Perhaps all you need to know about the Parish Library at Rougham is summarised in a brief bibliographical note tucked into the appendices of a recent book by Jamie C. Kassler. I have added Kassler’s text as an appendix at the end of this introduction. What follows here represents my struggle to make sense of some things I found out while transcribing the library’s catalogue, a list of long-lost books that once furnished a now abandoned library.
To see the full version of this introduction, with notes and bibliography, please click here.
To see the catalogue click here (part 1) and here (part 2).
To see a ‘mimetic’ transcription of the catalogue click here, and to see my attempt to identify the books listed in the catalogue click here (these are working documents). Later in the introduction I mention Bray Libraries, here is a link to the catalogue of a typical Bray Library of 1714 in Shropshire.
THE CATALOGUE
The catalogue is presently in the Norfolk Record Office, item DN/MSC2/9. It comprises ten sheets of parchment. It is the catalogue of the library formerly at St. Mary’s church in Rougham, Norfolk. The majority of the writing, in brown ink, is in the hand of Ambrose Pimlowe, rector at Rougham from 1710-23. There are a number of corrections and additions in blue-black ink in the hand of Roger North, a retired lawyer, a former Member of Parliament, the owner of neighbouring Rougham Hall and sponsor of the library. It is signed and dated July 13, 1716 by Roger North on behalf of himself and ‘Amb: Pimlow Vicar’, this inscription is in brown ink on the penultimate page. The catalogue lists 1211 books, or rather, titles. The titles are organised by format (folio, quarto, octavo, etc.), language, and subject area in a descending order of dignity from ‘Orientalium Philogicorum’ to ‘Hispanice Missellan[eorum]’. There is no alphabetical organisation of any kind.
The parchment is still flexible, its surface has retained an almost translucent sheen. Where the surface has not been rubbed the writing remains easily legible. Several sheets have elongated holes indicating where the skin was attached to a stretching frame, this might suggest that it had perhaps not been prepared as a prestigious presentation document. There is some minor variation in the length of the sheets (585mm to 615mm), and in their width (193mm to 220mm), the longest and widest sheet is the last, f. 10. The sheets are approximately the same size as the pages of a folio book cut in half vertically. Each sheet has been prepared with red-ink ruled vertical margins – a double line on the left about 20mm from the edge, and on the right two single lines about 15mm and 30mm from the edge. The space to the left of the left-hand margin is reserved for headings indicating the size of the volumes (folio, quarto, etc), the columns on the right-hand side are for place and date of publication. Each sheet has also been horizontally ruled, ink dots used in the measuring of the ruling are still visible, as are many of the pencil (or metal-point) lines. One can also see ink dots used for the ruling of the margins – for example on the right-hand side, at the top of f. 3r.
The long and narrow proportions of the document (approximately 3:1) suggest that it was intended to be rolled. When rolled it would appear that it was tied with the string which still binds the sheets so that it now opens bound at the top as a long booklet, looking not unlike a modern-day wall calendar. Remains of a wax seal are attached to the string on both sides (ff. 1r and 10v). The seal on the wax at the top of f. 1r appears to bear the impress of the North coat of arms – I convince myself I see a fleur-de-lis and a lion passant. The catalogue was perhaps originally stored (or delivered?) as a scroll or rotulus, and in this, as in the use of parchment, it resembles an (even then) old-fashioned legal document. A legal document vouchsafed by the seal of a gentleman, himself a distinguisehd lawyer, ought really to stay rolled, the impress says enough, but the catalogue has been transformed from a legal document into an informational and historical document and it has been opened for inspection. Evidently the catalogue has for a long time been kept flat, folded once back up over itself, just below halfway down. There has been wear and staining on the upper exposed surfaces, that is, the very top of f. 1r, and the folded-up lower part of f. 10v. As well as the effects of dust and abrasion we can see, on the final page, corrosion caused by Roger North’s signing and dating, which appears to have been done with a more acidic brown ink. There has been rubbing on the edges of the sheets, this has especially affected the edges of the wider recto pages, causing the erasure of many of the dates that had filled the margin on the right-hand side. In being made available for inspection, and in being stored for that purpose, the document has been rendered partly illegible.
There is a puzzling episode on f. 8r, and again on f. 9r, where Ambrose Pimlowe changes the form of some of his capital letters and the general ‘look’ of his writing. In the first episode it occurs where space had been left between two categories, between the folios and quartos in the section ‘Anglice Miscellaneorum’, filled-in with some titles by both Roger North and Pimlowe. The second episode begins on f. 9r where we see innovations in the form of the capital ‘P’, ‘S’ and ‘C’, and a general ‘improvement’ in the formation and inking of the letters. Perhaps this is evidence of the use of a different pen, or perhaps of a lapse of time during the writing of the catalogue. Any other variations in handwriting seem to be the result of coping with the different textures of the parchment. On the whole, the verso side of any sheet is the more legible, with a more consistent contrast between ink and ground.
BEING ON PARCHMENT
Few English parish library catalogues listed in the Directory of Parochial Libraries were written on parchment. ‘John Tomkyns (d. 1703), vicar of Snitterfield in Warwickshire, left his books to the minister of Bilston, desiring a catalogue of them should be “registered in parchment […] that a view might be made upon the removall of every Minister that they might not be alienated from the uses intended”‘. At Brent Eleigh near Bury St. Edmunds, then in the Norwich Diocese, there was a parchment catalogue of 1719 listing ‘c. 1500 titles in a little over 1700 vols’. There was a catalogue on parchment of the books in Bubwith parish library in East Yorkshire ‘taken the sixteenth of April 1747’ listing some 689 titles. At St James church, now the cathedral of Bury St Edmunds, then in the Norwich Diocese, there was a shelf list dating from 1599 (133 titles, c. 200 volumes), and catalogue of 1716, both on parchment. In the Oxfordshire Archives there is ‘a list of 8 items on a parchment fragment dated 1756’ of books formerly at St. Kenelm’s, Enstone. Sir John Chesshyre’s generously housed 1733 donation of c. 400 vols. at St. Mary’s in Halton, Cheshire, was recorded on a ‘unique shelf-list, printed in London in 1733 on vellum in one copy’. There is reference to a lost 18th-century parchment catalogue of a substantial library at Holy Trinity, Hull (331 vols. in 1700). At Langley Marish there is ‘a 1638 vellum catalogue hanging on the wall […] almost certainly that requested by Archbishop Laud’s Commissioners on their visitation in 1637’, the library of (now) 191 books is still in place in a remarkable painted room off the Kedermister family pew. There is reference to a lost c. 1680 parchment register listing the initial gift of some 250 volumes donated to the library of St Peter, More. A much later parchment catalogue of 1777 survives for St Peter and St Paul, Sheffield (now the cathedral church). A damaged parchment list of c. 240 titles, updated in the 18th century, survives for the library formerly at St Peter and St Paul, Stainton, it is attached to the will of the donor, Richard Lumley, who died in 1689. An 18th-century catalogue on parchment, listing 322 titles, including 331 tracts in 16 volumes, ‘mainly of the Commonwealth period’, records John Newte’s 1716 gift to St Peter, Tiverton. Gervase, Lord Pierrepoint’s 1697 gift of c. 350 books is recorded in a ‘contemporary’ parchment catalogue, the books ‘for the use of the minister and his successors’ were originally in Tong Castle, and were moved to Tong vicarage by 1759.
In the previous paragraph we diligently note every use in Perkin’s Directory of the words ‘parchment’ and ‘vellum’ in relation to ‘catalogue’. The 13 examples, 14 when we add the Rougham catalogue, do not seem to have much in common. They are various in date, from 1599 to 1777. The libraries were in diverse locations – in large urban churches as well as village churches. On the other hand, most of them do represent quite large libraries, the Brent Eleigh library was even larger than Rougham’s, and most of the catalogues list more than 250 titles. We might note that most of the libraries appear to have been founded by a single gift donated by a high status individual. Perhaps a high status donor might represent or manifest their status by chosing to have a catalogue on parchment. (One notes the choice of vellum for the printing of a unique copy of the catalogue of Sir John Chesshyre’s library in 1733, this is a remarkable commission, and by another retired lawyer who knew all about the prestige of documents on parchment). But not every high status donor’s parish library catalogue was on parchment. So, although we might reasonably suppose that parchment was employed owing to its prestige, we might consider other reasons for its use, such as its robustness. We might then flip the idea and consider that although robustness might have played a part in its survival, parchment has also survived rather well on account of its prestige. It might be a pity to move on from this topic without mentioning the parchment library catalogue of Sir Edward Coke, another retired Norfolk lawyer, which lists his 1237 books on a scroll 42 feet (12 metres) in length. The Rougham catalogue, if consigned to one side of a continuous length of parchment, would be the same length – a coincidence which prompts this reference, if it does not justify it.
THE NUMBER OF BOOKS
Whether on parchment or not, the Rougham catalogue represents a parish library substantially larger than most. There are 1,211 titles in about 1,189 volumes. 140 of those titles are in eleven volumes of ‘pamphletts bound together’. The term ‘pamphlet’ embraced a wide range of printed texts identified by their being purchased unbound, some ‘pamphletts’ would be thought whole books today. Six titles in the catalogue are paired by brackets and/or the word ‘compact’ which tells us that each of the pairings were bound together in a single volume. A further title is described as ‘cum alijs Compactis’, but those other titles are not listed. There were therefore a debatable number of ‘books’, as we nowadays understand the term, in the Rougham parish library – but it can be agreed there were a lot of them. How much is a lot? About 70 of the nearly 500 English parish libraries established between 1680 and 1740 had 250 books or more, there were many more with between 70 and 100 books (the standard Bray Associates parochial library c. 1710, of which more below, contained 72). Most parish libraries were much smaller. Fewer than twenty parish libraries had more than 1,000 books, half a dozen had 2,000 or more. Rougham was therefore one of the largest parish libraries in England.
Larger parish libraries can be compared in size to those of the ‘great schools’ in the first decade of the 18th century which averaged 4-600 books. In 1708 Eton College, the largest school library, contained ‘perhaps 2,250, often expensively bound or re-bound books’ – about as many as at St. Alkmund parish library at Whitchurch in Shropshire. The largest English parish library was founded in 1704 in accordance with the will of Thomas Plume, vicar of Greenwich. He left more than 8,000 books, plus the money to house them, to his home town of Maldon in Essex. On the whole parish libraries were smaller than libraries in the two English universities, at the Inns of Court, in the Royal Society, Royal Colleges and other professional institutions, or in Cathedrals. Roger North’s brother, John, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge between 1677-83, oversaw the building of the new Trinity library building, designed by Christopher Wren. In 1674 there were 3,500 books in Trinity’s old library, in 1675 this had been increased by a gift of 2,144 books which prompted Isaac Barrow, the then Master, to commission a new building (the problem being, apparently, the capacity of the floor of the old library to support more books). College and University libraries all saw corresponding increases in size during the period. Cambridge University library at the time of the foundation of the Rougham library consisted of approximately 15,000 books, in 1715 this increased to 45,000 when the incoming George I presented it with the library of John Moore, Bishop of Ely. But the resources of Cambridge were dwarfed by those of Oxford where the Bodleian had long been the nation’s largest library. Bodleian catalogues served in various libraries as a working bibliography of printed books. The Royal College of Physicians lost its books in the fire of London but it inherited a large library, including some of the library of John Dee, in a gift from Henry Pierrepont, marquess of Dorchester, in 1680 – at which point they, too, commissioned a library building from Wren. In 1700 a catalogue of the library of the Middle Temple, where Roger North had his chambers, was printed, listing about 6,000 books. There were libraries emerging wherever specialist knowledges were being established and reproduced, most of them modest in size (c. 500 books), in hospitals, guild halls, even in coffee houses. Cathedral libraries had been damaged and diminished during the Interregnum but saw a resurgence after the Restoration. Durham, Ely, Litchfield, Peterborough and Winchester libraries enjoyed expansion, rehousing and refurbishment under enthusiastic bishops and cathedral chapters. Canterbury had 5,000 books catalogued in 1744, Exeter 5,000 in 1752. Lambeth Palace contained a significant library of books and manuscripts, decanted regularly to libraries at one or other of the universities. New libraries were designed by Wren for Lincoln and St Paul’s in London. Lincoln’s library had been re-founded around its surviving treasure of manuscripts, augmented with Dean Michael Honywood’s library of several thousand books assembled in exile in the Netherlands during the Civil War and Interregnum. St Paul’s books, like those of the Royal College of Physicians, had perished in the fire of London, they were at that time being kept at nearby Sion College, its library was restocked by means of the purchase of collections of books and by gifts, including, in 1712, 2,000 books from the library of Henry Compton, Bishop of London. The library of Sion College, largely but not exclusively ecclesiastical in character, following its devastation by the fire, had been replenished and held some 10,000 books in 1712. Wren also designed a parish library building for St Martin’s-in-the-Fields which, through generous support from influential friends of its founder, Thomas Tenison, later Archbishop of Canterbury, would eventually hold 4-5,000 books. Rougham parish library was a much more modest collection in this company of contemporary institutional libraries.
I have assumed that many of the books in Rougham church were assembled as a library from among the North family’s books. They will, of course, have included bundles of books bought with the library project in mind. There was during this period a vigorous recirculation of exactly the kinds of continental editions and English religious literature which we see so well represented here. Catalogues from this book trade are to be found in the list – see titles 717, 1155, and 1173. Mark Purcell describes private accumulations of books in country houses during the early-modern period. Some accumulations simply accumulated, other accumulations were collected, and collecting became more the case when what book historians have called ‘bibliomania’ became a consuming fashion from about 1720. As the corrosive signature was drying on the Rougham catalogue, Edward Harley was returning from his Grand Tour and installing the first of his books and manuscripts at his homes in Dover Street and at Wimpole Hall (he was soon to rebuild Wimpole Hall around his library). Over the next 20 years he amassed a collection of 14,000 rolls, 50,000 printed books, 41,000 prints and 350,000 pamphlets, all of which were eventually listed in a twelve-volume catalogue. We cannot be sure whether the Rougham books were bought new over time, accumulating generation by generation, nor can we be certain how many of them were collected for the parish library. But it would be quite wrong to assume that the Rougham catalogue represent the whole of any such imagined accumulation of North books – there is no music here, and little natural philosophy, little literature in modern languages, and few books on travel and trade, or indeed much else we might expect to find in a gentlemanly library, let alone one of a family as intellectual as the Norths.
Mark Purcell writes of the tendency of libraries to specialise during the 17th century as new objects emerged in bibliography. He mentions collectors interested in the early book, the rare book, the book with provenance and annotations, books with fine bindings. In the Rougham catalogue each title is listed along with its place and date of publication. This indicates an alertness to the specificity of editions, which indicates a bibliographical interest. On the other hand, the consignment to a parish church, however improved by Roger North’s rebuilding, of a dozen or so incunabula, and numerous early continental editions, albeit mostly theological works in Latin, rather indicates someone who is not what we would now call a bibliophile. One ‘specialism’ apparent among the North books already noted is ‘Orientalium Philogicorum'(i.e., ‘oriental languages’). We are told by Jessopp that books that had belonged to Roger North’s niece, Dudleya North, who had died in 1712, were a special feature of the parish library. Dudleya was the daughter of Charles, Roger North’s eldest brother. Following Charles’ death Roger became guardian to his eldest brother’s children (as he was also guardian to the children of his other brothers, Francis and Dudley). When Dudleya showed a talent for scholarship, Roger encouraged it. He was a promoter of women’s education, he was by his own admission the son of one remarkable woman and the brother of others, we know that he was a friend of Mary Astell. We can assume that a significant proportion of the oriental literature in the Rougham parish library had been bought by Dudleya. We also know that Rogers’ brother Dr. John North, the Master of Trinity, had been the owner of a fine collection of Greek texts, but although some of these might have been here, we also know that the bulk of them had remained, and remain, in the library of his College in Cambridge.
The second ‘specialism’ is represented by the numerous continental and English theological books which offer a survey of post-Reformation literature. It is entirely possible that many of them had been accumulated over long years by the North family, and that they had then been devoted to a new purpose in the parish library. As a set they represent a continuous account of what an intellectual, thoughtful, Anglican family might have been reading since the Reformation. But we should consider, too, a particular investment of Roger North’s own. He had served as the legal advisor to William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury. Opinions and notes that he had prepared for the Archbishop are to be found among his surviving papers. He advised Sancroft during the summer crisis of 1688 when James II pressed his Declaration of Indulgence on an unwilling clergy, arresting seven bishops (one of whom was Sancroft; see, also n. 50, below) and holding them in the Tower of London. He produced a review of legal precedents ‘Concerng ye Kgs dispensg power’, adding that ‘a clear and full Collection of Ecclesiasticall Transactions since the Reformation (if it could be had) were of great use’ which he delivered with some completeness in the same advice. Maybe this ambition is represented in the catalogue. In the following year, after the ascension of William and Mary, bishops, clergy and lay-people in public offices, found themselves obliged to swear allegiance to the new monarchs of the Glorious Revolution in order to retain their posts. Many refused, fearing that in so doing they would forswear or perjure previous oaths. James may have made bad decisions as a king, but for nonjurors, those who would not swear, he was still king until he abdicated, and their previous oaths remained binding. Most would have accepted William and Mary as regents, but not as dual monarchs. Roger North, who himself refused the new oath, became the principal legal advisor to the leaders the nonjurors. There were nine nonjurer English bishops, a number which included five of the seven bishops imprisoned by James the previous year (all Scottish bishops also refused the oath, but were anyway ousted by the return of the Presbyterians). A clandestine church was established. In the 1690s William Lloyd, the excluded Bishop of Norwich, who had been delegated by the excluded Archbishop Sancroft as his successor, went so far as to consecrate bishops of his own, among them George Hickes as suffragen Bishop of Thetford. Hickes was a vigorous promoter of the nonjuror cause and in 1713 consecrated three bishops himself. Hickes corresponded with Roger North over many years and was evidently a supporter and likely an instigator for the foundation of Rougham library. He is represented in the Rougham library not only as an author on ecclesiatical matters, but also as a scholar, his Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archæologicus of 1705, catalogue number 811, was an early contribution to the scientific study of Anglo-Saxon. It is likely that we will be able to read for Hickes’ influence, and for nonjuror sentiment generally, in the composition of the library. The story of the nonjuror schism is long and strange, and centred around more than simply matters of divine right and submission to earthly authorities.
There may also be some other overlapping historical and theological special interests in play, interests which developed over time and according to circumstances to which we have to be alert. For example, there is the ‘specialism’ revealed by the collection of pamphlets which, considered as an accumulation, might represent the North family’s longer engagement with political and religious events. They may have been materials for his biographical and historical research. He was preparing his Examen, and the biographies of his brothers, at the very moment of the founding of the library. Many of the pamphlets had only recently been bound, the latest pamphlets are dated 1712, that is, some years after the founding of the Rougham parish library, and four years before the date of the catalogue. This rather suggests that they were purchased with the library in mind.
If we think of the Rougham books as a specialist scholarly library (or even as an accumulation in process of scholarly specialisation), we might compare the number of books with the library of any number of contemporary gentleman scholars. Robert Boyle was reported to have owned more than 3,500 volumes, and John Locke owned 3,641 books ‘at some time’ during his adult life. ‘Samuel Pepys (another nonjuror) had about as many titles as Locke, but much grander titles they were, and John Evelyn had 5,000’; all four of these great men had substantially larger libraries than Isaac Newton who left 1,792 titles (1,896 volumes), many of which are now in Wren’s Trinity Library, along with Dr. John North’s books. Jonathan Swift who, like Newton, Pepys and Locke is not likely to have inherited many books, and who lived many years in the libraries of patrons, listed a mere 479 titles (600 volumes) in his own handwritten 1714 library catalogue.
From these numbers of books and categories we might conceive a set of proportions and averages, typicalities and boundaries. The Rougham parish catalogue might represent a large fragment of a family accumulation of books, substantially augmented by the special interests of its founder and his niece and with the advice from his closest political allies. We might also think of it as a North family enterprise, drawing upon books that had been distributed across a number of properties belonging to an extensive extended family, but which had been drawn to Rougham as members of that family died off. We might try to imagine how the books had fitted into the private life of the family before being redeployed to their new public function where (as a possibly intended consequence) the catalogue declares the family’s intimate, private reading history to the diocesan authorities in Norwich, and to the world and its publics beyond, by means of a very legal-looking parchment roll.
Not included among the numbers of books, although very much part of the function of any family ‘library’ as an archive, would be the family papers, personal and intellectual as well as financial and legal. These are the so-called ‘evidences’. Their (to us) diversity and ambiguity as a body of things might trace (for us) difficult to determine processes of the formation of identity and the definition of privacy within the the early-modern family (Roger North refers to his own manuscript writings at one point as ‘My owne Reiterated self’). In his writings on architecture Roger North describes three locations for books and papers in a house: the library, the master’s closet and the parlour. In Rougham Hall, the library was on the west side of the house on the first floor, ‘a good room with 2 windoes backwards’. There was also the ‘master’s closet’, a ground floor room ‘for my papers and domestique concerns’. This room connected with his bailiff’s room and the parlour, its doors therefore linking the intimate, the private and the public domains. North argues the utility of this arrangement ‘for any one who breaks the employment of his time, as part to books, part to law concernes and part to accounts, […] he will find great use in dispersing them in-to severall stations in his house proper for them’. He describes the ‘comon parlour’ (as opposed to the reception room, or ‘great parlour’) as ‘the place of generall pastime […] and if the walls can be brought to allow it, nothing is more useful here than closets, cupboards, and presses, for the laying by of books, swords, cloaks, and other things, which may be of quotidian use and shoud to avoid lumbring the room have places to lay them buy in’. We know also that the North brothers were all enthusiastic experimenters and handymen, no doubt there were interesting tools, curiosities and other objects of various kinds. The North family books are now long gone. Many of the private papers were distributed across public collections in a series of nineteenth-century sales. Some of the papers were eventually re-purchased by an indirect descendent, Marianne North the painter, and were returned to Rougham, where they remain ‘private’ in a more recent building that replaced Roger North’s Hall. She noted in her autobiography that the parish library had been destroyed and its contents dispersed in 1771. I shall return to some of these points in the second essay.
THE NUMBER OF PARISH LIBRARIES
The earliest English parish libraries date from the 14th century, about a dozen pre-date the Reformation. Numbers increased at an accelerating pace after 1660 when there were still fewer than seventy, up to 1689 when there were one hundred and ten. There were over two hundred parish libraries in England in 1709 when the Rougham library was founded, this number had increased by fifty per cent to more than three hundred by 1716 when the Rougham catalogue was signed. All parish churches in England c. 1710 ought to have contained some books, a succession of 16th-century Royal Injunctions had required the purchase of Bibles, Erasmus’ Paraphrases, and various other other texts. From the Injunctions we read a general concern not only with the salvation of the laity, and with their submission to authority even when left alone to read and save themselves, but also an anxiety regarding the competence and orthodoxy of the priesthood. Graham Best cites a directive from Archbishop Parker of 1564 that added John Jewels’ Apologie to the books that the priesthood should read, and to a later directive from Archbishop Whitgift that all non-graduate clergy should make notes from Bullinger’s Sermons. Following the Restoration, and especially after 1689, under something like an Anglican ascendancy, the increasing numbers of parish libraries suggest a coordinated project at work. The English nation never became an Anglican people, but it seems that there was an attempt to make them something like one … by means of books.
A library was founded in Boston at St Botolph’s in 1610 at the behest of the church assembly. It was enlarged by a succession of individual donations as well as by sponsorship from the Corporation and the parish. Sir Humphrey Chetham, a London linen merchant, founded a school in his home town of Manchester, the descendant of which is Chetham’s School of Music. He also left money for the foundation of a library at the school, now the Chetham Library, established in 1655. Some of the money was also used to establish five small parish libraries in and around Manchester. In 1687, Barnabas Oley, an academic and churchman, sponsored libraries of sixteen books each in the ten poorest parishes in Cumberland. We read in John Evelyn’s diary for February 15, 1684 a reference to the library at St Martin’s-in-the-fields already mentioned.
“Dr. Tenison communicated to me his intention of erecting a library in St. Martin’s parish, for the public use, and desired my assistance, with Sir Christopher Wren, about placing and structure thereof, a worthy and laudable design. He told me there were thirty or forty young men in orders in his parish, either governors to young gentlemen or chaplains to noblemen, who being reproved by him on occasion for frequenting taverns or coffee-houses, told him they would study or employ their times better if they had books. This put the pious Doctor on this design; and indeed a great reproach it is that so great a city as London should not have a public library becoming it.”
The library at St Mary Magdalene at Reigate, Surrey was established in 1701 by the vicar, Andrew Cranston. It was set up as ‘a publick library for the use and perusall of the freeholders, vicar and inhabitants of the said parish and of the gentlemen and clergymen inhabiting in parts thereunto adjacent’. In the first year some 1,400 books were assembled, the gifts of 365 donors, including Cranston himself and a number of celebrities, among whom was John Evelyn. A Benefactions Register records the donations (as it did at St Martin’s-in-the-Fields). Each of these library foundations represents, or enables the imagining of, a different kind of local project. The Boston library looks like the spontaneous Manifestation of the Lord at His Work in a Protestant town, pious and local. The Chetham and Oley projects seem to represent charitable assistance for poor clergymen. Tenison’s metropolitan library project (at least, its self-acknowleged purpose) is explained to and for us by Evelyn. Reigate, which became a famous example as we shall see, might almost require us to picture a proto-enlightenment project shared between gentlemen coming together as ‘a public’.
On the final page of the Rougham catalogue, the third title from last (1,209 out of 1,211), is ‘Brays. Bibliotheca parochialis’. There is another title by Thomas Bray listed at number 695 on f. 5v, ‘Bray’s Baptismal Covenant, 1697’. This must refer to A short discourse upon the doctrine of our baptismal covenant, etc.. The first edition of this book had been dedicated to William Lloyd, Bishop of Coventry and Litchfield. (This William Lloyd is not to be confused with his namesake, the Bishop of Norwich, discussed above. He was one of the seven bishops imprisoned by James in June 1688 for signing a petition against James’ Declaration of Indulgence and he went on to become an enthusiastic supporter of the Glorious Revolution.) In the dedication Bray warns of a church in peril if it does not catechise its children and bring young people into the church, the numbers of non-Anglicans was everywhere rising:
“Atheists, Deists, and Socinians on the one hand […] Enthusiasts and Antinomians on the other […] what Indignation from God may not we of the Clergy dread, should we suffer the Youth of our Nation to go abroad into the World, without having first given ’em those Religious Impressions by good Principles, as will guard ’em from the danger thereof.”
The second edition, our book, the edition of 1697, was dedicated to the Duke of Gloucester, the seven year-old son of Princess Anne, heir to the throne. This much shorter dedication speaks to a child, explaining in large print the role of catechism to someone not yet confirmed. The book, over various editions, was a tremendous success earning Bray over £700, a princely sum. It was the most recent example of the kind of book that ministers might have read in order to fulfil the 59th Canon of the Church of England, which urged ‘Ministers to Catechise every Sunday’.
A poor student at Oxford, Thomas Bray had found modest preferment first in his native Shropshire and later in Warwickshire. Even before the publication of his first book Bray had been noticed by Henry Compton, Bishop of London. Henry Compton was an aristocrat, the youngest son of the Earl of Northampton (who died at the Battle of Hopton Heath), he had been a soldier before joining the Church. Under Charles Compton had enjoyed rapid promotion, he was appointed religious advisor to the Princesses Anne and Mary, made Dean of the Chapel Royal, and became Bishop of Oxford and then London in quick succession. He was suspended from his posts by James owing to his opposition to that king’s Catholic policies (Compton was not one of the Seven Bishops held in the Tower, having been proscribed by James even before the crisis of the summer of 1688). He was one of the signatories of the Invitation to the Stadthouder Willem and he was restored to his bishoprics after the Glorious Revolution. It was Compton who crowned William and Mary and who baptised the infant Duke of Gloucester. It seems likely that it was Compton’s influence that led to the royal dedication of the second edition of Bray’s book. As Bishop of London, Compton was responsible for the colonial church, which is to say, the Anglican church in the American Colonies. Maryland had come to his attention. The colony been founded and developed by two generations of the Calvert family, Cecil and Charles, second and third Barons Baltimore, both Catholics who had enjoyed Stuart patronage. They had held onto their territory, even during the Interregnum, by being out of the way, and by promoting a policy of religious toleration. Following the fall of James they were turned out by the colony’s Protestant majority (not all of them Anglicans, of course). Baltimore rule was temporarily ended, and with it religious toleration. In 1695 the Governor of the Colony, a military appointee, Francis Nicholson, approached Compton asking for a Commissary to oversee the establishment of the Anglican church in Maryland, and Compton chose Bray. It was proposed by the Maryland assembly that to secure the colony as an Anglican territory, it should be divided into thirty parishes, and that a poll tax be instituted to pay for the infrastructure of buildings, ministers and administration. Bray waited for parliamentary approval of these reforms which were fiercely opposed by, among others, the Quakers. When he at last arrived in Maryland in 1700 the scheme still lacked official sanction. He wrote a pamphlet, Proposals for Encouraging Learning and Religion in the Foreign Plantations: and to induce such of the clergy of this kingdom, as are persons of sobriety and abilities, to accept of a mission into those parts, which drew attention to a problem he had encountered – that he could recruit only poor men to the colonial ministry, men unable to afford what might be considered the necessary books. He argued for the founding of libraries in the colonies and appealed for financial support. He never gained government sponsorship for any such scheme, but he managed to raise sufficient funds by means of the appeal made in the pamphlet to begin the work. He received a gift of £44 from Princess Anne, future Queen and (it will be remembered) mother of the dedicatee of the second edition of his Baptismal Covenant. Thirty-nine American libraries were founded during his lifetime, one of the first was the largest, in Maryland’s new Protestant capital Annapolis (the city named in honour of the same Princess). In 1697 he published An essay towards promoting all necessary and useful knowledge, both divine and human, in all parts of his majesty’s dominions, both at home and abroad. In this pamphlet he pointed out that in Britain there were some 400 Anglican ministers on stipends of below £15 a year. He argued that on account of their poverty ministers, and consequently the church, lacked both in dignity and learning. The pamphlet contained a list of recommended books. The essential points in these two publications were developed very thoroughly in his Bibliotheca parochialis of 1707, dedicated to Henry Compton, a copy of which we have already found to be added as item 1,209, third from last on the last page of the Rougham catalogue.
So it was that from 1695 increasing numbers of libraries were established, both in the colonies and at home. Bray even set up libraries for seafaring clergy in the ports of Gravesend, Deal and Plymouth during the delays preceding his departure to Maryland. In 1705 ‘the Trustees for Erecting Parochial Libraries, and Promoting Other Charitable Designs’, or ‘The Associates of Dr. Bray’, became a formal entity, several of its supporters having already been active for a decade. The scheme first involved cash grants distributed by Bray himself, from his own or his associates pockets. After 1705 the Associates supplied a standardised set of (usually 72) books, with a bookpress. More than forty English parish libraries were set up between 1695 and 1700 and, after a brief hiatus, a further sixty between 1710 and 1713. Meanwhile, Bray drafted ‘A General Plan’ for ‘a Protestant Congregation, or Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge’ (the words here echoing that of the Catholic church’s Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, the latin phrase actually occurs later in the document). The Society, which became a ‘high church’ enterprise supported by many suspected of nonjuror sympathies, had a remit much wider than the Maryland project, or any library project. It sought to bring together clergy and laity for an extraordinary undertaking of world missionary activity in ‘Lands Given to Superstitious Uses’. The SPCK was eventually established in March 1699, not long before Bray at last took ship for Maryland. (The SPCK’s foundation was followed three years later by the establishment of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the SPG, which sought to convert Catholics, Quakers and other Nonconformists in the colonies.) By 1716 more than a quarter of England’s parish libraries were the result of the evangelical zeal and organisational nous of, first among others, Thomas Bray. There were three Bray libraries established in Norfolk during the period: at Sedgford (we have no date for its foundation), at North Walsham (founded in 1710), and at Howe (founded in 1729). Bray provided an extensive list of possible books for parish libraries in his Bibliotheca parochialis. The contents of a ‘typical’ Dr. Bray’s Associates library, the Oldbury catalogue of 1714, shares 29 of its 72 titles with the Rougham catalogue. Only three titles among the 72 volumes in this ‘typical’ library appear to be in Latin; for obvious reasons, as discussed above, it would seem that the institution of Bray libraries and what was going on at Rougham represent two quite different projects.
This, broadly, is the number-of-parish-libraries and institutional-historical background against which we should understand the founding of the parish library at St Mary’s, Rougham. There are two other points of information to be mentioned. Firstly, we should note the succession of Queen Anne’s Bounty Acts passed by parliament from 1703 onwards. These Acts used ‘annates‘, or ‘first fruits’ monies, a donation originally granted to the Papacy but since the time of the Reformation received by the Crown. The Act dictated that these annates were to be used to purchase land for the support of the poorest church livings. The problem of clerical poverty was not solved by this measure. A second factor was the Act for the better Preservation of Parochial Libraries in England of 1708. This formalised the rules under which parish libraries were to be run. Clauses IV and V of the Act required the making of a catalogue and the signing of the catalogue, and its submission to the diocesan authorities, which ostensibly explains the existence of our document (although not its manifestation on parchment). There are surprisingly few such catalogues retained in diocesan archives, much of the information provided in the Directory of Parochial Libraries comes from other sources – from accidental survivals, from documents of some other kind, from ‘notitiae parochiorum‘, from terriers and from diocesan visitors’ reports. The Act did not leave a documentary tideline. Clause XI of the Act was a special proviso introduced relating to the Reigate Library; Reigate was allowed to retain the rules it had devised for itself (which were pretty much the same as the rules in the Act). It is clear from the Act that it is not ostensibly about the utility and virtue of libraries (perhaps we should concede those to be given), but rather it is about processes relating to security, the catalogue was to be an inventory of books made at the handing over of a parish from one priest to another. The Act is also about registration and supervision. Catalogues were to be made available to episcopal authorities. Were every parish library to send a catalogue of books to their local bishop, and were every bishop then to forward those catalogues to Lambeth Palace, then documentation would be in place for the central power to read into and scrutinise the souls of a population.
THE LIBRARY BUILDING
As far as I am aware there has been no archaeology done on the site of St Mary’s church, although a readable summary of its architectural history was produced in 1988. The north side of the building where the library stood was largely remodelled in 1913. A account of the Library, the building and its contents, is given by Jessopp, a Victorian ‘discoverer’ and promoter of Roger North’s writings; as a break in this little essay, and in an effort to raise its style, I transcribe his account below.
“42. Those were not the days of circulating libraries, and a man of studious habits and literary tastes, if he could not borrow books, must needs buy them. Mr. North’s library grew ever larger and larger, and it was evident that it would go on growing. Such an accumulation of books in the heart of Norfolk would in those days have been a very unsaleable piece of property, and yet might prove of great utility hereafter if it were kept together for others besides the occupant of Rougham Hall to refer to and borrow from. Mr. North had not yet abandoned his hope of getting the patronage of the vicarage into his own hands. It is evident that he contemplated having a resident clergyman who should perform daily service in the church, and it would be a distinct gain if a large library were placed at the disposal of such a chaplain as he desired to secure. With this view he drew up a scheme whereby his large and increasig collection of books should be removed to a new depository, and instead of remaining an heirloom to descend with the estate, should be so settled as to be a parochial library, to be vested jointly in the occupant of Rougham Hall and the vicar of the parish for the time being. A new library was built as the adjunct to the north aisle of the church, and was completed some time during the year 1709. It had scarcely been finished when Mr. North’s only surviving brother, Montagu, died. He had never married and had spent the last years of his life at Rougham. Roger North was his sole executor and residuary legatee, and though very liberal provision was made in the will for several nephews and nieces and others who are mentioned, the residue, after all payments, constituted a handsome addition to Mr. North’s fortune.
“43. On the 25th April, 1712, the Hon. Dudleya North died at the house of her sister-in-law, the Lady North and Grey, in Bond Street. She, too, appointed her uncle executor, and when her affairs came to be wound up, Roger North requested that the books and MSS. which his niece had collected should be added to the Rougham Library. Her brother, Lord North and Grey, at once acceded to the proposal. […]
“[…] 47. […] my readers will expect to be told what became of all this structure that Mr. North raised in a little country village in Norfolk, and left in so flourishing a condition nearly half a century after it had come into his hands. The sequel is a melancholy one. Before the eighteenth century closed not one stone was left upon another of the house which Roger North had erected; the aisle of the church which he had rebuilt and the library which he had founded, had been pulled down to the ground. The books were all dispersed, none knew where or how, nor have I ever been able to to trace more than a single volume. At the beginning of the present century there were stories still current of old “parchment books” which none could decipher, and sumptuous to look at, having found their way into the villagers’ houses, and it is just possible that these may refer to the Oriental MSS. which Dudleya North had acquired from Constantinople through the intervention of her uncles and their correspondents in the East; but of all not a vestige has survived. [There are no ‘Oriental MSS.’ listed in the Rougham Catalogue, sad to say, so this elegiac sentence can be left hanging in its own romantic updraught.]”
Further to this, here from Roger North’s own Preface to the Life of Francis North, etc.,
“[…] the youngest, named Dudleya, having amaciated herself with study, whereby she had made familiar to her, not only the Greek and Latin, but the Oriental languages, under the infliction of a sedentary distemper, died also […] [h]er Library, consisting of a choice collection of Oriental books, by the present Lord North and Grey, her only surviving brother, was given to the parochial library of Rougham, in Norfolk, where it remains […]”
George Ballard’s Memoirs of Severall Ladies has an entry for Dudleya which I also add.
“Honourable Mrs. Dudleya North.
“The Honourable Mrs. Dudleya North was the younger of the two daughters of the Right Honourable Charles Lord North, of Kirtling and Baron Grey of Rolleston, by Catherine the daughter of the Right Honourable William Lord Grey of Wark. She was born at Lord North and Grey’s house in Leicester fields, in July 1675. This Lord North had two sons who were instructed in all necessary school learning by a private tutor in the house, before they were sent to the University of Cambridge, wherein at a proper age they were both admitted Noblemen of Magdalen College. In the course of their education at home, this lady, having a natural inclination to learning, whilst she was a girl, was desirous to learn Latin and Greek of the same person along with her brothers. Upon this foundation, as she advanced in years, she pursued her studies so assiduously and with such good success, that she quickly rendered those two languages familiar to her. But not content with that, she extended her views a great deal farther; and, after becoming intimately acquainted with the original language of the Old Testament; she gained by a long severe course of study, a competent share of knowledge in the whole circle of Oriental learning. An evident proof of this, is the choice collection of books, she died possessed of in that branch of literature; which after her death, were, by her only surviving brother, the then Lord North and Grey, given to the Parochial library at Rougham in Norfolk, founded by the Honourable Roger North, Esq; for the use of the minister of the parish, and under certain regulations and restrictions; of the neighbouring clergy also, for ever. Amongst these there is in particular, one very neat pocket Hebrew Bible in 12mo. without points, with silver clasps to it, and bound in blue Turky leather, in a case of the same materials, which she constantly carried to church with her. But this incessant as well as intense application to study, at length brough her into a consumptive disorder, which put a period to her valuable life; and she was translated from this, to a better, on the 25th of April, 1712; at her sisters house the Lady North and Grey, in Bond-street in London: her brother the Lord North being at that time in Flanders. On the second of May following, her corps was carried down to Kirtling, or Catlidge, in Cambridgshire, the ancient seat of the family, and, with all decent ceremony, suitable to her quality, interred amongst her ancestors in that church by her uncle the said Honourable Roger North Esq; whom she had made the sole executor of her last will and testament.
“In the first leaf of all the books that had been hers, when they were deposited in that library, this inscription was inserted.
“E. Libris nobilis & eruditae Virginis Dominae Dudleyae North, Filiae aetate minoris praenobilis Caroli Domini North & Grey Baronis de Kirtling & Rolleston defuncti. Beneficio praenobilis Wilhelmi Domini North & Grey, ejus Filii natu maximi & haeredis; E. Concilio secretiori, & inter Locum tenentes Generalis Exercituum dominae Annae Dei Gratia Mag. Brit. Fran, & Hibern. Reginae, Fedei Defensoris, &c.”
THE LIBRARY CATALOGUE AS THE REPRESENTATION OF A MOTIVE
Why did Roger North establish a parish library in Rougham? Jessopp’s account suggests a specific ambition, to have ‘a chaplain’ and to supply him with books. That would agree generally with what we have so far tried to do, setting the Rougham library into the larger context of charitable giving and Anglican mission, both generally in the Reformation period and more specifically in England after the Restoration, with the Anglican church at a moment of ‘church in crisis’ during the reign of Queen Anne. But since there is scarcely any contemporary documentation offering us insight into the founding of this specific library, is there any way in which we could (or should) read the catalogue and its contexts, since it is all we have to work with now that the books are long gone?
We might reflect on the library as one of a number of ‘improvements’ by a landowner. Roger North designed his own house, he had a long-standing interest in architecture. (If it was built to his design then) the dovecote which still stands at Rougham is testament to a man with genuine talent – more than talent, a creative architectural wit. He laid out trees and gardens which today mark the grounds clearly enough to be visible from a satellite; in the midst of the grounds the dovecote, too, can be seen. He hired a brickmaker from Fulham to come to Norfolk and build kilns to make bricks for the building of his house. He innovated with digging fishponds and published on the subject. Further to his remarks on running a household recounted above, he was the author of a book on estate management. Although excluded from public life as a nonjuror, and although he never (as was frequently the case for men of his class) published under his own name, Roger North was a ‘Public Man’ in as rich a sense as is required for a gentleman to function in late-Stuart and early-Georgian England. So we are perhaps right to see the library as sign of a landowner behaving as a landowner should. His parish library follows the directions suggested in the 1708 Act and, furthermore, even has substantial overlap with the evangelical motives of contemporary parish library foundations. But tangled up in that general description was a set of very particular circumstances, some already adumbrated. As we have read, the books from Dudleya’s collection apparently each contained a bookplate proclaiming their status as memorials of her life, so presenting us with a commemorative function for the library. But then … the library was established in 1709, Dudleya died in 1712, and the catalogue was produced in 1716. There is no reference to Dudleya in the catalogue, and her books, whether they had bookplates or not, are not identified. The library catalogue must represent an unfolding succession of motives, but stubbornly remains a representation effectively disguising any such motives.
We might also see the library, and read its catalogue of titles, as a declaration by a nonjuror. Nonjurors saw themelves as a group within the national church, not so much marginal or refusing, but rather the true succession, a group who yet hoped to return to the centre of the church and national life. Roger North was involved in providing legal advice and support to numerous nonjurors and suspected Jacobites for more than a quarter of a century. He never argued any course other than nonresistance and passive obedience, but he consorted with people less inhibited. He had dangerous relations and acquaintances. In 1696 he had married the daughter of Sir Robert Gayer, a notorious Jacobite, who was involved in the Duke of Berwick’s Plot and temporarily exiled (Gayer was a long-time friend of Archbishop Sancroft, they had toured Europe together in their youth). Dudleya North’s brother William, the Lord North and Grey, was one of the most outspoken Tories in the House of Lords. His patriotism was not in doubt, he had been a general in Marlborough’s army and had lost his right hand at Blenheim, but he was dismissed from the governorship of Portsmouth suspected of Jacobite sympathies during Anne’s final illness in 1714 (although not implicated in the rebellion of the following year). Following his involvement in the Atterbury Plot of 1721 he was exiled. Thereafter he accepted an Earldom from the Old Pretender and a commission in the King of Spain’s army. It is not hard to understand why Rougham Hall was searched for arms in 1696, and again in 1715. In this light, the library catalogue represents to the world an assertion, indeed a celebration, one enhanced by its manifestation on vellum, of North family ‘orthodoxy’, an orthodoxy which heldfast while others were trimmed away. Seeing it in that light we can set the library project alongside his other preoccupation of the period 1709-16, the preparation of his refutation of Whig historical triumphalism, the Examen and the biographies of his brothers.
We might also considered the library as the performance of public good within the framework of a culture of competition and emulation. By 1716 Roger North will have known of developments 15 miles away in King’s Lynn (where his brother Francis had been MP in the early 1670s, a borough held by the Walpole family for over a century after 1702). We have already noted the existence of a 1641 parchment catalogue for the St. Nicholas library in that town. The St. Nicholas library was opened in 1617, a second library had been set up above the north porch of St. Margaret’s church in 1631. And then:
“In the Year 1714, in the Mayorality of Edmund Rolfe, Esq; the Reverend Thomas Thurlin, D.D. late President of St John’s College in Cambridge, and Rector of Gaywood in this County, having by his Will given all his Books at Cambridge and Gaywood to the Library belonging to St Margaret’s in King’s Lynn; the same were deliver’d to the Mayor and Burgesses by his two Executors, consisting of One hundred seventy nine Folio’s, One hundred seventy eight Octavo’s and Duodecimo’s, and Eighty four Quarto’s, in the whole Four hundred and forty one Books, valued at One hundred and Sixty pounds. He also gave by his Will to the said Mayor and Burgesses, for the settling a Yearly Pension of Six Pounds for ever, to be paid to a poor Scholar, who shall go from the Grammar-School of this Town to St John’s College aforesaid. And Forty Shillings Yearly for ever toward the Cloathing three of the poorest Inhabitants of Gaywood and C.C. &c.
“The books over the north porch were suffering from damp, so dispensation was obtained from the Bishop of Norwich to build a new structure inside St. Margaret’s church. Permission was granted on two conditions, which we might imagine were also required of Roger North at Rougham.
“Provided that this Library and every thing belonging to it be built in such manner as may be no way prejudicial to the Fabrick of the said Church, nor inconvenient to any of the Parishioners in their Attendance on the Divine Offices therein performed: Hereby also requiring you, according to the late Act of Parliament in that Case made and provided, or cause to be made, a true and perfect Catalogue of all the Books in the said Library; and to deliver the same, signed by the Minister of the said Parish, to us, and to our Vicar-General.”
The same writer continues:
“After the Corporation had got the Faculty for Building a New Library, several worthy Townsmen, Gentlemen, Clergymen, and others, raised several Hundred Pounds by a Voluntary Subscription to buy Books to be deposited therein: At which time Charles Lord Viscount Townsend, Baron of King’s Lynn, gave the Sum of Fifty Pounds; and each of the Members of Parliament for the said Town, viz. the Honourable Robert Walpole, Esq; now Sr Robert Walpole, Knt of the most Noble Order of the Garter, Chancellor of the Exchequer &c. and Sr Charles Turner, Kt. (since Knight and Baronet) did each of them give the sum of Twenty Five Pounds, besides Five Guineas given by Robert Britiss, Esq; the Recorder of the same.”
In Swaffham, 9 miles south of Rougham, there was another library, it still exists although its 400 or so volumes were removed to Norwich Cathedral in 1995. The collection was begun in the 16th century by members of the Spelman family and was donated to the town of Swaffham in 1679 on the death of Sir Clement Spelman by (another) Clement Spelman of Narborough Hall, who also bequeathed funds for the purchase of further books. The Swaffham library is no more a conventional parish library along the lines suggested by Bray than is Rougham library. For example, the collection betrays recusant sympathies, there are a number of ‘Catholic’ books believed to have belonged to Clement Spelman’s brother-in-law, Francis Willoughby. There are also a number of interesting antiquarian objects, including the ‘Swaffham Hours’. Klein describes a book by an earlier Spelman, Sir Henry, The History and Fate of Sacrilege, being transcribed for Francis Cherry in 1698 in the nonjuror enclave at Shottesbrook. At Rougham, Roger North set up a third library, within a day’s walk of these other two, it is hard to imagine that anyone who knew one of them would not be aware of the others, and would not consider them in comparison with each other.
It is not contraversial to suggest that few Rougham parishioners read much, and that even fewer read Latin (let alone Greek, Syriac, Hebrew or Arabic), perhaps a future curate might, but certainly not Ambrose Pimlowe who, as we plainly see in the catalogue, stumbled in transcribing Greek and did not even attempt Hebrew. The library stood for a few decades as a proud, barely readable and (presumably) little read testament to a purpose we can only guess at. In Part 2 we shall consider the contents of the catalogue as a ‘set’ representing a position, and attempt a search for an afterlife of the books in the marketplace.
APPENDIX
(From Kassler, J. C., Seeking truth: Roger North’s notes on Newton and correspondence with Samuel Clarke c.1704-1713, Farnham/Burlington VA, 2016, pp. 341-2. My comments are [in square brackets]. I have also placed Dr Kassler’s notes into square brackets, augmenting her abbreviated titles so that her text can remain self-standing.)
RN Books (1) = (UK:Nro [i.e., Norfolk Record Office] DN/MSC2/29. Dated 1714, the letters ‘DN’ stand for the Diocese of Norwich. The manuscript itself is bound as a small, oblong quarto notebook and consists of a short-title catalogue of approximately 1,150 books, the entries in which represent, with a few exceptions, the books that North transferred from his personal library to the parochial library that he established in St. Mary’s Church, Rougham, where about 1709 or a little later he had a special room built adjacent to the north isle [sic.] of the church for use of future incumbents, as well as for his own successors at Rougham Hall [note 1. See Korsten, F. J. M., Roger North (1651-1734): Virtuoso and Essayist: A Study of his Life and Ideas, Amsterdam, 1981, pp. 22-3 and 267 n.231.] Most of the entries in the catalogue are in the hands of others, although North has occasionally made additions or corrections.
In addition to the books from his own library, there were a number of donations and bequests, including from North’s niece, Dudleya North, as well as from the nonjuring bishop, George Hickes, and the Norfolk lay nonjuror, Sir Christopher Calthorpe. [note 2. Calthorpe, whose manor was in East Barsham, was a cousin of Sir Nicholas Le Strange; see Cherry, D., ‘Sir Nicholas L’Estrange’, Norfolk Archaeology 34 (3), 1968, pp. 314-5, et passim, and Yould, G. M. ‘Two Nonjurors’, Norfolk Archaeology 35 (3), 1972, pp. 364-381, especially p. 378 for the nonjuror interpretation of the oaths of fealty to the monarch. Regarding RNs not swearing the oaths, see Kassler, J. C., The Honourable Roger North, 1651–1734: On Life, Morality, Law and Tradition, Farnham/Burlington VA, 2009, pp. 34-47.] Upon the death in 1693 of Archbishop Sancroft, the nephews of the prelate were ‘ordered’ to present North with a memorial ring, although the same nephews indicated that he could take the equivalent in money if he thought that ‘more conducing’ for the memorial. He therefore accepted the money, since ‘by that time I had almost finisht my library at Rougham. And thought a memoriall of him there would be more lasting of him then a ring’. So he used the money to buy ‘a sett of law books, had ’em bound after his manner, and wrote [an inscription] in them’. [note 3. North, R. (ed. Millard, P. T.), Notes of Me: The Autobiography of Roger North, Toronto, 2000, p. 186 (where the inscription is reproduced in Latin).] These are probably the five volumes of statutes (four of Charles II and one of William and Mary), which are listed in the catalogue under the heading ‘Anglice Miscellaneorum’ [see Catalogue Nos. 962-6].
The Parochial Libraries Act (7 Anne 1708 cap. 14) had required that a catalogue be produced and deposited by 29 September 1709 in cases where parochial libraries were already in existence. But since the parochial library at St. Mary’s was not completed until 1712, copies of the draft regulations dated 1713, as well as the final version dated 1714 are still preserved, [note 4. (UK:Ccc [i.e., Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
]) Misc. Doc. 165, and (UK:Nro) DN/MSC1/40.] along with some notes related to the library. [note 5. (UK:Ob [Bodleian Library, Oxford]) MS North b. 17, no. 94 and MS Eng. Misc. c.360, ff, ff. 259-261. Unfortunately, however, in 1771 the parish library itself was destroyed and its contents dispersed. [note 6. See North, Recollections of a Happy Life, vol. 1, p. 2, and Colvin and Newman (eds), Of Building, p. xv.]