A catalogue of the Harsnett Library at Colchester : in which are included a few books presented to the town by various donors since 1631 / compiled, with an introd. by Gordon Goodwin.

Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A catalogue of the Harsnett Library at Colchester : in which are included a few books presented to the town by various donors since 1631 / compiled, with an introd. by Gordon Goodwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be taken of the Books.” On 20th March, 1654-5, “ Books being- then grown useless when everything was done by pretended Revelations,” the Library was mortgaged to the town chamberlain for 50/. Nine years later, on 7th June, 1664, “for the sake of the little Rent that could be made of the Room in which they stood,” the books were ordered to be forthwith “ removed from the Red-Row to some con- venient place in or near the Grammar-school, and a Cata- logue1 taken of all the Books to be kept in the Moot-hall, and the Schoolmaster to take care of the Books, and be accountable for them.”2 The books were thereupon con- signed to the Free School, then situate in a back street, Culver Street, “where,” according to Morant, “ there was no proper Room for them, and where they were in danger of Speedy Decay.”3 Morant, although he could appa- rently see nothing more remarkable in the Library than “the fine Antwerp Polyglot Bible [which, however, may not have been Harsnett’s gift] and Hesychius, with Isaac Casaubon’s manuscript notes,” 4 did much towards rescu- ing it from destruction, and he drew up a list of the books.5 Thanks to his influence, the Library was saved from further “ Speedy Decay” by the intervention of his friend, Mr. Charles Gray, F.S.A. Mr. Gray, who was owner by mar- riage of Colchester Castle, and M.P. for the borough in five Parliaments, was himself a bibliophile and antiquary of repute. Readmitted the homeless books “for safe cus- tody” into the so-called “Chapel” of the Castle in No- vember, 1749,6 and in 1755 into the “ spacious and hand- 1 All traces of this and the preceding Catalogue, if ever made, have long disappeared. s Assembly Books cited in Morant’s Hist, of Colchester, p. 168. 3 Note appended to his MS. List of the Library. 4 Hist, of Colchester, p. 168. 5 Now in the keeping of Mr. James Round, M.P. 6 Morant, Memorandum prefixed to MS. List.