The Queen’s College Library
Insight
Issue 6, Michaelmas Term 2016
Inside this issue:
The lost medieval library of Queen’s: some facts and
conjectures by Ian Maclean
The history of a collection: books relating to Cumberland and
Westmorland by Douglas Bridgewater
The College Archive: an introduction by Michael Riordan
Unusual methods bring unusual results: dust monitoring in the
Upper Library at Queen’s by Victoria Stevens
And more...
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THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
W
elcome to Issue 6 of Insight. The
front cover of this issue contains an
image from each of our contributed
articles which between them look
back to the foundation both of the College and the
Library and look forward to the arrival of a future
addition to our special collections.
June 2015. However, we were awaiting a report
from Oxford Archaeology to enable the article to
be written, which sadly arrived too late for this
year. We look forward to including the article next
year, alongside other pieces about the new library
which is scheduled to be in full occupation by the
end of next summer
The first article is by Ian Maclean, one of our
Supernumerary Fellows and one of our most
regular users of the historic collections. His
fascinating article charts the somewhat mysterious
early history of the College Library with its stories
of books which have “gone missing”, presumably
with eminent senior members the College who
took them with them to new appointments. I must
add that this is not something we encourage
today…
As always, in addition to my gratitude to all the
contributors I am most grateful to my colleague,
Lynette Dobson, who has compiled the Newsletter
for us and taken many of the photographs.
The article by Douglas Bridgewater (Queen’s 1955)
sits in contrast to Ian Maclean’s article as he
describes the development rather than the
dispersal of a collection of books. Douglas has
been collecting books on the Lake District since
his student days and describes how his collection
came about and highlights some of the most
interesting items. The collection will, in due
course, come to the Library.
If you have ideas for future articles or indeed
would like to contribute, please contact me at
[email protected]
Amanda Saville, Librarian, December 2016
Although this is the sixth edition of Insight, this is
the first time that we have included an article
about the College Archive. Mike Riordan, the
Archivist, has produced a fascinating account of
the history and development of the Archive, which
is scheduled to move into the new library building
next year alongside our other historic collections
into a new purpose made store.
We aim each year to include something about
either a conservation or preservation project and
this year is no different. Victoria Stevens, one of
the conservators at the Oxford Conservation
Consortium, has written about the perennial
problem of dust in historic interiors and how we
have gone about monitoring and controlling it in
the Upper Library.
During the Long Vacation the Benjamin Cole
Orrery in the Upper Library was cleaned and
serviced by Jonathan Betts, retired Curator of
Horology from the National Maritime Museum.
The final pages of this issue show some images
form this process, depicting the inside of this
wonderful machine.
We had hoped to bring this issue out in the Long
Vacation and that it would have included an article
on the archaeological dig which was carried out
before the library project started at the end of
Selection of images taken during
the archaeological
work for the new
library; a future
article, hopefully
in 2017’s issue,
will examine this
excavation and its
finds in detail.
The lost medieval library of Queen’s
The lost medieval library of Queen’s:
some facts and conjectures
Ian Maclean
A
ccording to legend, the most remarkable book in the medieval library of
Queen’s was a volume containing works
of Aristotle in the Greek. The story goes
that a student called Copcut was set upon by a wild
boar on Shotover, and survived the attack by
thrusting the tome in question into its mouth,
saying as he did so (or, in some versions, causing
the boar to say) ‘graecum est’. If this had been a
text in Greek, it would have been the earliest in a
college library by far; but the apocryphal anecdote
is no more than a version of a joke more recently
practised by humourists such as Frank Muir and
Denis Norden, where a well-known saying is
adapted wittily to an implausible context (in this
case, the original phrase – ‘graecum est, et non
legitur’ – was inserted by medieval jurists in their
commentaries on the texts of Roman law when
they came across interpolated passages of Greek
and declared their bafflement by admitting ‘it is in
Greek and cannot be read [or commented on]’). It
happens also to be the case that Eglesfield’s
statutes expressly forbade the removal of books
from the College, and so Copcut was in this respect
an early (but certainly not the last) member of the
College in breach of the rules of the Library, even
if a resourceful one when it came to dealing with
wild beasts.
The coming of printed books to Oxford and
London occurred from the 1460s onwards and had
an accumulative effect on college libraries, with
printed books displacing medieval manuscript
holdings in many cases over the first half of the
sixteenth century. But not everything was printed;
and colleges felt some piety to their donors, having
invested quite a lot in their manuscript collections
by having them expensively bound and illuminated. In most cases such books were retained, as
well as texts known to be rare. Not so in Queen’s,
whose pre-1460 holdings had come from revered
donors and had been very well looked after, but
had completely disappeared by 1600 (Rodney
Thomson tells me that University College presents
another similar case of disposal or loss).
In 1600, Thomas James, the recently appointed
Bodley’s Librarian, published his Ecloga Oxonio–
Cantabrigiensis, in which he listed all the
2
manuscripts he had found in the Libraries of
Oxford and Cambridge. His motivation for this
was not purely bibliographical. He was an ardent
Protestant who wanted to find historical evidence
for his crusade against the Church of Rome in the
form of accounts of the Church in England during
the Middle Ages that demonstrated its independence from the Papacy. James discovered fairly
extensive holdings in a number of Oxford colleges,
but there are only four titles recorded under the
name of the Queen’s College. Of these, one
certainly, and two probably, survive in today’s
library, but these were all acquired around 1600,
and reveal nothing about the earlier holdings. And
unlike some other colleges, there is no surviving
medieval inventory of books, which is a considerable impediment to identifying tomes now in the
possession of others; the first library list was
established by Provost Gerald Langbaine before
his death in 1658.
There have been three identifications of surviving
pre-1460 manuscripts made, of which only two are
plausible. Both rely on catalogues drawn up by the
antiquarian, historian and controversialist John
Bale (1495-1563), who in the late 1540s actively
sought out medieval historical works by
Englishmen in Oxford colleges. His notebook,
edited in 1902 by Reginald Poole, lists all the
discoveries he made: forty-three of the authors
and their works were from the Library of Queen’s,
which was particularly rich in such compositions.
He kept hold of a number of these and took them
with many others to Ireland when he was
appointed Bishop of Ossory in 1552, only to have
to abandon his see and his library in 1553 due to
popular unrest and the coming of Mary to the
throne. In an appendix of his Scriptorum maioris
Britanniae catalogus of 1557-9, he compiled from
memory a list of nearly four hundred titles of his
collection, and proceeded in law against the
deputy for Ireland and his son, Anthony and
Warham de Leger, for the return of a number of
these. The de Legers however denied all
knowledge of them, and all that can be said with
any certainty is that the collection was dispersed,
and only about a tenth of it is known to have
survived. Archbishop Matthew Parker had his
hands on a ‘huge heap’ (‘ingens acervus’) of the
volumes before Bale’s death in 1561, some of
which he loaned together with a number of his
own manuscripts to the Lutheran theologian and
historian Matthias Flacius Illyricus, then in
Regensburg, for return within the year; but as in
the case of many other of loans made to Flacius,
they never came back.
Honor McCusker, who has edited this list of 355
titles, admits that ‘any identification of the Irish
3
THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
manuscripts is likely to be highly conjectural’, but
goes on to offer some identifications, partly based
the fact that Bale’s annotations are to be found on
the text in question, and partly on the principle
that if a number of these manuscripts, associated
with each other in the list, are found together in a
modern library (preferably in a pre-1560 binding)
‘it is highly probable that [the volume in question]
was once in Bale’s possession.’ As a result of one
or both of these two principles, the following two
works have been identified as survivals of the
medieval Library of Queen’s:
1. A historical work known as the Polychronicon
by the Chester monk Ranulph Higden. This is now
British Library, MS Harley 1751.
2. A collection of twelve short polemical twelfthcentury works on various topics mainly to do with
the Friars, and Thomas of Eccleston’s account of
the arrival of the Friars minor in England and the
debate about Franciscan poverty; once Phillipps
MS 3119, fols. 55-121, now Bodley MS Lat.
Misc.c.75. Other works have been added in this
case, and the binding replaced.
These volumes were almost certainly bought from
a bookseller in England at some point after 1553; it
is not known through how many hands they
passed before being acquired by Phillipps and
Harley.
For a different source of information about the
medieval library we are indebted to Provost
Magrath’s history of the College, where he records
the results of his trawls through the Long Rolls.
These reveal that by the fifteenth-century, the
Library was quite extensive, certainly running to
more than a hundred manuscripts. From the
College’s archives and other surviving medieval
libraries, the general disposition of the College
book collection can be ascertained. It would have
been divided into three sections. The service
books (Bibles, psalters, and liturgical works)
would in most cases have been stored in a chest in
the Chapel; there would have been a chained
library in a designated room, consisting of core
texts relevant to the arts course and the higher
Fig. 1: Loggan’s engraving of the College in 1675, showing the medieval library building in the top left corner.
The lost medieval library of Queen’s
faculties of medicine, law and theology; the third
component would have been the circulating
library, which was subject to an annual ‘electio’ by
the Fellows, being books distributed to them for
their private study. Very often, these would be
commentaries on the core texts, or peripheral
material to the arts course (such as speculative
work on mathematics or cosmology, or works
about history). There would also have been
polemical material about any one of the many
medieval theological debates which might indicate
the parti pris of a given College. I have referred to
the poverty debate above, whose documents from
Queen’s do indeed survive: there were also both
Wycliffite and anti-Wycliffite texts, as one would
expect, given the fact that Wycliffe was a tenant of
the College in the 1360s. Magrath has recorded
nearly all of the references in the long rolls to
these three libraries, whose contents were either
purchased by the College, or were acquired by
donation. Among the notable donors was William
Rede or Reed, Bishop of Chichester, who also gave
money for the building and equipment of the
Library room itself, and (according to Rodney
Thomson) Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester, who gave
the College a Bible in 1428.
The founder’s statutes required that all the
possessions of the College should be marked with
the sign of the flying eagle. It was certain that this
applied to the College pewter, and Magrath
records that it was also inscribed in the service
books. Had it have been inscribed also on the
other collections, it might now be possible to
locate other manuscripts that have strayed from
the Library. The only other clear identifying clue
is the cataloguing device known in the Middle
Ages as the secundo folio, being the incipit or
opening words of the second leaf of a book,
providing a means by which a medieval book could
be matched to its record in a list. This, together
with a brief title, is found in most college records.
It is more useful in excluding possibilities than in
providing firm identifications. Many of the works
known to have been in Queen’s are now to be
found in other college libraries, but with a
different incipit, which rules them out as previous
possessions of Queen’s.
To a limited degree the contents of the missing
library can be reconstructed. The most complete
recent account of the pre-Reformation library of
Queen’s is given in Rodney Thomson’s The
University and college libraries of Oxford (2015),
who follows the policy of the series in which this
work appears by not including post-1540 evidence,
although he shows clearly that he is aware of the
Bale Index of the late 1540s. Thomson, who
consulted de novo the long rolls of Queen’s, was
4
kind enough to read this paper and supply some
emendations and corrections. He refers to two
surviving indentures (one already known to
Magrath, and reproduced by him). The first
records books and other alienated items returned
to the College on 13 May 1378. I quote Thomson’s
paragraph about this document:
The indenture marked the resolution of a dispute
which had disrupted the life of the College and
divided the fellows for almost a decade. From the
moment of his appointment in 1362, Provost
Henry Whitfield, a scholar from Exeter diocese
and perhaps a member of Exeter College, had
shown excessive favour to men from the southwest in fellowship elections. Complaints from the
northerners in the College finally prompted royal
intervention in 1377 and Whitfield was deposed in
favour of the northern faction’s own candidate,
Thomas Carlisle. Whitfield and his supporters
responded immediately by seizing the College
seal, muniments and other moveable goods
(including books), in an attempt to force the new
provost to stand down. With the support of the
crown, however, Carlisle quickly regained
control, and the leaders of the southern faction,
William Frank, William Middleworth and
Richard Thorpe, were expelled. Even so, it seems
that it took at least another six months for the
seal and other properties to be recovered. In spite
of a mandate to bring them into Chancery, it was
only after a commission led by the sheriff of
Oxford, Edmund Stonor, had commanded their
return on pain of arraignment that the rebels
released them.
The indenture, which is dated 13 May, more than
six weeks after Sheriff Stonor issued his writ,
records the surrender, by William Frank on
behalf of the other rebels, of the stolen items: the
seal, seven indentures from the annual electio of
library books dating from 1372, a chalice, pax
and mazer, and the twenty-four books. The latter
are a mixed collection of legal and theological
textbooks, together with a handful of well-known
reference works, the Catholicon, Higden’s
Polychronicon and an unspecified grammar. This
is typical of the variety of volumes usually set
aside from the library in the medieval colleges for
lending under the election system. In fact it is
very likely that it was the election books that
Frank and his followers had taken. Usually these
would be the only ones left unchained, and as
elsewhere were probably kept apart from the
library itself. This would also explain their seizure
of the election inventories. The number of these
documents recording loans from a single year
(1372) is surprising and might indicate that the
elections were conducted differently (and perhaps
5
THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
more frequently) at Queen’s than at other
colleges. None of the books is known to survive.
It is also pointed out in this work (somewhat at
variance to the above account) that this list
consists in two easily discernible parts: the first
being fourteen items from the chained library; the
second being ten items from the circulating
library. It is interesting to note that one of the
very substantial items (a concordance) was
purchased from the College in 1394-5 by the same
William Middleworth who had connived in its
removal in 1377. Thomson also reproduces a
second indenture (now lost) acknowledging
receipt by Henry Scayfe of Queen’s College of
books received in an election in 1445. There are a
number of items in common between the lists.
*
So much for the available evidence of survival:
now for some hypotheses to explain the absence in
1600 of Queen’s large medieval collection of
manuscripts.
They come under two heads:
destruction or abandonment, on the one hand;
deliberate or accidental alienation, on the other. I
begin with the former possibility. The religious
troubles of the Reformation on College holdings
are often cited as the occasion of the loss and
destruction of medieval theological works. In fact,
such destruction was wrought mainly during
Mary’s reign not on the writings of medieval
scholastics but of sixteenth-century reformers; as I
mentioned above, ardent Protestants were very
often keen to hold on to materials from the
medieval church in the hope that these could be
interpreted in a way that would provide ammunition against the Church of Rome. Such was not
the case however with late medieval grammar and
philosophy texts encapsulating highly abstract
debates that humanistic scholars, inspired by the
recovery of classical Latin and practical logic, saw
as fastidiously over-subtle in content and barbaric
in expression. The most recondite and barbaric of
all scholastic thinkers was reputed to be the
‘doctor subtilis’ Duns Scotus, a version of whose
name (‘dunce’) eventually became synonymous
with stupidity. He was a popular author in the
fourteenth century, and various colleges had
considerable holdings of his writings. Magrath
records one such volume in Queen’s (there were
probably more). During the visitation of the
University instigated by Thomas Cromwell in
1535, it was reported that neighbouring New
College had ‘utterly […] banished Dunce from
Oxford for ever’; those of his works not used as
paper in the latrines, were torn up and scattered in
the quadrangles, ‘the wind blowing them in every
quarter’. A local gentleman was even said to have
gathered up the sheets to use them in the
construction of scarecrows (‘sewells or blanshers’)
to stop deer leaving his woods.
Queen’s might also have purged its Scotist
holdings in this brutal way, but that would not
have been a very high percentage of all the
manuscripts it possessed, even though the obvious
interest in the College in Franciscan writings
would have predisposed its Fellows in Scotus’s
favour. Neil Ker has suggested that the arts course
books and some of the theology would simply have
come to seem irrelevant: ‘at Queen’s, someone in
authority may have said “out with these useless
old books.”’ Some might have been used in the
construction of bindings for newly acquired
printed books as flysheets and paste-downs,
something that certainly happened in other
colleges. Printed books also could have supplanted medieval manuscripts, as happened elsewhere:
in All Souls, for example, a donor gave an edition
printed in 1459 of one of the standard liturgical
manuals, the Rationale divinorum officiorum of
Guillaume Durand, and the manuscript version
was disposed of.
I move now to the second possibility – alienation
– and to those who might have committed it. The
first candidates are a group of Fellows who
borrowed books from the circulating library of
their college and retained them when they
migrated to another society or went even further
afield. All Souls, Merton and Exeter are among the
colleges who are known to have lost or gained
books by this process. Thus far, Rodney Thomson
has not been able to identify any volumes from the
Queen’s medieval library in other Colleges, but
there may well be some lurking there, with or
without the mark of the flying eagle.
The second group consists of scholarly visitors,
one of whom was the notorious magus John Dee
(1527-1608). He left a manuscript account of his
books, in which there is a reference to a volume
containing fourteen mathematical treatises by
various authors that he borrowed from Queen’s on
18 May 1556 in the presence of two masters of the
College. These, together with the Bishop of
London, stood surety for the return of the volume
(‘ita quod […] pro eiusdem volumine redditione
onus omne se susciperent’). It was still in Dee’s
possession when he made a second list of his
library in Mortlake on 6 September 1583. Soon
after he had a number of his possessions stolen or
destroyed by enraged local residents who believed
that he was summoning up spirits. The remaining
collection was sold long after his death in 1625,
but there is no trace of the Queen’s manuscript
among the volumes known to have passed into the
The lost medieval library of Queen’s
6
following note to the exiguous list of the Queen’s
holdings:
Extant in hac Bibliotheca plures libri Manuscripti, non ita pridem a nupero Vigilantissimo
illius Collegii Praefecto, iam Episcopo Carleolensi,
eo translati, quorum nomina, propter diutinam
meam absentiam ab Academia, nondum ad
notitiam meam venerunt. (Many manuscript
books survive in this Library that were transferred
not long ago to Carlisle by the recent most vigilant
Provost, by then already the Bishop of that place,
whose titles have not yet come to my notice
because of my long absence from the University.)
Fig. 2: Painting of the student Copcot, of “boar and book”
fame, from the Queen’s collection. Unknown artist. Note the
boar’s head on a stick in his right hand and the book in his
left.
hands of a number of the major purchasers, and
from these into the British Library, Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge and Trinity College, Dublin. It
has not been returned to the College.
We are left with two prime suspects. The former of
these is John Bale, whom I have already
mentioned. Some of his collection seems to have
remained in Ireland, and to have found its way
eventually to Trinity College, Dublin: there are no
identifiable Queen’s volumes there, however.
Honor McCusker gives an account of his struggles
to reclaim his manuscript collection after his
return to England: it was in vain. Quite a lot of it
was no doubt available in the London book trade
around 1560, when Matthew Parker, Archbishop
of Canterbury, was invited to purchase it. It is
fairly safe to assume that these remnants were
dispersed, and found their way thereafter into
various collections (notably Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge). Again, the Queen’s
manuscripts are not among them.
A much more surprising figure who alienated
books from the Queen’s library is Henry Robinson,
who as Provost from 1581 to 1598 is credited with
having restored the fortunes of the College under
Queen Elizabeth I. In his Ecloga, James added the
Rodney Thomson is unsure of the import of this
comment (‘he seems to hint that [some of these
books] were taken away by the former Warden
Henry Robinson when he became Bishop of
Carlisle’). I wonder myself whether the text,
whose temporal references are confused, could be
incorrect in one detail. If we read ‘erant’ for
‘extant’ and ignore the ‘dum’, the sequence of
events becomes clearer ‘many books were in this
Library that did not come to my notice…’). As in
the case of Dee (but probably not that of Bale),
Robinson, who witnessed the many acquisitions of
printed books in his time in the College, might
have taken the manuscripts away as redundant
duplicates with the consent of his colleagues.
Canon David Weston of Carlisle Cathedral kindly
informed me that Robinson might have taken the
manuscripts either to Rose Castle, the Bishop’s
Palace, or the Cathedral Library itself. Rose Castle
was besieged, captured and burnt by parliamentarian troops in 1648; the fabric of the Cathedral
was destroyed by Scottish troops allied to the
parliamentarians in 1650, and it is generally
accepted that the Library was burnt at that time.
Only three manuscripts of the medieval period are
known to have survived from the Cathedral
Library, none with associations with Queen’s, and
it must be presumed that these were alienated
before its destruction. As a result, that line of
investigation is a dead end, just as in the case of
Dee’s volume and Bale’s alienations.
*
So the hope that, in the brave new world of the
Oxford medieval libraries project and the
emergence of digitalised records from all over
Europe, some further identifications might be
possible has not yet been fulfilled. The collections
of both of the prime suspects Bale and Robinson
either were traded by shrewd early modern
booksellers or have vanished in a number of other
ways. It is not impossible that at some future date
some further identifications might be made as
7
THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
more records become available, but it is in my
view unlikely (the most likely source will be tomes
from the election library in other colleges). We are
left to speculate on the most unlikely reappearance
of all: that of the Aristotle in Greek thrust in the
mouth of the Wild Boar. I consulted Nigel Wilson
of Lincoln College, the foremost Oxford scholar on
the transmission of classical learning, and through
his kind replies to my enquiries, I am able to say
with some degree of confidence that the earliest
printed Greek text of Aristotle – the famous
Aldine edition of 1495-99 - arrived in Oxford with
the founding of Corpus Christi College in 1519, as a
gift of its humanist founder. It is unlikely that
copies in other college libraries (including
Queen’s) were acquired at such an early date. The
first Greek manuscript of Aristotle to reach Oxford
was produced by the scribe John Serbopoulos,
who wrote copies of commentaries on Aristotle
from his house in Reading; they were first in the
possession of William Grocyn (1446-1519), who
between 1491 and 1496 inaugurated the teaching
of Greek at Oxford. On his death they passed to
Corpus Christi College (MS 106) and New College
(MS 240-241). Neither tome, as far as I know,
bears the toothmarks of a boar.
Richard Sharpe, ‘The English bibliographical tradition from
Kirkestede to Tanner’, in Britannia Latina, ed. C. S. F.
Burnett and C. N. J. Mann, London, 2005, pp. 86–128;
http://diglib.hab.de/edoc/ed000086/tei-regest.xsl
(Matthew Parker’s letter of 1561 to Flacius Illyricus);
Rodney Thomson et al., The University and college libraries
of Oxford , London, 2015, pp. 1233-41;
Andrew Watson, Medieval libraries of Great Britain: a
supplement to the second edition, London, 1987, p. 13 (one
Carlisle MS identified by script);
id., A descriptive catalogue of the medieval manuscripts of
All Souls College, Oxford, Oxford, 1997, pp. 268-73 (for
examples of the migration of tomes from circulating
libraries);
David W.V. Weston, Rose Castle and the Bishops of Carlisle,
1133-2012, Kendal, 2013.
Ian
Maclean is a Supernumerary Fellow of
Queen’s. He is also a Fellow of the British
Academy and the Royal Historical Society. He
was Fellow and Praelector in French at Queen’s
from 1972 to 1996, before being elected to a
Senior Research Fellowship in History at All
Souls College which he held until 2012. He was
the Librarian of the Codrington Library from
1998 to 2015. He has published extensively on
book history inter alia.
Some references:
John Bale, Scriptorum majoris Britanniae catalogus, Basle,
1557-9;
id., Index Britanniae scriptorum, ed. Reginald Lane Poole
and Mary Bateson, Oxford, 1902;
Bodleian Library, MS Langbaine 7 (Queen’s College Library
list);
Bodleian Library, Ker Papers, 15. XIV(g), p. 102) (Henry
Scayfe’s electio);
Thomas de Eccleston, Tractatus de Adventu Fratrum
Minorum in Angliam, ed. and introd. A.G. Little,
Manchester, 1951, xvii (the best account of the Queen’s
provenance of this work);
R.H. Hodgkin, Six centuries of an Oxford College; a history
of the Queen’s College, 1340-1940, London, 1949, p. 61 (the
anecdote about the boar);
N.R. Ker, ‘Oxford Libraries in the sixteenth century’,
Bodleian Library Record, 6 (1957-61), 490-3 (with the
speculative and to my mind unconvincing attribution of
Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS Lat. 3183 to the Library of
Queen’s);
id., (ed.) Medieval libraries of Great Britain: a list of
surviving books, London, 1964 (for Carlisle MSS);
id., ‘The provision of books’, in The History of the University
of Oxford: 3. The Collegiate University, ed. James
McConica, Oxford 1986, pp. 441-77 (446);
M.R. James, Lists of manuscripts formerly owned by John
Dee , Oxford, 1921, pp. 13, 27, [40];
Thomas James, Ecloga Oxonio–Cantabrigiensis, Oxford,
1600, p. 52;
J.R. Magrath, The Queen’s College, Oxford, 1921, esp. 1.7280, 93-5, 126-9;
Honor McCusker, ‘Books and manuscripts formerly in the
possession of John Bale’, The Library 4th ser., 16 (1935-36),
144-65;
Hastings Rashdall and Robert S. Rait, New College, London
1901, pp. 106-7 (on the fate of the manuscripts of Duns
Scotus);
The history of a collection:
books relating to Cumberland and
Westmorland
Douglas Bridgewater
I
was born in Workington and went to
Workington Grammar School, which
unfortunately no longer exists. Its then
Headmaster, E.H. Mander, had studied at
Queen’s, whose founder’s village of Eaglesfield was
only about seven miles away. During the 1950s
the school regularly sent one boy a year to Queen’s
and I went up in 1955 to read PPE, after
completing my National Service.
Books had always attracted me, but I only began
collecting them after coming down and moving to
Birmingham when I joined Joseph Lucas Ltd in
1958. One of the Lucas factories was in Hall Green
and in the course of the year I spent there I visited
the local second-hand bookshop two or three
times a week during my lunch hour. Those visits to
Creswell’s frequently resulted in a temptation to
spend. My purchases included the two volume 1st
edition (1906) of Scott’s The voyage of the
The history of a collection
Fig. 2: Cover from
Postlethwaite’s Mines and
Mining in the Lake District
(3rd ed.), showing the Bradley Mine on the shores of
Derwentwater in 1862.
Fig. 1: Added engraved title page from William Hutchinson’s
History of the County of Cumberland.
discovery for £1.50 and a two volume leather
bound edition of the Comte de Buffon’s A natural
history, general and particular (1787) with
numerous hand-coloured plates for £1.00.
In 1961 a job was advertised in Workington and I
found the prospect of a return to Cumberland
impossible to resist. During our first summer
there we invited some of the friends I had met at
Lucas to join us for a weekend in our Cockermouth
home. One of them had browsed with me at
Creswell’s and kindly presented me with two
books on Cumberland he had found there. They
were Volume 4 (the Cumberland volume) of
Daniel and Samuel Lysons’ Magna Britannia
published in 1816 and William Whellan’s History
and topography of Cumberland and Westmorland (1866). The former was in a good state
internally: its spine was split, but this was later
remedied by having the book rebound. These gave
a fresh impetus to my book collecting, which
focussed on the history and topography of
Cumberland. Over the years it became an eclectic
collection, embracing the whole of modern
Cumbria, with some subjects being included as
one led naturally to another, others a result of
serendipity.
8
In looking to add to my
very small collection,
the first requirement
was to find a second
hand bookshop with
antiquarian
books.
Although Cockermouth
didn’t have one, in the
course of car journeys to
Sheffield on business I
discovered Kerr’s in
Kendal. One of my first
purchases there was
William Hutchinson’s
History of the County of
Cumberland (fig. 1),
published
in
two
volumes
in
1794:
Queen’s College Library
is listed as a subscriber
and still has its copy.
I joined the Cumberland and Westmorland
Antiquarian and Archaeological Society (CWAAS)
in the early 1960s. In addition to producing an
annual volume of Transactions of scholarly articles
(since 1875) the Society also publishes many other
volumes, including a Record Series and an Extra
Series. Complete sets of the Society’s Transactions, its Record Series and its Extra Series are
rare: in its early years only 150 copies of its
Transactions were printed. One of the most
sought after volumes of the Record Series is J.F.
Curwen’s Castles and fortified towers of
Cumberland and Westmorland (1913) and of its
Extra Series R.S. Ferguson’s edition of The Royal
Charters of the city of Carlisle (1894), both of
which are in my collection.
A year or two later I joined the Cumberland
Geological Society and the Cockermouth Mountain
Rescue team and these introduced me to new
areas of interest in geology, the history of mining
and the development of rock climbing in the
county. Medieval Cumberland was noted for its
mineral wealth, an old saying being “Caldbeck and
Caldbeck fells are worth all England else”. Many
valleys in the Lake District contained valuable
sources of minerals and were the site of important
mines. Ores of lead and copper were mined in
such places as Braithwaite and Coniston. In
addition to these metals, gold and silver were
extracted from the Goldscope mine in the
Newlands Valley: the mine’s name is a corruption
of “Gottes Gab” (the gift of God), so called in
Elizabethan times by immigrants from Augsburg,
who provided the skilled labour necessary to
develop the mineral wealth of the Mines Royal.
The records of these miners survived in Augsburg
9
THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
and were transcribed and translated by W G
Collingwood, whose Elizabethan Keswick was
published by the CWAAS in 1912. Detailed plans
of the mines illustrate John Postlethwaite’s Mines
and Mining in the Lake District (fig. 2), first
published in 1877 with the third and most
comprehensive edition coming out in 1913.
I moved back to Birmingham when I joined IBM
in 1966. My job took me to London quite
frequently, where second hand and antiquarian
bookshops abounded. Charing Cross Road was
the centre of the trade, Foyle’s being the largest
and most well-known shop. The best source I
found for Cumbrian books was Stanley Crowe’s, in
a side street near the British Museum. His stock
was held in a number of gloomy and dusty cellars
beneath his house, but there was always
something of interest to be had.
He was
unfailingly helpful and I bought over fifty books
from him between the years 1967 and 1982 and
only three from Foyle’s.
I returned regularly to Cumberland for holidays
Fig. 5: The Library roof after repair.
and in 1972 discovered the bookshop of Michael
Moon in Beckermet, who has contributed more to
my collection than any other bookseller. He
subsequently moved to Whitehaven, where he
flourishes to this day. I also found bookshops
which issued relevant catalogues, the most
interesting being those of Hollett’s of Sedbergh.
Times have changed and my most recent
acquisitions have been found on the internet.
The merits of walking in the Lake District were
extolled in A fortnight’s ramble to the Lakes
(1792) by “A Rambler” (Joseph Bedworth), who
walked over 240 miles. The most comprehensive
guides to walking in the fells were written by
Arthur Wainwright and published between 1955
and 1966.
The pioneers of rock climbing did
much of their climbing in Cumberland, their
principal base being the Wasdale Head Inn. One
of the first books on the subject was Rock climbing
in the English Lake District by O.G. Jones (“the
Only Genuine Jones”), published in 1897. The
second edition appeared in 1900 and recorded his
death in the Alps in 1899. Napes Needle on Great
Gable was a spectacular climb. The photographs
illustrating Jones’ book (fig. 3, left) were taken by
the Abraham brothers of Keswick, themselves well
-known climbers, who carried their bulky
equipment to the most unlikely places.
Early visitors who published accounts of their
visits to Cumbria did so as part of a much longer
tour. The first account appears in The itinerary of
John Leland the antiquary which was published
from the original manuscript in the Bodleian. The
collection includes the seven volumes of the third
edition (1768): these have the armorial bookplate
of Samuel Herbert and the Cliveden Library
bookplate of Waldorf and Nancy Astor (many
other bookplates are to be found in the collection).
The earliest account of Cumberland is Thomas
Denton’s A perambulation of Cumberland 16871688, commissioned by Sir John Lowther but not
published until 2003. The first specific Guide to
the Lakes (1778) was written by Thomas West, to
be succeeded by many more. One such prefaced
the Revd Joseph Wilkinson’s Select views in
Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire
(1810) and was written by Wordsworth. The latter
refused to allow his name to appear as he did not
approve of the quality of Wilkinson’s drawings.
He later published several editions of his Guide
under his own name (without Wilkinson’s
illustrations).
Fig. 3: Image of the Gable Needle from O.G. Jones’ Rock
climbing in the English Lake District.
The Lake District had become a popular tourist
destination by the end of the eighteenth century.
A fashion for the Picturesque developed, due
largely to the books of the Revd William Gilpin, a
The history of a collection
10
Fig. 5: Image of “Keswick Lake” from J. Walton’s A Picturesque tour of the English Lakes.
who also produced a comprehensive bibliographical study of them, The Picturesque scenery of the
Lake District 1752-1855 (1990).
Bicknell
presented his collection to King’s College,
Cambridge where it is to be found in the Provost’s
Drawing Room. Many books in his collection, but
by no means all, are included in my own.
William Gilpin was not the first member of the
Gilpin family to go up to Queen’s. Bernard Gilpin,
“the Apostle of the North”, went up in 1533 and his
portrait hangs in the College, despite the fact that
he turned down the Provostship in 1561 (having
already declined the Bishopric of Carlisle). I
acquired an early nineteenth century manuscript
Bernard Gilpin: his birthplace and its neighbourhood: a memory of the English Mereland from
Michael Moon in 1987.
Fig. 4: Title page from The tour of Dr Syntax in search of
the Picturesque. Note buildings forming three letters in the
image.
Cumbrian who spent many years at Queen’s,
finally taking his MA in 1748. Observations
relative to Picturesque beauty was first published
in 1786 and was instantly popular among those
sufficiently well-heeled to afford the time and
money to visit the area. His work was parodied by
William Coombe in The tour of Dr Syntax in
search of the Picturesque (1812) (fig. 4). This
book has thirty coloured plates by Thomas
Rowlandson and a fine modern binding by
Sangorski and Sutcliffe. The most attractive
illustrations appear in T.H. Fielding’s and J.
Walton’s A Picturesque tour of the English Lakes
(fig. 5, above right), published by R. Ackermann
in 1821. The copy in the collection is a large paper
edition, of which only 100 were printed. A good
collection of books on the theme of the Picturesque was put together by the late Peter Bicknell,
Many other Cumbrian families were associated
with Queen’s for generations. One such was the
Fothergills: George Fothergill (1705-1760) entered
Queen’s as a Taberdar and Poor Child and rose to
become Principal of St Edmund’s Hall in 1751.
Two of his younger brothers, Henry and Thomas,
also went up to Queen’s, the latter serving as
Provost from 1774-1796. Their correspondence
from Queen’s to their parents appears in The
Fothergills of Ravenstonedale: their lives and
their letters (1905). The late George Fothergill
was a contemporary of mine at Queen’s. Provost
Magrath’s three volume The Flemings in Oxford
gives details of the lives of several members of that
family from 1650 to 1700.
There were many poets writing in Cumberland at
the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the
nineteenth century. The most notable was William
Wordsworth, who was born in Cockermouth in
1770, whence he would have gravitated to Queen’s.
11
THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
However, at the age of eight he was sent to school
in Hawkshead, whose Grammar School had a
connection with St John’s, Cambridge.
He
remains the most notable Cumbrian to have gone
up to Oxbridge but not to Queen’s. The Wordsworth Collection in St John’s is a fine one.
An earlier Cumbrian poet was the Revd Josiah
Relph, Vicar of Sebergham, whose Miscellany of
poems was published posthumously in 1747 and
who is referred to by Hutchinson as “The Poet of
the North”. He was educated at Appleby Grammar
School and the University of Glasgow, but seems
to have had some connection with Queen’s: of the
542 named subscribers, no fewer than 75 were
from Queen’s. Susanna Blamire (1747-1794), “the
Muse of Cumberland”, was formerly well enough
known to be quoted by Dickens in The old
curiosity shop, to have three of her songs set to
music by Haydn and to be lauded as
“unquestionably the best female writer of her age”.
Some of her verse was written in collaboration
with Catherine Gilpin, the sister of William. A
prolific versifier of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries was Canon H.D. Rawnsley of Crosthwaite, a founder of the National Trust and of the
Keswick school of Industrial Art. A more notable
poet was Norman Nicholson of Millom.
Many of the Cumbrian poets, including Relph and
Susanna Blamire, wrote at least some of their
verse in dialect. The Revd Thomas Ellwood, in The
Landnama Book of Iceland (1894), showed how
closely the dialect, place names and folk lore of
Cumbria relate to early Norse. A glossary of the
words and phrases pertaining to the dialect of
Cumberland (1907) is one of a number of such
books, while linguistics studies appear in A
grammar of the dialect of Lorton (1913) and A
grammar of the dialect of Penrith (1927). A
bibliography of the dialect literature of Cumberland, Westmorland & Lancashire North of the
Sands was published by the CWAAS in 1907.
Just as Cumbria and its people have inspired
many poets, novelists have been attracted to set
their works in the area. These include Hugh
Walpole, who produced six novels in the 1930s
and 1940s chronicling the history of the Herries
family across several centuries. Graham Sutton
(St Bees and Queen’s) produced a series of five
historical novels with a Cumbrian setting. Melvyn
Bragg is a prolific author of books on Cumbria.
A notable feature of the landscape in the north of
Cumberland is the Roman Wall, of which much
has been written. William Hutton published his
History of the Roman wall in 1802, giving a full
account of its appearance in 1801. The first
edition of the Revd
John
Collingwood
Bruce’s Guide came out
in 1851. A pilgrimage
along the Roman Wall,
jointly organised by the
CWAAS
and
the
Newcastle Society of
Antiquaries has been
held every ten years
since 1849.
One book I was very
pleased to find was
published
by
John
Christian Curwen of
Workington Hall in
Hints on the
Fig. 6: Title page from Cur- 1808.
of feeding
wen’s Hints on the economy economy
of feeding stock and bettering stock and bettering the
the condition of the poor.
condition of the poor set
out his advanced ideas
on agriculture and social security. Schoose Farm
on his Workington estate was a model of the
application of his farming practices: he established
the Miners’ Society of Workington in 1793 to make
provision for his miners when they retired or were
injured and his book contains its rules together
with summaries of its accounts for the first ten
years of its existence.
Sheep farming was and is an important part of
agricultural life in Cumbria. Since much the
greater part of the fells is unenclosed, the sheep
which graze on them need to be readily identifiable as they are constantly liable to stray. Each
farmer’s flock had its own distinguishing marks,
catalogued in Shepherd’s Guides. A good example
is Daniel Gate’s New shepherd’s guide of 1893 (fig.
7).
Fortunately, I began cataloguing my books at an
early stage, recording not only the details of the
books themselves, but where and when I found
them and the price paid for them. The oldest
book, the Revd Thomas Robinson’s Essay towards
a natural history of Westmorland and Cumberland, was printed in 1709. The collection has now
grown to well over 1,100 volumes and this article
has told something of the way that happened and
of some of the subjects it embraces. I have
accumulated and enjoyed my collection over many
years and have no wish to see it broken up. Given
the long-standing connection between Cumbria
and Queen’s, it seems entirely appropriate that I
should make my own contribution to the 675th
anniversary of the foundation of the College by a
Cumbrian and donate it to Queen’s. The College
already has a collection of over 180 books, almost
The College Archive: an introduction
12
The College Archive: an introduction
Michael Riordan, Queen’s College
O
n meeting new members of College, and
after first establishing that I am not an
architect (or an activist, or even once an
alchemist!) the first question I am
usually asked is what does the College Archive
actually contain. People tend to be surprised.
Essentially, it is the College’s institutional archive,
i.e. the records created by the College in the
operation of its own business, whereas items
created or acquired from outside the College tend
to be in the library’s manuscript series. There is
some grey area here, particularly regarding the
records of college societies and the papers of
Fellows and Old Members, examples of which can
be found in both collections.
Fig. 7: Some of the images from Daniel Gate’s New shepherd’s guide depicting the marking used on sheep flocks belonging to different farmers.
all stored beneath Back Quad (to the building of
which another Cumbrian, Sir Joseph Williamson,
was an important contributor). A major addition
to that collection is particularly apt in view of the
advent of the new library building. It will mean
that Queen’s will have the largest and most
comprehensive such collection of any Oxbridge
college.
Douglas Bridgewater is married to Susan (who
happens to be a direct descendant of Queen
Philippa) and has two sons. Most of his working
life was spent in the computer business. He lives
in Henley in Arden and on his retirement
represented the town on Warwickshire County
Council for eight years. He then returned to
academia, reading for an MA in English Local
History and subsequently for a PhD in Modern
History at the University of Birmingham. He has
written two books on the Great War.
The Archive has existed since the very foundation
of the College – indeed, it was mandated by
Robert de Eglesfield’s statutes of 1341. The
Archive’s importance is shown by the fact that the
statutes insisted that the records should be kept in
a chest with three locks, and its three keys were to
be held by the Provost and the two Bursars so that
they could be accessed only when all three officers
were present. Why the archive was considered so
important that such security was necessary is
hinted at by the Latin word used in the statutes to
refer to the records: munimentia.
The room used to store the greater part of the
Archive for nearly a century is still known as the
Muniment Room, and the Oxford English
Dictionary defines muniment as being a document
‘preserved as evidence of rights or privileges’. The
importance of its muniments to a college is
particularly well illustrated by the statutes of
Corpus Christi College of 1517 (and copied by the
founders of the later sixteenth century colleges
that followed) which saw the muniments as
weapons to defend their property and interests,
insisting that they be preserved so that
(translating from the Latin) ‘the men of our
College, when challenged to suits and arms, may
be always ready, and not march to the pitched
battle unarmed.’ A college, in 1341 as now, cannot
survive without an income stream to fund its
primary functions of teaching and research and so
the muniments were vital in proving ownership of
13
THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
Fig. 2: Foundation Deed.
Fig. 1: Letters Patent of Edward III appointing College as
perpetual warden of God's House.
the estates that formed the College’s endowment
and in ensuring that the College continued to
receive the rents, fines and other incomes from
these estates that it needed in order to survive.
Thus, from the start, the most important records
in the archive related not to students, fellows,
teaching or buildings, but to property.
It comes as a surprise to many people that perhaps
half of the Archive consists of records relating to
the College’s estates. And some of this pre-dates
the College itself, particularly those deeds which
relate to St. Julian’s Hospital (aka God’s House) in
Southampton, founded in c.1197 by (the
appropriately named) Gervase le Riche and of
which, courtesy of Edward III, the College became
perpetual warden in 1347 (fig. 1). Thus, all of the
deeds passed to the College as part of the College’s
title to the hospital’s lands. There are not many
institutions, even in Oxford, that hold records
dating to the twelfth century. The College has a
little over two and a half thousand deeds from
before 1500 as well as nearly 350 manorial court
rolls, account rolls and rentals from the same
period. Almost half of the deeds, and all of the
rolls, relate to property acquired through God’s
House, and a third of these are from the estates of
Pamber Priory in Monk Sherborne, given to God’s
House by Edward IV in 1462.
The remaining half relate to property given to the
College itself, including Robert de Eglesfield’s gift
of his manor of Renwick in Cumbria as the
College’s founding estate, and 155 deeds for
tenements in Oxford itself. Rounding off the
College’s medieval deeds are forty-three that relate
to the College as an institution itself, including
Edward III’s Letters Patent granting Eglesfield
permission to found the College (usually referred
to, a little inaccurately, as the Foundation Deed,
fig. 2) of 18 January 1341 and, on one large piece
of parchment measuring approximately 98cm by
63cm and covered with tiny writing, the statutes
for the college which Eglesfield issued on 10
February 1341.
The vast majority of these medieval deeds are
stored not in College, but in the Bodleian’s Weston
Library. In 1930 Noel Denholm-Young, a medieval
historian and fellow of Magdalen, was employed to
catalogue the Archive as he had done for several
other colleges. It was Denholm-Young who divided
the Archive into two either side of c.1500, claiming
that the post-1500 records were the Bursar’s
domain and ‘hardly comes within the province of
an archivist’. Thus the modern records remained
in College, while the medieval records were
dispatched to Bodley where Denholm-Young
believed, no doubt correctly at the time, they
would be more accessible to scholars. This now
seems regrettable, not least because it artificially
divides the archive into two on what was even then
a false distinction between administrative and
scholarly records. In fact, even now, every few
years a situation arises where a piece of necessary
college business can only be expedited by
reference to some of the medieval records. We
hope that it will be possible to return the medieval
deeds to the college when the new Historic
Collections and Archive store opens in 2017.
(There is an interesting coda to Denholm-Young’s
work. The College has a collection of ledgers
dating back to 1566 into which every lease was
copied so that the Bursar had them available for
The College Archive: an introduction
easy reference, while the College’s counterpart
copy of the lease, which bore the seal of the college
and the other parties, was kept with the deeds.
Denholm-Young advised the college to destroy the
counterpart copies to save space, but the College
instead decided to sell them, reckoning that ‘some
Americans or others might care to have them’.
They were right, so although the Queen’s leases
are sadly no longer in the College Archive, they do
still survive in the Kenneth Spencer Library of the
University of Kansas.)
But what of the College itself? Besides its property
records there is only one series of records that
dates back to medieval times, and two more that
began in the early modern period. The oldest, of
course, is the one record series that no institution
can survive without: accounts. These, formally
known as computi but known informally as the
Long Rolls, followed, as their informal name
14
suggests, the English governmental tradition in
being written on parchment rolls, the income on
one side and the expenditure on the other; it was
not until 1592 that the College switched to the
church tradition of codices (bound volumes),
though the accounts continued, through to the
nineteenth century, to be written on parchment.
The earliest roll to survive is from 1348 and there
are lacunae throughout the medieval period.
The accounts were prepared each year (running
from 7 July to the same date the following year) by
the Bursars – known as the Treasurer and
Chamberlain (in the nineteenth century this would
become the Senior Bursar, dealing with the
estates, and the Junior Bursar, dealing with
domestic matters). Setting aside the technical
difficulties (one needs a knowledge of Latin and
some palaeographical experience) they are
relatively simple documents. There is no attempt
at double entry book-keeping; there are simply
notes of all income and all expenditure (organized
into related groupings), all added up to provide a
summa at the bottom of the roll. Finally, the sum
total of expenses would be deducted from the sum
total of income to provide the cash that the
bursars had in hand which would then be carried
over in pede rotuli (i.e. from the foot of the roll) to
the income side of the following year’s roll (fig. 3).
By the mid-fifteenth century the rolls had become
completely standardised with the same headings
used each year (and continued even after the rolls
were swapped for volumes), and some payments
were also standardized. However, we can still
learn a lot from the accounts and they are vital for
the medieval period in which they are, except for
the property records, just about the only source for
college history. For example, under the heading
Fig. 3: Part of the expentiture side of the 1374-5 Long Roll.
Fig. 4: Selection of memoranda of a college meeting from
Register G, signed by the fellows present.
15
THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
Deliberata preepsito et sociis is recorded the
stipends of the fellows, a vital source, as we shall
see, for knowing who they were; under Custos
reparacionum intrinsecarum are payments for
building and repairs in the College (including
Wycliffe’s latrine in 1374!); under Custos
forinsecorum is a whole miscellanea of expenses
ranging from lawyers’ fees to payments for book
chains in the library, which reveal a great deal
about the history of the college during each year.
One might have expected another series to have
been kept by the medieval College, a record of
College meetings and decisions and elections to
fellowships, but this does not happen until
Register G (strictly speaking Registrum G, fig. 4)
appears in 1558. Magrath believed that the name
of this register suggested that six previous
registers had existed, but had been lost. However,
the first of the lease ledgers are lettered A to D,
and it may be more likely that two sequences were
intended – lease ledgers beginning at A and
registers beginning at G – which were then
discontinued. Certainly, there is no evidence of
any earlier registers, and there is a great deal of
evidence that the College transformed its record
keeping practices in the second half of the
sixteenth century. As we have already seen, the
lease ledgers date to 1566 and the long rolls were
modified into codices in 1592 and, as we will see,
the entrance book begins around 1589. It is
probable that the ‘Cartulary’, a large volume in
which a great deal of important property
transactions were copied for reference, also dates
to this time.
Furthermore, one might take for evidence of a
newly created record keeping tradition the fact
that having decided to start keeping a register, the
Provost and Fellows were not entirely sure what to
put in it. There are many miscellaneous matters
recorded in the registers, and not always in
chronological order. Arguably, it is not until the
late nineteenth century that the registers take a
fixed format of simply recording the minutes of
the meetings of the fellows (though the erratic
indexing still makes it sometimes impenetrable
even in the twentieth century). However, from the
1560s onwards two items are generally recorded:
the election of Fellows and Taberdars (though
those elected on the Michel Foundation were
recorded in a separate series of registers) and
decrees of the Provost and Fellows.
Though we therefore only have evidence of the
elections of fellows from the 1560s, we can create a
list of fellows for the medieval period from the
Deliberata praeposito et sociis section of the
accounts where each fellow is listed and his
Fig. 5: First list of commoners in Entrance Book.
stipend given. There are some lacunae, particularly in the late fifteenth century, which mean that it
is possible that someone who was a fellow for just
two or three years might – if they happen to be in
1483-6 or 1494-1500 when there are substantial
continuous gaps – escape notice, but other than
this we can be sure of getting a near-complete list
of fellows. Of course, in the accounts only the
fellow’s surname is given, but it is usually possible
to identify him in comparison with university
records (and, of course, Emden has done that for
us in his Biographical Register of the University of
Oxford to AD 1500). Unfortunately, it is not
always possible to identify the commensales, men
who lodged in the college but were not fellows.
The most famous is Wycliffe whom we can find
several times in the accounts, but there is no
certainty that we can identify all commensales. It
is this lack of certainty that has allowed the
College, from time to time, to indulge in the
fantasy that Henry V was educated here.
As for undergraduates, there really weren’t any in
The College Archive: an introduction
16
attached to the College and that they were
expected to go elsewhere, perhaps to an arts
college like Balliol, before they might one-day
return to Queen’s as a fellow. However, it is very
difficult to trace these poor boys – only occasionally can we identify someone in the accounts who is
being paid for an errand and is probably a poor
boy – though we can be fairly certain that they
never reached anywhere near seventy-two.
However, in the sixteenth century the university,
and particularly the colleges, started to change
radically, and all the colleges began to admit men
who came to be called commoners (because they
paid for their commons, i.e. food at the common
table) and who, unlike fellows (and in some
colleges, scholars) received no stipend from the
college. Because they received no stipend they do
not appear in the expenses of the College and the
Long Rolls did not record batells individually.
Therefore, like commesales, the early commoners
appear nowhere in the College’s records.
This changes about 1589. In 1581, the government
of Elizabeth I being concerned about both
Catholics and Puritans insisted that all men
matriculating at the University must subscribe
their name to an oath of belief in the Thirty-nine
Articles, the formal theological dogma of the
Church of England. And although it took the best
part of a decade for the College to start to keep an
entrance book (fig. 5), the names of all those who
entered the College since 1581 were written into it,
suggesting that the Oath of Subscription was
central to the new record (though as we have seen
this also comes at the end of a period of considerable innovation in the college’s record keeping).
The College also copied in the names of all
provosts and fellows since the foundation, no
doubt just copying them from the Long Rolls.
Fig. 6: Page from Batells Book, showing some of the termly
batells for some of the commoners in 1773-4
Queen’s in the medieval period. Robert de
Eglesfield had intended his college for the study of
theology and therefore every fellow had to have
already taken the MA degree, which meant about
seven years’ study in the university before election
to Queen’s was possible. And although Eglesfield
had intended for up to seventy-two ‘Poor
Boys’ (later to be informally called Taberdars) to
be taught in the College it seems that he was really
intending this to be a kind of grammar school
It is therefore possible from the end of the
sixteenth century to be able to ascertain when any
commoner entered the College, but it tells us no
more about them (usually not even a forename).
We can learn a little more from the end of the
seventeenth century. From 1685 onwards we have
the Batells Books and from 1693 to 1842 the
Buttery Books, though with long lacunae for both.
The Batells Books records the termly sum of each
man’s batells (Provost, Fellow and Commoner
alike, fig. 6) and the Buttery Book is a weekly
record of what each man paid in the buttery (i.e.
for food and drink beyond commons). This tells us
a little more about each man (and in this period, of
course, they were all men) as we can gauge to
some extent whether they were amongst the
poorer or richer of the commoners and, perhaps
more importantly, we can determine from their
17
THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
payments when they were actually resident in
college and when they were merely paying a
nominal fee to ‘keep their name on the books’.
But to get any real information about a member of
the College we must wait until the end of the
nineteenth century and two new series of Entrance
Books. One of these will be familiar to all those
Old Members reading this for, beginning in 1864,
each man’s name was entered in a new book along
with his address and school. From 1905 he entered
these details himself and signed it.
were long ago destroyed, though they are more or
less complete from the mid-1960s onwards. We
are now scanning these files and destroying the
originals to save space (the files grow bulkier by
the year) but the important information they
contain continues to be permanently preserved.
The other series, so far as I’m aware unique
amongst college archives, was instituted by
Magrath when he became Provost in 1876. It
seems that he had an interview soon after every
freshman came up and made a short record of it.
The first half of each entry contains the same
information as the other Entrance Book with a
record of parents and schools, but then Magrath
records more personal information, usually
including what the freshman was studying and
what he hoped to do after leaving Oxford, along
with what sports he played, whether he was
musical and whether he had any particular
hobbies. It ends with a note of his college room
and tutor (fig. 7). This practice continued
throughout Magrath’s long provostship (including
the years of his retirement when successive proprovosts carried out the interview) until 1930
when Walker was promoted from pro-provost and
replaced this system with a record card, including
a photograph, which was maintained throughout a
man’s time in college and beyond. At some point
after the Second World War, the College also
started keeping files on all students, which
included their tutors’ reports. Sadly, many of these
Fig. 7: Magrath's notes on new members.
Fig. 8: Building Account Book 1714.
Unusual methods bring unusual results
This brings us neatly to the twentieth century, but
before we linger here, we should note that beyond
these principal record series there are also a gaggle
of smaller, specific accounts, most notably four
books of buildings accounts from the early
seventeenth century when the rebuilding of the
college was at its height (fig. 8), and a variety of
account books from the bedmakers’ fund through
the stable account in the nineteenth century.
Similarly, there is a great deal of correspondence
relating to various college matters (again mostly
property related) and College Members. The
formal series of Bursar’s letters begins in 1900,
created by making copies of all outgoing letters by
the damp-press method.
These letter books continued until the 1920s when
the Bursar started to keep everything in a series of
files. The file, as a record management concept, is
now so ubiquitous that we forget it is barely a
century old in its modern form. From the 1920s,
and even more so from the 1940s, the college kept
files on everything. We have already come across a
file for each student; there was a file (or, rather,
successive files) for each college property. There
were also files for a whole range of domestic
matters including buildings, benefactions and
brewing (at least, until the brewhouse closed in
1939), and much else besides. Though curiously,
one key college function has never been properly
documented: teaching. There is a Tutors’ Minute
Book (the precursor to Tutorial Committee) from
1882, but because teaching was overseen by
individual tutors very little has been kept,
although some files and notes given by a few
fellows and Old Members has filled in a few gaps.
The accumulation of files continues, of course, and
the bulk of them still, of course, relate to the
College’s property. The Register still continues too,
though now in the form of the minutes and papers
of Governing Body, as do the accounts. But
although the Archive continues in the task
assigned by the founder of protecting the College’s
rights and interests, it also tries to do more in
documenting not only the functions of the College
as an institution, but something that has rarely
been achieved in 675 years: an attempt to
document college life for all those who have spent
some part of their own life in Queen’s.
18
Unusual methods bring unusual results:
dust monitoring in the Upper Library at
Queen’s
Victoria Stevens
Oxford Conservation Consortium
A
s in our own homes, so in historic
libraries: as much as we may not enjoy
the process, regular housekeeping is a
constant and necessary part of
maintaining a good environment in any space. The
key difference with historic interiors is that poor
housekeeping practices can have a significant and
damaging impact on the stability and longevity of
the objects they house. Conservation aims to
provide solutions for the issues library and archive
storage spaces face, balancing use with the
preservation of the collections they contain. One
of the main collections care concerns in historic
interiors such as the Upper Library at Queen’s,
where the library is a heavily used study area, an
aesthetically important space and a repository for
some of the college’s rare book collections, is dust.
Dust is constantly created by human activity, and
is composed of a mixture of textile fibres,
atmospheric pollutants, building debris and
organic material, as well as degradation products
from the collection itself. It is a self-perpetuating
cycle: dust is distributed throughout a space by
the movement of people, open windows and air
circulation systems, actions which in themselves
create dust. Characteristically, higher surfaces
have fine particulate dust, with coarser debris
gathering at lower levels. Carpets and floor
coverings act as reservoirs for dust and dirt, and if
Michael Riordan is the Archivist of both Queen’s
and St. John’s. His research focuses on nineteenth
-century historiography and early modern record
-keeping.
Fig. 1: Visible dust accumulation on shelf edges.
19
THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
Fig. 2: Storage dirt, showing the potential crosscontamination effects of handling such items.
left to accumulate it is then disturbed and
recirculated by traffic through the space, and so
the cycle continues. If the dust and dirt is not
removed the continuous layering process starts to
cause visible deposits on exposed surfaces,
including on objects such as books.
Dust impacts on the condition of library objects in
several ways. The most obvious effect is to lower
the aesthetic impression of the collection and the
library as a whole. A great deal of research has
been carried out by institutions who offer public
Fig. 3: Part of the 2014 book cleaning team at work.
access to heritage sites, such as English Heritage
and the National Trust, into acceptable levels of
dust. This research showed that visitors expect to
see some evidence of dust, even appreciating it as
part of the visitor experience by inferring age, but
heavy deposits of visible dust and dirt were
equated with neglect. Anecdotally, a perception of
lack of care in any space encourages the likelihood
of mistreatment and poor handling. Dusty and
dirty books are unpleasant for readers to use, and
through normal handling other areas of the object
and the collection can be contaminated and
affected. Clearly, it is important to the college that
the Upper Library at Queen’s is displayed to its
very best effect through good stewardship.
In terms of the interaction with objects, in this
case specifically books, dust can cause several
significant preservation issues. Dust is hygroscopic, attracting water from the surrounding
environment. This can establish damaging
chemical interactions with components in the
bindings and textblock causing irreversible
discolouration and degradation, such as browning
and foxing. It is clear to see the impact of this
process on any historic library item: the tail, or
lower edge is usually in pristine condition,
Unusual methods bring unusual results
20
whereas the head, or upper edge is permanently
darkened. Where there are high levels of
atmospheric humidity dust can undergo a process
known as cementation, causing it to adhere to the
surface of an object and may cause permanent
damage on handling or removal. Furthermore,
dust and dirt are also an attractant to pests,
including insects such as silverfish and woodboring beetles as well as rodents, and, in the presence
of high humidity, it can significantly increase the
risk of microbial attack, causing irreversible
damage to the object and loss of media.
It is clear that dust is an issue in historic library
collections, and the conservation team at the
Oxford Conservation Consortium were keen to
work with the college to develop effective
strategies to mitigate its impact on the Upper
library at Queen’s. Dealing with dust can be
divided into three stages: cleaning, maintenance
and monitoring. Ideally, a full collection clean
should be followed up and maintained by regular,
thorough housekeeping and the development of a
monitoring programme to check where the dust
continues to accumulate, the results of which can
be used to develop a cleaning strategy. The Upper
Library at Queen’s is a excellent example of best
practice, as all three stages of maintaining a good
library environment have been in place since
December 2014.
A full Upper Library collection cleaning programme takes place every three years in the Long
Vacation. The work is undertaken by teams of
students, in some instances from book conservation training courses. This offers invaluable
experience for trainee conservators, giving them
an excellent opportunity to come into contact with
a wide range of binding styles and see the
conservation issues that affect a library collection
as a whole.
There are three key considerations for the library
cleaning. Firstly, in order to keep handling to a
minimum and avoid mechanical damage to the
book joints, only the external faces are cleaned.
Handling and use poses one of the greatest risks to
any library collection, with fragile joints and
endcaps being very vulnerable to damage or loss,
even when treated with care. Many of the volumes
in the Upper Library may not have been opened
for some time, and systematic flexing of the boards
and spine, even when supported on foam book
supports, may potentially cause more significant
damage than leaving surface dirt on the endpapers
and textblock. This also has a bearing on the
second consideration, time. As each book has to be
removed, cleaned and reshelved the level of
cleaning has to be restricted. Anyone who has used
the Upper Library at Queen’s will appreciate the
Fig. 4: Supporting the book on foam blocks when
cleaning to minimise handling.
scale of this task, with 80 bays, each with at least 6
shelves. The third consideration is that dust
generation from the cleaning process itself should
be kept to minimum, and that it is removed from
the library and not allowed to fall either on
previously cleaned areas of the collection or the
floor. This approach is reflected in the equipment
used, with heavy emphasis on vacuum suction
rather than dusters, and simple procedural
methods such as working from the top shelf down
when cleaning any given bay.
Following training from OCC conservators, and
working in pairs, the student teams work
systematically through the library, cleaning both
the books and the shelves. Each book is removed
from the shelf to a table cushioned with bubble
wrap and covered in polyethylene sheeting. This
provides a protective surface that can easily be
kept clean and free of any debris that may cause
damage through abrasion to the fragile surface
leather of the bindings. It is important that the
books are kept in shelf order at all times to
21
THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
minimise handling and more importantly the need
to open the books to check shelf marks.
Using one of the several portable conservation
vacuum cleaners bought by the Library for this
purpose, the outer surfaces of the books are
carefully vacuumed to remove loose surface dirt
and dust using a small soft brush attachment. If
necessary, loose or detached boards or areas of the
spine can be tied up using cotton tape at this stage.
The tape is specifically designed for this purpose
and is available in a range of browns to blend in
with the collection and provide an unobtrusive
means of supporting loose areas of the book
structure. It is a simple but effective means of
ongoing collection care, as having the boards tight
against the textblock is particularly important for
preventing further penetration of dust into the
volume. Additionally, tying up reduces the risk of
loss or further damage to the binding, as well as
flagging up to readers that the book is in a
damaged condition and therefore requires careful
handling. Following the cleaning of the books, the
shelf is also cleaned using vacuum suction with
HEPA filtration and a large brush attachment,
again to remove rather than spread the dust and
dirt. The books are then returned in order to the
shelf, and the team moves on to the next shelf. The
cleaning of the whole Upper Library by this
method takes four people working full-time 6
weeks to complete.
library, dust will be constantly introduced and also
generated within the space. This is compounded
by the building work in the adjacent quads since
2014 which has exposed the library to a great deal
of extra particulate dirt.
Regular and careful cleaning is the main weapon
in the fight against this dust and dirt, and there is
already a very high standard of cleanliness
through the work of the Housekeeping team at
Queen’s. Regular vacuuming of floors and floor
coverings will remove a significant proportion of
the dust, minimise its accumulation and reduce
recirculation to the collection. The filters on the
library’s air circulation system are well maintained
and regularly checked, again minimising the
amount of particulates that can enter into the
library through normal air exchange. However, it
is impossible to remove or eliminate all dust and
this is where monitoring can be an effective tool in
identifying how and where dust is an issue. The
results from monitoring can then be used to target
resources to where the need is greatest. It was
hoped that the results from any monitoring would
inform future cleaning and dust management
programmes for the library, and, as handling is the
greatest risk to the collection, reduce the
frequency with which the whole collection is
cleaned.
Clearly, this is a major commitment and
investment into the care of the library and its
collection by the college. Following the last
cleaning programme in 2014 and in advance of the
next scheduled clean in 2017, the librarians and I
have focused our attention on the other two
components of tackling dust in historic libraries,
and have looked more closely at mitigating and
monitoring strategies for the Upper Library. As a
heavily used student study area and a working
There were four priorities for the design of a dust
monitoring system for the Upper Library at
Queen’s. It had to be simple, cost-effective, safe for
the collection and unobtrusive. Research around
the subject and consultation with the Preservation
section of the Bodleian’s Conservation Collection
Care department showed a wide variety of
approaches and equipment available, most of
which relied on electronically recording the
measurement of progressive loss of gloss, or
reflection, on a sample surface such as a glass slide
caused by the accumulation of dust. As the
purchase of such equipment was not an option,
two simpler, comparative methods of dust
Fig. 5: A sticky dust trap ready for use.
Fig. 6: The dust trap in position.
Unusual methods bring unusual results
22
intended to allow the greatest possible comparison
of the anticipated results. As it is predominantly
circulated by traffic through a given space, most
dust should accumulate at waist height and below,
and in terms of deposition on the head edges of
books, it stands to reason that the larger the space
above the book the greater the capacity for dust to
settle. Entry points have the maximum traffic
volume, and so should have the maximum dust
accumulation. The traps were checked at 6
monthly intervals, with the previous 6 months
results being covered by a strip of Melinex™, a
thin clear plastic sheet. It was hoped that after a
significant time it would be easy to compare the
results between the test areas and determine
which locations were most affected.
After 18 months the results of the initial
monitoring programme using the sticky traps
proved fairly inconclusive. As expected for shelves
near the main entry point to the Upper Library,
there was a slight increase in dust in the traps
facing the stairs from the Lower Library. Overall,
however, there was minimal dust in any of the
traps. This would have been a positive sign, and
proof that the mitigating strategies in place were
working sufficiently well, if it had not been for
contrary evidence in the form of visible dust
accumulations on the shelf edges.
A rethink of the monitoring method was required,
and following further research in the literature on
dust a potential solution was found.
Fig. 7: Two years after the last cleaning programme, the accumulation of dust is noticeable.
monitoring were chosen as the most suitable for
the Upper Library.
The first was a card tray with a sticky inner base to
catch and hold any dust accumulations. These
were constructed in-house using conservation
boxboard and double sided tape. The sides of the
tray minimised the risk of the traps becoming
accidentally adhered to any library object, and
warning signs on the traps discouraged casual
interest. They were placed either on the shelf or on
the head edges of the books at regular intervals
throughout the library. Entry points to the library
were chosen for sampling, as well as both high and
low level shelves. As dust requires access to fall on
any given surface, shelves where there was both a
significant and minimal gap above the head edge
of the books were chosen. This placing scheme was
As each shelf in the Upper library is roughly the
same width, a simple way of comparative sampling
was to collect the dust from each shelf edge and
visually cross-reference the quantities collected.
Some unusual equipment was required, and from
an unusual source: Superdrug is not a supplier you
normally associate with conservation. A flat
circular cotton wool pad was drawn along the front
edge of the shelves and the sample swab was
placed in a clear plastic bag labelled with the shelf
reference. This would allow easy comparison both
between shelves according to proximity to the
entry points and main aisle but also as according
to height within any given bay. The simplicity of
the method meant that a greater number of
shelves could be sampled, and as well as the main
entry points, the sampling focused on the bays
next to the carpeted areas and the heavily used
student work spaces. Although as a method it
could not monitor the different deposition rates of
dust according to the space above the head edges
of the books, it did provide a measurement of the
maximum level of dust on exposed surfaces. This
information could then be applied to all such areas
where dust could have easy access, including the
book edges.
23
THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
Fig. 8: Cotton wool pad swabs, showing the comparative levels of dust collected at various points throughout the library.
As a method of dust monitoring it was more
successful and safer than the sticky traps in that it
provided an easily comparable set of data and
immediate results. There was a small increase in
the level of dust on the lower shelves in the bays
adjacent to the main entrance point at the head of
the stairs from the Lower Library, which was to be
expected: virtually everyone who enters the library
does so by this route. Likewise, there was a
noticeable reduction in dust levels at the Senior
Common Room end of the library, which is less
regularly used by readers.
However, some of the data did not entirely follow
the normal expectations of a heavily used library
space. The results from the main body of the
library were more surprising, with near identical
deposits being recorded at various heights
throughout the open shelves. Although there was a
slight increase in some of the higher open shelves,
the level at which the sample was taken within the
bay did not seem to make a significant difference,
which proves the thoroughness and success of the
housekeeping measures in place in removing the
daily accumulation of dust from the floors. If the
floor and the carpets were providing a dust
reservoir the level of dust on the shelves would be
significantly higher up to waist height. What was
intriguing was that the most noticeable accumulations of dust were found behind the cupboard
doors on shelf A of each sampled bay, as it would
be expected that the doors would provide excellent
protection from airborne particulates. A possible
hypothesis is that the air circulation system is
distributing the available dust at a higher level
than would normally be anticipated, borne out by
the slightly higher shelf B dust levels. In order to
check this theory, and check that there are no
other factors involved in this anomaly such as the
impact of the building works in the adjacent
quads, a sample cupboard will be cleaned and
monitored separately to see the level of dust build
up over the next year.
Although some of the data gathered in the Upper
Library over the past 18 months has proved, in
part, contrary to what was expected, the
monitoring programme has provided a sound
starting point for the future cleaning and
collections care of this important collection and
historic interior. It is gratifying for all those
involved in the care of the library to know that the
measures in place, such as the thorough
housekeeping and maintenance regime, are clearly
effective in reducing dust accumulation as the rate
of deposition is fairly low. By using this data,
The Queen’s College Grand Orrery, 2016
priorities can be set for future library cleaning
programmes to focus on where the need is
greatest. Priority areas include the bays near
access points and around the most heavily used
student study desks, as well as where the dust has
greatest access through a significant gap above the
book head edges. In other areas where the effect of
dust is minimal, only the shelf edges may need to
be periodically vacuumed to remove visible dust
accumulations. In doing so, the risk associated
with handling the collection could be minimised
whist the overall aesthetic of the collection and the
space would not be compromised.
By tackling the gritty issue of dust in the Upper
Library, a sound model for dust management has
been created which will have wider benefits to the
college community as a whole. As an example of
an effective method, the measures in place at
Queen’s can applied to other college libraries and
collections cared for by the Oxford Conservation
Consortium. Queen’s continue to pioneer work in
this area, by hosting a dust management and
monitoring session for Consortium members in
August 2016. It is great to have the opportunity to
share the knowledge we have developed over the
last two years and showcase how Queen’s Library
is leading the way in this important aspect of
collections care.
2
See
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
S1296207409000557
Having started her career in a trade bindery and
following her graduation from the London
College of Printing, Victoria has worked as a
library and archive conservator at the Oxford
Conservation Consortium since 2002, undertaking conservation and collections care for 16
colleges of the University of Oxford. She also
works in private practice from her own
workshop. She is an accredited member of the
Institute of Conservation (Icon). As well as
serving on Icon’s Book and Paper Group and
Care of Collections Group committees Victoria
also co-ordinate activities for the Oxford
Conservators’ Group.
Excerpt from A report following the
servicing and inspection of The Queen’s
College Grand Orrery, 2016
Further information on library cleaning, book
handling and care of collections can be found in a
series of booklets produced by the Preservation
Advisory Centre at the British Library, and via the
following links:
http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/
collectioncare/publications/booklets/
caring_for_bookbindings.pdf
http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/
collectioncare/publications/booklets/
cleaning_books_and_documents.pdf
http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/
collectioncare/publications/booklets/
damaged_books.pdf
1
For example, see www.english-heritage.org.uk/content/learn/
conservation/.../Musmicdustpaper.pdf;
www.ifla.org/files/assets/pac/ipn/IPN%2053.indd.web.pdf;
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?
doi=10.1.1.468.5969&rep=rep1&type=pdf
24
Jonathan Betts
Brief Description
L
arge Grand Orrery by Benjamin Cole &
Son, London, 1763, commissioned
specifically for Queen’s College.
The instrument stands on a fine mahogany table
with six finely carved cabriole legs, the whole
covered with a multi-panelled protective glass
shade which can be locked securely onto the table,
preventing access to the orrery.
The mechanical orrery within is fitted in a
mahogany twelve-sided case, with lacquered brass
mounts and surmounted, on a brass pillared
gallery, with a large lacquered brass hemispherical armillary structure. The mechanical
orrery itself incorporates within its compass the
solar system out to Mars, including the Earth and
Moon, with additional mountings fixed on the
outside of the case for attaching static models of
Jupiter and Saturn.
25
THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY INSIGHT
The seventeenth century scientific revolution in England
26
biological sciences on the right, although many of
the distinctions are blurred.
The seventeenth century scientific
revolution in England: an exhibition
Curated by Amanda Saville
Librarian, The Queen’s College
A number of the books on display have strong
Oxford connections. Many of our holdings have
interesting provenances, which, when they are
known, are described at the bottom of each
caption.
The following is the introductory text from the
current exhibition on display in the Upper
Library.
Books on display include Hooke’s Micrographia,
Newton’s Principia, and Robert Boyle’s Sceptical
chymist.
The exhibition will be in place until Spring 2017.
Old and Current members are welcome to visit the
exhibition and the Upper Library during staffed
hours; non-members should contact the Library
in advance to make an appointment.
A
*
fter the seismic conflict and turmoil of
the English Civil War and the Cromwellian Protectorate, the last forty years of
the seventeenth century were revolutionary in another way, witnessing significant
advances in all fields of science from physics and
chemistry to medical and life sciences. The relative
political calm and optimism of post- restoration
England allowed scientific endeavour to flourish.
The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and
scientific publishing grew. As in the rest of
Europe, long held scientific precepts were
challenged by natural philosophers working
experimentally in London and the university cities.
Many English publications from the second half of
the seventeenth century are still to this day
regarded as some of the most seminal scientific
texts of all time.
The Queen’s College Library is extremely fortunate
to own some of the most important of these
publications. The current exhibition showcases
selected highlights from our collection and also
includes earlier texts which indicate research
endeavour at the beginning of the century.
Importantly, these provide evidence that students
in Oxford were continuing their scientific studies
despite the Civil War raging around them.
The cases are roughly divided into mathematics
and physical sciences on the left and medicine and
The Queen’s College Library Insight
Published by The Library, The Queen’s College,
Oxford, OX1 4AW
Copyright The Queen’s College, Oxford, 2016
All rights reserved
ISSN 2049-8349
The 17th Century
Scientific
Revolution
September
to
Spring
2016/17
This small exhibition is
located in the display cases
in the Queen’s College
Upper Library.
Non-members of the
College, please contact us
in advance to arrange an
appointment.
The Queen’s College Library
01865 279130
[email protected]
An exhibition of books in the Upper Library