TWO SIXTEENTH-CENTURY CATALOGUES OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY

Abstract

The original statutes of St John's College, granted in 1516, do not mention the library, but in 1524 the new statutes given by Bishop Fisher, from which the above words are quoted, established that the newly founded college should possess and preserve a library. But little has been printed, despite the labours of devoted historians of the college, relating to the collection of books belonging to the foundation which sheltered Cheke and Ascham, from which the Master and no less than nine fellows felt it more politic to flee abroad during Mary's reign, which peopled the bench of bishops, and which was attended by the young William Cecil. Unlike Peterhouse, Caius and Pembroke, few books belonging to the college in the early sixteenth century now survive, but the two lists reproduced here, compiled fifteen years apart under two different regimes, afford enough to reconstruct the library, and offer an occasionally slightly curious picture of the books belonging to the college which was in the forefront of the 'new learning'. The first inventory reprinted here was taken on 23 September 1544, a few months before the college received a new body of statutes from Henry VIII statutes which were not only to reflect the growing spirit of reformation in the college but which also expunged all mention of its founding father John Fisher. The list, covering just over eight pages, appears on fos 79r 83r of the college's first Register of inventories, and notes 86 items. It is in a large clear secretary hand, with one or two later insertions, including a Bible added to the two books noted in the first stall on the east side and (in an italic hand) a note relating to the gifts of Thomas Lever and William Bill. The compiler appears to have been Richard Fawcett, later one of the bursars, whose hand can be identified with that of the titles written in the college Admissions Book.2 Fawcett made few corrections as he worked, but in some places his catalogue was subsequently amended: apart from the insertions just mentioned, Thomas Aquinas' commentary on Boethius is deleted from the list of books in the seventh stall on the east side, perhaps by the cataloguer, but, as the book does not appear elsewhere on the list, more probably by someone else. A note of Robert Thornham's donations in 1550 has been added at the end, together with further details of Bill's gift of Suidas' Lexicon (Milan 1499) in 1553.