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reference library, a concept which developed in the founder’s mind
between 1684 and 1692 and was created, in part, by the acquisition of
second-hand books in that period. Nevertheless its core is composed of
books read and used by Dr Plume; its contents are to a considerable
extent the result of his own deliberate choice and, had he been able to
complete its final tailoring, his gift to Maldon would have been
somewhat smaller but more completely a reflection of his own ideas,
tastes, convictions. Age, interruptions by official functions, perhaps
illness and the lateness in life at which he conceived his scheme, all
prevented him from completing his task, just as the disorderly
composition of his Will, begun in 1703, augmented by three further
instalments over a twelve month period, full of changes of his mind,
money indiscriminately bestowed, setting up too many trusts, all altered
again by a final codicil with fresh bequests added, shows us a busy man
surprised by the imminence of his death and without a clear knowledge
of the extent of his possessions.
Even the most hastily compiled library, the most perfunctory of wills
must be arranged according to distinguishable principles and this
Library had certainly reached a sufficiently complete state by 1704 for
Dr Plume’s innate ideas about its purpose to be clear. It was to promote,
strengthen, fulfil those ideas which had been nurtured during his early
association with Dr Hacket.
Of course, the most obvious is his concern for the maintenance of the
reputation his Church had gained for its scholarship. In St Paul’s
Cathedral, at the sermon for the opening of a Convocation in 1624, Dr
Joseph Hall had complimented his auditors thus, in Latin; “the wonder
of the world”, he said, “is the clergy of Britain” for its learning [34].
Edward Waterhouse echoed the claim during this learned clergy’s bleak
years of the Interregnum; writing of “Prelates and Preachers ... whose
breasts and braines by constant reading and meditation became Christ’s
Libraries”, he recorded that;
“
the whole Body of the University of Oxford, in An. 1603
published ‘There were then more learned men in the Ministry in
the Land then were to be found amongst all the Ministers of the
Religion in France, Flaunders, Denmark, Germany, Poland,
Geneva, Scotland or all Europe beside’” [36.4(a)].