Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T18:26:58.736Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

23 - The libraries of the antiquaries (c. 1580–1640) and the idea of a national collection

from Part Four - Libraries for leisure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Richard Ovenden
Edited by
Elisabeth Leedham-Green  and
Teresa Webber
Elisabeth Leedham-Green
Affiliation:
Darwin College, Cambridge
Teresa Webber
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Cambridge
Get access

Summary

The libraries formed by the group of individuals known as antiquaries during the period 1580 to 1640 were of crucial importance for the long-term development of the great research collections of the modern period. They are, for this reason alone, worthy of consideration, but the study of these libraries illuminates other aspects of early modern society and culture, since the context in which they were formed, and the impact they made, impinged significantly on the political, religious, cultural and intellectual life of Britain. In order to shed light on these collections, the individuals who formed them, and the emergent concept of a national collection which they helped to develop and articulate, a number of questions arise concerning the contents of the collections, why and how they were acquired and the uses to which they were put. But before these questions are answered, we must first turn our attention to the antiquaries themselves, and what distinguished them from their contemporaries.

To be an antiquary in the period 1580 to 1640 was not be a member of a profession, or to belong to a specific sector of society, for individuals who could in some circumstances be described as antiquaries could also be described and categorised in different circumstances in other ways, such as noblemen, clerics, politicians or heralds. Although antiquity was not specifically a subject studied at university, in general antiquaries were those who engaged in the study of antiquity, defined in Renaissance Britain as not only the classical past, but the classical and medieval periods together.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland , pp. 527 - 562
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, S. ‘Spain or the Netherlands?’, in Tomlinson, H. (ed.), Before the English Civil War (London, 1983).Google Scholar
Archer, I.W. ‘John Stow, citizen and historian, in Gadd, I. and Gillespie, A. (eds.), John Stow (1525–1605) and the making of the English past (London, 2004).Google Scholar
Backhouse, J.The Luttrell Psalter (London, 1989).Google Scholar
Barber, G., ‘Notes on some English centre and corner piece bindings c. 1600’, Library, 5th ser., 17 (1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beal, P.In praise of scribes: manuscripts and their makers in seventeenth-century England (Oxford, 1998).Google Scholar
Binnsf, J.W.Intellectual culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: the Latin writings of the age (Leeds, 1990).Google Scholar
Birrell, T. A., English monarchs and their books: from Henry VII to Charles II (London, 1987).Google Scholar
Bodley, T., Letters of Sir Thomas Bodley to Thomas James, ed. Wheeler, G. W. (Oxford, 1926).Google Scholar
Borrie, M. A. F. ‘The Thorne Chronicle’, British Museum Quarterly 31 (1966–7).Google Scholar
Buc, GeorgeThe history of King Richard the Third, 1619, ed. Kincaid, A. N. (Gloucester, 1979).Google Scholar
Carlson, D. ‘The writings and manuscript collections of the Elizabethan alchemist, antiquary, and herald Francis Thynne’, Huntington Library Quarterly 52 (1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collinson, P. ‘One of us? William Camden and the making of history’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 8 (1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coxe, H. O.Laudian Manuscripts, ed. Hunt, R.W. (Oxford, 1973).Google Scholar
Darlington, R. R. and McGurk, P. (eds.), The Chronicle of John of Worcester (Oxford, 1995).Google Scholar
Davies, G. R. C., Medieval cartularies of Great Britain (London, 1958).Google Scholar
Elrington, C. R. (ed.), The whole works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, DD (1847–64).Google Scholar
Emery, A.Greater medieval houses of England and Wales, 1300–1500, I: Northern England (Cambridge, 1996).Google Scholar
Evans, J., A history of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956).Google Scholar
Gibson, M.Heslop, T. A. and Pfaff, R. W. (eds.), The Eadwine Psalter: text, image, and monastic culture (London, 1992).Google Scholar
Greg, W.W.A companion to Arber (Oxford, 1967).Google Scholar
Hallam, E. M. ‘The Tower of London as a record office’, Archives 14 (1979).Google Scholar
Hallam, E. M. and Roper, M., ‘The capital and the records of the nation: seven centuries of housing the public records in London’, London Journal 4 (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliwell-Phillips, J. O (ed.), The autobiography and correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (London, 1845).Google Scholar
Hasler, P. W., The history of Parliament: the House of Commons, 1588–1603, 3 vols. (London, 1981).Google Scholar
Howarth, D., Lord Arundel and his circle (New Haven, 1986).Google Scholar
Hunt, R. W. ‘Donors of manuscripts to St John’s College Oxford during the presidency of William Laud 1611–1621’, in Hunt, R. W., Philip, I. G. and Roberts, R. J. (eds.), Studies in the book trade in honour of Graham Pollard, Oxford Bibliographical Society publications,(Oxford, 1975).Google Scholar
Krivatsy, N. H. and Yeandle, L., ‘Books of Sir Edward Dering of Kent (1598–1644)’, Fehrenbach, R. J. and Leedham-Green, E. S. (eds.), Private libraries in Renaissance England: a collection and catalogue of Tudor and early Stuart book-lists (Binghampton, NY, and Marlborough, 1992–5; Tempe, Arizona, 1998).Google Scholar
Krochalis, J. ‘Magna tabula: the Glastonbury tablets (part I)’, Arthurian Literature 15 (1997).Google Scholar
Levy Peck, L.Northampton: patronage and policy at the court of James I (London, 1982).Google Scholar
Mathew, D. ‘The library at Naworth’, in Woodruff, D. (ed.), For Hilaire Belloc (London, 1942), and Ovenden, R. and Handley, S., ‘Lord William Howard’, The Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford, 2004).Google Scholar
Orme, N. (ed.), Nicholas Roscarrock’s Lives of the saints: Cornwall and Devon, Devon and Cornwall Record Society, n.s., 35 (Exeter, 1992).Google Scholar
Ornsby, G. (ed.), Selections from the household books of Lord William Howard of Naworth, Surtees Soc. 68 (Durham, 1878).Google Scholar
Ovenden, R. ‘Scipio Le Squyer and the fate of monastic cartularies in the early seventeenth century’, Library, 6th ser., 13 (1991).Google Scholar
Ovenden, R. ‘Thomas Howard, second [=14th] earl of Arundel’, in Baker, W. and Womack, K. (eds.), Pre-nineteenth-century British book collectors and bibliographers (Detroit, 1999).Google Scholar
Parry, G.The trophies of time: English antiquarians of the seventeenth century (Oxford, 1995).Google Scholar
Pearson, D., ‘The libraries of English bishops, 1600–1640’, Library, 6th ser., 14 (1992).Google Scholar
Philip, I. G., The Bodleian Library in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Oxford, 1983).Google Scholar
Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the feudal law (Cambridge, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramsay, N., ‘The cathedral archives and library’, in Collinson, P., Ramsay, N. and Sparks, M. (eds.), A history of Canterbury Cathedral (Oxford, 1995).Google Scholar
Reinmuth, H. S. ‘Lord William Howard (1563–1640) and his Catholic associations’, Recusant History 12 (1973–4).Google Scholar
Roberts, R. J., ‘The Latin trade’, in Barnard, J. and McKenzie, D. F. (eds.), The Cambridge history of the book in Britain, IV: 1557–1695 (Cambridge) (2002).Google Scholar
Roberts, R. J., and Watson, A. G. (eds.), John Dee’s library catalogue (London, 1990).Google Scholar
Rogers, D. ‘The English recusants: some mediaeval literary links’, Recusant History 23 (1997).Google Scholar
Sandler, L. F.The Psalter of Robert De Lisle in the British Library, rev. edn (London, 1999).Google Scholar
Sharpe, K.Sir Robert Cotton,1586–1631: history and politics in early modern England (Oxford, 1979).Google Scholar
Tite, C. C. G. ‘The Cotton library in the seventeenth century and its manuscript records of the English Parliament’, Parliamentary History 14 (1995).
Tite, C. G. C., The manuscript library of Sir Robert Cotton (London, 1994).Google Scholar
Wagner, A. R., A catalogue of English mediaeval rolls of arms (London, 1950).Google Scholar
Watson, A. G.The manuscripts of Henry Savile of Banke (London, 1969).Google Scholar
Watson, A. G., The library of Sir Simonds d’Ewes (London, 1966).Google Scholar
Woodruff, C. E. and Danks, W., Memorials of the Cathedral Priory of Christ in Canterbury (London, 1912).Google Scholar
Woudhuysen, H. R., Sir Philip Sidney and the circulation of manuscripts, 1558–1640 (Oxford, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, C. E., ‘The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and the formation of the Cottonian library’, in Wormald, and Wright, , English library (1958).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×