William Petyt |
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Once more the Library was rebuilt and was in use
again by 1680, the upper room still being used for social functions,
the drinking of wine by members after dinner and the serving of
suppers to the invited guests of the Masters of the Bench. Of its
administration during the 17th century little is known. There was,
apparently, no catalogue, certainly no official library keeper, and
no rules existed to govern the use of the material and the conduct
of readers. Then in 1707 the Inn was offered what has since become
known as the Petyt MSS. William Petyt, Treasurer of the Inn in
1701-2, was for many years Keeper of the Records in the Tower of
London. He had antiquarian interests, was a scholar of some
distinction and, despite later tales to the contrary, was a
scrupulously honest collector of ancient documents. At his death he
left to the Inn a great mass of manuscripts together with a sum of
money to construct a building to house them. By his bequest, which
was accepted, he performed a double service, that was to be of
lasting benefit. He provided the Inn with a manuscript
collection of a richness which few private societies could
otherwise have hoped to obtain; and this in turn provided the spur
for the reorganisation of the Library upon a sound administrative
basis. His collection, still intact after almost three hundred
years, contains 386 volumes and covers a diversity of subjects.
Macrobius Commentary on
Somnium Scipionis |
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These include Year Books, Registers of Writs,
Statutes, Legal Treatises, Precedent Books and Commonplace Books.
Among chronicles there is an uncollated early 13th century
manuscript of Roger de Hovedon's Historia Anglorum, which
once belonged to the Abbey of Rievaulx. There is also a long range
of Journals of the House of Commons, some of which contain entries
which were no longer decipherable when the printed version of the
Journals was made. Among noteworthy manuscripts there is an early
12th century Macrobius, and the earliest known Books of Forms in
Ecclesiastical Causes, from the end of the 13th century. There are
works by Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Robert Cotton and Sir Thomas Bodley,
and important original letters from such personages as William
Cecil, Lord Burghley, Sir Edward Coke and Sir Christopher Wren.
Original letter of Lady
Jane Grey, signed by her as `Quene'. (Closer
view) |
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Items of interest include an original letter of
Lady Jane Grey, signed by her as `Quene', the original draft of Sir
Edward Coke's 12th and 13th Reports, and a Year Book for a term of
Edward I, which seems to be contemporary and which is, besides,
unique. There are also autograph letters by Edward VI, Mary and
Elizabeth I.
By 1709 the new Library had been built. It
included the two former rooms (one of which was to be known as `the
back library') as well as a new room spacious and handsome. Samuel
Carter, an `aged and impecunious barrister' was appointed as Library
Keeper to attend in the Library as follows: Lady Day to Michaelmas,
9 a.m. - 12, and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.; Michaelmas to Lady Day, 10 a.m.
to 12, and 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. His salary was £20 a year. He it was
who did the first work on Petyt's books and manuscripts. He
produced, besides, a draft catalogue of the books in the Library,
dated 1713, which is still extant, but he died the same year leaving
it unfinished. He was succeeded by Joshua Blew, a butler in the Inn,
who served for fifty years as Librarian.
Bird's eye view of the
Temple, 1720. Engraved by Bowles in 1754, after a print
of 1720 by Sutton Nicholls. (Closer
view) |
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On 18th May 1716-17 a Bench Table Order was
issued: "No copy or transcript is to be taken by any person of
any manuscript books in the Library, and no books to be delivered or
taken out of the Library without leave of the Table. This order to
be hung up in the Library". Thus was formally established the
principle that the Library was essentially for reference and not for
borrowing. But though the books were now housed either in close
presses or frames with wire guards the manuscripts seem to have been
easily available (at least to Masters of the Bench) and were as
often consulted out of curiosity as out of need; their availability
not being restricted in the modern sense until late in the
nineteenth century. If in the early days the Library's acquisition
of books had been haphazard it was regulated by a Bench Order of
1713 directing the Treasurer to expend £20 a year on books, but it
was the Librarian, Joshua Blew, who was responsible for the actual
purchase of books, often their selection too, their binding, and on
occasion, the publication of the manuscripts. During his years in
office he produced four catalogues. These are notable for the
careful and accurate annotations to entries, for Blew had all the
instincts of a good bibliographer.
Illustration of the
Library in the 1720s. (Closer
view) |
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In the eighteenth century the great majority of
books purchased were law books; of the books presented the majority
were also law books. But antiquarian, historical and literary
interests were also held by the members of the Society, and the
purchase or presentation of books reflected these interests as is
duly recorded in the catalogues subsequently to be issued.
This diversity of interests, continued to the
present though in modified form, explains the presence today of many
valuable works, all either original or second editions: Howard's State
of Prisons (1777), Higden's Polychronicon (1527), Hall's Chronicle
(1548), Strutt's Sports and Pastimes (1810), Hakluyt's Voyages
(1598-1600), Clarendon's History (1702-4), Saxton's Atlas
of England and Wales (1579) and, Seller's Atlas Maritime
1678. The list of incunabula acquired is shorter but includes The
Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), volumes of statutes printed by
Caxton in 1490, as well as two out of the three volumes of statues
issued by Machlinia, the first of the English law printers. On the
whole however the purchase policy towards legal and allied materials
was highly selective, and books had to prove themselves before they
were bought. The forty eight titles purchased in 1723 range in
publication date from 1651 onwards but only four of these were
current publications.
Many problems familiar to modern librarians were
already being encountered. By 1729 as a result of gifts the problem
of duplication existed and the Librarian drew up a list of seventy
nine titles for disposal by sale. Books were being supplied by
mistake and having to be returned, whilst overcharging of
bookseller's accounts was not uncommon.
The catalogue of 1773, the work of another
Librarian, the Rev. William Jeffs, was the last to be in manuscript
and was the most scientifically planned to date. It was ordered that
"The Librarian ... to make a complete Catalogue of all the
books in the Library and to range the books relating to the several
subjects they treat upon in distinct presses so as to compose a
separate Library of Law and Equity, Civil Law and Parliamentary
proceedings, Classics, General and Biographical History, Theology,
Heraldry, Physic, Miscellaneous Books or others relating to any
particular science or subject and manuscripts; that in the Catalogue
to be made there shall be one column to signify the number of the
press, another the shelves, another the name of the book, another
the name of the printer and another the date of the year, and that
the books may follow in an alphabetical manner, as much as may be,
and that all duplicates may be placed together in two or three
presses, and that the same may be completed by the first full week
in Michaelmas term, and for which this Society do desire his
acceptance of ten guineas."
In 1784 Randall Norris, a clerk in the
Treasurer's department (he subsequently became Sub Treasurer) was
appointed Librarian, and it was during his tenure of office that the
earliest printed catalogue, dated 1806, was issued. The surviving
evidence suggests that the appointment of Norris was not a happy
one. His intellect was not powerful and he possessed none of the
qualities that make a true librarian. When he died in 1827 Charles
Lamb wrote a famous letter about him to Crabbe Robinson: "In
him I have a loss the world cannot make up. He was my friend, and my
father's friend, all the life I can remember. I seem to have made
foolish friendships ever since ... To the last he called me Charley.
I have none to call me Charley now. Letters he knew nothing of, nor
did his reading extend beyond the Gentleman's Magazine. Yet there
was a pride of Literature about him from being among books (he was
Librarian) and from scraps of doubtful Latin which he had picked up
in his office of entering new students, that gave him very diverting
airs of pedantry. Can I forget the erudite look with which, when he
had been in vain trying to make out a black letter text of Chaucer
in the Temple Library, he laid it down and told me that "in
these old books, Charley, there is sometimes a deal of indifferent
spelling", and seemed to console himself in the
refection".
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