Considerable fears were entertained for the safety of the Divinity
School and that portion of the Library which is built over it. About
thirty-two years before, some failure had been observed in the roof of
the former, which was rectified under the superintendence of Sir
Christopher Wren. When Bishop Barlow's books were brought to the
Library, in 1692 or 1693, the galleries on either side of the middle
room were erected; and, as the beams of the roof of the School were then
observed to give from the wall, they were anchored on both sides, under
the direction of Dr. Aldrich. But the tight bracing had now caused the
south wall, that which adjoins Exeter College garden, to bulge outwards,
so that the book-stalls were found to have started from the wall by
three and a-half inches at the top and two and a-half at the bottom; the
wall itself was seven and a-half inches out of the perpendicular, and
the four great arches of the vault of the School were all cracked.
Hereupon Dr. Gregory, the Savilian Professor, was despatched to London
to consult Sir C. Wren again, and, by his advice, additional buttresses
of great depth and strength were erected on the south side, the weight
of the bookstalls was removed from the roof of the School by their being
trussed up to the walls with iron cramps; and the cracks in the vault
were filled with lead or oyster-shells, and in some places with the
insertion of new stones, and were then 'wedged up with well-seasoned
oaken wedges.' This work went on through the summers of 1701 and 1702;
and in 1703 some similar repairs were executed in some of the other
Schools. The letters and papers of Wren on the subject, with the
draughts, and reports of the workmen employed, are preserved in Bodley
MS. 907. They are printed in [Walker's] _Oxoniana_, iii. 16-27.
In this year died Henry Jones, M.A., Vicar of Sunningwell, Berks[155].
He bequeathed to the Library sixty volumes in MS., very miscellaneous in
character, and chiefly of the 16th and 17th centuries. Some of them had
belonged to Bishop Fell. The bequest probably came to Oxford some few
years after Mr. Jones' death, as the books are entered (in a full and
accurate list) by Hearne, in the Benefaction Book, among the gifts of
about the years 1706-12. It was from a modern transcript among these
that Hearne edited the _Historia Regum Angliæ_ of John Ross or Rouse;
and seventy-one documents from No. 23, which is an Hereford Chartulary,
were printed by Rawlinson at the end of his _History of Hereford_, 8^o,
Lond. 1717. One volume has for many years been missing from the
collection, viz., a funeral oration, by John Sonibanck, on the death of
Queen Elizabeth of York, in 1503. A list of the MSS. is printed from the
Benefaction Register, in Uffenbach's _Commercium Epistolicum_, pp.
200-208.
Between 1700 and 1738 Sir Hans Sloane is recorded to have given
considerably more than 1400 volumes, together with his picture in 1731;
but the majority of them do not appear to have been considered of much
value, and only 415 are specified by name in the Benefaction Register.
Dr. Hyde, in a letter to Hudson, which accompanied a list of the books
for which the latter had asked with a view to registration, says he
scarce thinks the entry to be 'for the credit of the business, _nos
inter nos_[156].' But Hudson appears to have thought that the
omission proceeded rather from carelessness, for, in a letter to Wanley,
he says that he thinks Hyde assigned '_non causa pro causa_[157].'
[155] Steele's _MSS. Collections for Berks_; Gough MS. 27.
[156] Walker's _Letters by Eminent Persons_, i. 173.
[157] Ellis's _Letters of Eminent Literary Men_, Camd. Soc. pp. 302-3.