A GALLERY OF ANTIQUARIES
<under construction>
The purpose of the following pages, and associated links, is to commemorate persons who played important roles in the development of Anglo-Saxon studies (in general) and in the study of Anglo-Saxon charters (in particular).
Sir Robert Cotton is commemorated here not least because he assembled the largest single collection of 'original' Anglo-Saxon charters (now in the British Library), and a very considerable number of medieval cartularies (including the two eleventh-century Worcester cartularies in BL Cotton Tiberius A. xiii, and the two versions of the Abingdon chronicle-cartulary in BL Cotton Claudius C. ix and Cotton Claudius B. vi).
Bibl. Colin G. C. Tite, The Manuscript Library of Sir Robert Cotton, Panizzi Lectures 1993 (London, 1994); Sir Robert Cotton as Collector, ed. Christopher J. Wright (London, 1997). See also Carl Berkhout's bibliography of Anglo-Saxon scholars and scholarship.
A portrait of Sir Robert Cotton was commissioned in 1626 by his friend (and fellow collector of Anglo-Saxon charters) Sir Simonds D'Ewes (1st Baronet), of Stowlangtoft, Suffolk. As D'Ewes reported in his diary (written in the 1630s): 'The residue of July [1626] I spent moderatelie well in the studie & discourse of the common law often alsoe intermixing my transcribing of Fleta, the often before-mentioned old law manuscript which I borrowed of Sir Robert Cotton, Englands prime Antiquarie; whose picture downe to the middle I caused this month to bee verie liuelie & exactlie taken being the first & the onlie excellent Representacion that was euer taken of him; & which I now highlie value, & haue placed in my librarie as a select & choice monument'. The portrait, attributed to Cornelius Johnson (1593-1661), shows Cotton with his left hand resting on his prized manuscript of the Book of Genesis (Cotton Otho B. vi), which was all but destroyed in the disastrous fire at Ashburnham House in 1731.
The portrait of Cotton remained throughout the seventeenth century at Stowlangtoft, and was seen there by Humfrey Wanley in October 1703. It was bought by Wanley from Sir Simonds D'Ewes (3rd Baronet), in 1705-6, and from Wanley by Edward Harley, Lord Oxford, some time thereafter. It was sold at a Harley sale in 1742, and was bought by the antiquary James West (?1704-72). An engraving of the portrait, by George Vertue, was published in 1747 (Vetusta Monumenta I, pl. LXVI). The portrait was sold at a West sale in 1773, and would appear to have been acquired at about this time by a descendant of Sir Robert Cotton. Robert Cotton Trefusis (d. 1778), son of Robert Trefusis and Alice Cotton (daughter of Sir Robert Cotton, younger son of Sir Thomas Cotton [by his second wife Alice], son of Sir Robert Cotton the antiquary), was the father of Robert George William Trefusis, who became 17th Baron Clinton in 1794, and whose eldest son was Robert Cotton St John, 18th Baron Clinton (d. 1832). The portrait is now the property of The Rt. Hon. Lord Clinton, D.L., 22nd Baron Clinton, of Heanton Satchville, Devon.
For the entry in D'Ewes's diary (BL Harley 646, fol. 90r), see
The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D'Ewes,
ed. J. O. Halliwell (1845) I, p. 303. For Cornelius Johnson, see R.
W. Goulding (rev. C. K. Adams), Catalogue of the Pictures
Belonging to His Grace The Duke of Portland, K.G., at Welbeck Abbey,
17 Hill Street, London, and Langwell House (Cambridge, 1936), pp.
453-4, and Ellis Waterhouse, The Dictionary of 16th & 17th
Century British Painters (1989), pp. 142-5. For the later history
of the portrait, see Andrew G. Watson, The Library of Sir Simonds
D'Ewes (London, 1966), p. 90, n. 295; Roy Strong, Tudor and
Jacobean Portraits (London, 1969) I, pp. 51-3; and Simon Keynes,
'The Reconstruction of a Burnt Cottonian Manuscript: the Case of
Cotton MS. Otho A. I', British Library Journal 22.2 (1996),
pp. 113-60, at 144, n. 17.
<The fire in the Cottonian library (23 October 1731). The story of Dr Bentley's heroic escape from the inferno at Ashburnham House, clutching the Codex Alexandrinus under his arms, was told in a letter from Dr Robert Freind, of Westminster School, to Charlotte, Lady Sundon. The bust of Dr Freind by Rysbrack, at Christ Church, Oxford, reveals the face of a man who had witnessed the Cotton fire.>
<Humfrey Wanley, as the model of a modern Anglo-Saxonist. His attempt to borrow the Augustus portfolio of charters from the Cottonian Library, rebuffed by Thomas Smith. Renowned for his catalogue of manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (1705), and for his catalogue of the Harleian manuscripts.>
Bibl. C. E. Wright, 'Humfrey Wanley: Saxonist and Library-Keeper', Proceedings of the British Academy 46 (1960); The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. C. E. Wright and Ruth Wright, 2 vols. (London, 1966); Letters of Humfrey Wanley, Palaeographer, Anglo-Saxonist, Librarian, 1672-1726, ed. P. E. Heyworth (Oxford, 1989). For Wanley's 'Book of Specimens' (Longleat House, MS. 345), see Simon Keynes, 'The Reconstruction of a Burnt Cottonian Manuscript: the Case of Cotton MS. Otho A. I', British Library Journal 22.2 (1996), pp. 113-60, at 126-35.
A portrait of Humfrey Wanley was painted by Thomas Hill (1661-1734), in 1711, for Edward Harley, Lord Oxford. The portrait shows Wanley seated at a desk, with a manuscript open before him, and various other objects (including the Guthlac Roll, and a stone bearing a runic inscription). The text depicted on the open page of the manuscript is Matthew 6:19-21, in Greek. The manuscript has been identified as BL Harley 5598 (fol. 248v), which belonged to Dr John Covel (1638-1722), Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, and which was later acquired by Edward Harley, Lord Oxford. It turns out, however, that the book in front of Wanley is not the Greek manuscript itself. Covel's manuscripts were not acquired by Harley until 1716 (C. E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani, pp. 113-17), and the text shown is on a recto, not a verso. The manuscript depicted in the portrait is in fact Wanley's renowned 'Book of Specimens', containing his facsimiles of pages from Greek, Latin and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, made in 1697-9 and given by Wanley to Lord Weymouth, probably in the 1710s. The 'Book of Specimens' came to light at Longleat House in 1996 (MS. 345). The facsimiles in the 'Book of Specimens' include one of the same page of the Greek manuscript, then belonging to Dr Covel (Longleat MS. 345, fol. 12r; cf. BL Stowe 1061, fol. 14r). The portrait of Wanley was bought by George Vertue at a Harley sale in 1741, and was presented by Vertue to the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1755. It now hangs in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries, at Burlington House. Reproduced in Joan Evans, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), Plate IV, and in Letters of Wanley, ed. Heyworth, Frontispiece. For the runic inscription, see R. I. Page, Runes and Runic Inscriptions, ed. D. Parsons (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 174-5.
A second portrait of Wanley, painted by Thomas Hill and dated 30 April 1716, was acquired by the University of Oxford in 1785, and is now in the Bodleian Library. It is apparently a replica or development of the portrait painted by Hill in 1711. Described by Mrs R. L. Poole, Catalogue of Portraits in the Possession of the University, Colleges, City, and County of Oxford, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1912-26) I, pp. 90-1 (no. 225).
A third portrait of Wanley, painted by Thomas Hill in 1717, was presented by Lord Oxford to the University of Oxford in 1740, and is now in the Bodleian Library. Described by Mrs R. L. Poole, Catalogue of Portraits in the Possession of the University, Colleges, City, and County of Oxford, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1912-26) I, p. 91 (no. 226).
A fourth portrait of Wanley, painted by Thomas Hill in 1717 (a copy of the third), was presented to the British Museum in 1795, and was transferred to the National Portrait Gallery in 1879. Illustrated in K. K. Yung, National Portrait Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1856-1979 (London, 1981), p. 593. Engraved by John Smith, and, from Smith, by R. Graves (1819) and A. Wivell (1819).
A fifth portrait of Wanley, painted by Thomas Hill in 1722, was presented to the British Museum by Robert Westfaling, and now hangs in the Students' Room of the Department of Manuscripts, British Library. Reproduced in The Diary of Wanley, ed. Wright and Wright, vol. I, Frontispiece. In a letter to Edward Harley, 8 May 1722, Wanley remarked that Hill's picture 'will be soon finished, so as to furnish-out a good Performance upon a very mean Subject' (Letters of Wanley, ed. Heyworth, no. 226). In a letter to Johann Schumacher (librarian to Peter the Great), 26 May 1722, he remarks of his own portrait: 'Mine goe's on bravely, and will be his Master-piece. I am represented therein, as holding a fine Brass-Head of the Emperor Hadrian, bigger than the Life, and of Grecian Workmanship' (ibid., no. 227). It emerges from another letter to Schumacher that the portrait of Wanley was in fact intended for Schumacher's use (ibid., no. 228).
An enamel miniature, by an unknown artist, is at Welbeck abbey. Goulding, Welbeck Abbey Miniatures, pp. 166-7 (no. 252): 'Head and shoulders to sinister, with gaze directed to spectator, clean shaven, yellow cloak.'
For Thomas Hill, see R. W. Goulding, The Welbeck Abbey Miniatures Belonging to His Grace The Duke of Portland K.G., G.C.V.O.: a Catalogue Raisonné, Walpole Society 4 (1916 for 1914-15), pp. 166-7; R. W. Goulding (rev. C. K. Adams), Catalogue of the Pictures Belonging to His Grace The Duke of Portland, K.G., at Welbeck Abbey, 17 Hill Street, London, and Langwell House (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 449-50; David Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth-Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714 (Cambridge, 1963), p. 372.
<Thomas Astle, of Battersea Rise. Collector of manuscripts and charters, which now form the core of the Stowe MSS. in the British Library. Include the 'Liber Vitae' of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, and the Stowe Charters. Dispersal of his papers. Present whereabouts of the seven volumes of his correspondence with antiquaries. Commemorative stone at St Mary's Church, Battersea, London SW11.>
John Mitchell Kemble (1807-57)
<John Mitchell Kemble, of Trinity College, Cambridge. Died 27 March 1857, in Dublin. He is buried there, in St Jerome's Cemetery.>
Images of Kemble
In a printed leaflet entitled 'Kemble Memorial', dated 27 June 1867, W. B. Donne enlarges upon the circumstances of Kemble's death in Dublin, and explains how the money raised from Kemble's friends in Ireland and England so far exceeded the cost of the memorial in Dublin that it was decided to commission a suitable memorial in England, to be placed in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. 'It is due to Mr Woolner, to state the imperfect character of the materials, with which he had to work. He had never seen Mr Kemble: beyond a sketch or two, taken at various times, no portrait of him existed; the only vouchers were a mask and a photograph taken after death, and a profile in lithograph, from a drawing made many years previously by Mr Richard Lane, A.R.A. From such mere rudiments, Mr Woolner has succeeded in producing a bust, not only admirable in point of art, but which conveys a fair idea of Mr Kemble as he was in life.' The list of subscribers, provided by Donne, reveals that the Rev. Professor Bosworth was among the most generous contributors to the fund.
Bibl. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. M. Lapidge, J. Blair, S. Keynes and D. Scragg (Oxford, 1999), p. 269, with further references; entry in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004).
From the abstract of a paper given at a meeting of the Medieval Academy, Boston, March 1995:
Black Jack Kemble: Apostle, Revolutionary, and Anglo-Saxonist
John Mitchell Kemble (1807-57) belonged to a family of famous actors and actresses (Fanny Kemble was his younger sister), but he earned his own renown as an Anglo-Saxonist. He was among the first to apply the principles of comparative Germanic philology to the study of Old English; he was the first editor (in England) of the poem Beowulf; he collected the texts of the entire corpus of Anglo-Saxon charters, published as the Codex Diplomaticus Ævi Saxonici, 6 vols. (1839-48); he also produced a seminal two-volume study of Anglo-Saxon society and political institutions, published as The Saxons in England (1849); and he was latterly a pioneer in the use of archaeological evidence to throw light on the migration of Germanic peoples to Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. This paper examines Kemble's intellectual background as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the late 1820s, when he flourished as a member of the free-thinking 'Cambridge Conversazione Society', otherwise known as 'The Apostles'. It describes his first visit to Germany in the summer of 1829, ostensibly to pursue his study of German philosophy at Munich, but leading to his exposure to the delights of Germanic philology. It recounts how he became a member of an expedition mounted in 1830 to overthrow the despotic regime of Ferdinand VII, King of Spain, and shows on the basis of Kemble's unpublished journal how his attention gradually wandered from political idealism to philology, and from philology to the comforts offered by a sixteen-year-old Spanish girl called Francisca. And it suggests how, under these circumstances, Kemble decided to abandon his intention to enter the Church and resolved instead to pursue a career as an Anglo-Saxonist.
Some of Kemble's working papers appear to have been sold by his descendants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but the great bulk of the material was sold by his grand-daughter in 1934. One batch, acquired by a London dealer called Michelmore, was promptly offered to Trinity College, Cambridge; but the Council of Trinity College turned the offer down. Michelmore soon afterwards acquired another batch of papers, and merged them into a single collection. He did not, however, find a buyer for the archive as a whole; so the papers were sold off separately, and are now widely dispersed. The papers include Kemble's undergraduate notebooks (now in the Law Library of the Library of Congress, Washington DC), materials for a projected seventh volume of the Codex Diplomaticus (now in the Beinecke Library, Yale University), and the autograph manuscript of Kemble's archaeological work in the 1850s (now in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries, London).
The link below leads to a working list of all of Kemble's papers which have come to SDK's attention in the past 25 years. Any information on the existence or whereabouts of other material would be most gratefully received.
- A preliminary list of the papers of John Mitchell Kemble
- The Anglo-Saxon Meteor
- Kemble family (Martin Sharman)
- Kemble family (Ralph Kemble Wood) <February 2005>
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