In 1763, Mr Grenville, then First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor
of the Exchequer, had occasion to enlist the services of a gentleman
familiar with ancient handwriting, in the arrangement of papers
and other business. So well did Mr Thomas Astle do his work, that,
two years later, he was made Receiver-general on the Civil List;
subsequently becoming, in succession, chief clerk in the Record Office,
and keeper of the records in the Tower. Astle was a diligent and
discreet collector of manuscripts; and mindful of his obligations to
the Grenvilles, directed by his will that his valuable library should
pass into the possession of the Marquis of Buckingham for the sum of
five hundred pounds. That nobleman gladly accepted the conditional
bequest, and housed the sometime keeper’s treasures honourably at
Stowe. As opportunities offered, he and his successor added books and
documents to Astle’s store, until they had brought together a mass of
original materials for the history of the three kingdoms unrivalled by
any other private collection.
The middle of the present century saw Stowe shorn of its glories;
and in 1849, its famous manuscripts were advertised for public sale;
but their threatened dispersion was fortunately averted by the Earl
of Ashburnham purchasing the entire collection, and adding it to his
own extensive library, rich in works of early European and English
literature. At the time of the earl’s death he was the possessor
of four distinct collections, known as the Stowe, the Barrois, the
Libri, and the Appendix. The last-named, representing his occasional
purchases, consisted of two hundred and fifty volumes, including richly
illuminated missals and Books of Hours, choice copies of the works
of Chaucer, Wickliffe, Gower, Dante; English chronicles, monastic
registers, and individual manuscripts of great rarity and value. The
Barrois collection of seven hundred and two manuscripts was notable
for its specimens of ancient bindings, its illuminated manuscripts,
and its examples of early French literature; while the Libri section
was remarkable for its very ancient manuscripts, its copies of Dante’s
Commedia, its works of early Italian literature, its rare autographs,
and its letters of distinguished French men of science.
In 1879, all these treasures were offered by the present Earl of
Ashburnham to the trustees of the British Museum for the sum of one
hundred and sixty thousand pounds; but upon their requesting him to
separate the manuscripts from the printed books, the earl intimated
that, finding he had underpriced his library in the first instance,
he should require the hundred and sixty thousand pounds for the
manuscripts alone; or fifty thousand for the Stowe collection, and
fifty thousand for the Appendix collection, if the trustees elected to
buy them only; and with that intimation the negotiation ended. In the
autumn of 1882 the Museum authorities sought Lord Ashburnham again, to
learn that he would only sell the collection as a whole at the price he
had originally named. The keeper of the department of Manuscripts went
down to Ashburnham Place, examined the collection volume by volume, and
returned with above nine hundred of the choicest volumes and portfolios
of papers, for the inspection of the trustees themselves; and they came
to the conclusion that, all things considered, the collection was worth
the money demanded for it; and recommended the Treasury to purchase it,
and give the trustees power to make over certain portions of the Libri
and Barrois collections—said to have been abstracted from the public
libraries of France—to the French government on payment of twenty-four
thousand pounds. To this proposition the Treasury would not agree, not
being prepared to purchase the collection _en bloc_.
Then Lord Ashburnham agreed to sell the Museum the Stowe and Appendix
divisions for ninety thousand pounds. The Treasury offered seventy
thousand pounds; whereupon the earl requested that the manuscripts
in the possession of the Museum trustees should be returned to their
proper home. Determined, if possible, to avert what they regarded
as an irreparable national calamity, the trustees proposed to make
good the twenty thousand pounds by allowing a reduction on the annual
vote for the Museum to the amount of four thousand pounds for the
next five years. ‘My Lords’ were obdurate, the earl was firm; and the
disappointed Museum trustees had nothing left to them but to retire
with an expression of their regret at the untoward result of their
efforts to save the precious manuscripts from probable expatriation. A
week or two later, however, they were gladdened by receiving a verbal
intimation from the guardian of the public purse that the government
were ready to purchase the Stowe collection provided it could be
obtained for forty thousand pounds. Lord Ashburnham would not lower
his demand to that extent, but consented to accept forty-five thousand
pounds. So the bargain was struck, the House of Commons voted the
money, and the much-talked-of manuscripts became the property of the
nation.
Whatever the pecuniary value of the Stowe collection may be, the
custodians of our great library may well rejoice upon acquiring its
nine hundred and ninety-six volumes of charters and cartularies;
ancient missals and rituals; old English chronicles; old statutes;
reports of famous trials; household books; royal wardrobe accounts;
papal bulls and indulgences; historical, legal, and ecclesiastical
documents; diplomatic, political, and private correspondence; and
papers of more or less value to the antiquary, genealogist, and general
student. In truth, the subject-matter of this mass of manuscripts is of
so varied a nature that it would almost be easier to say what is not,
than what is to be found therein. We shall not attempt to do either,
but content ourselves with enumerating some of the curiosities of the
collection.
First among these comes a volume of Anglo-Saxon charters, the cover
of which is adorned with figures of saints and martyrs, and a
representation of the crucifixion, worked with the needle, in coloured
silks and gold-thread. The first charter in the volume is one of six
lines, by which Withred, king of Kent, granted certain lands to the
nuns of Liming; His Majesty, ‘being illiterate,’ making the sign of
the cross against his name. Another relic of Anglo-Saxon times is
the register of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, the greater part of which is
supposed to have been written in the reign of Canute. On the first
page are portraits of that monarch and his queen ‘Ailgythu’ in their
robes of state. On the fourth leaf are memoranda of the Conqueror’s
building a palace at Winchester, and of the burning of the city
in 1140 by Robert, Earl of Gloucester. A copy of Alfred’s will is
followed by an account of the burying-places of the Anglo-Saxon kings
and saints, various forms of benedictions, a list of relics preserved
at Hyde, and a calendar of saints. On one page is a fragment of the
_exultat_ as chanted on Holy Saturday in the monastery, with the
musical notes—consisting of lines and points placed over the syllables,
and indicating by their forms the high and low tones in which these
syllables were to be sung.
Of historical interest are—the original report of the trial of ‘Johanne
d’Arc,’ dated the 7th of July 1456, and duly signed and attested by the
notaries; the original declaration of eight of the bishops in favour
of Henry VIII.’s assumption of power in church matters, in which they
pronounce that Christian princes may make ecclesiastical laws; and
two little volumes—one about three inches square, containing sundry
calendars and tables, written on leaves of vellum, and bearing on the
fly-leaf, in the handwriting of the Duke of Somerset: ‘Fere of the lord
is the begenning of wisdume: put thi trust in the lord w^h all thine
heart; be not wise in thyne own conseyte but fere the lord and fle from
evele frome the toware the day before deth, 1551. E. SOMERSET.’ The
other booklet is about an inch square, and bound in gold, enamelled in
black, and furnished with two small gold rings, by which it could be
suspended to its owner’s waist. It consists of a hundred and ninety-six
pages of vellum, on which are written the seven penitential psalms.
This was one of Henry VIII.’s gifts to Anne Boleyn, and was given by
her—Horace Walpole says—to her maid of honour Mrs Wyatt, when the
beautiful queen bade farewell to the world on Tower Hill.
Among other originals of political importance may be noted the
return concerning the levy of ship-money, made to Sir Peter Temple,
High-sheriff of Bucks, from the parish of Great Kimble, bearing the
names of those who tendered their refusal to the constables and
assessors; the said constables’ and assessors’ names appearing in
the list of protesters, at the head of which stands the name of John
Hampden. Of a little later date is the secret article of the treaty
made in 1654 between Louis XIV. and the Protector of England for the
expulsion from France of Charles II., the Duke of York, and eighteen
royalists; Cromwell undertaking in return to expel certain Frenchmen
from England. This document is signed by De Bordeaux on the part of
the French king; by Fiennes, Lisle, and Strickland on the part of the
Commonwealth. The Grand Monarch’s own signature appears to an order
addressed to the governor of the Bastile—an order for him to permit the
Countess de Bussy to sleep with her husband.
There are two literary curiosities in the shape of a five-act tragedy
by Bale, Bishop of Ossory, who died in 1563; and a comedy, author
unknown, intended to be played for the amusement of Elizabeth and her
court; the latter ending with the following lines, addressed to Queen
Bess:
May you have all the joys of innocence,
Injoyinge too all the delights of sense.
May you live long, and knowe till ye are told,
T’ endeare your beauty, and wonder you are old;
And when heaven’s heate shall draw you to the skye,
May you transfigured, not transfigured dye!
In the original draft of a dedication to be prefixed to some operas by
Purcell, Dryden says: ‘Musick and poetry have ever been acknowledged
sisters, which walking hand-in-hand support each other. As poetry is
the harmony of words, so musick is that of notes; and as poetry is a
rise above prose and oratory, so is musick the exaltation of poetry.
Both of them may excel apart; but sure they are most excellent when
they are joined, because nothing is then wanting to either of their
perfections, for thus they appear like wit and beauty in the same
person.’ At the end of a copy of Bacon’s _Essays_, presented to Mrs
Newsham, in 1725, by ‘her servant, A. Pope,’ is a sonnet in the poet’s
handwriting, entitled _A Wish to Mrs M. B. on her Birthday, June 15_.
It is to be found in his works, expanded into a twenty-line _Epistle
to Miss Martha Blount, on her Birthday_.
‘The Emperor of Morocco’s curses against his two eldest sons, taken
from the original in his own writing in the register of the principal
church at Morocco,’ is a curiosity, if scarcely a literary one; and
the same may be said of a specimen of French penmanship—a series of
portraits of the time of Louis XIV., executed with such freedom that
they seem to have been done with one uninterrupted flourish of the pen.
Each portrait has a song with music appended to it, the volume ending
with a piece of music in Rousseau’s own hand, composed by him at Paris
in 1776.
The letters, original and transcribed, in the collection are so
multitudinous, that it is impossible to enter into detail about
them; they cover every reign from Edward III. to George III., and
unrepresented Englishmen of any note are few indeed; while epistles
written by such illustrious foreigners as Doge Andrea Contarini,
Francis I., Cardinal Mazarin, Louis XIV., Madame de Maintenon,
Voltaire, Frederick the Great, Mirabeau, Lafayette, and Napoleon the
Great, figure in the catalogue of contents.
We must mention that among the treasures acquired by the nation are
a number of manuscripts in the Irish language, and of manuscripts
relating to the history and antiquities of Ireland; besides the
correspondence of Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, Lord-lieutenant
of Ireland under Charles II. The government having decided that
manuscripts in the Irish language, and those bearing more or less
directly upon Irish history and literature, should be lent indefinitely
to the Royal Irish Academy, for the use of students and the public,
the greater portion of the above will be lost to Bloomsbury—how large
a portion will not be known, until the representatives of the British
Museum and the Irish Academy have settled the matter between them.