20
a “personal working library,” as seen by Sir Frank Francis [1(a)], this was
a deliberately constructed museum of European intellectual history of the
16
th and 17th centuries.
Alternatively, this immense accumulation might be fortuitous.
Perhaps it consists of Dr Plume’s “personal working library” and other
collections which he inherited. His father, for example, Alderman
Thomas Plume of Maldon, was a Cambridge graduate, a benefactor to
the fine new building at Christ’s College in the late 1630s, a leading
member of a provincial society deeply interested in theology and church
affairs. Would not he have been the purchaser of many of these books?
The copy of
A Directory for the Publique Worship of God
(1644)
could
be his, as he was involved in the administration of the local presbyterian
classes during the Interregnum. A textbook of 1638, compiled by the
Master of the Grammar School (see Figure 7), bears this manuscript
dedication (in Latin) to Alderman Plume on its flyleaf:
“
To Thomas Plume, the most honest and greatest of friends, John
Danes gives this little work as a mark and token of friendship”
[29.1].
The wills of some of Maldon’s inhabitants of 1600-1665 have
references to the books they owned [30] and the descriptions show that
members of the Corporation and resident gentry loaned their copies to
friends. There is some correspondence between a few of the Library’s
books and those described in a few wills [30] but there turns out to be
little hard evidence that the collections of Maldon men came eventually
into Dr Plume’s possession. There is no copy of John Danes’ other
textbook,
A Light to Lilly;
there are two sets of sermons by George
Gifford, Maldon’s eminent and affectionately remembered preacher of
the 1580s and 1590s but his most important pastoral treatises are not in
the Library and do not appear ever to have been there [31.2-31.7] and no
others can be traced back to Alderman Plume or his friends. Only a tiny
proportion of the Library can be ascribed to Maldon owners.
Instead, the bulk of these 7,000 and more titles must have been
acquired by his own diligent purchasing in St Paul’s Churchyard, Fleet
Street and Westminster Hall, or at auctions in London coffee-houses.
Many flyleaves and title-pages have scribbled on