[105] Aubrey's Lives; in Letters by Eminent Persons, ii. 346.
A.D. 1647.
John Verneuil, M.A., Sub-librarian, died about the end of September. He was a native of Bordeaux, and came into England as a Protestant refugee shortly before 1608. In that year he entered at Magdalene College, and was incorporated M.A. from his own University of Montauban in 1625. Besides his share in the Appendix to the Catalogue noticed under the year 1635, the following small book of a similar kind in English was issued by him: A Nomenclator of such Tracts and Sermons as have beene printed, or translated into English upon any place or booke of Holy Scripture; now to be had in the most famous and publique Library of Sir Thomas Bodley in Oxford. This is the title of the second and enlarged edition, which appeared in 1642 in a small duodecimo volume, printed at Oxford, by Henry Hall. The first edition (which was not entirely confined to books in the Library) was printed under the author's initials by William Turner in 1637. Some books communicated by friends are here cited, which would, says Verneuil, have been accessible in the Bodleian, 'had the Company of Stationers beene as mindfull of their covenant as my selfe have beene zealous for the good of this our Library.' In an interesting undated letter from Sir Richard Napier, Knt. (while apparently an undergraduate of Wadham College, before 1630) to his uncle the Rev. Richard Napier, which is preserved in Ashmole MS. 1730, fol. 168, is the following curious passage relating to the facilities for studying in the Library, which were afforded to him by Verneuil:—
'I have made a faire way to goe into the Library privately when I please, and there to sitt from 6 of the clocke in the morneing to 5 at night. I have a private place in the Library to lay those bookes and to write out what I list, without being seene by any, or any comeing to me. I have made the second Keeper of the Library [i.e. Verneuil] my friend and servant, who promised me his key at all tymes to goe in privately, when as otherwise it is not opened above 4 houres a day, and some days not att all, as on Hollidays, and their eves in the afternoone, yett then by his meanes I shall [have] free accesse and recesse at all tymes. He hath pleasured me so farr as to lett me write in his counting house, or his little private study in the great publick library, where I may very privately write, and locke up all safely when I depart thence; he will write for me when I have not the leisure, or will transcribe any thinge I shall desire him, and if it be French translate it, for that is his mother tonge.'
Probably the practice here mentioned of admitting readers by favour into the Library at unstatutable times grew in the course of years to a considerable height, or was found (as might naturally be expected) productive of mischievous consequences, for on Nov. 8, 1722, it was 'ordered by the Curators that no person under any pretence whatsoever be permitted to study in the said Library at any other time than what is prescribed and limited by the Bodleian Statutes.'
Verneuil was succeeded in his office in the Library by Francis Yonge, M.A., of Oriel College.
Milton's gift of his Poems. See under 1620.
A.D. 1648.
At the end of the Readers' Register for 1647–8, 1648–9, is a list of nine volumes 'olim surrepti,' of which five had been replaced by other copies. Entries are made in the same place of some coins which were given in 1648–50. At this period the Library appears to have been well attended by readers; about twelve or fifteen quarto and octavo volumes being daily entered, those of folio size being accessible (as, in regard to a portion of the Library, is still the case) by the readers themselves, and not registered because at that time chained to their shelves. The register for the next years (as well as those which followed, up to the year 1708) appears to be lost, so that it cannot be ascertained whether this daily average continued during the Usurpation; but thus far it seems that Dr. John Allibond's description of the state of the Library as consequent on the Puritan visitation of the University in 1648, is not borne out by facts. For that loyal humourist, in his Rustica Academiæ Oxoniensis nuper reformatæ Descriptio, which is supposed to commemorate the condition of Oxford in Oct. 1648, writes thus of our Library:—
'Conscendo orbis illud decus
Bodleio fundatore:
Sed intus erat nullum pecus,
Excepto janitore.
Neglectos vidi libros multos,
Quod mimime mirandum:
Nam inter bardos tot et stultos
There's few could understand 'em.'
A.D. 1649.
'The Jews proffer £600,000 for Paul's, and Oxford Library, and may have them for £200,000 more[106].' They wished to obtain the first for a synagogue, and to do a little commercial business with the second. It is said in Monteith's History of the Troubles (translated by Ogilvie, 1735, p. 473) that the sum they offered was £500,000, but that the Council of War refused to take less than £800,000: probably they afterwards increased this their original bid to £600,000.
Philip, Earl of Pembroke, the Puritan Chancellor of the University, gave a splendidly bound copy of the Paris Polyglott, printed in 1645 in 10 vols.
[106] London News-letter of April 2; printed in Carte's Collection of Letters, vol. i. p. 275.
A.D. 1652.
John Rous, the Librarian, died in the beginning of April, probably on April 3, as, the Statutes requiring the election of Librarian to take place within three days of a vacancy, it was on the 6th of that month that Thomas Barlow, M.A., Fellow of Queen's College, was unanimously elected to be Rous's successor. At the same time certain orders were read in Convocation which the Curators had made, for the formation by the Librarian of a Catalogue of the coins and other rarities, providing also that they should be regularly visited and verified by the Curators every November[107].
A legacy of £20 from Rous to the Library is entered in the Benefaction Register, under the year 1661, probably because it may not have been actually received until that year.
[107] Reg. 'T. 158–9.' MS. Note by Dr. P. Bliss.
A.D. 1653.
Fifteen MSS., by Spanish authors, were given by Peter Pett, LL.B., Fellow of All Souls' College; and a sacred Turkish vestment of linen (e Mus. 45) on which the whole of the Koran is written in Arabic, by Richard Davydge, an East Indian merchant.