23
23
create a collection which he bequeathed to the French nation in 1642.
Evidently this item is at Maldon at third or fourth hand, having passed as
a bequest to a national library of France from the possession of a Prince
of the Roman Church into the hands of a Protestant English diocesan
official and thence to become for a second time a bequest to a public
library.
The third, a Dutch publication (Leyden, 1606) has the complex
grandeur of Baltic German heraldry stamped in fine detail in its
moulded vellum cover. On the front are the arms of Bogislav IV, Duke
of Pomerania, who died in 1637. On the back are the arms of his
brother-in-law, the Elector George William, Duke of Brandenburg, who
died in 1640 [32.2]. Of this volume, too, Dr Plume was at best the third
owner in the course of its curious wanderings across Europe, for the
name “William Payne” is written inside the front cover.
Such books are the most exotic effects of the process by which Dr
Plume assembled a Library. There is also a ‘‘hidden” result of his
purchase of second-hand books, in that some titles may be present by
accident rather than by design, because they happened to be bound up in
a volume containing one or more other titles which he did want, or
because they were part of a bundle sold as a Lot in a book auction. It
would be next to impossible now to identify all such accidental
acquisitions but their existence may explain the considerable number of
duplicate copies and different editions of the same works which are to
be found in this Library.
The possibility that the collection is to some extent the product of
bulk purchasing can be pressed further. Most of it may have been
accumulated in one fairly short period of intensive purchasing, either
during the early years of his career—say late 1650s to the
1680
s—which would partly explain the paucity of books from the
1680
s to 1704, or he could have bought more intensively between 1680
to 1700, as his thoughts turned to the final disposition of his wealth.
The latter period is preferable for several reasons. Book auctions only
became a speciality of the London market from the late 1670s. A spell of
bulk purchasing requires a clearly-formed plan of action; he would need
to be certain what kind of Library he wished to establish. Indeed the
building programme indicates that his plan was complete by at least
1698.
As has been noted