and was born at Coventry, on the 21st of March, 1673. In his youth he attracted the favourable notice of his father’s diocesan, William Lloyd, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (and afterwards of Worcester), by whom he was sent to Edmund Hall at Oxford. That hall he soon exchanged for University College, on the persuasion of Dr. Arthur Charlett, by whose influence he was afterwards made an Underkeeper of the Bodleian Library. He took no degree, but won some distinction, whilst at Oxford, by the services which he rendered to Dr. Mill in collating the text of the New Testament.

On leaving the University, Wanley went to London, where he became Secretary to the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. He translated Ostervald’s Grounds and Principles of the Christian Religion; and compiled a valuable Catalogue of the Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts preserved in the chief libraries of Great Britain. The last-named labour gave proof of much ability. It was a sample of the work for which its writer was best fitted.

As Speaker of the House of Commons, Harley took a considerable part in organizing the Cottonian Library, when it became a public institution under the Act of Parliament. Wanley proffered to the Speaker, on this occasion, some advice about the necessary arrangements; became well acquainted with Harley’s bookishness, and saw how eagerly he would welcome opportunities for the improvement 237of his own library, as well as of that newly acquired by the Public.

The Sir Symonds D’Ewes of that generation was the grandson of the diligent antiquary and politician who has been heretofore mentioned in this volume as the close friend of Sir Robert Cotton, and to whose labours, in a twofold capacity, students of our history owe a far better acquaintance with parliamentary debates, in the times both of Elizabeth and of Cromwell, than, but for him, would have been possible. The grandson of the first Sir Symonds had inherited from his ancestor a valuable library; but its possession had no great charm for him. He was willing to part with it, for due consideration, yet aware that he was under an obligation, moral if not legal, not so to part with his books as to lead to their dispersion.

On that head, the original collector had thus expressed himself in his last Will:—‘I bequeath to Adrian D’Ewes, my young son yet lying in the cradle, or to any other of my sons, hereafter to be born, who shall prove my heir (if God shall vouchsafe unto me a masculine heir by whom my surname and male line may be continued in the ages to come), my precious library, in which I have stored up, for divers years past, with great care, cost, and industry, divers originals and autographs, ... and such [books] as are unprinted; and it is my inviolable injunction and behest that he keep it entire, and not sell, divide, or dissipate it. Neither would I have it locked up from furthering the public good, the advancing of which I have always endeavoured; but that all lovers of learning, of known virtue and integrity, might have access to it at reasonable times, so that they did give sufficient security to restore safely any original or autograph ... borrowed out of the same, ... without blotting, erasing, or defraying it. But 238if God hath decreed now at last to add an end to my family in the male line, His most holy and just will be done!’ In that case, the testator proceeds to declare, it is his desire that the library should pass to his daughter and her heirs, on like conditions as to its perpetual preservation, so ‘that not only all lovers of learning ... may have access to it at seasonable times, but also that all collections which concern mine own family, or my wife’s, may freely be lent ... to members thereof,’ &c. |D’Ewes, Autobiography, in MS. Harl. (B. M.)| Then the testator adds—in relation to the last-named clause—an averment that he had ‘only sought after the very truth, as well in these things as in all other my elucubrations, whilst I searched amongst the King’s records or public offices.’

It having come to Wanley’s knowledge or belief, in the year 1703, that possibly arrangements might be made to obtain this library, for the Public, from the then possessor, he wrote to Harley in these terms:—‘Sir Symonds D’Ewes being pleased to honour me with a peculiar kindness of esteem, I have taken the liberty of inquiring of him whether he will part with his library, and I find that he is not unwilling to do so. And that at a much easier rate than I could think for. I dare say that it would be a noble addition to the Cotton Library; perhaps the best that could be had anywhere at present.... If your Honour should judge it impracticable to persuade Her Majesty to buy them for the Cotton Library—in whose coffers such a sum as will buy them is scarcely conceivable—then, Sir, if you shall have a mind of them yourself I will take care that you shall have them cheaper than any other person whatsoever. I know that many have their eyes upon this collection.’ |Wanley to Harley; MS. Lansd. 841, fol. 63. (B. M.)| ‘I am desirous,’ he goes on to say, ‘to have this collection in town for the public good, and rather in a public place than in private hands; but, of all private 239gentlemen’s studies, first in yours. I have not spoken to anybody as yet, nor will not till I have your answer, that you may not be forestalled.’

Harley welcomed the overture thus made to him, and Wanley, on his behalf, entered upon a negotiation which ended in the eventual acquisition of the whole of the D’Ewes Manuscripts for the Harleian Collection. Soon afterwards, Wanley became its librarian.

In the course of this employment he watched diligently for other opportunities of a like sort; established an active correspondence with booksellers, both at home and abroad; and induced Lord Oxford to send agents to the Continent to search for manuscripts. |History of the Harleian Library, continued.| But the Earl had soon to meet an eager rival in the book-market, in the person of Lord Sunderland, who in former years had been, by turns, his colleague and his opponent in the keener strife of politics. In their new rivalry, Lord Sunderland had one considerable advantage. He cared little about money. If he succeeded in obtaining what he sought for, he rarely scrutinised the more or less of its cost. Wanley was by nature a bargainer. He felt uneasy under the least suspicion that any bookseller or vendor was getting the better hand of him in a transaction. And he seems, in time, to have inoculated Lord Oxford with a good deal of the same feeling. Some of the entries in his diary put this love of striking a good bargain in an amusing light.

Thus, for example, in telling of the acquisition of a valuable monastic chartulary which had belonged to the ‘Bedford Library’ at Cranfield, he writes thus:—‘The said Chartulary is to be my Lord’s, and he is to present to that library St. Chrysostom’s Works, in Greek and Latin, printed at Paris, for which my Lord shall be registered a benefactor to the said library. Moreover, Mr. Frank will 240send up a list of his out-of-course books, out of which my Lord may pick and choose any twenty of them gratis.... I am also to advise that he is heartily willing and ready to serve his Lordship in any library matters; ... particularly with [Sir John] Osborne of Chicksand Abbey, where most part of the old monastical library is said yet to remain.’ |Wanley’s Diary, vol. i, pp. 13, 21. 1720, February.| And again, on another occasion:—‘My Lord was pleased to tell me that Mr. Gibson’s last parcel of printed books were all his own as being gained into [the bargain with] the two last parcels of manuscripts bought of him.’ |Ib., vol. ii, f. 24.| Gibson’s protest that he was entitled to an additional thirty pounds was quite in vain.

Of the innumerable skirmishes between librarian and bookseller which Wanley’s pages record with loving detail, two passages may serve as sufficient samples:—‘Van Hoeck, a Dutchman’ he writes in 1722, ‘brought to my Lord a small parcel of modern manuscripts, and their lowest prices,—which proved so abominably wicked that he was sent away with them immediately.’ And, in February, 1723:—‘Bowyer, the bookseller, came intreating me to instruct him touching the prices of old editions, and of other rare and valuable books, pretending that thereby he should be the better able to bid for them; but, as I rather suppose, to be better able to exact of gentlemen. I pleaded utter inexperience in the matter, and, without a quarrel, in my mind rejected this ridiculous attempt with the scorn it deserved. |Wanley’s Diary, vol. i, f. 73, verso. MS. Lansd., 771. (B. M.)| This may be a fresh instance of the truth of Tullie’s paradox, “that all fools are mad.”’

In the year 1720, large additions were made, more especially to the historical treasures of the Harleian Library, by the purchase of manuscripts from the several collections of John Warburton (Somerset Herald), of Archdeacon Battely, and of Peter Séguier (Chancellor of France). Another important accession came, in the same 241year, by the bequest of Hugh Thomas. |Ibid., pp. 35, 42, 48.| In 1721 purchases were made from the several libraries of Thomas Grey, second Earl of Stamford; of Robert Paynell, of Belaugh, in Norfolk; and of John Robartes, first Earl of Radnor.

Lord Oxford died on the 21st May, 1724, at the age of sixty-three. |Death of Lord Oxford.| Wanley records the event in these words: ‘It pleased God to call to His mercy Robert, Earl of Oxford, the founder of this Library, who long had been to me a munificent patron.’

When condoling with the new Earl upon his father’s death, Swift wrote to him:—‘You no longer wanted his care and tenderness, ... but his friendship and conversation you will ever want, because they are qualities so rare in the world, and in which he so much excelled all others. It has pleased me, in the midst of my grief, to hear that he preserved the greatness, the calmness, and intrepidity, of his mind to his last minutes; for it was fit that such a life should terminate with equal lustre to the whole progress of it.’ It is honourable alike to the man who was thus generously spoken of, and to the friend who mourned his loss, that the testimony so borne was a consistent testimony. The failings of Harley were well known to Swift. In the days of prosperity they had been freely blamed; and face to face. When those days were gone, the good qualities only came to be dwelt upon. To the unforgiving enemy, as to the bereaved son, Swift wrote about the merits of the friend he had lost. ‘I pass over that paragraph of your letter,’ said Bolingbroke, in reply, ‘which is a kind of an elegy on a departed minister.’

When the Harleian Library was inherited by the second Earl of Oxford (of this family) it included more than six 242thousand volumes of Manuscripts, in addition to about fourteen thousand five hundred charters and rolls. By him it was largely augmented in every department. |Increase of the Harleian Library by Edward, Earl of Oxford. 1724–1741.| |See MS. Addit., 5338. (B. M.)| He made his library most liberally accessible to scholars; and when, by a purchase made in Holland, he had acquired some leaves of one of the most precious biblical manuscripts in the world—leaves which had long before been stolen from the Royal Library at Paris—he sent them back to their proper repository in a manner so obliging as made it apparent that his sense of the duties of collectorship was as keen as was his sense of its delights. At his death, on the 16th of June, 1741, the volumes of manuscripts had increased to nearly eight thousand. The printed books were estimated at about fifty thousand volumes, exclusive of an unexampled series of pamphlets, amounting to nearly 400,000, and comprising, like the manuscripts, materials for our national history of inestimable value.

The only daughter and heiress of the second Earl, Margaret, by her marriage with William, Duke of Portland, carried her share in a remnant of the fortunes of the several families of Cavendish, Holles, and Harley, into the family of Bentinck. The magnificent printed library which formed part of her inheritance was sold and dispersed. |Johnson, Account of the Harleian Library; Works, vol. v, p. 181.| It was of that collection that Johnson said, ‘It excels any library that was ever yet offered to sale in the value as well as in the number of the volumes which it contains.’

The Manuscripts were eventually purchased by Parliament for the sum of ten thousand pounds. |The purchase of the Harleian MSS. for the Nation.| With reference to this purchase the Duchess of Portland wrote as follows, in April, 1753, to the Speaker of the House of Commons:—‘As soon as I was acquainted with the proposal you had made in the House of Commons, in relation to my Father’s Collection of Manuscripts I informed my 243Mother [the then Dowager Countess of Oxford] of it, who has given the Duke of Portland and me full power to do therein as we shall think fit.

‘Though I am told the expense of collecting them was immense, and that, if they were to be dispersed, they would probably sell for a great deal of money, yet, as a sum has been named, and as I know it was my Father’s and is my Mother’s intention that they should be kept together, I will not bargain with the Publick. I give you this trouble therefore to acquaint you that I am ready to accept of your proposal upon condition that this great and valuable Collection shall be kept together in a proper repository, as an addition to the Cotton Library, and be called by the name of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts.

‘I hope you do me the justice to believe that I do not consider this as a sale for an adequate price. |Duchess of Portland to Arthur Onslow; MS. Addit., 17521, f. 30. (B. M.)| But your idea is so right, and so agreeable to what I know was my Father’s intention, that I have a particular satisfaction in contributing all I can to facilitate the success of it.’

If it were possible to give, in few words, any adequate view of the obligations which English literature, and more especially English historical literature, owes to the Collectors of the Harleian Manuscripts, there could be no fitter conclusion to a biographical notice of Robert Harley. Here, however, no such estimate is practicable. Nor, in truth, can it be needed in order to convince the reader that ‘some tribute of veneration’—to use the apposite words which Johnson prefixed to the Harleian Catalogue—is due to the ardour of the two Harleys for literature; and ‘to that generous and exalted curiosity which they gratified with incessant searches and immense expense; and to which they dedicated that time and that superfluity of fortune 244which many others, of their rank, employ in the pursuit of contemptible amusements or the gratification of guilty passions.’

Note to Chapter V.

EXTRACTS FROM THE STUART PAPERS, REFERRING TO INTERCOURSE OF ROBERT HARLEY, EARL OF OXFORD, WITH THE JACOBITES, AFTER THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE I.

1. [1717?] A document which, could it be recovered, would go far towards clearing up some of the uncertainties which exist as to Lord Oxford’s intercourse with the Pretender and his agents, subsequently to the death of Queen Anne, was seen by Sir James Mackintosh among the Stuart Papers acquired by George the Fourth. It was afterwards vainly searched for by Lord Mahon, when engaged upon his History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht. |Edin. Rev., vol. lxii, pp. 18, 19.| It is still known only from the cursory notes made by Mackintosh, and referred to by a writer in the Edinburgh Review in these words: ‘During Oxford’s confinement in the Tower there is a communication from him to the Pretender, preserved among the Stuart Papers, offering his services and advice; recommending the Bishop of Rochester as the fittest person to manage the Jacobite affairs,—the writer himself being in custody; and adding that he should never have thought it safe ‘to engage again with His Majesty if Bolingbroke himself had been still about him.’

2. 1717. September 29. Bishop Atterbury to Lord Mar:—

‘Your accounts of what has been said here concerning some imaginary differences abroad have not so much foundation as you may suppose. At least, if they have, I am a stranger to it.... The result of any discourse I shall have with [the Earl of Oxford?] will be sure to reach you by his means. |Stuart Papers, 1717.| You will, I suppose, have a full account of affairs here from his and other hands.’

3. [1717?] The same to the same.

‘Distances and other accidents have, for some years, interrupted my correspondence with [the Earl of Oxford?] but I am willing to renew it, and to enter into it upon a better foot than it has ever yet stood, being convinced that my so doing may be of no small consequence to the 245service. I have already taken the first step towards it that is proper in our situation, and will pursue that by others as fast as I can have opportunity; hoping that the secret will be as inviolably kept on your side as it shall be on this, so far as the nature of such a transaction between two persons who must see one another sometimes can pass unobserved.’

4. 1721. ‘Among the same papers,’ says the Reviewer quoted on the previous page, ‘there is a letter from Mrs. Oglethorpe to the Pretender (Jan. 17, 1721), containing assurances from Lord Oxford of his eternal respect and good wishes, which from accidental circumstances he had been unable to convey in the usual manner.’

5. 1722. April 14. The Pretender [to Lord Oxford?]

‘If you have not heard sooner or oftener from me, it hath not, I can assure you, been my fault. Neither do I attribute to yours the long silence you have kept on your side, but to a chain of disappointments and difficulties which hath been also the only reason of my not finding all this while a method of conveying my thoughts to you, and receiving your advice, which I shall ever value as I ought, because I look upon you not only as an able lawyer but a sincere friend. |Stuart Papers, 1722.| This will, I hope, come soon to your hands, and the worthy friend by whose canal I send it will accompany it, by my directions, with all the lights and information he or I can give, and which it is therefore useless to repeat here.’

6. 1722. April 16. The Pretender to Atterbury.

‘I am sensible of the importance of secrecy in such an affair, yet I do not see how it will be possible to raise a sufficient sum, or to make a reasonable concert in England, without letting some more persons into the project. |Ibid.| You on the place are best judge how these points are to be compassed, but I cannot but think that [the Earl of Oxford?] might be of great use on this occasion. [Lord Lansdowne?] is to write to him on the subject, and I am confident that if you two were to compare notes together you would be able to contrive and settle matters on a more sure and solid foundation than they have hitherto been.’

7. 1722. In a report made to the Earl of Mar by George Kelly, one of his emissaries employed in England, it is stated that on the delivery, by Kelly, of Mar’s letter to Atterbury, the prelate asked the messenger if he had anything to say, in addition to the contents of the letter, and that he replied (in the jargon of his calling): ‘It is a proposal for joining stocks with the Earl of Oxford, and taking the management of the Company’s business into their hands.’ Atterbury, according to this story, required a day’s deliberation, and then told Kelly that he was ‘resolved to join both heart and hand with the Earl; and not only so, 246but in the management and course of the business he would shew him all the deference and respect that was due to a person who had so justly filled the stations which he had been in.’ The Bishop, says Kelly, also added that he was ‘resolved to dedicate the remainder of his days to the King’s service, and proposed, by this reunion, to repay some part of the personal debt which he owed to the Earl of Oxford, to whom he would immediately write upon this subject.’ |Ibid.| The messenger goes on to assure Lord Mar that Atterbury ‘is entirely of your opinion that there is not much good to be expected from the present managers, and thinks it no great vanity to say that the Earl of Oxford and himself are the fittest persons for this purpose; but the chief success of their partnership will depend upon the secrecy of it.’

Of the genuineness of the several letters,—of the credit due to the emissaries and their reports,—even of the accurate identification, in some instances, of the ‘Mr. Hackets,’ ‘Houghtons,’ and numerous other pseudonyms, under which ‘Lord Oxford’ is assumed to be veiled, there are, as yet, no adequate means of judging.

Flemish Exiles in England.—The Adventures, Mercantile and Colonial Enterprises, and Vicissitudes of the Courtens.—William Courten and his Collections.—The Life and Travels of Sir Hans Sloane—His acquisition of Courten’s Museum.—Its growth under the new Possessor.—History of the Sloane Museum and Library, and of their purchase by Parliament.

The history of the rise and growth of our English trade is, in a conspicuous degree, a history of the immigration hither of foreign refugees, and of what was achieved by their energy and industry, when put forth to the utmost under the stimulus and the stern discipline of adversity. Other countries, no doubt, have derived much profit from a similar cause, but none, in Europe, to a like extent. By turns almost all the chief countries of the Continent have sent us bands of exiles, who brought with them either special skill in manual arts and manufactures, or special 248capabilities for expanding our foreign commerce. To Flemish refugees, and more particularly to those of them who were driven hither by Spanish persecution in the sixteenth century, England owes a large debt in both respects. |Flemish Exiles in England.| Our historians have given more prominence of late years to this chapter in the national annals than was ever given to it before, but there is no presumption in saying that not a little of what was achieved by exiles towards the industrial greatness of the nation has yet to be told.

Nor is it less evident that, over and above the political and public interest of the things done, or initiated, by the new comers in their adopted country, the personal and family annals of the exiles possess, in not a few instances, a remarkable though subsidiary interest of their own. In certain cases, to trace the fortunes of a refugee family, is at once to throw some gleams of light on obscure portions of our commercial history, and to tell a romantic story of real life.

One such instance presents itself in the varied fortunes of the Courtens. |The Courtens; their Adventures and Enterprises.| That family attained an unusual degree of commercial prosperity, and attained it with unusual rapidity. In the second generation it seemed—for a while—to have struck a deep root in our English soil. It owned lands in half-a-dozen English counties, and its alliance was sought by some of the greatest families in the kingdom. In the next generation its fortunes sank more rapidly than they had risen. In the fourth, the last of the Courtens was for almost half his life a wanderer, living under a feigned name, and he continued so to live when at length enabled to return to his country. The true name had been preserved only in the records of interminable litigation—in England, Holland, India, and America—about the scattered 249wreck of a magnificent property. But the enterprise of the family, in its palmy days, had planted for England a prosperous colony. It had opened new paths to commerce in the East Indies, as well as in the West. And its last survivor found a solace for many ruined hopes in the collection of treasures of science, art and literature, which came to be important enough to form no small contribution towards the eventual foundation of the British Museum.

In 1567 William Courten, a thriving dealer in linens and silks, living at Menin in Flanders, was together with his wife, Margaret Casier, accused of heresy. Courten was thrown into the prison of the Inquisition, but contrived both to make his escape into England, and to enable his wife soon to join him. He established himself in London, in the same business which had thriven with him at home. |Family Records of the Courtens; in MS. Sloane, 3515, passim. (B. M.)| His wife shared in its toils, and by skilfully adapting her exertions to those tastes for finery in the families of rich citizens which were now striving with some success against the rigour of the old sumptuary laws made the business more prosperous than before. It expanded until the poor haberdasher of 1567 had become a notability on the London Exchange.

In 1571 a son was born to the exiles. This second William Courten was bred as a merchant rather than as a tradesman. He had good parts, and seems to have started into life with a passion for bold enterprise. His early training in London was continued at Haerlem, and there he laid a foundation for commercial success by marrying the daughter of Peter Crommelinck, a wealthy merchant. First and last, his wife brought him a dowry of £40,000, of which sum it was stipulated by the father’s 250will that not less than one half should be laid out in the purchase of lands in England, to be settled on the eldest son that should be born of the marriage.

By the time of his attaining the age of five and thirty William Courten had already become—for that period—a great capitalist. He then, in 1606, established in London a commercial house which added to the ordinary business of merchants on the largest scale, that of marine insurers, and also that of adventurers in the whale fishery. His partners in the firm were his younger brother, Peter Courten, and John Mouncey. One half of the joint stock belonged to the founder; the other half was divided between the junior partners.

For nearly a quarter of a century this mercantile partnership prospered marvellously. Its annual returns are said to have averaged £200,000. It built more than twenty large ships, and kept in constant employment more than four hundred seamen and fishermen. The head of the firm gradually acquired a large landed property which included estates in the several counties of Worcester, Gloucester, Leicester, Nottingham, Essex, and Kent.

This great prosperity had, of course, its drawbacks. Amongst the earliest checks which are recorded to have befallen it was a Crown prosecution of Courten (in company with several other foreign merchants of note, among whom occur the names of Burlamachi, Vanlore, and De Quester) on the frequent charge—so obnoxious to the political economy of that age—of ‘the unlawful exportation of gold.’ |Domestic Corresp., James I, vol. cix, § 90; 96; vol. cx, § 86; vol. cxi, § 66. Signs Manual, vol. xii, § 26. (R. H.)| Courten was brought into the Star Chamber and was fined £20,000; a sum so enormous as to excite a suspicion of the accuracy of the record, but for its repeated entry. The prosecution was instituted in June, 1619; the defendant’s discharge bears date July, 1620. But it may 251fairly be assumed that only a portion of the nominal fine was really exacted.

Another and much more serious check to the prosperity of the enterprising merchant came from his embarking in the grand but hazardous work of planting colonies.

In 1626, William Courten—then Sir William, having received the honour of knighthood at Greenwich, on the 31st of May, 1622—petitioned the King for ‘licence to make discoveries and plant colonies in that southern part of the world called Terra Australis incognita, with which the King’s subjects have as yet no trade,’ and his petition was granted. |Domestic Corresp., Charles I, vol. xiv, § 33.| What ensued thereupon is thus told in an authoritative manuscript account preserved in the Sloane collection:—

‘Sir William Courten being informed, by his correspondents in Zealand, that some Dutch men-of-war sent out upon private commission against the Spaniards had put into the island of Barbados, and found it uninhabited, and very fit for a plantation, did thereupon, at his own charge, set forth two ships provided with men, ammunition, and arms, and all kinds of necessaries for planting and fortifying the country, who landed and entered into possession of the same in the month of February, 1626 [1627, N.S.]... Afterwards, in the same year, he sent Captain Powell thither, with a further supply of servants and provisions, who, in 1627, fetched several Indians from the mainland, with divers sorts of seeds and roots, and agreed with them to instruct the English in planting cotton, tobacco, indigo, &c. Sir William Courten having, by his partners and servants, maintained the actual possession for the space of two years, and peopled the island with English, Indians, and others, to the number of eighteen hundred and fifty men, women, and children, thought fit to make use of the 252Earl of Pembroke’s name in obtaining a patent particularly for Barbadoes, although he had before a general grant from the king to possess any land within a certain latitude, wherein this island was comprehended. His Majesty having thus granted, by his Letters Patent, dated 25 February, 1627 [1628, N.S.] the government of this island unto the Earl of Pembroke, in trust for Sir William Courten, with power to settle a colony according to the laws of England, Captain Powell had a commission to continue there as Governor, in their behalf. The Earl of Carlisle,’ continues the MS. narrative, ‘having, before this Patent to the Earl of Pembroke, procured a grant, dated 2nd July 1627, of all those islands lying within 10 and 20 degrees of latitude by the name of Carliola, or Carlisle Province, with all royalties, and jurisdictions, as amply as they were enjoyed by any Bishop of Durham, within his bishopric or county palatine, and having also got another patent, for the greater security of his title, dated 7th April 1628, sent one Henry Hawley with two ships, who, arriving there in 1629, invited the Governor on board, kept him prisoner, seized the forts, and carried away the factors and servants of Sir William Courten and the Earl of Pembroke. |Ibid. Comp. Despatches in Colonial Correspondence, vol. v, §§ 1, 9, 13, 101, seqq.| The authority of the Earl of Carlisle being thus established was maintained.’

But it was only maintained after a long contest at the Council Board at home, which contest seems to have been largely influenced by the fluctuations of Court favour from time to time. A despatch in February, written in behalf of Carlisle, is followed in April by another despatch written in behalf of Pembroke and Courten. The one fact that becomes consistently evident throughout the proceedings is that grants of this kind were made in the loosest fashion, and often in entire ignorance even of the geographical 253positions of the countries given by them.^[39] Indeed, the common course of procedure under the Stuarts, when a courtier had the happy thought of begging a territory in America, reminds one of those earlier days of the Tudors, when a favoured suppliant sometimes obtained the grant of a monastery, or the lease of a broad episcopal estate, with hardly more trouble than it cost him to win a royal smile.

To Courten and his colonists the issue of this quarrel about Barbadoes was very disastrous. To some of the latter it brought ruin. But to the founder himself a check to enterprise in one direction seems to have brought increased stimulus to new enterprise in another direction. He now embarked largely in adventures to the East Indies and to China. As usual, they were planned on a magnificent scale; excited great jealousy in the breasts of competitors; and were attended, in the long run, with very mixed results of good and ill.

Meanwhile, Sir William’s growing wealth—greatly exaggerated by popular renown—and the conspicuous position into which his varied pursuits had brought him, led to plans of enterprise by others, and of quite another kind, at home. He had lost his first wife, and also his eldest son. He had married a second wife,—Hester Tryon, daughter of Peter Tryon. Only one son survived, but Sir William had three daughters, whose prospective charms attracted 254many suitors. In September, 1624, King James wrote a characteristic letter in which he assured Courten that the son of Sir Robert Fleetwood, Lord of the Scottish barony of Newton, would make a fit match for one of the three daughters, and that the conclusion of such a match would be very acceptable to the King himself. |Alliances between the City and the Court.| |James I to Sir Willm. Courten; Dom. Corr., vol. clxxii, § 71.| The pretendant would gladly, and impartially, wed any one of the three ladies, but the King himself, continues the royal letter, ‘will regard, as a favour, any increase of portion given to the daughter whom Fleetwood may marry, over and above the portion given to, or intended for, the other daughters.’

But despite so powerful a recommendation the young Baron of Newton failed in his suit. Among the aspirants with whom he stood in competition were men much higher in social position. Eventually, the eldest daughter married Sir Edward Lyttelton of Staffordshire. The second daughter married Henry Grey, eighth Earl of Kent, of that family. And the third married Sir Richard Knightley of Fawsley.

Royal commendations of suitors were sure, in that age, not to be the only sample of royal letters—direct and indirect—with which a man in Sir William Courten’s position became familiar. He was favoured with not a few solicitations for advances of money on privy-seals, and in other forms of ‘loan.’ Sometimes he complies. Sometimes he remonstrates by specifying the large sums he contributes to the revenue in the way of custom’s duties, and the entire incapability thence arising of the desired response to privy-seals and the like documents. His loans, however, to James, and to Charles, amounted to no less a sum than £27,000.

The death in 1625 of his brother, Sir Peter Courten, 255deprived the firm of its efficient representative in Holland, and laid a foundation for great misfortunes by putting in his place an unworthy successor. The partner resident at Middleburgh had the trust both of a large portion of the capital of the Company, and of the chief share of its account keeping.

Peter Boudaen was a nephew of the Courtens, and had been to some extent admitted as a partner. His uncle Peter made him also his executor. He thus acquired a great control over the continental affairs of the house, just at the time when its transactions were expanding in all directions. |1631.| He proved unfaithful to his trust, applied his large local influence to his personal advantage and to the prejudice of his partners; and at length failed altogether to render due accounts to the two partners in England. Mouncey, the junior of these, went to Holland in order to enforce an adjustment. He had hardly entered on his task when he died, after a very brief illness, in Boudaen’s house at Middleburgh. Boudaen made a Will for him; asserted that the testator had executed it, in due form of law, immediately before his death; and found means to get the document sanctioned by the Dutch Courts, in the face of strong opposition and of strong presumptive evidence of fraud.

Sir William Courten, meanwhile, prosecuted with his characteristic vigour his vast enterprises already established; made new and large ventures in the reclaiming of waste lands in England; and established the ‘Fishery Association of Great Britain and Ireland,’ with a view to the rescue from the Dutch of that productive herring fishery on our own coasts, which the growing supineness of English governments during at least two generations had permitted to become almost a monopoly in their hands. 256Of this Association Courten, during the closing years of his life, was the mainspring.

The Dutch, as was natural, strove vigorously to retain the advantage they had acquired, and were little scrupulous about the means of opposition. English herring busses were occasionally captured. And the captors had the great incidental advantage in the strife of dealing with a Government already weak at home, and yearly losing ground.

The East Indian adventures were, at length, attended by circumstances still more complex than those pertaining to the fishery business at home, or to the trading in Holland. |Domestic Corresp., Charles I, vol. cccxxiii, p. 58; vol. cccxliii, § 19.| For, in the former, English rivalry had to be encountered, as well as Dutch rivalry. And the rivalry took such a shape as to make the carrying on of trade extremely like the carrying on of war. But, as if the care of these varied interests, in addition to all the toils and anxieties of ordinary commerce on an extraordinary scale, were all too little to occupy the mind of a man who had now reached his sixty-sixth year, we find Sir William Courten taking, just at the close of life, a new and leading part in the business of redeeming captives who had been taken by the pirates of Morocco and Algiers. |Domestic Corresp., Charles I, vol. cccxv, § 16; vol. ccclxviii, § 82.| Nor was this merely an affair of the provision of money and the conduct of correspondence. It involved an intimate acquaintance with the circumstances and the needs of the Barbary States, being carried on, in part, on the principle of barter.

But all these far-spread activities were now fast approaching their natural close. Courten’s career had been, as a whole, wonderfully prosperous, until very near its close. Already it contained, indeed, the germ of a series of reverses, hardly less remarkable; but the growth of that germ was to depend on the as yet unseen course of public 257events. His ambition to ‘found a family’ had also been gratified by the marriage of his only surviving son^[40]—William Courten, third of his name—with the Lady Katherine Egerton, daughter of John Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater. |Courten Papers, in MS. Sloane, 3515.| On that son and his heirs, Sir William Courten settled landed estates amounting to nearly seven thousand pounds a year.

Sir William Courten died in June, 1636. The commercial enterprises of all kinds which were in full activity at the time of his death were continued by his son, who inherited large claims, large responsibilities, and large perils. And it was of the perils that—after his succession—he had earliest experience.

Just before the father’s death, a complaint had been made to the Privy Council that certain ships which he had sent to Surat and other places had committed acts of ‘piracy near the mouth of the Red Sea.’ |Domestic Corresp., Charles I, vol. cccxliii, § 19.| It appeared afterwards that the ships which had given cause, or pretext, of complaint were not Courten’s ships, but the accusation entailed trouble, and was, to the heir, the beginning of troubles to come. The opposition of the East India Company to the Indian trading of ‘interlopers’ (as they were called already) was unremitting and bitter. |Courten Papers, in MS. Sloane, 3515, p. 38.| In June, 1637, William Courten, with a view to arm himself for the encounter, obtained from the Crown letters patent which empowered himself and his associates to trade with all parts of the East, ‘wheresoever the East India Company had not settled factories or trade before the twelfth day of December, 1635.’ One of his chief 258associates under the new grant was Endymion Porter, and it appears that it was partly by Porter’s influence at Court that the grant had been procured.

Renewed activity was now shown in prosecuting the Eastern trade; new and large ventures were made in it. On some occasions as many as seven well-appointed ships were sent out by Courten and his associates at one time. Instructions are still extant which were given to the chief agents, supercargoes, and factors, for the settlement of English factories at many important places where none had heretofore existed. They are marked by great sagacity and breadth of view, and, in several points, contrast advantageously with contemporary documents of a like kind.

The enterprise was pursued, as it seems, with satisfactory results until the year 1643, when, in the Straits of Malacca, two richly-laden vessels of the Courten fleet were seized by the Dutch. Subsequent proceedings show that the value of the ships and their cargoes, with the contingent losses, exceeded £150,000. Along with this severe blow came the interruptions and injuries to trade at home, which were the inevitable accompaniment of the Civil War. Soon after it, there came indications that the loss to Sir William Courten’s representatives by the misconduct of Peter Boudaen at Middleburgh would but too probably prove to be a loss without present remedy. It appears to have been established by the evidence adduced in the course of the almost interminable litigation which ensued that there was due from Boudaen to his partners a sum of £122,000; none of which, it may be added, seems ever to have been recovered. And the debt which had been contracted by James the First and his successor, though less grievous in amount, was at this time even more hopeless.

259Under the pressure of such a combination of misfortunes, William Courten found himself practically and suddenly insolvent. He met some of the most pressing claims upon him by the sale of available portions of his landed property. He assigned other portions of his estates to trustees, and became himself an exile. He survived the ruin of the brilliant hopes and expectations to which he had been born about ten years; dying at Florence in the year 1655. He left, by his marriage with Lady Katherine Egerton, one son and one daughter.

The fourth William Courten was born in London on the 28th March, 1642. He was baptized at St. Gabriel Fenchurch, on the 31st of that month. The downfall of his family was therefore very nearly contemporaneous with his own birth, and makes it explicable that no record can now be found of the places of his education, or of the course of his early years. But the first trace which does occur of him is in exact harmony with the one fact which makes his existence memorable to his countrymen. |Museum Tradescantianum, (1656).| He appears, at the age of fourteen, in the list of benefactors to the Tradescant Museum, at Lambeth, a collection which afterwards became the basis of the Ashendean Museum at Oxford.

The Tradescants—father and son—hold a conspicuous place in the history of Botanical Science in England, and they are especially notable as the founders of the first ‘Museum’ worthy of the name, which was established in this country. The next collection of note, after theirs, was that formed by Robert Hubert, in his house near St. Paul’s Cathedral. Other collectors—as for example, John Conyers and Dr. John Woodward—soon followed the example. But in this path all of them were far outstripped 260by Courten, who had marked his early bias, and also his characteristic liberality, by his gift to the Tradescants in 1656.

Part of Courten’s youth was passed at Montpelier, where he formed the acquaintance of several men then, or afterwards, famous for their scientific acquirements. Amongst them, and with the local advantages for the study of the natural sciences, in particular, for the possession of which Montpelier was already noted, his tastes for observation and study were developed, and his character took the ply which soon became indelible.

If he ever possessed any share at all of the qualities and predispositions for mercantile adventure, which had marked so many generations of his ancestors on the father’s side, that share was far too weak an element in his composition to resist the discouragements of adverse circumstances. But as he attained manhood, he found himself immersed—unwittingly in part—in a sea of litigation which boded ill to his prospective enjoyment of leisure for scientific studies, whatever might prove to be its ultimate results upon his worldly fortunes.

Some of the later enterprises of Sir William Courten had been carried on in conjunction with another famous merchant, Sir Paul Pindar, who like himself was a large creditor of the Crown. The administration of Pindar’s estate had fallen into the hands of a certain George Carew, who seems to have imagined that the restoration of royal authority in England would bring with it opportunities, to an energetic man, of winning a new fortune out of the remnants of the old fortunes which the fall of royalty had helped to ruin. |Courten Papers, in MSS. Sloane, 3515; 3961; and 3962.| Just before Charles the Second came back, this man busied himself in buying up claims against Courten’s estate as well as claims against Pindar’s. He 261had a stock of energy. He had also the prospect of acquiring a good standpoint at Court, in addition to his present possession of a good training in the mysteries of English law. He was ready to devote all his energies to the business, and to encounter at once with the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch Republic, the Government of Barbadoes, and a host of adversaries at home.

There had, however, been no Commission of Bankruptcy. It was necessary that the battle should be fought as well in the name of the heir and representative of the family, as in the name of the collective body of creditors. Carew used Courten’s name and used it, as it appears, for some years without authority from the legal guardian. Courten himself did not become of age until 1663.

The Restoration was hardly effected before Carew besieged the King and the Courts with Petitions, Memorials, Claims, and Bills of Plaint. He would lose nothing for lack of asking. And he was undeterred by difficulties or rebuffs.

The case of Barbadoes was thus put before the Committee of the Privy Council for America:—

‘Courten claims the whole island of Barbadoes; and, more particularly, the Corn Plantation, the Indian Bridge Plantation, the Fort Plantation, the Indian Plantation eastwards, and Powell’s plantation. Sir William Courten’s ships discovered the island in the year 1626, and left fifty people there. Captain Henry Powell landed there in February, 1627, built [houses] for Courten’s colony, and left more than forty inhabitants there. John Powell erected Plantation Fort, and remained until he was surprised in 1628 by a force under Charles Wolverton, by which the fort was captured. |Colonial Correspondence, vol. xiv, §§ 37, 39, 42.| In 1629, Sir William Courten sent eighty men with arms, in the ‘Peter and John,’ and they retook 262the fort in the name of the Earl of Pembroke, Trustee for Courten, according to the royal grant.’ And then the Petition recites the recapture, under the conflicting Patent of the Earl of Carlisle, as I have described it already.

There is, of course, no foundation for the statement that Barbadoes was ‘discovered’ by the ships of Courten. In other respects, the details here set forth appear to be sustained by the evidence.

In order to the recovery of the debt from the Crown, Carew suggested, in another petition, and quite in the fashion of the day, that the Petitioners should have ‘leave to raise the money’ due to the Courten Estate from the estates of John Lisle, Thomas Scott, Thomas Andrews, and others, concerned in the murder of the late King. In a third petition, he prayed that ‘a blank warrant for the dignity of a baronet’ might be granted, in order to sell it to the best bidder, and to apply the proceeds in partial satisfaction of the debt.

But it was to the prosecution of the claim upon the Dutch Republic for the unwarranted seizure, in 1643, of the rich ships of the East India Fleet that Carew devoted his best energies. The damages were put at £163,400. The main facts of the case were fully substantiated. And a royal letter was addressed to the States General on the 21st of March, 1662, claiming full satisfaction.

A Memorial was delivered at the Hague in the April following, by the English Ambassador, Sir George Downing, in which, after a general statement of the case at issue, he went on to say: ‘Whereas it may seem strange that this matter may be set on foot at this time, whereas in the year 1654 Commissioners were sent to England who did end several matters relating to the East Indies, and whereas in the year 1659 several matters of a fresher date were also 263ended, and thereby a period put to all other matters of difference which had happened about the same time, and were known in Europe before the 20th of January in the same year, it is to be considered that the persons interested in these ships were such as, for their singular and extraordinary activity to His Majesty, ... father to the King my master, were rendered incapable of obtaining or pursuing their just rights, at home or abroad. |Memorial delivered to the States General, at the Hague, 19 April, 1662.| And upon that account it is that the business of the two ships remains yet in dispute, though several matters of a much fresher date have been ended.’

When these proceedings were initiated by Sir George Downing at the Hague, Courten himself was still in his minority. But it is probable that he had already returned to England.

Courten’s first personal appearance upon the scene was also made in the way of presenting a petition to the King. |MS. Sloane 3515.| In July 1663, he thus alleged that the steps which had been taken were without his concurrence or knowledge, ‘and, as is feared, with intention to deprive him of his claims.’ The King referred the petition to Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who pronounced in Courten’s favour.

His position was one of great embarrassment. |The Agreement between Courten and Carew.| Some of his family connexions had already suffered much annoyance from litigation about the Courten Estates at home, and were little inclined to incur further risk or trouble on behalf of a relative whose inheritance was certain to yield abundance of immediate vexation and anxiety, and very uncertain in respect to its prospects of any better harvest in the end. |1663.| He was advised to sell the remnant of his entailed estates, to put the product of the sale out of danger from any adverse issue of pending claims, and to come to terms 264with Carew for the prosecution of the latter—or of some of them—on a joint account. In accordance with this advice, an agreement was made, in the course of 1663, by which Carew was empowered to pursue the claims against the Netherlands, as well on Courten’s behalf as on his own and that of other creditors. The remaining landed estates in Worcestershire and other counties—or nearly all that remained of them—were sold, and a life income was secured.

For the next half dozen years Courten’s life was almost that of a recluse, save that such activities as it admitted of were devoted almost exclusively to the study of antiquities and of the natural sciences. A great part of those years was passed at Fawsley with his aunt, Lady Knightley, one of the few relatives whose affection stood the proof of adversity.

There are several reasons for thinking that the rudimentary foundation of Courten’s Museum had been laid as early as in the time of his grandfather, Sir William, whose mercantile and colonial enterprises presented so many opportunities for bringing into England the more curious productions of remote countries, as well as their merchandise. Be that as it may, the collection of a museum which should eclipse everything of its kind theretofore known in England became, from his attainment of manhood, the leading aim and object of William Courten’s career. It was to him both an ambition and a solace.

The other of the two men who thus came into brief contact in 1663 lived a life as different from Courten’s as can well be conceived. Carew seems to have been a glutton in his appetite for contention. |Pretentien tegens d’Oost-Indische Compagnie, &c. (B. M.)| And the Dutchmen, as far as they were concerned, put no stint upon its indulgence. There was also ample time for it. Treaty followed by war, 265and war leading to renewed treaty, kept the affair of the Bona Esperanza and the Henry Bon-Adventure both in active historical memory, and in full legal vigour. Towards the close of 1662 it had been covenanted by the English government, as a necessary condition of a good understanding between the two Powers, that there should be a prompt satisfaction of damages. The Treaty of Commerce of that year was tossed to and fro on that one point of the Courten ships with more obstinate pertinacity than on any other. To the intrinsic merits of the claim, in the main, there was really no answer. To the legal technicalities by which its settlement, if left to Dutch courts of judicature, could be indefinitely protracted, there was no end. |The Claims in Holland.| When letters of dismissal had been already drawn at Whitehall for the Dutch envoys of 1662, because they insisted on a clause extinguishing all outstanding claims on both sides; they skilfully contrived to substitute leave to litigate^[41] for a proviso to satisfy. And the event justified their forecast.

During the year 1665, Letters of Marque and Reprisal were granted to Carew and his associates, and a special clause of continuance until the full recovery of debt and damages,^[42] notwithstanding the conclusion of any subsequent Treaty of Peace was inserted. This was done after an elaborate argument before the Lord Chancellor Clarendon. Several ships were taken by Carew’s cruisers, but they were nearly all claimed by Hamburghers, Swedes, and 266others. And at length the cost of the reprisals exceeded their yield.

In this case, and throughout it, as in so many other and graver cases, the policy of Charles the Second’s ministers was a policy of the passing exigence. Principle had always to vail to expediency. The Dutch were permitted, after all, to insert their favorite extinction clause in the Treaty of Breda (21 July, 1667). Five years later, the Privy Council advised the King that ‘it is just and reasonable for your Majesty to insist upon reparation for the debt and damages’ sustained by the seizure, in 1643, of the Bona Esperanza and her consort. New Letters of Marque led to the capture of more vessels, duly provided with a diversity of flag; and to the imprisonment, in England, of the captors, before trial or inquiry. Meanwhile, Carew himself was seized abroad, and put into a Dutch prison. |Courten Papers, in MS. Sloane, 3515.| And, at length, in 1676, the States of Holland sent express orders to their courts of judicature, directing that ‘no further progress shall be made in the pending suits,’ grounding the order upon the proviso in the treaty of 1667, as extinctive of all claims and pretensions, whatsoever, advanced by Englishmen against Dutch citizens, be the foundation and history of such claims what they might. This decree, therefore, operated in bar, as well of the claims of the representatives of Sir William Courten, for the debt of Peter Boudaen, as of those arising out of the seizure of the ships of the East India Fleet. It was estimated that the Courten claims then pending in the Courts of Holland amounted, in the aggregate, to £380,000 sterling.^[43]

In May, 1683, a petition was presented to the English government, in which humble prayer was made that that 267government would be graciously pleased ‘to perpetuate the memory of Sir William Courten and of Sir Paul Pindar, by setting up their statues in marble under the piazzas of the Royal Exchange—Sir William Courten’s at the end of the “Barbadoes walk” at the one side, and Sir Paul Pindar’s at the end of the “Turkey walk” of the other side—for encouragement to all merchants, in future ages, |Vox Veritatis, 1683. (B. M.)| to take examples by them for loyalty and fidelity to their King and country.’

Courten did his best to avoid any personal share in those unceasing turmoils, and to keep in the quiet paths of a studious retirement. But he presently found that, in order to secure his end, he must needs do as his father had done before him. He must leave England, either for Italy or for France. When his mind was made up to exile, it was also made up to the relinquishment of his name. William Courten became, even to his nearest relatives, ‘William Charleton.’

The friendships he had already formed at Montpelier, in his youth, and the local charms of that city for a studious man, incited him to revisit his old retreat. But he made no permanent abode there. He took long tours, in France, in Germany, and in Italy; adding everywhere both to the stores of his knowledge and to the presses and cabinets of his library and museum. It was during his second stay at Montpelier that he formed his life-long friendships with a famous Frenchman, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, and with a more famous Englishman, John Locke. Here also began his acquaintance with Dr. (afterwards Sir) Hans Sloane.

It was at Sloane’s instance that he made his solitary 268appearance as an author, in the shape of a communication to the Royal Society, which was laid before them in 1679, and afterwards printed in the Philosophical Transactions, |Philosoph. Transact., vol. xxvii, pp. 485, seqq.| under the title: Experiments and Observations of the Effects of several sorts of Poisons upon Animals, made at Montpelier.

Thirteen or fourteen years were thus passed. And then, to the natural yearning of an exile, there came the strong reinforcement of the call of large collections for a settled abode. There are few claims to fixity of tenure better grounded than are those of a Museum or a Library.

The return was not easy, but the difficulties were faced. It is probable that he came back to England in the summer of 1684. He did not then own one acre of that land of which his father had inherited so respectable a breadth in half a dozen counties. He had not long arrived before one of his nearest friends wrote him a letter, which seemed to bode ill for his prospects of a peaceable life. ‘The number of creditors,’ wrote Richard Salwey to him, on the 18th August, 1684, ‘is incredible, for the debts are standing, and multiplied to children and grandchildren, who, so long as the parchment and the wax can be preserved, will not forego their hopes nor attempts. And I fear your late so public station^[44] will daily expose you, and that you will at every backstairs and turning be pulled by the sleeve and provoked. |Salwey to ‘Charlton;’ MS. Sloane, 3962, f. 191.| Nor yet do I know of any danger consequent in any suit that can be commenced, except putting you to great trouble and like expenses;—and I fear you have not a superfluous bank to defray the charge.’

269Courten, however, was not seriously molested. He established himself in London as the occupant of a large suite of chambers in Essex Court, Middle Temple. Here his collections were conveniently arranged, and they had space to expand. |Establishment of the Courten Museum.| Ere long we find mention of his Museum as filling ten rooms.

Of the cost at which it had been gathered, there are now no adequate and authenticated materials for forming an estimate. But in those days the man who himself travelled on such a quest had a vast advantage over the man—howsoever better provided with what in the sixteenth century was called purse-ability—who sent other men to travel in his stead. In Courten’s days no dealers explored the Continent as an ordinary incident of their calling. The wreck, too, of such a fortune as that of the Courtens was not contemptible. |Courten Papers, in MS. Sloane, 3962; 303.| When living in France (1677–79) our collector appears to have had an income of about fifteen hundred pounds a year, accruing from money invested in mortgages and in annuities.

Although his chief collections were of his own gathering, he had many helpers. Among them was the future inheritor of his Museum, Hans Sloane. In the year 1687, when about to set out on his voyage to the West Indies, Sloane wrote to him: ‘I design to send you what is curious from the several islands we land at,—which will be most of our plantations.’ |Sloane to ‘Charlton;’ Ib., 308.| The writer was then a young man. Probably his acquaintance with Courten was at that time of not greater standing than eight or nine years, but he writes of the obligations Courten had then already conferred upon him: ‘I am extremely obliged to you, beyond any in the world.’|Ibid.|

The use this Collector made of his treasures was as liberal as the zeal with which he had amassed them was indefatigable. 270The friend whose correspondence has just been quoted said, after Courten’s death, that he was wont to show his Museum very freely, and to make his stores contribute, in various ways, ‘to the advancement of the glory of God, the honour and renown of the country, and the no small promotion of knowledge and the useful arts.’

Many notices are extant—scattered here and there in the Diaries and among the correspondence of the day—of visits made to Courten’s Museum by men who were able to judge of what they saw. Those notices confirm the general statement made by Sloane, and show the comprehensiveness of the collector’s tastes as well as the geniality of his character. Two such notices have an especial interest, which is not lessened by the fact that both of them are to be found in diaries that are well known. They record the visits to Essex Court of John Evelyn, and of John Thoresby.

Evelyn paid his first visit in charming company. It was made in December, 1686. He thus tells of it in his journal: ‘I carried the Countess of Sunderland to see the rarities of one Mr. Charlton, in the Middle Temple, who showed us such a collection as I had never seen in all my travels abroad—either of private gentlemen, or of princes. It consisted of miniatures, drawings, shells, insects, medals, ... minerals; all being very perfect and rare of their kind; especially his books of birds, fishes, flowers, and shells, drawn and miniatured to the life. He told us that one book stood him in three hundred pounds. |Diary, &c., vol. ii, p. 260. (Edit. of 1854.)| It was painted by that excellent workman whom the late Gaston, Duke of Orleans, employed.^[45] This gentleman’s whole collection, gathered by himself [while] travelling over most parts of 271Europe, is estimated at eight thousand pounds. He appeared to be a modest and obliging person.’

Evelyn records two other visits, which he made at subsequent times. It is obvious that during almost the whole period which elapsed between Courten’s return to England and his death, his museum was a place of frequent and fashionable resort; notwithstanding the warning which its owner had received as to the perils of a ‘public station,’ under his peculiar circumstances. To the celebrated diarist himself, his visits seem to have suggested a very natural thought of the public value of such an institution, to be maintained by and for the country at large. And he was very far from keeping the idea to himself. Evelyn lived to a more than ordinary term of years, but not long enough to see his idea carried into act. He had, however, helped to prepare the way.

His incidental statement about the estimated money value of the Courten Museum does not invalidate a foregoing remark in this chapter. The estimate can hardly have been founded upon better ground than mere conjecture. But it is curious to note the near approach of the guess of 1686 to another guess, on the same small point, made nine years later.

Thoresby’s visit occurred in May, 1695. He records it thus: ‘Walked to Mr. Charlton’s chambers at the Temple, who very courteously showed me his Museum, which is perhaps the most noble collection of natural and artificial curiosities, of ancient and modern coins and medals, that any private person in the world enjoys. It is said to have cost him seven or eight thousand pounds sterling.... |Thoresby, Diary, 1695, May 24, vol. i, p. 299.| I spent the greatest part of my time amongst the coins; for though the British and Saxon be not very extraordinary, yet his [collection of] the silver coins of the Emperors and 272Consuls is very noble. He has also a costly collection of medals of eminent persons in Church and State, and of domestic and foreign Reformers. But, before I was half satisfied, an unfortunate visit from the Countess of Pembroke and other ladies from Court prevented further queries.’

The visits of the ‘ladies from Court’ may not have seemed quite so unfortunate to the host who had to entertain them, as to the zealous antiquary whose recondite questions they broke off. At all events, such visits must have been to Courten like renewed glimpses of the gayer life of which he had known something in his early days.

In learned leisure, and in quiet pleasures such as these, his life passed gently to its end. He kept up his correspondence as well with some of the surviving friends of his youth, as with two or three of the eminent scholars and naturalists with whom he had made acquaintance during the travel-years of middle life. Failing to raise his fortunes to the height of his early hopes, he yet won contentment by bringing down his desires to the level of his means. He ceased to trouble himself with claims on the Dutch Republic, or with pretensions to a proprietorship in the Island of Barbadoes, or even about his interest in debts contracted by the Crown of England. He had been able, in spite of all losses, to open to his contemporaries means of culture and of mental recreation which, on any like scale, had been before unknown to them. Only in the most famous cities of Italy had the like then been seen. And he had the final satisfaction of making the secured continuance of his Museum the means of further securing, at the same time, the comfort and prosperity of some humble friends and dependants whose faithful attention had helped to solace his own closing years. Nor had he neglected those consolations which are supreme.

273William Courten’s Will was made on his death-bed, in March, 1702. Having bequeathed certain pecuniary legacies—increased two days afterwards by codicil—and having provided for the payment of his debts, he made Dr. Hans Sloane his residuary legatee and sole executor. He forbade all display at his funeral. He died, at Kensington, on the 26th of March, 1702, wanting two days of the completion of his sixtieth year.^[46] He was buried in Kensington churchyard, near the south-east door of the church. By his friend and executor an altar-tomb, carved by Grinling Gibbons, was placed above his remains, with this inscription:—

274Sir Hans Sloane was the seventh and youngest son of Alexander Sloane, a Scotchman who had married one of the daughters of Dr. George Hickes, Prebendary of Winchester, and who had settled in Ireland on receiving the appointment of receiver-general of the estates of the Lord Claneboy, afterwards Earl of Clanricarde. |Life of Sir Hans Sloane.| He was born at Killileagh, in the county Down, on the 16th of April, 1660.

We learn that almost from earliest youth, Hans Sloane evinced his possession of quick parts and of keen powers of observation. And he gave early indications of that happy constitution of mind and will which now and then permits the union of intellectual ambition and aspiration, with not a little of prudential shrewdness. A special bias towards the study of the natural sciences was—as it has often been in like cases—one of the things that were soonest taken note of by those about him. Faculties such as these naturally pointed to medicine as a fitting profession for their early possessor. His home studies, however, were checked by a severe illness which threatened his life, and from some of the effects of which he never quite recovered. But that illness helped to qualify him for his future profession. If it took away, for life, the likelihood that the bright promises of the dawn would be altogether realized in his maturity, it seems to have strengthened, in an unusual degree, both the prudential element which already marked his character, and his predisposition to rely mainly, for the success of his plans, upon plodding industry. From youth to old age an 275unweariable power of taking pains was his leading characteristic.

In his eighteenth year he came to London with the immediate object of studying chemistry and botany, before he entered on other studies more distinctively medical. |Early Studies in London;| |1677–1682.| He learned chemistry under Staphorst,^[47] and of botany he acquired a good deal of knowledge by frequenting, with much assiduity, the recently founded Botanical Garden at Chelsea. In the latter pursuit he met with assistance from the intelligent keeper of the garden, Mr. Watts. |MS. Corresp.| And ere long he acquired the friendship of John Ray, and of Robert Boyle.

After six years of steady educational labours, both scientific and medical, he went to Paris, which possessed in 1683—and long afterwards—facilities for medical education far superior to any that could then be found in London. |And in France.| |1683–4.| His companions in the journey were Dr. Tancred Robinson and Dr. Wakeley.

Sloane had scarcely got farther into France than the town of Dieppe, before it was his good fortune to make the acquaintance of Nicholas Lemery, and to find himself able to communicate to that eminent chemist the results of some novel experiments. |Eloge, in Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences (1753); and MS. Correspondence. (B. M.)| They journeyed together from Dieppe to Paris, and the acquaintance thus casually formed was productive of good to both of them. The studies begun in Ireland, and assiduously continued in London, were now matured in Paris under men of European fame. And the young botanist who heretofore could profit only by the infant garden established by the London apothecaries at Chelsea, and by an occasional botanizing ramble 276into the country, could now expatiate at will in the magnificent Jardin des Plantes of the King of France. In that botanical university Sloane, too, had Tournefort—four years his senior—for his frequent companion and fellow-student.

In July, 1683, he took his degree as Doctor of Medicine in the University of Orange. Thence he went to Montpelier, where he resided until nearly the end of May, 1684. After visiting Bordeaux, and some other parts of France, he returned to Paris. There were few towns, in which he made any stay, that had not given him some friend or other, in addition to a valuable accession of knowledge. And the friendships he had once formed were but rarely lost.

Towards the close of 1684 Dr. Sloane returned to England, whither the reputation of his increased acquirements had preceded him. In January, 1685, he was chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society, and exactly one year afterwards he was proposed for election as Assistant-Secretary. Among the other candidates were Denis Papin and Edmund Halley. On the first scrutiny, Sloane had ten votes; Halley sixteen. The majority was not enough, but on a second ballot Halley was chosen. Early in 1687 he became a Fellow of the College of Physicians. He had thus early laid some foundation for a London practice that would lead him to social eminence, as well as to fortune. And for the good gifts of fortune he had a very keen relish.

Loving wealth well, he loved science still better. But he had already good reason to hope that both might be won, in company. He had become known to Christopher Monk, second Duke of Albemarle, and when that nobleman received, in 1687, the office of Governor-General of the West India Colonies, Sloane received an invitation 277to sail with him, as the Duke’s physician and as Chief Physician to the fleet; and he was desired to name his own conditions, if disposed to accept the appointment.

He did not take any long time to think over the offer. If it presented no very brilliant prospect of monetary profit, it opened a large field for scientific research. |The Voyage to Jamaica.| And, in the main, the field was new. |1687.| No Englishman had ever yet been tempted to take so long a journey in the interests of science. He knew that he had excellent personal qualifications for turning to good account the large opportunities of discovery that such a voyage was sure to bring. Nor was it less certain that it would bring innumerable occasions for enlarging his strictly professional knowledge. And he had on his side the vigour of youth, as well as its curiosity and its enthusiasm.

In annexing to his reply the conditions of his acceptance he wrote thus: ‘If it be thought fit that Dr. Sloane go physician to the West Indian Fleet, the surgeons of all the ships must be ordered to observe his directions.... He proposes that six hundred pounds, per annum, shall be paid to him quarterly, with a previous payment of three hundred pounds, in order to his preparation for this service; and also that if the Fleet shall be called home he shall have leave to stay in the West Indies if he pleases.’ The proposed terms were approved. |Corresp. in MS. Sloane, 4069, ff. 86, 87.| The Doctor embarked at Portsmouth, in the Duke’s frigate Assistance, on the 12th of September.

His work as a scientific collector began at Madeira. |Ibid., MS. Sloane, 3962, f. 310.| To botanize in that pleasant island was an enjoyment all the more welcome after an unusual share of suffering from seasickness, in the midst of professional toil. For it was honourably characteristic of Sloane that, under all circumstances and forms of temptation, medical duties had the 278first place with him. What he achieved for science, throughout his life, was achieved in the intervals of more immediate duty.

He reached Barbadoes in November. Thence he wrote to Courten: ‘This is indeed a new world in all things. You may be sure the task I have is already delightful to me.’ |Sloane to Courten; Ib., 1687, Nov. 28.| Then he continues: ‘I am heartily sorry that I, being new landed here, cannot now send [what I have collected for you] with this letter. What I had at Madeira cannot be come at. What is here I have not, as yet, gathered. But you may assure yourself that what these parts of the West Indies afford is all your own, the best way I can send them.’

The collections begun thus favourably were continued at the beginning of December in the islands of Nevis, St. Christopher, and Hispaniola. The fleet reached Port Royal on the 19th of that month. Jamaica was explored with ardent enthusiasm and with minutest care. Its animals and minerals, as well as its plants; its history, as well as its meteorology, were thoroughly studied. |Medical Cases appended to Voyage to Jamaica; vol. i (1708).| And the medical skill of the new-comer was put as heartily at the service of the toil-worn negro as at that of the wealthiest planter, or of the highest officer of the Crown.

But presently Sloane himself needed the care and skill he so willingly bestowed. ‘I had a great fever,’ he says, ‘though those about me called it a little seasoning.’ He had scarcely recovered before his knowledge of the natural history of Jamaica was suddenly and unpleasantly increased.

‘Ever since the beginning of February,’ I find him writing to the Lord Chief Justice Herbert (who seems to have been one of the earliest of the many patients who became also friends): ‘I dread earthquakes more than heat. 279For then we had a very great one. Finding the house to dance and the cabinets to reel, I looked out of window to see whether people removed the house (a wooden structure) or no. Casting my eyes towards an aviary, I saw the birds in as great concern as myself. Then, another terrible shake coming, I apprehended what it was, and betook me to my heels to get clear of the house; but before I got down stairs it was over. If it had come the day after, it had frighted us ten times more. |Sloane to Lord Chief Justice Herbert; MS. Sloane, 4069, ff. 277, 278.| For the day it happened there arrived a Spanish sloop from Porto Bello, giving an account of the destruction of great part of the kingdom of Peru.’

Long before this letter was written the exploring studies and expedition had been resumed with all the activity of renewed health, and they were carried on—at every available interval, as I have said, of pressing medical duty—throughout the year 1688. That eventful year, during which the thoughts and anxieties of the mass of his countrymen were so differently engrossed, was to Sloane the especial seedtime of his study of Nature. All that he was enabled to effect in that attractive path may now seem very small and dim, when viewed in the light of subsequent achievements. But it was great for that day, when, in England, the path was so newly opened that the possession of a taste for collecting insects was thought, by able men of the world, to be a strong presumption of lunacy. And it soon fired the ambition of a multitude of inquirers who rapidly carried the good work of investigation onward, in all directions.

Towards the close of the year, the Duke of Albemarle suddenly died. The contingency for which Sloane had had the foresight to make provision had arisen, but in a quite unexpected way; so that his forecast failed to secure 280him that time for continued research which he had coveted and contracted for. The Duchess of Albemarle had accompanied her husband in his voyage, and, after the first shock of his death had been borne, was naturally desirous to leave the colony. Sloane could not allow her to take the return voyage without his attendance. He hastened to gather up his collections and prepared to come home. The fleet set sail from Port Royal on the 16th of March, 1689.

The voyage was full of anxiety. Such news from England as had yet reached the West Indies was very fragmentary. And the lack of authentic intelligence about the outbreak of the Revolution and its results, had been eked-out by all sorts of wild rumours. The voyagers looked daily with intense eagerness for outward-bound ships that might bring them news, and were especially anxious to know if war had broken out between England and France. When they caught sight of a sail so wistfully watched for, they commonly observed in the other vessel as great a desire to avoid a meeting, as there was amongst themselves to ensure one.

The Duchess of Albemarle had with her a large amount of wealth in plate and jewels, as well as a large retinue. Her anxieties were not lessened when the captain of the frigate said to her Grace, two or three weeks after the departure from Port Royal: ‘I cannot fight any ship having King James’ commission, from whom I received mine.’ On hearing this assurance—which seemed to open to her the prospect, or at least the possible contingency, of being carried into France—the Duchess resolved to change her ship. With Sloane and with her suite she left the Assistance, and re-embarked, first in the late Duke’s yacht, and then in one of the larger ships of the fleet.

281After this separation, ‘our Admiral’ says Sloane, ‘pretended he wanted water and must make the best of his way for England, without staying to convoy us home, which accordingly he did.’ The voyage, nevertheless, was made in safety.

They learned very little of what had happened at home, until they had arrived within a few leagues of Plymouth. Then Sloane himself went out, in an armed boat, with the intention of picking up such news as could be gathered from any fishermen who might be met with near the coast. The first fishing vessel they hailed did her best to run away, but was caught in the pursuit. |Ibid., p. 347.| To the question, ‘How is the King?’ the master’s reply was, ‘What King do you mean? King William is well at Whitehall. King James is in France.’

Sloane landed at Plymouth on the 29th of May, with large collections in all branches of natural history, and with improved prospects of fortune. The Duchess of Albemarle behaved to him with great liberality, and for some years to come he continued to be her domestic physician, and lived, for the most part, in one or other of her houses as his usual place of residence. In 1690 much of his correspondence bears date from the Duchess’ seat at New Hall, in Essex. In 1692 we find him frequently at Albemarle House, in Clerkenwell. He had also made, whilst in the West Indies, a lucky investment in the shape of a large purchase of Peruvian Bark. |Sloane Corresp., in MSS. Sloane.| It was already a lucrative article of commerce, and the provident importer had excellent professional opportunities of adding to its commercial value by making its intrinsic merits more widely known in England.

The botanists, more especially, were delighted with the large accessions to previous knowledge which Sloane had brought back with him. ‘When I first saw,’ said John 282Ray, ‘his stock of dried plants collected in Jamaica, and in some of the Caribbee Islands, I was much astonished at the number of the capillary kind, not thinking there had been so many to be found in both the Indies.’

The collector, himself, had presently his surprise in the matter, but it was of a less agreeable kind. ‘My collection,’ he says, ‘of dried samples of some very strange plants excited the curiosity of people who loved things of that nature to see them, and who were welcome, until I observed some so very curious as to desire to carry part of them privately home, and injure what they left. This made me upon my guard.’

On the 30th of November, 1693, Sloane was elected to the Secretaryship of the Royal Society. A year afterwards he was made Physician to Christ Hospital. It is eminently to his honour that from his first entrance into this office—which he held for thirty-six years—he applied the whole of its emoluments for the advantage and advancement of deserving boys who were receiving their education there. For that particular appointment he was himself none the richer, save in contentment and good works.

In 1696 he made his first appearance as an author by the publication of his Catalogus Plantarum quæ in insula Jamaica sponte proveniunt, vel vulgo coluntur cum earundem synonimis et locis natalibus: Adjectis aliis quibusdam quæ in insulis Madeira, Barbadoes, Nevis, et Sancti Christophori nascuntur. |1696.| He had already seen far too much of the world to marvel that his book soon brought him censure as well as praise. By Leonard Plukenet, a botanist of great acquirements and ability, many portions of the Jamaica Catalogue were attacked, sometimes on well-grounded objections; more often upon exceptions rather captious than just, and with that bitterness of expression which is the 283unfailing finger-post of envy. Plukenet’s strictures were published in his Almagesti Botanici Mantissa.^[48] Sloane made no rash haste to answer his critic. Where the censure bore correction of real error or oversight, he carefully profited by it. Where it was the mere cloak of malice, he awaited without complaint the appropriate time for dealing, both with censure and censor, which would be sure to come when he should give to the world the ripened results of the voyage of 1687.

A passage in Dr. Sloane’s correspondence with Dr. Charlett, of Cambridge, written in the same year with the publication of the Jamaica Catalogue, shows that even whilst he was still almost at the threshold of his London life, he was able steadily to enlarge his museum. |Charlett to Sloane, in MS. Corresp., 4043, f. 193.| At that early date, Charlett, who had seen it during a visit to London, calls it already ‘a noble collection of all natural curiosities.’^[49] The collector, when he landed its first fruits at Plymouth, had yet before him—such was to be his unusual 284length of days—almost sixty-four years of life. Not one of them, probably, passed without some valuable accession to his museum. And those sixty-four years were the adolescent and formative years of the study of the Physical Sciences in Britain. They were years, too, in the course of which there was to be a great development of British energy, both in foreign travel and in colonial enterprise. Very many were to run to and fro in the earth, so that knowledge might be largely increased. As a traveller, Sloane had already done his spell of work. But just as that was achieved, he was placed, by his election to the secretaryship to the Royal Society, precisely in the position where he could most extensively profit by a wide correspondence with men of like scientific pursuits all over the world, and could exercise a watchful observation over the doings and the opportunities of explorers.

But the most immediate result of his secretaryship was the resumption of the suspended Philosophical Transactions. The interruption of a work which had already rendered yeoman service to Science, abroad as well as at home, had been caused by a combination of unfavourable circumstances. The death of its first and energetic editor, Henry Oldenburg; some diminution in the Society’s income; and some personal disagreements at its Council board, seem all, in their measure, to have concurred to impede a publication, the continuance of which the best men in the Royal Society knew to be inseparable from the achievement of its true purposes. Sloane bestirred himself with the steady vigour which had been born with him; impressed his friends into the service; profited by the foreign connections he had formed ten years earlier at Paris, Bordeaux, and Montpelier, and so found new channels by which to 285enrich the pages of the Transactions, as well as to extend their circulation.

He did it, of course, in his own way, and under the necessary influence of his habits and predispositions. One natural result of his labours, as secretary and as editor, was a frequent prominence of medical subjects, both at the meetings and in the subsequent selections for permanent record. If such a prominence might now and then give, or seem to give, fair ground of complaint to men whose thoughts were absorbed in the calculus of fluxions, or whose eyes were wont to search the heavens that they might learn the courses of the stars, it had at least the excuse that it tended to the elevation—in all senses of the word—of a profession in the thorough education and the dignified status of which all the world have a deep interest.

If Sloane, in his day, occasionally made scientific men somewhat more familiar with medical themes than they cared to be, he did very much to make medical men aware of the peculiar duty under which their profession laid them of becoming also men of true science. And in this way he exerted an influence upon medical knowledge, which was none the less pregnant with good and enduring results because it was in great measure an indirect influence. It was one of the minor, but memorable, results of the establishment of the Royal Society that it tended powerfully to lift medical practice out of the slough of quackery.

This frequent reading of medical papers during the Doctor’s secretaryship could not fail to give an opening, now and again, for the wit of the scorner. A physician, in his daily practice, is constantly seeing the power of small things. He may well, at times, over estimate trifles. In the year 1700, Dr. Sloane was made the subject of a satirical pamphlet which appeared under the title of ‘The 286Transactioneer, with some of his Philosophical Fancies.’ The author of the satire was Dr. William King, but, for a considerable time, the authorship was unknown. There was great anxiety to discover it, not only on Sloane’s part individually, but on the part of the Council at large. The whole affair was trivial, and would be unworthy of memory but that it led to some dissensions within the Society itself, which for a long time left marks of their influence.

Sloane conceived that The Transactioneer was the production of Dr. John Woodward—the author of Natural History of the Earth—who was himself a member of the Royal Society’s Council. Woodward, in denying the imputation, endorsed the satire. ‘Whether there was not some occasion given,’ he said to the Council, ‘may be worth your consideration. This I am sure of: The world has been now, for some time past, very loud upon that subject. |Newton Correspondence and Papers; cited by Brewster, in Memoirs, &c. (2nd Edit.), vol. ii, ff. 185, 186.| And there were those who laid the charges so much wrong, that I have but too often had occasion to vindicate the Society itself, and that in public company.’ The ill feeling thus excited lasted a long time. It seemed at length, that the Society must lose either the services of its laborious Secretary or those of his active-tongued opponent.

The petty dissension came to a height when Sloane chanced to make some passing medical comment on the words ‘the bezoar is a gall-stone,’ occurring in a paper which he was reading to the Society, from the Memoirs of the Parisian Academy of Sciences. Sloane’s casual remark drew from Woodward the offensive words, ‘No man who understands anatomy would make such an assertion.’ On another occasion he interrupted some observation or other made by Sloane, by exclaiming—‘Speak sense, or English, and we shall understand you.’ A friend or two 287of Woodward tried hard to back him by enlisting the illustrious President on their side. They reminded Newton that he had been often himself impatient under the medical dissertations, and they praised Dr. Woodward’s acquirements in philosophy. ‘For a seat in the Council,’ replied Sir Isaac, ‘a man should be a moral philosopher, as well as a natural one.’ |Records of the Royal Society.| Eventually, it was resolved: ‘That Dr. Woodward be removed from the Council, for creating a disturbance by the said reflecting words upon Dr. Sloane.’ The latter was of a very forgiving temper, and he soon sought to be reconciled with his adversary.

His professional course, meanwhile, was steadily upward. A friendship which he had contracted in 1705 with Dr. Sydenham greatly aided his progress. Sydenham was retiring from practice, and gave to Sloane his cordial recommendations. In 1712^[50] he was made Physician Extraordinary to the Queen, whom he attended, two years afterwards, on her death bed. He filled the office of Physician-in-Chief to George the First, by whom, on the 3rd April, 1716, he was created a Baronet. He was, I believe, the first physician who received that dignity. In 1719 he became President of the College of Physicians. In 1727 he received the crowning honour of a life which, to an unusual degree, had already been replete with honourable distinctions of almost every kind. He was placed in the chair of the Royal Society, as the next successor of Newton.

Eighteen years before, he had been welcomed into the illustrious Academy of Sciences, the establishment of which at Paris had followed so quickly upon the foundation of the Royal Society. Both academies had worked with conspicuous 288success. Both had been adorned by a long line of eminent members. They had frequently, and in many ways, interchanged friendly communion. To Sloane himself, the reception at Paris had been the prelude of many like invitations from other learned societies in various parts of Europe. No man of his time had a worthier estimate of the dignity involved in the freemasonry of science, nor had any a more conscientious sense of the duties and responsibilities which it entails.

As President of the Royal Society, one of his earliest proposals to the Council was that, for the future, no pecuniary contribution should be received from foreign members whose fellowship it invited as an honour. He urged this step, notwithstanding that the Society was at the time in debt from an unusual arrear of subscriptions,—an arrear so great that he felt it to be right that the Council should be recommended to sue their offending brethren in the law courts. His third proposal, like both the others, had for its object the incontestible advantage and honour of the Society. He checked some nascent abuses in elections by making it necessary that there should be an express approval of every new candidate by the Council, on the recommendation of not less than three fellows, before proceeding to a ballot in the Society at large.

The work by which Sloane holds his chief place in the literature of science, the Natural History of Jamaica, was the work of no less than thirty-eight years. Its materials, as we have seen, were collected in the years 1687 and 1688. The first volume was not published until 1708. Seventeen additional years elapsed before the completion of the second. The fact indicates how crowded with avocations its author’s life was, as well as the marked conscientiousness 289and thoroughness which from youth to age characterized his doings.

The Jamaica book cannot be opened without some appreciation, even at first sight, of this faculty of thoroughness. For it is shown not more by the elaboration and beauty of the illustrations, than by the copious citation of authorities, on all points in relation to which authority is valuable. That all previous labourers in his field should have their full meed of acknowledgment is with Sloane a prime anxiety.

The West Indian Voyage of 1687–89 had had, it may here be remarked, other results besides that of exciting new emulation—at home and abroad—in the study of natural history, and in the amassing in cabinets and presses of the dried and preserved objects of that study. It gave a marked impulse to arboriculture, both in England and in Ireland. What Sloane had to show, and to tell of, led to the sending oversea of vessels expressly prepared for the transport of living trees; and several noble ornaments of our parks and pleasure grounds date their introduction to English and Irish soil from the expeditions so set on foot.

The Natural History of Jamaica excited considerable interest abroad, as well as at home. |Corresp. of Sloane and Briasson; in MS. Sloane, 4039, ff. 136–140.| Bernard de Jussieu offered to undertake the editorship of a French translation, and Briasson, a Parisian bookseller of some eminence, wrote to Sloane that he was willing to incur the charges and risk of publication, on condition that the author would send the copper plates of the original work to Paris, for use in the new edition. Sir Hans, however, objected to incur the risk of this transmission across the channel, but was willing to have the needful impression worked off in London; an arrangement to which the Parisian, in his 290turn, was disinclined to assent, being of opinion—perhaps not unjustly—that, in 1743, the art of copperplate printing was better understood in Paris than in London. On these grounds the negotiation was broken off.

Amidst these varied avocations, the growth of the library and museum went on unceasingly. Friends and foes contributed, in turn, to its enrichment. The year 1702 saw the incorporation with the original gatherings of the West India voyage of the splendid collections of Courten, the friend of Sloane’s youth. In 1710, Sir Hans acquired the valuable herbaria of his old assailant, Leonard Plukenet. In 1718 he purchased the extensive collections, in all departments of natural history, of another friend of early years, James Petiver. The herbarium of Adam Buddle, a botanist little remembered now but of note in his generation, came to Sloane, as a token of friendship, from the death-bed of its collector. |MS. Sloane, 4069, passim.| The scientific possessions of Dr. Christopher Merret were purchased from his son, and from time to time, when valuable collections were known to be on sale upon the Continent, agents went across to buy.

Of these numerous sources of augmentation the museum of Petiver was next in importance to that of Courten—but with a considerable interval. It is said (in the contemporary correspondence, as I think) that its cost to Sloane was four thousand pounds. But remembering what four thousand pounds was a hundred and fifty years ago, there is reason to suspect some exaggeration in the statement.

James Petiver, when Sir Hans first became acquainted with him, was serving, as an apprentice, the then apothecary of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. He afterwards became apothecary to the Charter House. He had, in one way 291or other, made for himself a singularly extensive acquaintance amongst seafaring men; and by their help had established an almost world-wide correspondence with people interested in natural history, or possessed of special opportunities for gathering its rarities. Of such rarities, Sloane somewhere says, ‘He had procured, I believe, a greater quantity than any man before him.’ But in course of time his collections overpowered his means, or his industry, for the work of preservation and arrangement. When, at the collector’s death, they passed into the possession of his friend, choice specimens were found, not in order, but in heaps. The due classification and ordering occupied many hands during many months.

The charities of human life were not, in the breast of Sir Hans Sloane, choked either by the various allurements and preoccupations of science, or by the ceaseless toils of a busy and anxious profession. He was a very liberal giver, and also a discriminating and conscientious giver. I have rarely seen a correspondence which mirrors more strikingly than does that of Sloane, a just and equable attention to multifarious and often conflicting claims.

The multiplicity of the claims was, indeed, as notable as was the patience with which they were listened to. Not to dwell upon the innumerable gropings after money of which, in one form or other, every man who attains any sort of eminence is sure to have his share (but of which Sir Hans Sloane seems to have had a Benjamin’s portion) or upon interminable requests for the use of influence, at Court, at the Treasury, at the London Hospitals, at the Council Boards of the Royal Society or of the College of Physicians, and elsewhere; his fame brought upon him a mass of appeals and solicitations from utter strangers, busied with 292less worldly aims and pursuits. Enthusiastic students of the deep things of theology sought his opinion on abstruse and mystical doctrines. Advocates of perpetual peace, and of the transformation, at a breath, of the Europe of the eighteenth century into a new Garden of Eden, implored him to endorse their theories, or to interpret their dreams.

His replies are sometimes both characteristic and amusing; none the less so for the fact that his power of writing was, at all times, far beneath his other mental powers and attainments. Now and then, though rarely, a touch of humour lights up the homeliness of phrase.

To one of the enthusiasts in mystic divinity, who had sent for his perusal an enormous manuscript, he replied: ‘I am very much obliged for the esteem you have of my knowledge, which, I am very sure, comes far short of your opinion. |Sloane to Gabriel Nisbett, May, 1737, MS. Sloane, 4069, f. 38.| As to the particular controversies on foot in relation to Natural and Revealed Religion, and to Predestination, I am no ways further concerned than to act as my own conscience directs me in those matters; and am no judge for other people.... I have not time to peruse the book you sent.’

To the worthy and once famous Abbé de Saint Pierre, who would fain have established with Sloane a steady correspondence on the universal amelioration of mankind, by means of a vast series of measures, juridical, political, and politico-economical, which started from the total abolition of vice and of war, and descended to the improvement of road-making by some happy anticipation—a hundred years in advance—of our own Macadam, he wrote thus: ‘I should be very glad to see a general Peace established, for ever. |Sloane to St. Pierre, MS. Sloane, 4069, f. 44.| Rumours of war are often, indeed, found to be baseless, and the fears of it, even when well grounded, are often dissipated by an unlooked-for Providence. But poor 293mortals are often so weak as to suffer, in their health, from the fear of danger, where there is none!’

Letters on high themes like these had their frequent variety, in the shape of proffers of contributions, to be made upon terms, for the enlargement of the Museum, the fame of which had now spread into very humble ranks of society. A single specimen in this kind will suffice: ‘I understand,’ wrote a correspondent of a speculative turn, ‘you are a great virtuoso, and gives a valuable consideration for novelties of antiquity,’—on getting thus far in the perusal, one can imagine Sir Hans murmuring ‘not willingly, I assure you,’—‘a pin has been many hundred years in our family, and was, I am told, the pin of the first Saxon king of the West Angles,’ and so on.

Until the year 1741, a few months after his resignation of the chair of the Royal Society on the score of old age, Sir Hans Sloane continued to live chiefly in London; though often removing, for part of the summer months, to his Manor House in the then charming suburb of Chelsea. He had purchased that valuable manor, from the family of Cheyne, in 1714. The fine old House abounded in historical recollections and amongst them, as most readers will remember, in associations connected with the memory of Sir Thomas More. It had the additional attraction of a large and beautiful garden, close to that other garden in which the now Lord of the Manor had pursued, with all the energies of youth, the study of botany. One of his earliest acts of lordship had been a graceful gift to the Company of Apothecaries, of the freehold in the land of which till then they had been tenants. In 1741 he transferred his Museum and Library from Bloomsbury to Chelsea. His former house—situated in Great Russell Street, 294near the corner of what is now Bloomsbury Square—had been capacious, but the new one admitted of a greatly improved arrangement and display of the collections.

The state and character of the Sloane Museum, in the fullness to which the collector had brought it during these latest years of his life, can scarcely be exemplified better than in a contemporary account of a visit which was paid to the Manor House at Chelsea by the Prince and Princess of Wales, in the year 1748. I quote it, almost verbally, from the Gentleman’s Magazine of that year, but with some unimportant omissions.

At that date, the Manor House formed a square of above a hundred feet on each side, enclosing a court. Three of the principal rooms were, on the occasion of this royal visit, filled successively—as the visitors passed from one room into another—with the finest portions of the collections in its most portable departments. The minerals were first shown. The tables were spread with drawers filled with all sorts of precious stones in their natural beds, as they are found in the earth, except the first table, which contained stones found in animals, such as pearls, bezoars, and the like. Emeralds, topazes, amethysts, sapphires, garnets, rubies, diamonds, ... with magnificent vessels of cornelian, onyx, sardonyx and jasper, delighted the eye, says the attendant describer, and raised the mind to praise the great Creator of all things.

When their Royal Highnesses, continues our narrator, had viewed one room, and went into another, the scene was shifted. When they returned, the same tables were covered, for a second course, with all sorts of jewels, polished and set after the modern fashion, and with gems carved and engraved. For the third course, the tables were 295spread with gold and silver ores, and with the most precious and remarkable ores used in the dresses of men from Siberia to the Cape of Good Hope, from Japan to Peru; and with both ancient and modern coins in gold and silver.

The gallery, a hundred and ten feet in length, presented a ‘surprising prospect.’ The most beautiful corals, crystals, and figured stones; the most brilliant insects; shells, painted with as great variety as the precious stones; and birds vying with the gems; diversified with remains of the antediluvian world.

Then a noble vista presented itself through several rooms filled with books; among these were many hundred volumes of dried plants; a room, full of choice and valuable manuscripts; and the rich present sent by the French King to Sir Hans of the engravings of his collections of paintings, medals, and statues, and of his Palaces, in twenty-five large atlas volumes.

Below stairs, some rooms were then shown, filled with the antiquities of Egypt, Greece, Etruria, Rome, Britain, and even America; other rooms and the Great Saloon were filled with preserved animals. The halls were decorated with the horns of divers creatures. |G. M., vol. xviii, pp. 301, 302. (July, 1748.)| ‘Fifty volumes in folio,’ concludes the enthusiastic bystander who chronicled, for Mr. Sylvanus Urban, the royal visit of 1748, ‘would scarce suffice to contain a detail of this immense Museum, consisting of above 200,000 articles.’

The Prince of Wales, on taking leave of his host, gave expression to a wish which he did not live long enough to see realised. ‘It is a great pleasure to me,’ he said, ‘to see so magnificent a collection in England. It is an ornament to the Nation. Great honour would redound from the establishing of it for public use, to the latest posterity.’

296Plans, more or less definite, of perpetuating those collections for public use had occasionally engaged their owner’s thoughts almost from the date of his acquisition of the Museum of William Courten, in 1702. |The Will and Codicils of 1749–51.| In 1707, he had watched with interest a scheme that had been set on foot for the formation of a Public Library in London by combining the old Royal Collection with the collections of Sir Robert Cotton and of the Royal Society.^[51] But that scheme failed of execution, until, almost half a century later, it was, in the main, revived and carried out as the indirect but very natural consequence of his own testamentary dispositions.

His Will, in its first form, was made at Chelsea in 1748, but was replaced on the 10th July, 1749, by the following codicil:—

‘Whereas I have in and by my said Will given some directions about the sale and disposition of my Museum, or collection of rarities herein more particularly mentioned, now I do hereby revoke my said Will, as far as relates thereto, and I do direct and appoint concerning the same in the following manner: Having had from my youth a strong inclination to the study of plants and all other productions of nature, and having through the course of many years, with great labour and expense, gathered together whatever could be procured either in our own or foreign countries that was rare and curious; and being fully convinced that nothing tends more to raise our ideas of the power, wisdom, goodness, providence, and other perfections of the Deity, or more to the comfort and well being of his creatures, 297than the enlargement of our knowledge of the works of nature, I do will and desire that for the promoting of these noble ends, the glory of God, and the good of man, my collection in all its branches may be, if possible, kept and preserved together whole and entire, in my Manor House in the Parish of Chelsea, situate near the Physic Garden given by me to the Company of Apothecaries for the same purposes; and having great reliance that the right honourable, honourable, and other persons hereafter named, will be influenced by the same principles and [will] faithfully and conscientiously discharge the trust hereby reposed in them, I do give, devise, and bequeath, unto the Rt. Hon. Charles Sloane Cadogan ... [and to forty-nine other persons whose names follow,] all that my Collection or Museum at, in, or about, my Manor House at Chelsea aforesaid, which consists of too great a variety to be particularly described, but ... which are more particularly described, mentioned, and numbered, with short histories or accounts of them, with proper references, in certain catalogues by me made, containing thirty-eight volumes in folio, and eight volumes in quarto,—except such framed pictures as are not marked with the word “Collection”—to have and to hold to them and their successors and assigns for ever, ... upon the trusts, and for the uses and purposes, ... hereafter particularly specified concerning the same.

‘And for rendering this my intention more effectual that the said Collection may be preserved and continued entire in its utmost perfection and regularity, and being assured that nothing will conduce more to this than placing the same under the direction and care of learned, experienced, and judicious persons who are above all low and mean views, I do earnestly desire that the King, H.R.H. the 298Prince of Wales, H.R.H. William, Duke of Cumberland, the Archbishop of Canterbury for the time being ... |Authentic Copies, &c. (B. M.) 17, p. 12.| [and twenty-eight others, being chiefly great Officers of State] will condescend so far as to act and be Visitors of my said Museum and Collection; and I do hereby, with their leave, nominate and appoint them Visitors thereof, with full power and authority for any five or more of them to enter my said Collection or Museum, at any time or times, to peruse, supervise, and examine, the same, and the management thereof, and to visit, correct, and reform, from time to time, as there may be occasion, either jointly with the said Trustees or separately—upon application to them for that purpose, or otherwise—all abuses, defects, neglects or mismanagements, that may happen to arise therein, or touching and concerning the person or persons, officer or officers, that are or shall be appointed to attend the same.

‘And my will is and I do hereby request and desire that the said Trustees, or any seven or more of them, do make their humble application to His Majesty, or to Parliament at the next session after my decease,—as shall be thought most proper,—in order to pay the full and clear sum of twenty thousand pounds unto my executors or to the survivors of them, in consideration of the said Collection or Museum; it not being, as I apprehend or believe, a fourth of their real and intrinsic value; and also to obtain such effectual powers and authorities for vesting in the said Trustees all and every part of my said Collection, ... and also my said capital Manor-House, with such gardens and outhouses as shall thereunto belong and be used by me at the time of my decease, in which it is my desire that the same shall be kept and preserved; and also the water of or belonging to my Manor of Chelsea coming from Kensington, 299or right of patronage of the Church of Chelsea; to the end the same premises may be absolutely vested in the said Trustees for the preserving and continuing my said Museum in such manner as they shall think most likely to answer the public benefit by me intended, and also obtain, as aforesaid, a sufficient fund and provision for maintaining and supporting my said Manor House, ... to be vested in the said Trustees for ever.... |Authentic Copies, &c. (B. M.) 17, p. 12.| And it is also my will and desire that all such other powers ... may be added or vested as well in the said intended Trustees as in the Visitors hereby appointed, as shall by the Legislature be thought most proper and convenient for the better management, order, and care, of my said Collection and premises.’

Provision is then made, in subsequent clauses of this codicil, for the replacement, by the Trustees surviving, from time to time, of vacancies occasioned by death in the ranks of the Trustees first appointed; and by surviving Visitors of vacancies so occasioned in those of the original Visitors.

In September, 1750, another codicil added to the list of Visitors—in order to supply vacancies which death had already wrought—the Earls of Macclesfield and Shelburne, and the then Master of the Rolls, Sir John Strange, with proviso of succession for the Master of the Rolls of the time being. Sir John Bernard, Sir William Calvert, and Mr. Slingsby Bethel were, in like manner, added to the roll of Trustees. The same codicil excepted the advowson of the Rectory of Chelsea from the bequest of 1749, and annexed it to the lordship of the Manor.

By his marriage with the daughter and heiress of Mr. Langley, an Alderman of London, Sir Hans Sloane had issue two daughters, but no son. The elder of the 300daughters, Sarah Sloane, married George Stanley, of Poultons, in Hampshire; the younger, Elizabeth, married Lord Cadogan. By the representatives of those co-heiresses the large inheritance was eventually enjoyed.

A subsequent codicil of 1751, added nine other Trustees, five of whom were distinguished foreigners. Among the four English names are those of John Hampden (‘twenty-fourth hereditary lord of Great Hampden,’ and last lineal male descendant of that famous stock) and William Sotheby.

The declining years of a man to whom had been given, not only unusual length of days, but an unusual span both of bodily and of mental vigour, so that he remained in the rank of busy men until he had passed his eightieth year, were necessarily days of seclusion. He had enjoyed not only the honours^[52] and the comforts, but the troop of friends which should accompany old age. Yet a man who reaches the age of ninety-two must needs lose the friends of his maturity, as well as the friends of his youth. Sir Hans Sloane, in the old Manor House of Chelsea, had something of the experience which made a famous statesman of our own day, who was loth to leave the stir of London life, say—with a sigh—‘I see all the world passing my windows, but few come in.’

His chief recreations, in those latest years, lay in the continued examination of the stores of nature and of art which never palled upon his capacity of enjoyment, and in the regular weekly visit of a much younger man, who was 301very conversant in the busy world without; who could talk, and talk well, alike upon public events, upon the novelties of science, and upon the gossip of the coffee-houses and the clubs. This friend of old age was George Edwards, a naturalist of considerable acquirements, and the author of some Essays on Natural History which are still worth reading.

Sloane’s mental vigour long outlived his power of bodily locomotion. For years he could move from room to room, or on very bright days from room to garden, only by the aid of an invalid chair. In other respects, his health gave a weighty sanction to the counsel which he had been wont to give, not infrequently, in lieu of an invited but superfluous prescription. ‘I advise you’ he would say, ‘to what I practice myself. I never take physic when I am well. When I am ill, I take little, and only such as has been very well tried.’

The end of a bright, abundant, and most useful life, came at the beginning of the year 1753. On the tenth of January, George Edwards found him rapidly sinking, and suffering greatly. On the eleventh he found him at the point of death. ‘I continued with him,’ he wrote, ‘later than any one of his relatives. But I was obliged to retire—his last agonies being beyond what I could bear; although, under his pain and weakness of body, he seemed to retain a great firmness of mind and resignation to the will of God.’ He was buried at Chelsea, in the same vault in which, twenty-eight years before, he had buried his wife.

This indefatigable collector had continued to enrich his Museum with new accessions as long as he lived. We have the means of estimating its growth—as regards mere numbers, of course—by comparing a synoptical table drawn up 302in 1725—for the purpose of showing to certain grumblers what had been the nature and aim of those avocations which had delayed the completion of the Natural History of Jamaica—with another table drawn up by his Trustees immediately after his death.

The comparison of numbers shows that the twenty thousand two hundred and twenty-eight coins and medals of 1725 had grown, in 1752, to thirty-two thousand. Other antiquities had increased from eight hundred and twenty-four to two thousand six hundred and thirty-five. The minerals and fossils had increased from about three thousand to five thousand eight hundred and twenty-two specimens. The botanical collection which, in 1725, had numbered eight thousand two hundred and twenty-six specimens, together with a Hortus Siccus of two hundred volumes, had become in 1752 twelve thousand five hundred specimens, with a Hortus Siccus of three hundred and thirty-four volumes. The other natural history collections had increased on the average by more than one half. The details are as follows:—

On the 27th January—sixteen days after Sir Hans’ death—about forty of the Trustees named in the Will met at 304Chelsea, to confer with the Executors. Lord Cadogan produced the Will and its Codicils. By these, should the bequest and its additions be accepted, the manor house and land, together with the collection in its existing state and arrangement, would be given to the Public. This, said Lord Cadogan, will save the hazard and expense of removal. Mr. William Sloane then informed the Trustees that the Executors had thought it prudent temporarily to remove the medals of gold and silver, the precious stones, gems, and vases, to the Bank of England, in order to ensure their present safety.

The Earl of Macclesfield was then placed in the chair. A synopsis of the contents of the Museum was read by Mr. James Empson, who had acted as its curator for many years. Mr. Empson was appointed to act as Secretary to the Trustees, and a form of Memorial to be addressed to the King, in order to the carrying out of the trusts of the Will, was agreed upon.

The Memorial had—eventually—the desired effect. |The Act for Establishing the British Museum.| It led, in the course of the year 1753, to the passing of an Act of Parliament—26 George II, chapter 22—which is entitled An Act for the purchase of the Museum or Collection of Sir Hans Sloane, and of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts, and for providing one General Repository for the better reception and more convenient use of the said Collections, and of the Cottonian Library, and of the additions thereto.

The Act recites the tenour of the testamentary dispositions made by Sir Hans Sloane. It also recites that a provisional assent had been given by his Trustees to the removal of his Museum from the Manor House of Chelsea ‘to any proper place within the Cities of London and Westminster, or the suburbs thereof, if such removal shall be judged most advantageous to the Public.’

305The Act then proceeds to declare that, ‘Whereas, all arts and sciences have a connexion with each other, and discoveries in natural philosophy and other branches of speculative knowledge,’ for the advancement whereof the Museum was intended, may, in many instances, give help to useful experiments and inventions, ‘therefore, to the end that the said Museum may be preserved and maintained, not only for the inspection and entertainment of the learned and the curious, but for the general use and benefit of the Public,’ it is enacted by Parliament that the sum of twenty thousand pounds shall be paid to the Executors of Sir Hans Sloane, in full satisfaction for his said Museum.

In this Statute, also, the preceding original Act for the public establishment of the Cottonian Library (12th and 13th of William III, c. 7), together with the subsequent Act on that subject (5th Anne, c. 30), are severally recited, and it is declared as follows:—

First, ‘Although the public faith hath been thus engaged to provide for the better reception and more convenient use of the Cottonian Library, a proper repository for that purpose hath not yet been prepared, for the want of which the said Library did ... suffer by a fire;’

And secondly, ‘Arthur Edwards, late of Saint George’s, Hanover Square, in the county of Middlesex, Esquire, being desirous to preserve for the public use the said Cottonian Library, and to prevent the like accident for the future, bequeathed the sum of seven thousand pounds’—after the occurrence of a certain contingent event—for the purpose either of erecting, ‘in a proper situation, such a house as might be most likely to preserve that Library from all accidents, or—in the event of the performance by the Public, before the falling out of the contingency above mentioned, of that duty to which it already stood pledged by Act of 306Parliament, then—for the purpose of purchasing such manuscripts, books of antiquities, ancient coins, medals, and other curiosities, as might be worthy to increase the Cottonian Library aforesaid;’ to which end the same public benefactor further bequeathed his own library.

In order therefore to give due effect, at length, both to the primary donation of Sir John Cotton, and to the additional benefaction made thereto by Major Arthur Edwards, Parliament now enacted that a general repository should be provided for the several collections of Cotton, Edwards, and Sloane, and that Major Edwards’ legacy of money should be paid to the Trustees created by the new Act, in accordance with the provisions heretofore recited in Sir Hans Sloane’s codicil of 1749.

It is to the exertions, at this time, of Arthur Onslow, the then Speaker of the House of Commons, that historical students owe their debt of gratitude for the preservation of the Harleian Manuscripts from that dispersion,—abroad as well as at home,—which befel the Harleian printed books.

When the Memorial of Sloane’s Trustees was first presented to George the Second, he received it with the stolid indifference to all matters bearing upon science and mental culture, which was as saliently characteristic of that king as were his grosser vices. ‘I don’t think there are twenty thousand pounds in the Treasury,’ was the remark with which he dismissed the proposal. Money could be found, indeed, for very foolish purposes, and for very base ones. And the bareness of the Treasury was, very often, the natural result of the profligacy of the Court. But, in 1753, it was a fact.

Save for Speaker Onslow’s exertions, the Memorial would have fared little better in Parliament than at Court. The 307then Premier, Henry Pelham, was not unfriendly to the scheme, nor was he, like his royal master, a man of sordid nature; but a Minister who was every now and then obliged to write to his ambassadors abroad, even in the crisis of important negotiations, ‘I have ordered you a part of your last year’s appointments, but we are so poor that I can do no more,’ could hardly be eager to provide forty or fifty thousand pounds for the purchase of a new Museum and the safety of an old Library.

Onslow proposed—eventually—as a means of overcoming these difficulties, that a sum of money should be raised by a public lottery, and that it should be large enough to effect not only the immediate objects contemplated by the Will of Sir Hans Sloane, and by the prior public establishment of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library, but to purchase for a like purpose the noble series of Manuscripts which had passed (just eleven years before Sloane’s death) to the executors of the last Earl of Oxford, in trust for his widow, the Dowager Countess, and for his daughter, the Duchess of Portland.

Edward, Earl of Oxford, had stood at one period of his life, in the rank of the wealthiest of Englishmen. He was the owner of estates worth some four or five hundred thousand pounds. He was, too, a man of highly intellectual and studious tastes; but, in his case, a magnificent style of living, great generosity, and excessive trust in dependants, did what is more usually the work of huge folly or of gross sins; they brought him into circumstances which, for his position in life, might almost be called those of poverty. But for this comparative impoverishment, his own act—it is more than probable—would have secured to posterity the enjoyment, in its entirety, of the splendid library he had inherited and increased.

308To the proposal of a lottery there was much solid objection. What were then called ‘parliamentary lotteries’ had been introduced expressly to put down those private lotteries, common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which had been fraught with mischief. It was hoped, or pretended, that a ‘regulated’ evil would be reduced within tolerable limits, whilst bringing grist to the national mill. But the forty years that had passed since the first parliamentary lottery of 1709 had shown that the system was essentially and incurably mischievous. Pelham was averse to its continuance. As First Lord of the Treasury, it was his poverty, not his will, that consented to the adoption of so questionable an expedient for the purchase of the Sloane Collections. He had not, individually, any such love of learning as might have induced an appeal to Parliament to set, for once, an example of liberal and far-sighted legislation. He merely stipulated that some stringent provisos should be put into the Act, directed against the nefarious practices of the lottery-jobbers.

Eventually, it was enacted that there should be a hundred thousand shares, at three pounds a share; that two hundred thousand pounds should be allotted as prizes, and that the remaining hundred thousand—less the expenses of the lottery itself—should be applied to the threefold purposes of the Act, namely, the purchase of the Sloane and Harleian Collections; the providing of a Repository; and the creation of an annual income for future maintenance.

By the precautionary clauses of the Bill, provision was made for the prolonged sale of shares; for the prevention of the purchase by any one adventurer of more than twenty shares, or ‘tickets,’ and for other impediments, as it was 309thought, to a fraudulent traffic in the combined covetousness and ignorance of the unwary.

All these precautions proved to be vain. Mr. Pelham’s opposition was abundantly justified by the result. Fraud proved to be, in that age, just as inseparable an element in a Lottery scheme, however good its purpose, as fraud has proved to be, in this age, an inseparable element (at one stage or other of the business) in a Railway scheme,—however useful the line proposed to be made.

It thus came to pass that the foundation of the British Museum gave rise to a great public scandal. When evidence was produced that many families had been brought to misery, as the first incident in the annals of a beneficent and noble foundation, a somewhat dull Session of Parliament was suddenly enlivened by an animated and angry debate.

The provident clauses in the Lottery Act of 1753 were made of no effect, mainly by entrusting the chief share in working the Act to an accomplished jobber. One Peter Leheup was made a Commissioner of the Lottery. This man had held some employment or other at Hanover, from which he had been recalled with circumstances of disgrace. |1753. December.| It is to be inferred, from the way in which his name points an epigrammatic phrase in one of the letters of Bolingbroke,^[53] and in more than one of those of Horace Walpole, that it had come, long before this appointment took place, to have a sort of proverbial currency, like the names of ‘Curll’ or of ‘Chartres.’ But, be that as it may, Mr. Commissioner Leheup set on foot as thriving and as flagitious a traffic in Sloane lottery tickets, as was ever 310set on foot in railway shares by a clever promoter of our own day. He wrote circular letters instructing his correspondents how most effectually to evade the Act. He sold nearly three hundred tickets to a single dealer by furnishing him with a list of ‘Roes’ and ‘Does,’ ‘Gileses’ and ‘Stileses’ at discretion. He supplied himself, with equal liberality; and contrived to close the subscription, after an actual publicity of exactly six hours—for the issue of one hundred thousand tickets. In a few days, of course, tickets in abundance were to be had, at sixteen shillings premium upon each, and in what looked to be a still rising market. The trap proved to be brilliantly ‘successful.’

The subsequent explosion of parliamentary anger was rather increased than lessened by an attempt of Henry Fox (afterwards the first Lord Holland) to extenuate Leheup’s offence by some arguments of the ‘Tu quoque’ sort. By a great majority, the House of Commons sent up an address praying the King to direct his Attorney General to prosecute the chief offender, who was accordingly convicted and fined a thousand pounds. It is not uninstructive to note that Horace Walpole—himself one of the Sloane Trustees—treats the matter in one of his letters exactly in the offhand man-of-the-world style in which Henry Fox had treated it in the House of Commons.^[54]

By this unfortunate episode, the name of one of the best of Englishmen was brought into a sort of momentary connection with the name of one of the worst. But the chief discredit of the story does not really rest upon Leheup. A private citizen, of moderate means, had been willing to expend seventy or eighty thousand pounds—besides an inestimable 311amount of labour and research—upon an object essentially and largely public. Yet a British Parliament could not summon up enough of public spirit to tax its own members, in common with their tax-paying fellow subjects throughout the realm, to the extent of a hundred thousand pounds, in order to meet an obvious public want, to redeem an actual parliamentary pledge, and to secure a conspicuous national honour for all time to come. That want of public spirit did not exhaust its results with the ruin of the poor families, scattered here and there, whose scanty means had been hazarded and lost by gambling, under a parliamentary temptation. It impressed itself, so to speak, on the subsequent history of the institution for more than forty years. The Museum had been founded grudgingly. It was kept up parsimoniously.

Had that fact been otherwise, the story of the knavery of Peter Leheup would have little merited recital a century after it, and he, had passed into oblivion.

The value of so small an incident in the crowded story of our National Museum lies simply in the fact that it forms a just and salient illustration of the narrowness of spirit with which the then representatives of the people received the liberal gift of public benefactors. It serves to show why it was that, from the year 1753 down to some years after 1800, the History of the British Museum casts very little honour on Britain as a nation, whereas the precedent history of its integral parts, as separate and infant collections, casts, and will long continue to cast, great honour on the memory of the Cottons, the Harleys, and the Sloanes, by whom they were painfully gathered and most liberally dispensed.

Happily, as the course of this narrative—whatever its 312shortcomings—cannot fail to show, the literary and scientific treasures which men of that stamp had collected, came, in a subsequent generation (and, in a chief measure, by dint of the exertions of the Trustees and Officers to whom they had been, in course of time, confided) to be more adequately estimated by Ministers and by Parliament in their public capacity, as well as by the more cultivated portion of the people generally. For more than a half-century past the History of the British Museum has been one that any Briton may take delight and pride in telling. And such it promises to be, preeminently, in the time yet to come. In a conspicuous sense, the men by whom it was first founded, and the men by whom, for what is now a long time past, it has been administered and governed, have alike been true workers for Posterity.

Chapter I.

Introductory.—Early History of the British Museum.

II.

A Group of Archæologists and Classical Explorers.

III.

The Collectors of the Cracherode, Lansdowne, Burney, and Egerton Libraries, and of the appendant Collections.

IV.

The King’s Library—its Collector and its Donor.

V.

The Founder of the Banksian Museum and Library.

315“The King made this Ordinance:—That there should be a mission of three of the brethren of Solomon’s House, whose errand was only to give us knowledge of the affairs and state of those countries to which they were designed, and especially of the Sciences ... and Inventions of all the World; and withal to bring us books, instruments, and patterns in every kind....

“We have also precious stones, of all kinds; many of them of great beauty.... Also, store of fossils.... But we do hate all impostures and lies, insomuch as we have severally forbidden it to all our fellows, under pain of ignominy or fines, that they do not show any natural work or thing adorned or swelling, but only pure as it is, without affectation of showing marvels....

“We have also those who take care to consider of the former labours and Collections, and out of them to direct new explorations ... more penetrating into Nature than the former.... Upon every invention of value we erect a statue to the inventor, and give him a liberal and honourable reward.

“We have hymns and services, which we say daily, of laud and thanks to God for His marvellous works, and forms of prayer imploring His blessing for the illumination of our labours.”—Bacon, ‘New Atlantis, a Work unfinished.’

‘A Museum of Nature does not aim, like one of Art, merely to charm the eye and gratify the sense of beauty and of grace.

‘As the purpose of a Museum of Natural History is to ... impart and diffuse that knowledge which begets the right spirit in which all Nature should be viewed, there ought to be no partiality for any particular class, merely on account of the quality which catches and pleases the passing gaze. Such a Museum should subserve the instruction of a People; and should also afford objects of study and comparison to professed Naturalists, so as to serve as an instrument in the progress of Science.’—

Househunting.—The Removal of the Sloane Museum from Chelsea.—Montagu House, and its History.—The Early Trustees and Officers.—The Museum Regulations.—Early Helpers in the Foundation and Increase of the British Museum.—Epochs in the Growth of the Natural History Collections.—Experiences of Inquiring Visitors in the years 1765–1784.

The practical good sense which had always been a marked characteristic in the life of Sir Hans Sloane is seen just as plainly in those clauses of his Will by which he leaves much latitude, in respect of means and agencies, to the discretion of his Executors and Trustees. It is seen, for example, when, after reciting some views of his own as to the methods by which his Museum should be maintained 318for public use, he adds the proviso—‘in such manner as they (the Trustees) shall think most likely to answer the public benefit by me intended.’ He had a love for the old Manor House at Chelsea, and contemplated, as it seems, with some special complacency, the maintenance there of the Collections which had added so largely to the pleasures of his own fruitful life. But he was careful not to tie down his Trustees to the continuance of the Museum at Chelsea, as a condition of his bounty. They were at liberty to assent to its removal, should the balance of public advantage seem to them to point towards removal.

Chelsea was in that day a quiet suburban village, distant from the heart of London. As the site of a Museum it had many advantages, but it was, comparatively and to the mass of visitors and students, a long way off. The Trustees assented to a generally expressed opinion that whilst the new institution ought not to be placed in any of the highways of traffic, it ought to be nearer to them than it would be, if continued in its then abode.

One of the first places offered for their choice was the old Buckingham House (now the royal palace). It was already a large and handsome structure. The charm of its position, at that time, was not unduly boasted of in the golden letters of the inscription conspicuous upon its entablature—

Its prospects, as described not very long before by the late ducal owner, ‘presented to view at once a vast town, a palace, and a cathedral, on one side; and, on the other sides, two parks, and a great part of Surrey.’ Its fine gardens ended in ‘a little wilderness, full of blackbirds and nightingales.’ Yet it was close to the Court end of the town. But the price was thirty thousand pounds.

319Another offer was that of Montagu House at Bloomsbury. Less charmingly placed, and architecturally less striking in appearance than was its rival, both its situation and its plan were better fitted for the purposes of a public Museum. |Montagu House and its History.| It stood, it is true, on the extreme verge of the London of that day. Northward, there was nothing between it and the distant village of Highgate, save an expanse of fields and hedgerows. And for a long distance, both to the east and the west, no part of London had yet spread beyond it, except an outlying hospital or two. But there were already indications that the town would extend in that northerly direction, more quickly than in almost any other. The house had seven and-a-half acres of garden and shrubberies; and its price was but ten thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds.

Montagu House had been built about sixty years before for Ralph Montagu, first Duke of Montagu. A spacious court separated the house from Great Russell Street, towards which it presented to view only a screen of pannelled brickwork, having a massive gateway and cupola in the centre, and turreted wings, masking the domestic offices, at either end. The house itself was rather stately than beautiful, but its chief rooms and its grand staircase were elaborately painted by the best French artists of the day. And the appendant offices were more than usually extensive.

It stood on the site of a structure of much greater architectural pretensions, erected for the same owner, only twelve years before, from the designs of Robert Hooke. That first Montagu House had been burned to the ground.

The offer of Montagu House was accepted by the Trustees and approved by the Government. It was found 320needful to make considerable alterations in order to adapt the building to its new uses. This outlay increased the eventual cost of the mansion, and of its appliances and fittings, to somewhat more than twenty-three thousand pounds. The adaptation, with the removal and re-arrangement of the Collections, occupied nearly five years. It was not until the beginning of the year 1759 that the Museum was opened for public inspection. When removed to Bloomsbury, it was but brought back to within a few hundred yards of its first abode.

We have seen that according to the plan for the government of the institution which Sloane had sketched in his Codicil of July, 1749, there would have been a Board of Visitors as well as a Board of Trustees. But, by the foundation Statute, enacted in 1753, both of these Boards were incorporated into one. Forty-one Trustees were constituted, with full powers of management and control. Six of these were representatives of the several families of Cotton, Harley, and Sloane, the head, or nearest in lineal succession, of each family having the nomination, from time to time, of such representatives or ‘Family Trustees,’ when, by death or otherwise, vacancies should occur. Twenty were ‘Official’ Trustees, in accordance, so far, with Sloane’s scheme for the constitution of his Board of Visitors; and by these two classes, conjointly, the other fifteen Trustees were to be elected.

The Official Trustees were to be the holders for the time being of the following offices:—(1) The Archbishop of Canterbury, (2) the Lord Chancellor, (3) the Speaker of the House of Commons, (4) the Lord President of the Council, (5) the First Lord of the Treasury, (6) the Lord Privy Seal, (7) the First Lord of the Admiralty, (8 and 9) 321the Secretaries of State, (10) the Lord Steward, (11) the Lord Chamberlain, (12) the Bishop of London, (13) the Chancellor of the Exchequer, (14) the Lord Chief Justice of England, (15) the Master of the Rolls, (16) the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, (17) the Attorney-General, (18) the Solicitor-General, (19) the President of the Royal Society, (20) the President of the College of Physicians.

To the first three of these Official Trustees Parliament entrusted the appointment, from time to time, of all the Officers of the Museum, except the Principal Librarian, who is to be appointed by the Crown, on the nomination of the ‘Principal Trustees,’ as the first three Trustees—the Archbishop, Chancellor, and Speaker—have always been called.

The following fifteen persons were the first elected Trustees, under the Act of 1753:—The Duke of Argyle, the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Willoughby of Parham, Lord Charles Cavendish, the Honourable Philip Yorke, Sir George Lyttelton, Sir John Evelyn, James West, Nicholas Hardinge, William Sloane, William Sotheby, Charles Grey, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Birch, James Ward, and William Watson. |Records of British Museum, in MS. Addit., 6179.| The first meeting of the Trustees under the Act was held at the Cockpit, Whitehall, on the 17th of December, 1753.

The first ‘Principal Librarian’^[55] was Dr. Gowin Knight, a member of the College of Physicians, and eminent, in his 322day, as a cultivator of experimental science. Some magnetic apparatus of his construction and gift was placed in the Museum soon after its opening, and attracted, in its day, much attention. He received the appointment after a keen competition with the more widely-known physician and botanist, Sir John Hill. The first three ‘Keepers of Departments’ were Dr. Matthew Maty, Dr. Charles Morton, and Mr. James Empson. Dr. Knight retained his post until 1772.

Maty and Morton succeeded in turn to the office of Principal Librarian, and their respective services will have a claim to notice hereafter. Empson had been the valued servant and friend of Sir Hans Sloane. He is the only officer whose name appears in Sloane’s Will. He had served him as Keeper of the Museum at Chelsea for many years.

There is, in one of the letters of Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, an amusing account of an initiatory meeting of the original Trustees, held prior to their formal constitution by Parliament. It is marked by the writer’s usual superciliousness towards all hobbies, except the dilettante hobby which he himself was wont to ride so hard. ‘I employ my time chiefly, at present,’ he wrote to Mann, in February, 1753, ‘in the guardianship of embryos and cockle shells. Sir Hans Sloane valued his Museum at eighty thousand pounds, and so would anybody who loves hippopotamuses, sharks with one ear, and spiders as big as geese.... We are a charming wise set—all Philosophers, Botanists, Antiquarians, and Mathematicians—and adjourned our first meeting because Lord Macclesfield, our Chairman, was engaged in a party for finding out the Longitude.’

323‘One of our number,’ continues Walpole, ‘is a Moravian, who signs himself “Henry XXVIII, Count de Reuss.” The Moravians have settled a colony at Chelsea, in Sir Hans’ neighbourhood, and I believe he intended to beg Count Henry the Twenty-Eighth’s skeleton for his Museum.’ This distinguished foreigner does not appear in the parliamentary list.

The Chairman of the preliminary meeting so airily described by Walpole, continued, under the definitive constitution of the Trust, to take a leading part in its administration. It appears to have been by Lord Macclesfield that the original ‘Statutes and Bye-laws’ of the Museum, or many of them, were drafted.’

In the form in which they were first issued, in 1759, these statutes directed that the Museum should ‘be kept open every day in the week, except Saturday and Sunday.’ |1759–1803.| For the greater part of the year the public hours were from nine o’clock in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon. On certain days, in the summer months, the open hours were from four o’clock in the afternoon until eight—so as to meet the requirements of persons actively engaged in business during the early part of the day. But the publicity was hampered by a system of admission-tickets which had to be applied for on a day precedent to that of every intended visit. The application had first to be made, then registered; a second application had to follow, in order to receive the ticket; and the ticket could rarely be used at the time of receiving it. |MS. Addit., 6179, ff. 36, seqq.| So that, in practice, each visit to the Museum had commonly to be preceded by two visits to the ‘Porter’s Lodge.’

The visitors were admitted in parties, at the prescribed hours, and were conducted through the Museum by its officers according to a routine which, practically and usually, 324allowed to each group of visitors only one hour for the inspection of the whole. Special arrangements, however, were made for those who resorted to the Museum for purposes of study. |Statutes and Regulations, part ii, § 3.| To such, say the statutes, ‘a particular room is allotted, in which they may read or write without interruption during the time the Museum is kept open.’

The aggregate number of persons admitted as visitors—exclusive of students—was, for some years, restricted to sixty persons, as a maximum, in any one day.

In order to give the reader a definite and clear idea of what was seen, in 1759, by the earliest visitors to the British Museum, in its rudimentary state, some sort of ground plan is essential, but the merest outline will suffice for the purpose.

There were at Montagu House two floors or stories of state apartments. The upper floor was that which was first shown, after the formation of the Museum.

The visitor, having ascended the superb staircase painted by La Fosse, passed through a vestibule and grand saloon (A B) furnished with various antiquities, into the ‘Cottonian Library’ (C), and thence into the ‘Harleian Library,’ which occupied three rooms (D, E, and F). He then entered the ‘Medal Room’—containing the coins and medals of the Sloane and Cotton collections (G); the ‘Sloane Manuscript Room’ (H); and the room containing the chief part of the antiquities (I)—

325

Rough Diagram, showing Principal Floor of the original British Museum of 1759.

Then the visitor, passing again through the vestibule (A) and great saloon (B), entered the rooms K, L, and 326M. K contained the minerals and fossils of Sir Hans Sloane’s collection; L, the shells; M, the plants and insects. Thence he passed into N, which was devoted to the bulk of the Sloane Zoological Collection, and into O, containing artificial and miscellaneous curiosities.

Descending to the floor beneath, by the secondary staircase between N and O, the visitor then entered the small room P, which contained the magnetic apparatus given by Dr. Gowin Knight, and the rooms, Q and R devoted to the reception of the greater part of the Royal Library, restored by Henry, Prince of Wales, and augmented—but with extreme parsimony—by several of the Stuart monarchs, whose additions to the shelves were, indeed, much oftener made of books given, than of books bought. He then passed into Sloane’s Printed Library, which occupied the whole of the spacious and handsome suite of rooms S, T, V, W, X, and Y, and (passing through the Trustees’ Room Z,) entered the room A A, containing the Edwards Library; ending his tour of inspection in the room B B, in which was arranged the remainder of the old Royal Library, the main portion whereof had been seen already in Q and R.

327

Rough Diagram, showing Ground Plan of the original British Museum of 1759.

When the combined Museum and Libraries, thus arranged, were first opened to the inspection of the curious Public 328in 1759, the collections enumerated in the Foundation Act of 1753 had, it is seen, already received some notable increase by gifts. |Early Helpers in the Foundation and Growth of the British Museum.| The first donor was the House of Lords, by whose order the historical collections of Thomas Rymer, royal historiographer, and editor of the Fœdera, were given to the Trustees, immediately after their incorporation. |1755–57.| Then followed, in 1757, the gift of the Royal Library and that of the Lethieullier Antiquities from Egypt. [See Chapter II.]

The next donor, in order of time, was a Jewish merchant, and stock-broker, of humble origin, but of princely disposition. |1759. Da Costa’s Hebrew Collection.—History of the Collector.| Solomon Da Costa was one of the many men who have done honour to commerce not merely by its successful prosecution, but by the conspicuous union of mercantile astuteness with noble tastes and true beneficence. |Correspondence of Thomas Hollis.| His talents for business enabled him to make a hundred thousand pounds—which in his day was more, perhaps, than the equivalent of four hundred thousand in ours. He had made it, says a keen observer, who knew the man well, ‘without scandal or meanness.’ When wealth made him independent, he spent his new leisure, not in luxury but in hard labour for the poor.

Da Costa had come, from Amsterdam, into England, in the year 1704. His struggling Hebrew compatriots were among the earliest sharers in his bounty. But his heart was too large to suffer that bounty to be limited by considerations either of race or of local neighbourhood. To him, as to the Samaritan of old, distress made kinship. He was wont to journey, from time to time, through thirty or forty parishes of Surrey and of Kent, with the punctual diligence of a commercial traveller, simply to succour the distressed by that best of all succour, the provision of means through which, in time, self-help would be developed and ensured. Provident loans, clothing-funds, the education 329and apprenticeship of necessitous children, were the forms in which Da Costa’s benevolence delighted to invest not only his money, but his personal exertion and his cordial sympathy. He devoted more than a thousand pounds a year to the benefit of Christian Englishmen, besides all that he gave to the poor of his own faith and race. And to both he gave, without noise or ostentation.

He had, too, the breadth of view which enabled him to put, on their true foot of equality, the claims of the necessitous mind, as well as those of the necessitous body. Unlike many other men of genuine beneficence, popular estimates of giving did not mislead him into one-sidedness of aim.

Within a few years of Da Costa’s arrival in England, probably about the year 1720, and when, with youthful ardour, he was seeking to acquire knowledge as well as to make money, he met, at a bookseller’s, with a remarkable collection of Hebrew books, of choice editions and in rich and uniform bindings. The collection had that sumptuousness of aspect which invited inquiry into its origin. All that he could learn on that score was the probability that some statesman or other of the Commonwealth period, had collected them for a public but unfulfilled purpose, and that they had fallen—with so much other spoil—into the hands of Charles the Second. By that King’s order they had received, if not their rich binding, at least his crown and cypher as marks of the royal appropriation, and then (in a truly Carolinian fashion) were left in the hands of the King’s stationer for lack of payment of the charge of what—whether binding or mere decoration—had been done to the books by the royal command. Da Costa prized them as among his chief treasures, but directly he heard of the foundation of a great repository of learning, 330the emotions of the Jewish broker were such as might have been felt by ‘broad-browed Verulam,’ could he have lived to see that day; save only that Bacon would first have scanned the evidence about the origin of the institution, and would have discriminated the praise.

Da Costa wrote a letter to the Trustees. The generous heart is facile in ascribing generosity. ‘A most stately monument’ said Da Costa, ‘hath been lately erected and endowed, by the wisdom and munificence of the British Legislature,’ and he accompanied his eulogy with a prayer that the Almighty would ‘render unto them a recompense, according to the work of their hands.’ |Da Costa to the Trustees of the Brit. Museum, ‘5th of Sivan, 5519’ [1759]|. He brought his mite of contribution, he added, not only as proof of sympathy with the work in progress, ‘but as a thanksgiving offering, in part, for the generous protection and numberless blessings which I have enjoyed under the British Government.’

The gift embraced several Biblical Manuscripts of value, and a still choicer series of early printed books, one hundred and eighty in number. The giver has a merited place in the roll of our public benefactors; and his devout prayer for the new Museum, ‘May it increase and multiply ... to the benefit of the people of these nations and of the whole earth,’ has had a more conspicuous fulfilment than could, in 1759, have been imagined by the most sanguine of bystanders.

Three years afterwards, and soon after his accession to the throne, King George the Third gave to the Nation that most curious assemblage of nearly the whole English literature of two and twenty eventful years of Civil War,—open or furtive,—which is known to the Public as the ‘Thomason Collection,’ though its technical name within 331the Museum walls continues, as of old, to be ‘the King’s Tracts.’

That name is the less appropriate from its tendency to give an inaccurate idea of the contents of the King’s gift, as well as from its disregard of the origin of the Collection. The ‘tracts’ include the most ponderous theological quartos that ever came from an English press as well as the tiniest handbill, or the fugitive circular which called together a ‘Committee of Sequestrators’ at Wallingford House.

George Thomason, its collector, was an eminent London bookseller, of royalist sympathies, who watched intensely the progress of the great struggle between King and Parliament, Cavalier and Roundhead, and who had noted with professional keenness how strikingly the printing press was made to mirror, almost from day to day, the strife of senators in council, as well as that of soldiers in the field. He had seized, in 1641, the idea of helping posterity the better to realize every phase of the great conflict, the oncoming of which many men had long foreseen, by gathering everything which came out in print—as far as vigilant industry could do so—whether belonging to literature, and to the obvious materials of history, or merely subserving the most trivial need of the passing moment. He failed, of course, to secure everything; but his endeavour was wonderfully successful, on the whole. He also gathered many manuscripts which no printer in England dared to put into type. And he obtained a large number of political and historical pieces, bearing on English affairs, which had issued from foreign presses; their authors being sometimes foreign observers of the struggle, but more frequently British refugees.

Charles the First congratulated Thomason on the utility of his idea. More than once the King was able to 332gratify his curiosity by borrowing some tract or other which only our collector was known to possess. The Parliament, meanwhile, was far from exhibiting any literary sympathies in the undertaking. Some of its leaders loved freedom of the press when it was seen to be a channel for urging forward their peculiar doctrines and aims, but had the gravest doubts about its policy when it manifestly helped their opponents and gave back blow for blow. The ‘Thomason Collection’ came to be viewed, at length, much in the light in which soldiers view an enemy’s battery. If it could be captured and carried off, some of the pieces might be turned against the enemy. If the attempt at complete capture should miscarry, a sudden sally might at least enable the assailants to destroy what they had failed to secure.

Hence it was that the poor Collector came to be in such alarm about the possible fate of his treasures that he had them repeatedly packed into cases, and, as the successes of the war veered to and fro, sent them, at one time, far to the south of London; at another time, as far to the east; now, smuggled them, concealed between the real and false tops of tables, into a city warehouse; and anon made a colourable sale of them to the University of Oxford.

When the King enjoyed his own again, the Collection was offered, as fit to be made a royal one. It contained more than thirty-three thousand separate publications—bound in about 2,200 volumes—issued between 1640 and 1662 inclusive. But Charles the Second was busied with pursuits having little to do with any kind of learning, and was ill inclined, as we have seen already, to burden his Treasury for the enrichment of his Library. Sir Thomas Bodley’s Trustees at Oxford refused the offer, in their turn, under a very different but scarcely less obstructive 333pressure. Their excellent founder had formed peculiar and stringent views about the literature worthy of a great University. He had warned them against stuffing his library with ‘mere baggage books.’ And so future Bodleian curators had, in another age, to buy with large bank notes many things which their predecessors could have bought with small silver coins;—just as in the ancient story.

The unfortunate Collection went a-begging. The books passed from hand to hand, somewhat, it would seem, by way of pledge or mortgage. They had cost a large sum of money, and a larger amount of toil. When his expectations were at their best the first owner, it is said, refused several thousands of pounds for them. |The Acquirement of the Thomason Collection by George III.| His ultimate successors in the possession were glad, in 1762, to accept, at the hands of King George the Third, three hundred pounds. The purchase was recommended to him by Thomas Hollis, and also by Lord Bute, as a serviceable addition to the newly founded Museum. |1762.| As all readers now know, it has largely subserved our history already. It is not less certain that the ‘Thomason Collection’ embodies a store of information yet unused.

The next augmentor of the Museum was one of its Trustees, Gustavus Brander, distinguished as a promoter of natural science, and more especially of mineralogy and palæontology in the early stages of their study in England. A remarkable collection of fossils found in Hampshire, in the London Clay, was given by Mr. Brander to the Public, after having been, at his cost, carefully examined and described by Dr. Solander. It was the first notable contribution to the grand series of specimens in palæontology which, in their combination, have made the British Museum 334the most important of all repositories in that department of science.

To the Zoological Collections, the additions made, whether by gift or by purchase—save as the result, more or less direct, of ‘Voyages of Discovery,’ which will be noticed presently—were for many years very unimportant. The first purchase worthy of record was a collection of stuffed birds, formed in Holland, and acquired, in 1769, for four hundred and sixty pounds. This purchase was made by the Trust.

The reign of George the Third is marked by very few characteristics which are more honourable, both to King and people, than is its long series of expeditions to remote countries made expressly, or mainly, for purposes of geographical and scientific discovery, and extending over almost the whole of the reign.

Scarcely one voyage of the long series failed to bring, directly or indirectly, some valuable accession or other to the Collection of Natural History. Sometimes such accessions came to the Museum as the gifts of the navigators and explorers themselves. In this class of donors the name of Captain James Cook,^[56] and that of Archibald Menzies, occur both early and frequently. Sometimes they came as the gifts of the Board of Admiralty. Sometimes, again,—and not infrequently—as those of the King, who, in his best days, took a keen interest in enterprise of this kind, and delighted in talking with the captains of the discovery ships about their adventures, and about the marvels of the far-off lands they had been among the first to see. Nor did the King stand alone in his active encouragement of remote explorations. 335Many of the great and wealthy nobles gave generous furtherance to them, and were equally ready to make available for scientific study the new specimens which the ships brought home. In this way, for example, the Marquess of Rockingham gave to the Museum a curious collection of reptiles gathered in Surinam.

In the same manner was furnished that minor, but very popular and instructive, collection illustrating the rude arts and modes of life of the newly explored countries, which some yet among us can remember as occupying the ‘South Sea Room’ of the old house. In the course of years it came to be eclipsed by much better collections of the same kind elsewhere, and so to wear a meagre and somewhat obsolete aspect. But it had rendered good service in its day, and was the germ of what will become, it may be hoped, in due time, an ethnological collection worthy of a seafaring people.

As regards the Natural History Collections, the growth of the Museum may be said to have been mainly dependent on the Voyages of Discovery for more than forty years. That source of improvement seems to mark, distinctively, the first epoch in the history of those collections. Then came a second epoch, marked by some approach to systematic improvement, in all branches, by means of the purchase of entire private collections as opportunity offered. A third period may be dated from the acquisition of the botanical and other gatherings of Sir Joseph Banks in 1827. Sir Joseph’s splendid gift was soon followed by so many other gifts—sometimes as donations, more frequently as bequests—that for many years the liberality of benefactors quite eclipsed the liberality of Parliament. Only of late years can it be said that the public support of the Natural History Collections has been worthy, either of the Nation or of their 336own intrinsic importance to it. By degrees, statesmen have become convinced that such collections are much more than the implements of a knot of professed naturalists, and the toys of the public at large. Slowly, but surely, the economic and commercial value of a great museum of natural history, as well as its educational value, have come saliently into view. And a wise enlargement of the contributions from national funds has had the excellent result of stimulating, instead of checking, the benefactions of individuals.

Some of the particular steps by which so conspicuous an improvement has been gradually brought about will claim our notice hereafter, in their due order.

If, for a long series of years, the degree of liberality with which these varied collections were shown to the Public at large scarcely accorded, either with their origin, or with the purpose for which they had been avowedly combined, it should be borne in mind that ‘the Public’ of 1759 was a very different body from the Public of a century later. It is only by degrees that indiscriminate admission to museums has come to be either very useful or quite feasible. There was a good deal of warrant in 1759 for the opinion recorded by one of the Trustees when the Rules were first under discussion. |MS. Addit., 6179, f. 61.| ‘A general liberty,’ said Dr. John Ward, the eminent Gresham Professor, ‘to ordinary people of all ranks and denominations, is not to be kept within bounds. Many irregularities will be committed that cannot be prevented by a few librarians who will soon be insulted by such people [as commit abuses], if they offer to control or contradict them.’ But, after all, the inadequate strength of the staff was the main cause of such of the restrictions as were chiefly complained of.

337The original regulations, with but small change, remained in force for about forty-five years. How they worked will be best and most briefly shown by citing the experiences of two or three notable visitors, at various periods, during the last century.

In 1765, Peter John Grosley, an accomplished and keen-eyed Frenchman, familiar with the Museums of Italy as well as with those of his own country, visited the new Museum, and recorded his impressions of it. With the building he was charmed. He had already seen many parts of England, but nowhere any house that he thought worthy to be compared with Montagu House. He calls it ‘the largest, the most stately, the best arranged, and most richly decorated’ structure of its kind in all England. He made repeated visits. What chiefly arrested his attention in the Natural History rooms were the beauty of the papillonacea—comprising, he thought, ‘all that either the old world or the new can supply in this kind’—and the strangeness of some mineral specimens brought from the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. The Printed Books he thought to be ‘the weakest part of this vast collection.’ In one of the principal rooms, ‘I saw,’ he continues, ‘not without astonishment, a very fine bust of Oliver Cromwell, occupying a distinguished place!’ He praises the courtesy with which Drs. Maty and Morton discharged, by turns, the duty of exhibition. ‘They show,’ he says, ‘the most obliging readiness to explain things to the visitor, but,’ he adds, with obvious truth, ‘their very courtesy is wont to make a stranger content himself with hasty and unsatisfactory glances, that he may not trespass on their politeness.’ And then he makes a wise practical suggestion, which was carried into effect, almost half a century afterwards.

‘In order really to carry out the intentions of Parliament,’ 338writes Grosley, in 1765, ‘it is to be wished that the Public should be admitted more liberally, and more easily, by placing a warder in every room, to be continually present during the public hours.’

Ten years afterwards, the difficulty on this score had so increased that a notification to the following effect was circulated: ‘British Museum, 9th August, 1776. The Applicants of the middle of April are not yet satisfied. |MS. Addit., 10,555, fol. 14.| Persons applying are requested to send weekly to the porter to know how near they are upon the List.’

In 1782, the plan had so far improved that instead of waiting from April until August, a visitor could usually get admission within a fortnight or so after applying for a ticket. We have an intelligent and amusing account of a visit then made. This time the narrator is a German,—Charles Moritz, of Berlin. ‘In general,’ writes Moritz, ‘you must give in your name a fortnight before you can be admitted. But, by the kindness of Mr. Woide’—a countryman of the traveller, and, at that time, an Assistant-Librarian in the Museum,—‘I got admission earlier.... Yet, after all, I am sorry to say that it was the room, the glass-cases, the shelves, ... which I saw; not the Museum itself, so rapidly were we hurried on through the departments. The company who saw it when I did, and in like manner, was variously composed. They were of all sorts, and some, as I believe, of the very lowest classes of the people of both sexes, for, as it is, the property of the Nation, every one has the same ‘right’—I use the term of the country—to see it that another has. |Wendeborn’s Account of the Museum. 1780–90.| I had Mr. Wendeborn’s book in my pocket, and it, at least, enabled me to take more particular notice of some of the principal things.’

The book thus referred to by Moritz is the German 339original of that account of English society and institutions which Wendeborn himself translated, a few years afterwards, into English, and published at London, under the title of A View of England.

Its author had settled in London as the Minister of a German Congregation. He was himself a studious frequenter of the Museum, and says of it: ‘The whole is costly, worth seeing, and honourable to the Nation; when taken altogether it has not its equal. When considered in its separate branches, almost each of them singly may be surpassed by some other collection even in England itself.’ But the only collection which he specifies as, in this sense, superior, are the Hunterian Museum, and that which had been formed by Sir Ashton Lever, and which, when the View of England was written, belonged to Mr. Parkinson. |Wendeborn, A View of England, vol. i, 323–325.| Of the Museum Library, Wendeborn says, ‘though a numerous and valuable collection, it is yet, in many respects, very deficient, and as to its use, much circumscribed.’

When the German visitor of 1782 pulled Mr. Wendeborn’s book from his pocket, as he was hurried through the Museum, the action attracted the attention of the other visitors. The more intelligent of them pressed round him to see if the book could be made to yield any information for their behoof also. And the stranger gratified their curiosity by translating a passage or two in explanation of the objects they were passing. Then came an exquisite bit of sub-officialism.

‘The gentleman who conducted us’ observes Moritz, ‘took little pains to conceal the contempt which he felt for my communications when he found it was only a German description of the British Museum which I had.’ ‘So rapid a passage,’ he continues, ‘through a vast suite of rooms, 340in little more than one hour of time, with opportunity to cast but one poor longing look of astonishment on all the vast treasures of nature, antiquity, and literature, in the examination of which one might profitably spend years, confuses, stuns, and overpowers the visitor.’

Two years later, we have a similar account of the experiences of an inquisitive Englishman, and of one who is much more outspoken in his complaint. |William Hutton’s Visit in 1784.| William Hutton, the historian of Birmingham, came to London in December, 1784. ‘I was unwilling to quit it,’ he writes, ‘without seeing what I had, many years, wished to see. But how to accomplish it was the question. I had not one relative in that vast metropolis to direct me.... By good fortune, I stumbled upon a person possessing a ticket for the next day, which he valued less than two shillings. We struck a bargain in a moment and were both pleased.... I was not likely to forget Tuesday, December 7th, at eleven.’ Hutton, shrewd as he was, did not suspect the real nature of his ‘bargain.’ He had met with a professional dealer in Museum tickets; one of several who, on a humbler scale, followed in the steps of Peter Leheup, but were lucky enough not to excite the anger of the House of Commons.

He was taken through the rooms in company with about ten other persons, at a very rapid rate. He asked their conductor for some information about the curiosities. The reply, he says, so humbled him that he could not utter another word. ‘The company seemed influenced. They made haste and were silent. No voice was heard but in whispers. If a man spends two minutes in a room, in which a thousand things demand his attention, he cannot bestow on them a glance apiece.... It grieved me to 341think how much I lost for want of a little information. In about thirty minutes we finished our silent journey through the princely mansion, which would well have taken thirty days.... I had laid more stress on the British Museum, than on anything else which I should see in London. It was the only sight which disgusted me.... |Hutton, A Journey to London, pp. 187–196.| Government purchased this rare collection at a vast expense, and exhibits it as a national honour.... How far it answers the end proposed this account will testify.’

Better days were at hand. But it was not until 1805 that the rules of admission were even so far effectively revised as to abolish the traffic in tickets. Nor was any ‘Synopsis’ of the contents of the Museum provided until 1808. In that year admission tickets were abolished wholly.

Straitened means of maintenance have, at all times, had far more to do with any inadequate provision for public usefulness of which (in days long past) there may have been well-grounded cause of complaint, than had neglect or oversight on the part of any officer.

The officers, too, were, for a very long period after the establishment of the Museum, engaged, and remunerated, only for an attendance, in rotation, for two hours daily, on alternate days. A largely increased provision by Parliament was the essential condition of any large increase in the accessibility of the institution.

As early as in 1776 the necessary expenditure in salaries and wages alone (at a very low scale of payment), exceeded the annual income (£900) accruing from the original endowment fund. After Parliament had made an additional provision—first introduced in a clause of what was then 342called a ‘hotch-potch Act’—averaging £1000 yearly, the total annual income was still but £2448, including the yearly three hundred pounds accruing from the ‘Edwards Fund,’ and the £248, paid, under the grant of George the Second, as the net yearly salary of the ‘King’s Librarian.’ For a considerable period, the sums expended in purchases—for all the departments collectively—had not amounted, in any one year, to one hundred pounds.

On the decease of the first Principal Librarian, Dr. Gowin Knight, in 1772, Dr. Matthew Maty was appointed to that office. He was born at, or in the neighbourhood of Utrecht, in 1718, and was educated in the University of Leyden, where he took his degrees in 1740, the subject of his inaugural dissertation, for that of M.A. and Doctor of Philosophy, being ‘custom,’ and its wide results and influence social and political. His essay was published (under the title Dissertatio philosophica inauguralis de Usu,) in 1740. For the degree of Doctor in Medicine, he treated of the effects of habit and custom upon the human frame (De Consuetudinis efficacia in corpus humanum). This medical dissertation was also published at Leyden, in the usual form, in the same year. Both essays showed much ability, along with many faults and crudities. Some of these became matters of conversation and correspondence between the author and his friends. The subject was less hacknied than that of the majority of academical essays, and Maty was induced to reconsider it. He republished the result of his thoughts, in a greatly improved form, in the following year at Utrecht, and, to gain a wider audience, wrote in French. The Essai sur l’Usage attracted much attention, and served to pave the way for the establishment by its 343author, eight years afterwards, of the periodical entitled, Journal Britannique, as editor of which he is now best remembered. He came to England in 1741, practised as a physician, attained considerable reputation, and distinguished himself more especially by following in the path of Sir Hans Sloane, and others, as an earnest supporter of the practice of inoculation. In this field he was able to render good service, both by his professional influence and by his pen. In the sharp controversies which soon, and for a time, impeded the new practice, he took a large share, and his publications on the subject are distinguished from many others by their union of moderation of tone with vigour of advocacy.

Maty’s predilections, however, pointed to a literary rather than to a medical career. He had early taken that ply, and it was not easily effaced. Within six years (1750–1756) he published eighteen volumes of the Journal Britannique—edited in London but printed at the Hague—in the toils of which he was, according to Gibbon, almost unaided. Gibbon, too, bears testimony to the amiability of the man, as well as to the industry of the writer. His own first and youthful achievement in literature had Maty’s encouragement and active aid. |Memoirs of Gibbon, p. 107.| When the Essai sur l’Etude de la Littérature was, after much filing and polishing, given to the Public, a preliminary letter from Maty’s pen accompanied it, and by him the essay was carried through the press.

When he succeeded Dr. Gowin Knight, as Principal Librarian in 1772, his health was already failing. He occupied the post during less than four years. To the last, his pen was busily employed. He was a contributor to several foreign journals, as well as to the Philosophical Transactions, some volumes of which he edited, or assisted 344to edit, in his capacity as one of the Secretaries of the Royal Society, to which office he had been appointed in 1765. Among his minor literary publications are a life of Boerhaave, in French, and one of Dr. Richard Mead, in English. At the time of his death he was working on the Life of Lord Chesterfield, afterwards prefixed to the collective edition of the Earl’s Miscellaneous Works. Dr. Maty died in 1776, and was succeeded in his Librarianship by his colleague, Dr. Charles Morton, who had had, from the beginning, the charge of the department of Manuscripts, and had also acted as Secretary to the Trustees.

Dr. Morton was a native of Westmoreland, and was born in 1716. Until the year 1750 he had practised as a physician at Kendal. In 1751 he became a Licentiate of the College of Physicians, and in the following year a Fellow of the Royal Society. His service in the British Museum lasted from 1756 to 1799. There are several testimonies to the courtesy with which he treated such visitors and students as came under his personal notice, but his long term of superior office was certainly not marked by any striking improvement in the public economy of the Museum. And how much room for improvement existed there the reader has seen. Dr. Morton, like his predecessor, was one of the Secretaries of the Royal Society. He filled that office from the year 1760 to 1774. He contributed several papers to the Philosophical Transactions, as well on antiquarian subjects as on topics of physical science, and he was the first editor of Bulstrode Whitelocke’s remarkable narrative of his embassy to Sweden during the Protectorate. Morton’s writings are not remarkable either for vigour or for originality, but, on more topics than one, they had the useful result of setting abler men awork. He was three times married: (1) to 345Mary Berkeley, the niece of Swift’s frequent correspondent Lady Elizabeth Germaine; (2) to Lady Savile; (3) to Mrs. Elizabeth Pratt. He died on the 10th February, 1799.

Of his successors in the office of Principal Librarian some account will be found in the Introductory Chapter of Book III.

‘The Archæologist cannot, like the Scholar, carry on his researches in his own Library, independent of outward circumstances. For his work of reference and collation he must travel, excavate, collect, arrange, delineate, transcribe, before he can place his whole subject before his mind....

‘A Museum of Antiquities is to the Archæologist what a Botanic Garden is to the Botanist. It presents his subject compendiously, synoptically, suggestively, not in the desultory and accidental order in which he would otherwise be brought into contact with its details.’—

Sir William Hamilton and his Pursuits and Employments in Italy.—The Acquisitions of the French Institute of Egypt, and the capture of part of them at Alexandria.—Charles Towneley and his Collection of Antiquities.—The Researches of the Earl of Elgin in Greece.—The Collections and Writings of Richard Payne Knight.

To the comparatively small assemblage of antiquities which originally formed part of the Museum of Courten and of Sloane, several additions had been made—besides the coins, medals, and bronzes of Sir Robert Cotton—prior to the opening of the British Museum to the Public in 1759. Some of those additions were the gift, severally, of three members of the Lethieullier family. Others were 347the gift of Thomas Hollis, who became a constant benefactor to the Museum almost from the day of Sir Hans Sloane’s death to that of his own.

The Lethieullier antiquities had been chiefly gathered in Egypt. |The Egyptian Antiquities of the Lethieulliers.| The first gift was made by the Will of Colonel William Lethieullier, dated 23rd July, 1755. |MS. Addit., 6179, f. 29.| And the first catalogue of any kind which was prepared for the British Museum, after its acquisition by Parliament, was a list of these antiquities drawn up by Dr. John Ward, one of the Trustees. And here it may deserve remark that for many years after the foundation not a few of the Trustees took a large share in the actual work of preparing the Museum for public use, as well as in the ordinary duties of control and administration.

To the gift of Colonel William Lethieullier, his cousin, Smart Lethieullier, and his nephew, Pitt Lethieullier, made several additions between the years 1756 and 1770. The last-named of these gentlemen, when receiving, as executor of his uncle, the personal thanks of a Committee of the Trustees (February, 1756), for the bequest so made, took the opportunity of augmenting it by the gift of some antiquities which he had himself collected during his residence at Grand Cairo.

But the first large and comprehensive addition in the archæological department was that made in 1772 by the purchase, by means of a Parliamentary grant, of the Museum of Antiquities, which had been formed during seven years’ researches in Italy by Sir William Hamilton, our Ambassador at Naples.

Sir William Hamilton was among the earliest of British diplomatists who, by a voluntary choice, turned to good account, in the interests of learning and of the public, the 348opportunities which diplomatic life so frequently offers for amassing treasures of literature and science, and (in many cases) for saving them from peril of destruction. In that path Frenchmen had showed the way many generations earlier.

As far, indeed, as regards a public and national care for matters of the intellect, France is far better entitled to claim a priority in the proud distinction of ‘teaching the nations how to live,’ than is any other country in the world. It is to her immortal honour that from a very early period, and even in times of sore trouble, her sovereigns and her statesmen have known how to turn public resources to the promotion of public culture, as well as of national power. A man may read in French diplomatic letters of instruction of the sixteenth century orders to collect manuscripts and antiquities, as implements of public education, such as he would look for in vain in parallel British documents of any century at all,—inclusive of the present;—although it is certain that the omission has by no means arisen from the engrossment of our diplomatists in weightier concerns.

In Sir William Hamilton’s case the liberal tastes and the mental energy of the individual supplied the defect of his instructions. He set an example which not a few of our ambassadors have voluntarily followed with like public spirit, and with results not less conspicuous.

William Hamilton was the fourth son of Lord Archibald Hamilton, youngest son of James, third Duke of Hamilton, K.G. His mother, Lady Jane Hamilton, was of that illustrious family by birth, as well as by marriage, being the daughter of James, sixth Earl of Abercorn. He was born in the year 1730.

349Towards the close of his career, Sir William would sometimes say to his intimates, when conversation turned upon the battle of life: ‘I had to begin the world with a great name, and one thousand pounds for all my fortune.’ But the world never used him very roughly. Whilst still a young man (1755) he married Miss Barlow, the wealthy heiress of Hugh Barlow, of Laurenny Hall, in Pembrokeshire. She brought him an estate, in the neighbourhood of Swansea, worth nearly five thousand pounds a year; but it was his happy lot to have married a true wife, not a bag of money. Duclos, who saw much of the Hamiltons in their family circle at Naples in after years, was wont to say, ‘They are the happiest couple I ever saw.’

Mr. Hamilton was sent to the Court of Naples in 1764. The post, in that day, was not overburdened with business. And for some years to come the new Ambassador found the Neapolitan society little to his taste. He was intellectual, and, in the truest sense, an English gentleman. The tone of society at that time in Naples was both frivolous and dissolute. He had to form, by slow degrees, a circle in which a man of cultivated tastes might enjoy social life. The public duties of the embassy could employ but a small portion of his time, and the temper of the man made employment to him a necessary of life. He threw his energies into hard study. And he possessed that happiest of mental characteristics, an equal love of the natural sciences, and of the world of art and of books. He could pore, with like enjoyment, on the deep things of Nature, and on the secrets of ‘the antiquary times.’ And in both paths, he knew how to make his personal enjoyments teem with public good.

His first labours were given to the exhaustive research of volcanic phenomena. He amazed the fine gentlemen of 350Naples by setting to work as though he had to win his bread by the sweat of his brow. He laboured harder on the slopes of Vesuvius than an exceptionally diligent craftsman would labour in a factory—had Naples possessed any. Within four years he ascended the famous mountain twenty-two times. More than one of these ascents was made at the risk of his life. He made, and caused to be made, innumerable drawings of all the phenomena that he observed, showing the volcanic eruption in all its stages, and under every kind of meteorological condition. He formed too a complete collection of volcanic products, and of the earths and minerals of the volcanic district. When he had studied Vesuvius under every possible aspect, he went to Etna.

The results of these elaborate investigations were sent, from time to time, to the Royal Society (of which Mr. Hamilton was made a Fellow, after the reading of the first of his papers in 1766), and they were published in the Philosophical Transactions, between the years 1766 and 1780. They were afterwards collected, and improved, in the two beautiful volumes entitled Campi Phlegræi, and were lavishly illustrated from the drawings of F. A. Fabris, who had been trained by Hamilton to the work.^[57] The collection of volcanic geology and products was given to the British Museum in 1767.

These geological labours had been diversified, at intervals, by the collection of a rich archæological museum, and by the establishment of a systematic correspondence on antiquarian subjects with men of learning in various parts 351of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This correspondence had for its object, not merely the enrichment of his own Museum, but the awakening of local attention throughout the country to its antiquities and history; matters which had theretofore been but too much neglected—in the Neapolitan fashion.

One of the earliest and choicest acquisitions made by Hamilton in the early years of his residence at Naples was a collection of vases belonging to the senatorial family of Porcinari, many of which had been gathered from sepulchres and excavations in Magna Græcia. This purchase, made in 1766 and afterwards largely increased, may be regarded as the substantial beginning of the noble series of vases now so prominent a part of our National Museum.

Thus had been formed, by degrees, at Naples, a museum which, at the beginning of the year 1772, included seven hundred and thirty fictile vases; a hundred and seventy-five terra-cottas; about three hundred specimens of ancient glass (including three of the most perfect cinerary urns known, at that time, to have been discovered); six hundred and twenty-seven bronzes, of which nearly one-half illustrated the arms and armour of the ancients; more than two hundred specimens of sacrificial, domestic, and architectonic, instruments and implements; fourteen bassi-relievi, busts, masques, and inscribed tablets; about a hundred and fifty miscellaneous pieces of ancient ivory, including a curious series of tessaræ; a hundred and forty-nine gems, chiefly scarabæi; a hundred and forty-three personal ornaments, of various kinds, in gold; a hundred and fifty-two fibulæ in various materials; and more than six thousand coins and medals, comprising a considerable series from the towns of Magna Græcia.

352The first fruits of this noble collection was the publication, commenced in the year 1766, of the work entitled Antiquités Etrusques, &c., with admirable illustrations, and with a descriptive text, written in French by D’Hancarville. |Publication of the ‘Antiquités Etrusques.’| The first edition of this costly book was issued at Naples. It naturally attracted great attention. No such collection of fictile vases—in their combination of number and beauty—had been theretofore known.

The two volumes published at Sir William’s cost in 1766, were followed by two other volumes in 1767. All of them were executed with great care and with lavish expenditure. But the later edition, printed at Florence—long afterwards—is in many points superior.^[58]

Whilst the volumes were still incomplete, Mr. Hamilton circulated proof plates of the work with great liberality. Some of these proofs were lent to our famous English potter, Josiah Wedgwood, and gave a strong impulse to his taste and artistic zeal. |Meteyard, Life of Josiah Wedgwood, vol. ii, p. 72.| But they excited an eager longing for access to the vases themselves, as the only satisfactory models.

When Wedgwood wrote to his friend and partner, Bentley;—‘Mr. Hambleton, you know, has flattered the old pot-painters very much,’ one feels that for the moment that excellent man’s prepossessions had been rubbed a little, against the grain. But he shows directly that there is no real intent to impeach the Editor’s honesty in the matter. ‘He has, no doubt,’ adds Wedgwood, ‘taken his designs from the very best vases extant,’ which was precisely what it was his duty to do, since selection was the task in hand, not the publication of seven hundred specimens.

353This Collection—far more remarkable than any, of its kind, which had yet come to England—was brought over in 1772, and offered to the Trustees of the British Museum. An appeal was made to Parliament, and the first grant of public money, worthy of mention, was now made in order to its acquisition. The sum given to Mr. Hamilton was eight thousand four hundred pounds.

How soon one of the incidental results of the acquisition returned to the Public much more than its cost—leaving out of account altogether the best returns which accrue from such Collections—is among the familiar annals of our commerce. Josiah Wedgwood told a Committee of the House of Commons that, within two years, he had himself brought into England, by his imitations of the Hamilton vases in his manufactory at Etruria, about three times the sum which the Collection had cost to the country.

At the beginning of the year 1772 Mr. Hamilton was made a Knight of the Bath. He returned to Naples soon after the transfer of his antiquities to the Museum, and ere long he was busily engaged in new explorations at Pompeii and at Herculaneum. He sent to the Society of Antiquaries, in 1777, an interesting account of the discoveries at Pompeii, which is printed in the fourth volume of the Archæologia. At Herculaneum he employed, during many years, Father Antonio Piaggi to superintend excavations and make drawings, and gave him an annual salary equal to a hundred pounds sterling, after vainly endeavouring—at that time—to urge on the Neapolitan Government its own duty to carry on the task in an adequate manner for the honour of the nation, and to publish the results of the explorations for the general benefit of learning.

Sir William’s services as an ambassador were rendered with zeal and with credit, as opportunity offered. But the 354opportunity, in his earlier period, was comparatively rare. It was, perhaps, despite the proverb, not altogether a happy thing for Naples that its annals were tiresome. The rust of inactivity showed itself there, as so often elsewhere, to be much more fatal than the exhaustion of strife. Certainly, to the ambassador, it was a personal misfortune that, when the affairs of Naples became really momentous to Englishmen, the vigour and the will of earlier days were then departing from the man whose energies were at length to be put to the test in the proper sphere of his profession. Meanwhile, and in his prime, he had but—from time to time—to make routine memorials as to matters of individual wrong; to heal breaches between one Bourbon and another; and to secure the neutrality of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies during the war which grew out of the struggle in America. Such matters made no great inroad upon the pursuits of the naturalist and the antiquarian.

Labour on the mountains, in the excavations, and in the study, had been, now for many years, relieved by congenial friendships. There had been an improvement in the tone of Neapolitan Society since Hamilton’s first appearance. And all that was best in Naples had gathered round him. To English travellers his hospitalities were splendid and unremitting. But in 1782 the circle lost its mistress. Seven years before, Sir William and Lady Hamilton had been bereaved of a daughter—their only child. In 1783 occurred the dreadful earthquake in Calabria, the greatest calamity of the century save that at Lisbon.

Among the scientific correspondents in England with whom Sir William Hamilton kept up an intercourse was Sir Joseph Banks, then the President of the Royal Society. 355To him was sent the fullest account that was attainable of the sad event of 1783.

It had chanced that just before the news reached Naples, Sir Joseph had written to Hamilton about some experiments and discoveries on the composition and transmutation of water. He had said, jestingly: ‘In future we philosophers shall rejoice when an eruption, which may swallow up a few towns, affords subsistence for as many nations of animals and vegetables.’ This letter Hamilton was about to answer when he received the intelligence from Calabria.

‘We have had here,’ he writes, ‘some shocks of an earthquake which, in Calabria Ultra, has swallowed up or destroyed almost every town, together with some towns in Sicily.... Every hour brings in accounts of fresh disasters. |1783. Feb. 18.| Some thousands of people will perish with hunger before the provisions sent from hence can reach them. This, I believe, will prove to have been the greatest calamity that has happened in this century. An end is put to the Carnival. |Hamilton to Banks, MS. Addit., 8967, ff. 34, seqq.| The theatres are shut. I suppose Saint Januarius will be brought out.’ There had been no exaggeration in these first reports. It was found that at Terranova, not only were all the buildings destroyed, but the very ground on which they stood sunk to such a depth as to form a sort of gulf. In that district alone 3043 people lost their lives. At Seminara 1328 persons were buried beneath the ruins. In other and adjacent districts more than 3300 persons perished.

In 1784 the ambassador visited England. His stay was brief. But an incident which occurred during this visit gave its colour to the rest of his life.

In 1791 Sir William Hamilton was made a Privy Councillor, and in the same year (nine years after the death 356of his first wife) he married Emma Harte, whom he had first met in the house of his nephew, Colonel Greville, in 1784. In September, 1793, his eventful acquaintance with Nelson was formed.

In that month, Nelson had been sent to Naples with despatches from Admiral Lord Hood, in which Sir William Hamilton was pressed to procure the sending of some Neapolitan troops to Toulon. After his first interview with Lord Hood’s messenger, he is said to have remarked to his wife: ‘I have a little man to introduce to you who will become one of the greatest men England has ever had.’ The favourable impression was reciprocal, it seems. The ambassador gave such good furtherance to the object of Nelson’s mission, that the messenger, we are told, said to him, ‘You are a man after my heart. |Clarke and McArthur, Life, &c., of Nelson, vol. i, p. 133; and Nicolas, vol. i, p. 326.| I’m only a captain, but, if I live, I shall get to the top of the tree;’ while, of the too-fascinating lady into whose social circle he was presently brought, Nelson wrote to his wife, ‘She is a young woman of amiable manners, who does honour to the station to which she is raised.’ Several years, however, were yet to intervene before the events of the naval war and the political circumstances of Naples itself brought about a close connexion in public transactions between the great seaman and the British ambassador, whose long diplomatic career was drawing to its close.

Hamilton, after the manner of Collectors, had scarcely parted with the fine Museum, which he had sold to the Public in 1772, before he began to form another. The explorations of the buried cities gave some favourable opportunities near home, and his researches were spread far and wide. In amassing vases he was especially fortunate. And, in that particular, his second Collection came to surpass the 357first. He became anxious to ensure its preservation in integrity. With that view he offered it to the King of Prussia.

‘I think,’ he wrote to the Countess of Lichtenau, in May, 1796, ‘my object will be attained by placing my Collection, with my name attached to it, at Berlin. And I am persuaded that, in a very few years, the profit which the arts will derive from such models will greatly exceed the price of the Collection. The King’s [porcelain] manufactory would do well to profit by it.... For a long time past I have had an unlimited commission from the Grand Duke of Russia [afterwards Paul the First], but, between ourselves, I should think my Collection lost in Russia; whilst, at Berlin, it would be in the midst of men of learning and of literary academies.

‘There are more,’ he continues, ‘than a thousand vases, and one half of them figured. If the King listens to your proposal, he may be assured of having the whole Collection, and I would further undertake to go, at the end of the war, to Berlin to arrange them. |Sir W. Hamilton to the Countess of Lichtenau, 3 May, 1796.| On reckoning up my accounts,—I must speak frankly (il faut que je dise la vérité),—I find that I shall needs be a loser, unless I receive seven thousand pounds sterling for this Collection. That is exactly the sum I received from the English Parliament for my first Collection....^[59] As respects Vases, the second is far more beautiful and complete than the series in London, but the latter included also bronzes, gems, and medals.’ But the negotiation thus opened led to no result. And some of the choicest contents of this second Museum were eventually lost by shipwreck.

358When the correspondence with Berlin occurred, the Collector’s health was rapidly failing him. The political horizon was getting darker and darker. Victorious France was putting its pressure upon the Neapolitan Government to accept terms of peace which should exact the exclusion of British ships from the Neapolitan ports. The ambassador needed now all the energies for which, but a few years before, there had been no worthy political employment. They were fast vanishing; but, to the last, Sir William exerted himself to the best of his ability. It was his misfortune that he had now to work, too often, by deputy.

Lady Hamilton’s ambitious nature, and her appetite for political intrigue, when combined with some real ability and a good deal of reckless unscrupulousness as to the path by which the object in view might be reached, were dangerous qualities in such a Court as that of Naples. If, more than once, they contributed to the attainment of ends which were eagerly sought by the Government at home, and were of advantage to the movements of the British fleet, they cost—as is but too well known—an excessive price at last. The blame fairly attachable to Sir William Hamilton is that of suffering himself to be kept at a post for which the infirmities of age were rapidly unfitting him. But there he was to remain during yet four eventful years; quitting his embassy only when, to all appearance, he was at the door of death.

Between the September of 1793 and that of 1798 Nelson and Sir William Hamilton met more than once; but their chief communication was, of course, by letter. When, in October, 1796, after two victories in quick succession, Nelson lost his hard-won prizes, and narrowly escaped being taken into a Spanish port, it was to Hamilton that he wrote for a certificate of his conduct. And one of the ambassador’s 359latest diplomatic achievements was his procuring access for British ships to Neapolitan ports before the Battle of the Nile was won.

On the very night of that famous first of August, 1798, Sir William—whilst the distant battle was yet raging—told Nelson of the disappointment which had followed the rumours, current during many days at Naples, of a defeat given to the French fleet in the Bay of Alexandretta, and assured him of his own confidence that the rumours, though then unfounded, would come true at last. Five weeks afterwards, he had the satisfaction of sending to London the first official account of the great victory which he had seen before with the eye of faith.

At Naples the authentic news was received with a joy which worked like frenzy. When the ambassador first saw the Queen, after its arrival, she was rushing up and down the room of audience, and embracing every person who entered it—man, woman, or child. |Sir W. Hamilton to Nelson; Nicolas, vol. iii, p. 72.| He sent to Nelson an account of the universal joy. ‘You have now, indeed, made yourself immortal,’ was his own greeting. On the 22nd they again met, on board the Vanguard, in the Bay. On the 21st of the following December Sir William Hamilton accompanied the King and Court of Naples in their flight to Palermo.

The events of 1799 belong rather to history than to biography. Sir William Hamilton’s chief share in them lay in his exertions to obtain for Nelson the large powers which the King of Naples vested in the English Admiral—with results so mingled. On the 21st of June he embarked with Nelson on board the Foudroyant, and sailed with the squadron to Naples. In the stormy interview between Nelson and Cardinal Ruffo, Sir William acted as interpreter. In all that followed, he seems to have been rather a spectator than an actor. At the close of the year 360he joined with Nelson in the vain endeavour to induce the King to return to Naples, while that course was yet open to him.

On the 10th of June, 1800, Sir William took his final leave of Naples, which had been his home for thirty-six years, and where he had mingled in a departed world. In company with the Queen and three princesses, the Hamiltons sailed in the Foudroyant for Leghorn, on their way to Vienna. A few days after the embarkation, a fellow-passenger writes thus: ‘Sir William Hamilton appears broken, distressed, and harassed. |Miss Knight to Lady Berry, July 2, 1800.| He says that he shall die by the way, and he looks so ill that I should not be surprised if he did.’ When the Admiral struck his flag (13th July) at Leghorn, the party set out for Vienna. Between Leghorn and Florence, Sir William’s carriage met with an overturn, which increased his malady. At Trieste the physicians were inclined to despair of his life. But he rallied sufficiently to reach England at last, and the change from turmoil to rest prolonged his life for two years to come.

During the long interval between the acquisition of the first Hamilton Museum and the return of its Collector to his country, he had marked his interest in the national Collection by repeated and valuable gifts. To make yet one gift more—trivial, but possessing an historical interest—was one of his last acts. On the 12th of February, 1803, he sent to the British Museum a Commission given by the famous fisherman of Amalfi to one of his insurrectionary captains. On the 6th of April Sir William Hamilton died, in London. He was buried at Milford Haven.

The kindly heart had left many memorials of its quality at Naples. The ambassador had lost a part of his fortune. 361But many poor dependants, in his old home, enjoyed pensions from his liberality.

Nelson, when writing to the Queen of the Two Sicilies upon the death of their common friend, made this remark on his testamentary arrangements:—‘The good Sir William did not leave Lady Hamilton in such comfortable circumstances as his fortune would have allowed. He has given it amongst his relations. |Nelson to the Queen of Naples (Nicolas, vol. iv, p. 84).| But she will do honour to his memory, although every one else of his friends calls loudly against him on that account.’ This comment, however, expresses rather a temporary feeling than a wise judgment. Sir William had settled a jointure of seven hundred pounds a year upon his widow.

During the few months of life that yet remained to the great seaman himself, the highest encomium known to his vocabulary was to say, ‘So-and-so was a great friend of Sir William Hamilton.’

As the British Museum owes one choice portion of its archæological treasures to the man who was Nelson’s type of friendship, so also it owes—indirectly—another portion of them to the man who was Nelson’s favourite aversion, and whose very name, in the Admiral’s mind, served to sum up all that was most detestable. The Battle of the Nile, and the military operations which followed it in the after years, would have counted no antiquarian riches amongst their trophies, but for that ardent love of science in Napoleon which prompted him to plan the ‘Institute of Egypt’ as an essential part of the Campaign of Egypt.

The intention with which the Institute of Egypt was founded embraced every kind of study and research. The scholars of whom it was composed included within their number men of the most varied powers. What they effected 362was fragmentary, and yet their researches, directly or indirectly, bore much fruit.

In the end, the harvest was to France herself none the less abundant from the fact that Nelson’s achievement, and what grew thereout, set Englishmen and Germans to work with increased vigour in the same field, and divided some of the tools.

Scarcely had General Bonaparte established the military power of the French Republic in Egypt, before he was employed in organizing the Institute at Cairo. |1798–1801.| Its declared object was twofold: (1) the increase and diffusion of learning in Egypt itself; (2) the examination, study, and publication, of the monuments of its history and of its natural phenomena, together with the elucidation and improvement of the natural and industrial capabilities of the country. |Mémoires sur l’Egypt, passim.| The Institute was composed of thirty-six members, and was divided into four sections. The section with which alone we are here concerned—that of Literature, Arts, and History—was headed by Denon, and amongst its other members were Dutertre, Parseval, and Ripault. Its labours began in 1798, and were continued, with almost unparalleled activity, until the summer of 1801, when the defeat of Belliard near Cairo, and the capitulation of Menou at Alexandria, placed that part of the collections of the Institute which had not been already sent to France at the disposal of Lord Hutchinson.

Denon, on his return from Upper Egypt to Cairo, said, with French vivacity, that if the active movements of the Mamelukes now and then forced an antiquary to become, in self-defence, a soldier, the antiquary was enabled, by way of balance and through the good nature and docility of the French troops, to turn a good many soldiers into antiquaries. Had it not been for this general sympathy and 363readiness, one can hardly conceive that so much could have been accomplished, even under the eye of Napoleon, amidst perils so incessant. The Description de l’Egypte is for France at large, no less than for Napoleon and the men whom he set to work, a monument which might well obliterate the momentary mortification attendant on the transfer to London of a part of the treasures of the Institute. History, ancient or modern, scarcely offers a parallel instance in which war was made to contribute results so splendid, both for the progress of science and for the eventual improvement of the invaded country. To the labours initiated by Napoleon, and partially carried out by the ‘Institute of Egypt,’ the ablest of the recent rulers of that land owe some of their best and latest inspirations. Nor is it a whit less true that the most successful of our English Egyptologists have followed the track in which Frenchmen led the way. Such results, indeed, can never suffice to justify an unprovoked invasion. But they illustrate, in a marvellous way, how temporary evil is wrought into enduring good.

By the sixteenth article of the Capitulation of Alexandria, it was provided that the Members of the Institute of Egypt might carry back with them all instruments of science and art which they had brought from France, but that all collections of marbles, manuscripts, and other antiquities, together with the specimens of natural history and the drawings, then in the possession of the French, should be regarded as public property, and become subject to the disposal of the generals of the allied army.

The Convention was made between General Menou and General Hope, on the 31st of August, 1801. |1801, August.| Against this sixteenth article Menou made the strongest remonstrances, but General Hope declined to modify it, otherwise 364than by agreeing to make a reference, as to the precise extent to which it should be carried into actual effect, to Lord Hutchinson, as Commander-in-Chief.

Between Menou and Hutchinson there was a long correspondence. The French General declared that the Collections, both scientific and archæological, were private, not public property. The since famous ‘Rosetta stone,’ for example, belonged, he said, to himself. Various members of the Institute claimed other precious objects; some alleged, with obvious force of argument, that the care bestowed on specimens of natural history made them the property of the collectors and preservers; others threatened to prefer the destruction or defacement of their collections, by their own hands, to the giving of them up to the English army.

The correspondence was followed by several personal conferences between Menou and Colonel (afterwards General) Turner, in order to a compromise. Turner, who was himself a man of distinguished knowledge and accomplishments, advised Lord Hutchinson to insist on the transfer of the Marbles and Manuscripts, and to yield the natural history specimens, with some minor objects, to the possessors. The astute Capitan Pasha had contrived to place himself in ‘possession’ of one of the most precious of the marbles—the famous sarcophagus which Dr. Clarke so strenuously contended to be nothing less than the tomb of Alexander—by seizing the ship on board of which the French had placed it, and he gave Colonel Turner almost as much trouble as Menou himself had given.

The French soldiers were, as was natural, deeply mortified when they heard that the captors of Alexandria were to have the antiquities. Every man of them who had had to do with their excavation or transport had vindicated 365Denon’s eulogy by his pains to protect the sculptures from harm. Now, their excessive zeal and their national pride led to an unworthy result. The Rosetta stone was stripped of the soft cotton cloth and the thick matting in which it had been sedulously wrapped, and was thrown upon its face. Other choice antiquities were deprived of their wooden cases. |Capture of the Rosetta Stone;| When Turner, with a detachment of artillerymen and a strong tumbril, went to the French head-quarters to receive the Rosetta stone, he had to pass through a lane of angry Frenchmen who crowded the narrow streets of Alexandria, and were not sparing in their epithets and sarcasms. Those artillerymen, too, were the first English soldiers who entered the city. When Colonel Turner had gotten safely into his hands the stone destined to mark an era in philology, he returned good for evil. He permitted some members of the Institute of Egypt to take a cast of it, which they sent to Paris in lieu of the original.