Cambridge. Cambridge University Library, MS Add. 10139
- Source
- Cambridge Digital Library
- Library
- Cambridge. Cambridge University Library
- Shelfmark
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- MS Add. 10139
- Biblissima authority file
- Date
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- 1676
- Language
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- English
- Latin
- Title
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- Lund Library Catalogue
- Agent
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- Preferred form
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- Thomas Remington (1612?-1681)
- Role
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- Former owner
- Original form
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- Sir Thomas Remington, (c. 1612‒1681)
- Remington, Sir Thomas, c. 1612-1681
- Biblissima authority file
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- Preferred form
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- Thomas Kerrich (1748-1828)
- Role
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- Former owner
- Original form
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- Thomas Kerrich (1748‒1828)
- Kerrich, Thomas, 1748-1828
- Biblissima authority file
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- Preferred form
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- Albert Hartshorne (1839-1910)
- Role
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- Former owner
- Original form
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- Albert Hartshorne
- Hartshorne, Albert, 1839-1910
- Biblissima authority file
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- Preferred form
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- Charles Henry Hartshorne (1802-1865)
- Role
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- Former owner
- Original form
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- Charles Henry Hartshorne
- Hartshorne, Charles Henry, 1802-1865
- Biblissima authority file
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- Preferred form
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- Frances Margaretta Hartshorne (1805?-1892)
- Role
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- Former owner
- Original form
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- Frances Margaretta
- Kerrich, Frances Margaretta, d. 1892
- Biblissima authority file
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- Description
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A manuscript catalogue of the library in the church at Lund (in the East Riding of Yorkshire), made in 1676, listing c. 1900 titles given by Sir Thomas Remington, (c. 1612‒1681). The volume begins with Remington’s 'designe' for the library and goes on to discuss the use of the library, advising readers 'to take notice of the tablet that hands up, wheare he shall finde a catalogue of all the bookes in the library with directions wheare to finde any of them'. It is also recommended that every book should be left 'in its proper place after the use of it'.
Although the manuscript comes from Yorkshire, it has – both in its provenance and its contents – several links to Cambridge and to the University Library. Remington studied at Peterhouse (where he was admitted a Fellow Commoner in 1627), and is likely to have acquired books while at Cambridge which he later gifted to the church in Lund. The manuscript later passed into the hands of Thomas Kerrich (1748‒1828), from 1797 Protobibliothecarius of the University Library. Furthermore, several church libraries like that once at Lund are now preserved among the collections of the University Library, including the parish libraries of Bassingbourn (Cambridgeshire) and Broughton (Huntingdonshire) and the cathedral libraries of Ely and Peterborough.
The church of All Saints at Lund was built in the fifteenth century, but was rebuilt in the mid-nineteenth century, and no trace of the library, which must have sat in a second-storey room above the north aisle, survives. The library had evidently been dispersed by at least the 1860s, according to the accompanying correspondence.
The books listed show an incredible breadth of subjects, and we find works of history and travel (including Hakluyt's 'Sea voyages' and Contarini's history of Venice), science (Copernicus' De revolutionibus, an extraordinary find in a parish library, and Sacrobosco's Sphaera mundi), and literature (Herbert’s The temple along with Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruell), alongside works of law, dictionaries, sermons, Bibles, and at least three fifteenth-century printed books. Quite simply the catalogue is the most comprehensive and voluminous of its kind hitherto recorded for a seventeenth-century parish library, and provides a unique view onto a long-dispersed public collection which began – as so many church libraries did – in private ownership.
Liam Sims
Rare Books Department
Cambridge University Library
- Place
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- Preferred form
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- Lund (East Yorkshire, United Kingdom)
- Original form
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- At or near Lund, East Riding of Yorkshire
- Biblissima authority file
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- Rights
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- Provided by Cambridge University Library. Zooming image © Cambridge University Library, All rights reserved. Images made available for download are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC 3.0) This metadata is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
- Digitisation
- Manifest URL
