11
them to his Church before 1643); Plume, however, purchased the books
setting out the alternatives to episcopacy, especially the writings of
Richard Baxter (48 titles), even those of Henry Hickman (5) who vented
his hatred of the restored bishops from a self-imposed exile in Holland,
1662-1673;
he had the plea of Edward Stillingfleet—
Irenicum
(1662)—
for a church settlement inclusive of presbyterians; he later
showed particular concern for their French counterparts, the exiled
Huguenots, whom he permitted to use Greenwich parish church each
Sunday [9.4] and his Will included a legacy for impoverished French
ministers or French laymen, payable by “Mr Alix at the Charterhouse”
[16],
Any dislike of Irishmen did not prevent him collecting many
treatises by theologians of the Church of Ireland, nor fromassembling a
reasonably representative collection on Irish history and topography
[17].
Scottish history is also well covered. These were not the prejudices
of Thomas Plume.
He is not to be found among his books or his manuscripts. It is as if
he had wiped off even his finger prints when leaving his collections in
the town. Any attempt to sketch a biography of him from this Library’s
contents, to treat the books as his surviving
personalia,
is bound to end
in confusion. A more sensible course is to restrict enquiry to the
intentions which he expressed at the end of his life in his Will, to
consider the Library for what it most certainly is, one of the
benefactions of that Will, and to examine it in the context of his many
other legacies. This approach helps to explain the apparent anomalies
produced by direct and selective comparisons between his books and
the principal features of his career.
The building itself has something to say. It stands entirely as his
work, except for two eastern bays, added in 1817, which do not affect
an understanding of the original building’s style and plan. It consists of
a tower and a rectangular, two-storeyed house built over the ruins of St
Peter’s, a redundant medieval church. It was designed to provide a
schoolroom for Maldon Grammar School, which had previously used
the empty church, and to house his Library on the upper floor. Three
facts are often overlooked. The first is that Dr Plume had built it before
making his Will, so it was probably completed by 1700 [18]. Certainly
he had planned it by 1698 and maybe a gift of wine and oysters
presented in 1699 “to