Recent acquisitions
Harrington, James. The Common-Wealth of Oceana: Dedicated to His Highnesse the Lord Protector of the Common-Wealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
London: Printed by J. Streater, for Livewell Chapman, 1656
Purchase funded by the Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library to replace the copy missing from the original collection, June 2010
Marriage, John. Maldon and the Blackwater Estuary: A Pictorial History, 2nd edition.
Chichester: Phillimore, 1996
Presented by Mr John Hayward, March 2010
Douglas-Menzies, Lucinda. Portraits of Astronomers
London: The Science Museum, London in association with Lucinda Douglas-Menzies, 2009
Presented by Mrs C Whitworth Jones, March 2010
The Lives of Eminent & Remarkable Characters, born or Long Resident in the Counties of Essex, Suffolk & Norfolk.
London 1820:
Presented by Mr Keith Ireland, February 2010
Lovell, Robert. sive Panzoologicomineralogia: or a Compleat History of Animals and Minerals …
Bound with … sive Pammineralogicon, or An Universal History of Mineralls…
Oxford: Printed by Ben: Hall, for Jos: Godwin, 1661
Purchase funded by the Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library to replace the copy missing from the original collection, February 2010.
Tromly, Fred. “The Jest-Cracking John Shakespeare, Sir John Mennes, and Sir John Falstaff in Thomas Plume’s Notebook” Appendix, Fathers and Sons in Shakespeare: The Debt Never Promised.
University of Toronto Press, 2010
Presented by the Author January 2010
Hoare, Peter. “Archbishop Tenison’s Library at St. Martin-in-the-Fields: The building and its History.”
London Topographical Record, Vol. XXIX ed. by Ann Loreille Saunders
Publication No. 165, pp 127-50
John Milton. Epistolarum Familiarum, Liber Unus … Prolusiones Quaedam Oratoriae.
First edition 8vo
London, Brabazoni Aylmeri, 1674.
Purchase funded by the Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library to replace the copy missing from the original collection, October 2009.
The French Academie: Fully Discoursed and finished in four Bookes.
Folio
London, printed for Thomas Adams, 1618.
Purchase funded by the Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library to replace the copy missing from the original collection, October 2009.
Blomfield, Rev. E. The History of the Martyrs: Or an Authentic Narration of the Sufferings of the Church of Christ in Every Part of the World from the Apostles to the Present Time.
Printed by Brightly & Co. Bungay, Suffolk, 1810
Presented by Canon David Atkins, September 2009
The Maldonian Magazine
Maldon Grammar School
Vol. III No. 1 December 1922
Vol. III No. 3 July 1923
Vol. III No. 4 December 1923
Vol. IV No. 2 July 1924
Vol. VII No. 2 July 1927
Vol. X No. 3 July 1930
Presented by Maldon Library September 2009.
(The Maldonian collection is complete from 1919 to 1957 except for Vol. 2 No. 8 April 1922).
SOUVENIR: in connection with Unveiling of the Stained-Glass Window Presented to All Saints Church, Maldon, Essex 5th July 1928 as a memorial to the Rev. Laurence Washington (Great-great-grandfather of George Washington), buried in All Saints’ Churchyard, 1653.
This Window was presented by the Citizens of Maldon, Massachusetts U. S. A., and by the Members of the Sulgrave Institute.
Maldon: All Saints’ Church (Reproduction and printing by John Clifford), 2009.
Presented by John Clifford July 2009.
MALONE-LEE, Claire. ‘Enemies of God?’: Christian Attitudes Towards Jews and the Interpretation of Romans 11.28.
A Dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirement of Anglia Polytechnic University for the degree of Master of Arts.
Submitted: April 2005.
Anglia Polytechnic University.
Presented by Claire Malone-Lee July 2009.
FINE, Leon G. The Young Harvey.
(Royal College of Physicians History and Heritage Series)
London: Royal College of Physicians, 2004.
Presented by Mr F. Herrmann July 2009.
EVELYN, John. Navigation and Commerce, their Original and Progress. Containing a succinct account of Traffick in General; its Benefits and Improvements: of Discoveries, Wars and Conflicts at Sea, from the Original of Navigation to this Day; with special Regard to the English Nation; Their several Voyages and Expeditions, to the Beginning of our late Differences with Holland; in which His Majesties Title to the Dominion of the Sea is Asserted, against the Novel, and later Pretenders.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo.
London: Printed by T. R. for Benj. Tooke, 1674.
The Dutch were greatly offended by this treatise and demanded its suppression; the King agreed but privately congratulated Evelyn. the complete work however was never published and the manuscript was given to Pepys. The book gives an interesting account of the discovery of America by Columbus, and the Venetian Zeno who is “reported to have discover’d the North East part of America above an hundred years before” and “a certain obscure Mariner (Alphonse Zanches de Huelva who was blown on to the American coast by a storm eight years before Columbus and who bequeathed Columbus all his Charts and Papers”; and “some mean Biscayers (losing themselves in pursuit of Whale Fishing) had fall’n upon some of the American Islands above an hundred years before either”; then of subsequent voyages by Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot etc. Treating also of the exploits of Drake, Hawkins, Cavendish, Frobisher, Hudson, Raleigh, etc., and refers to American plantations American Fishery, Greenland, Whale Fishery, Newfoundland, Virginia, etc. “John Chabot, a Venetian, and his Son Sebastian (born with us at Bristol) had discover’d Florida and the Shoars of Virginia, with that whole Tract as far as New-found-Land, before the bold Genoeze; nay that Thorn and Eliot (both Country men of ours) detected this New-world before Columbus ever set foot upon it”. There are even a couple of brief mentions of the “Antipodes”. Keynes 92 states “an interesting complication concerning the economic history of Great Britain and Holland”.1
1. Notes reproduced by kind permission of E. M. Lawson & Co. Catalogue No. 327
Purchased to replace the copy missing from the original collection by The Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library from the Pamela Robertson Bequest July 2009.
DIGBY, Everard. Everard Digbie his Dissuasiue. From taking away the lyuings and goods of the Church. Wherein all men may plainely behold the great blessings which the Lord hath powred on all those who liberally haue bestowed on his holy Temple: And the strange punishments that haue befallen them vvich haue done the contrarie. Hereunto is annexed Celsus of Verona, his Dissuasiue translated into English.
Woodcut arms of Sir Christopher Hatton on verso of title page. FIRST EDITION. sm. 4to. [London]: Printed by Robert Robinson and Thomas Nevvman, [1590].
See also GARTH, Samuel. The Dispensary: A poem.
Otherwise a disciple of Aristotle, in his earlier works Digby had tried to classify the sciences and ventured on a theory of perception which appers to fore-shadow Leibnitz and reflect the Platonic idea. The above is important for the inclusion of the first edition in English of Celsus Maffeus’s Dissuasoria. This book is dedicated to Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord High Chancellor of England, with his coat of arms. STC 6842.
Digby is an interesting character, having written the first book in English on swimming, being deprived of his fellowship at Cambridge for treating the Master with the greatest disrespect, and blowing a horn and hallooing in the college in daytime!1
1. Notes reproduced by kind permission of E. M. Lawson & Co. Catalogue No. 327
Purchased to replace the copy missing from the original collection by The Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library from the Pamela Robertson Bequest July 2009.
GARTH, Samuel. The Dispensary: A Poem.
8vo. The Third Edition, corrected by the Author. frontis.
Bound with DIGBY, Everard. Everard Digbie his dissuasiue . . .
London: Printed And Sold by John Nutt, 1699.
[COTTON, (Charles)]. Scarronides: or Virgile Travestie. A Mock-Poem. Being the First Book of Virgils AEnies in English, Burlesque
FIRST EDITION. 8vo.
London: Printed for E. Cotes for Henry Brome, 1664.
Cotton’s famous burlesque poem proved most popular and it went through six editions in his lifetime. Some of the satirical allusions caused offence, and it has been noted that the later editions are more gross than the earlier. Selden, in his English Verse Satire gives Sarronides as the example for the ‘travesty’ type of burlesque “using a low style and a high subject matter” [indeed the running headline through the volume is ‘travesty’ or ‘travestie’]. Wing C. 6391.1
1. Notes reproduced by kind permission of E. M. Lawson & Co. Catalogue No. 327
Purchased to replace the copy missing from the original collection by The Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library from the Pamela Robertson Bequest July 2009.
[CHEVALIER, (Pierre)]. A Discourse of the Original, Countrey, Manners, Government and Religion of the Cossacks, with another of the Precopian Tartars. And the History of the Wars of the Cossacks against Poland, [Translated by Sir Edward Browne],
FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, 8vo.
London: Printed by T. N. for Hobart Kemp, 1672.
Purchased to replace the copy missing from the original collection by The Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library from the Pamela Robertson Bequest July 2009.
First published in French in 1663, this is the first translation into English, performed as his first literary effort by Sir Edward Browne, eldest son of Sir Thomas, after ten years of travelling on the Continent.
Chevalier fought the Cossacks in Poland, and it is as a history of those wars that offered his book, but Browne reverses the title and the two parts of the text, making Chevalier’s fascinating ethnographical appendices of the Cossacks and Tartars the rightly dominant feature. Wing C. 3800.1
1. Notes reproduced by kind permission of E. M. Lawson & Co. Catalogue No. 327
PEARSON, David. Books as History: The Importance of Books Beyond Their Texts.
London: The British Library, New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 2008.
Signed by the author.
Presented by Ian Kidman, February 2009.
Ray, John, Catalogus Plantarum Angliae, et Insularum Adjacetntium… una cum Observationinbus & Experimentis Novis Medicis & Physcicis
First edition, thick sm. 8vo, 1670.
Purchased in November 2008 to replace the copy missing from the original collection, funded by The Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library.
Note from Lawson’s catalogue: ‘…. first serious British Flora (preceded only by herbals and the Howe-Merrett lists of 1650 and 1666) by the founder of systematic zoology. As a result of his tours in Britain, Ray acquired a first-hand knowledge of native flora……arranged alphabetically, the book usually gives the English name of the plant and sometimes a brief observation as to location, etc.’
Ray, John (1627-1705) was a naturalist who was born at Black Notley, the son of the village blacksmith, was educated at Braintree Grammar School, Catharine Hall, Cambridge and later became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He travelled extensively in England and Western Europe with his friend Francis Willughby (1635-1672), to whom this book is dedicated, studying the flora and fauna. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1667. His ground-breaking classification of plants and insects led to him being regarded as the father of natural history in this country but he also published on subjects as diverse as proverbs, topography, geology, theology and his correspondence. Ray lived at Faulkbourne Hall for two years and, after his mother’s death, he returned to Black Notley to live in the house called Dewlands which he had had built for her. This house burnt down in 1900 and was replaced by a new house.
As well as that just purchased, the following books by Ray are in the Plume Library.
A collection of English Proverbs 1670
Historia Plantarum 1686-8 [vols. 1 and 2 only]
Miscellaneous discourses concerning the dissolution and changes in the world. 1692
References
Addison, William, Essex Worthies, London and Chichester, 1973, pp. 152-3.
The Concise Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 1995, vol.3, pp. 2491-2
Plot, Robert, The Natural History of Oxfordshire. Being an essay toward the Natural History of England
1677, first edition, folio.
Purchased in November 2008 to replace the copy missing from the original collection, funded by The Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library.
Note from Lawson’s catalogue: ‘The dedication to Charles II calls to attention the need of some similar survey of England and Wales, but sadly Plot managed only this and Staffordshire. The book is a sort of Baconian ‘natural history’, being a systematic gleaning of information and observation on the flora, fauna, geology, palaeontology, and intellectual history of the county. There is also a detailed account of Oxford science, arguing that Roger Bacon was the inventor of the telescope, and reviewing the mechanical inventions and discoveries of Wilkins, Wallis, Boyle, Hooke, Halley, and others.’
Plot, Robert (1640-1696), was an antiquary, a gentleman of property in Kent, and author (as well as the books mentioned above) of works of some interest but marked by great credulity. He was the first ‘custos’ of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and professor of Chemistry there in 1683 and historiographer-royal in 1688.
NB Plume did not, as far as is known, own Plot’s book on Staffordshire or any other of his works but they may have known each other, being contemporaries and both relating to Kent. Plume’s interest in this book may have been partly due to the fact that the Court and Parliament were held in Oxford during the Civil War and partly to the scientific information it contains.
Donne, John, Poems, with Elegies on the Author’s Death, To which is added Divers Copies under his own hand, Never before printed
Fifth edition, 8vo, in the Savoy, 1669.
Purchased in November 2008 to replace the copy missing from the original collection, funded by the Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library.
Lawson’s note: ‘Some of these poems are among the miracles of our literature, two of which spring to mind Goe and catch a falling starre and To his mistress going to bed. The latter incidentally is one of the three fine elegies which Hazlitt stated were suppressed, one of the fine poems included for the first time in this edition, and the Elegy in which occurs the phrase ‘O my America! My New-Found-Land’.
Donne, John (1572-1631) was born into a devout Catholic family and was therefore debarred from entering either of the universities. He commenced the study of law in Lincoln’s Inn in 1592 and, in about 1593 renounced his Catholic faith. He was one of the gentlemen volunteers with Essex to sack Cadiz in 1596 and with Ralegh to the Azores in 1597. During his employment as Lord Keeper of the Seal Sir Thomas Egerton’s secretary in 1601 he secretly married Ann More, Lady Egerton’s niece. For this he was dismissed from Egerton’s service and briefly imprisoned. There followed 14 years of difficulties but in 1615 James I made him a chaplain in ordinary, and forced Cambridge to grant him a DD. He went on to secure no less than three livings in the church and in 1621, was successful in getting the new royal favourite, the duke of Buckingham to prefer him to the deanery of St Paul’s. He was one of the most celebrated preachers of his age and its greatest non-dramatic poet. He is known as the earliest of the ‘metaphysical’ poets.
As well as this book, now replaced, Thomas Plume has the following books by Donne in his Library:
- Biathanatos [Greek] A declaration of that paradox or thesis that self-homicide is not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise 1648
- LXXX sermons, 1640.
- Pseudo-Martyr, 1610.
Reference
Drabble, Margaret, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature, fifth edition, 1985, p. 283.
Holder, William, A treatise of the Natural Grounds and Principles of Harmony
First edition, 8vo, by J. Heptinstall, for the Author, 1694.
Purchased in October 2008 to replace the copy missing from the original collection, funded by the Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library.
William Holder (1615/16-1698) was a Church of England clergyman and natural philosopher, Pembroke College, Cambridge, BA 1637 and MA 1640. About the time of the Civil War broke out he became tutor the young Christopher Wren, the future architect. In 1643 he married Christopher’s elder sister, Susanna Wren (1626/7 – 1688) and their union was long and happy but childless. Susanna was noted as a healer, and on one occasion incurred the enmity of the court physicians when she cured Charles II of a swollen hand.
At the Restoration, Holder was incorporated DD at Oxford in 1661 and was an early member of the Royal Society. He did work on the functioning of the human ear and on the elements of speech and other scientific matters.
Holder was a competent composer of services and anthems and his ‘A Treatise of the Natural Grounds…‘ was influential and remained a standard work for many years. It continues to be of interest for its account of mean tone-tuning. This is a complex system for tuning organs. (See below)
As well as this book now replaced, Thomas Plume also procured for his Library, Holder’s books entitled, A Discourse Concerning Time, 1694, and Elements of Speech, 1669; these still remain there. The ODNB has a most interesting note on A Discourse Concerning time – see page 1 of the article on Holder.
References
Biography
Robert Poole, ‘Holder, William (1615/16-1698)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13495, accessed 3 Oct 2008]
For an account of mean-tone tuning
Scholes, Percy A., The Oxford Companion to Music, tenth edition, 1992, p. 1014