Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/342

H that, by the advice of Dodwell, who then lived at Shottesbrooke, Cherry took him into his own house, and treated him as a son. From Cherry and Dodwell Hearne acquired his nonjuring principles. In 1695 Hearne was sent by Cherry to Oxford, where he was entered of Edmund Hall, under White Kennett, vice-principal of the hall and rector of Shottesbrooke. He began residence there at Easter 1696, and took the degrees of B.A. in 1699, and M.A. in 1703. While he was still an undergraduate his studious habits and literary tastes became known in the university, and he was employed by Mill (then at work on the Appendix to his Greek Testament), Grabe, and others in various ways. Soon after taking his degree he was given the opportunity of going to Maryland as a missionary (Letters from the Bodleian, i. 117); but this he refused, after making it the subject of special prayer for guidance (ib.) and taking the advice of his friends. Much of his time was now spent in the Bodleian Library, and there his tastes and powers of mind attracted the notice of the librarian, John Hudson [q. v.], through whose influence he was made assistant-keeper or janitor. Here he spent many years, working at the catalogue of books, and completing that of the coins, and thus obtaining the knowledge and interest which he preserved through life for this branch of antiquities, and amassing the minute knowledge he ultimately possessed of books of all kinds, and especially of all relating to the history of England. He was afterwards offered chaplaincies at Corpus Christi and All Souls' colleges; but as the librarian decided that these were not tenable with a post in the library, he declined them, and in 1712 became second keeper of the Bodleian Library. The following year he was offered the librarianship of the Royal Society, but he would not leave Oxford. In 1715 he was elected archi-typographus and esquire bedell in civil law, two offices which had been always combined, but which, by a high-handed proceeding of the vice-chancellor (Dr. Gardiner) and others, acting, according to Hearne, against the statute, were now to be separated. Hearne declared that he would not hold the one without the other. He was at the same time resolved to remain in the library, but the librarian wished to get rid of him, and induced the visitors to decide, as soon as Hearne assumed the office of bedell, that the offices of under-librarian and of bedell were inconsistent. Hearne at once resigned the bedellship, though, according to his own account, his resignation was not formally complete, when W. Mussendine was elected bedell in his place. Hearne continued to execute the office of librarian as long as he could obtain access to the library; but on 23 Jan. 1716, the last day fixed by the new act for taking the oaths to the Hanoverian dynasty, he was actually prevented from entering the library, and was soon after formally deprived of his office on the ground of ‘neglect of duty.’

He remained from that time to the end of his life living quietly in Edmund Hall, carrying on his literary and historical works. In later life he might have had several honourable posts in the university—the Camden professorship of history in 1720 and again in 1727, that of keeper of the archives in 1726, and the head-librarianship of the Bodleian Library in 1719 and in 1729; but all these, according to his own account, he refused rather than take the oaths to what he regarded as a usurping dynasty, preferring, in his own words, ‘a good conscience before all manner of preferment and worldly honour.’ On Wanley's death he was offered in vain the post of librarian to the Earl of Oxford. He died on 10 June 1735, in consequence of a fever following a severe cold, and was buried in the east side of the churchyard of St. Peter's-in-the-East at Oxford on the 14th, with the words ‘who studied and preserved antiquities’ inscribed after his name on the tomb, by his own wish, an inscription that has been more than once renewed. His library was sold by T. Osborne on 16 Feb. 1736 and following days (see printed catalogue).

As a young man he chiefly devoted himself to classical literature, and published editions of Pliny's ‘Letters and Panegyrick,’ Eutropius, Justin, and Livy, and made large collections for an edition of Cicero, which were utilised in the Oxford edition of 1783 (10 vols. 4to). But as he grew older his attention was chiefly confined to English history and antiquities, and after publishing the ‘Itinerary’ and ‘Collectanea’ of John Leland he began his well-known series of editions of the English chroniclers; they were all published by subscription, very few copies of each being printed. Their importance to historical students can scarcely be exaggerated, many of them being the only editions that existed till the recent publication of the Rolls Series of historical works, and some being still the only editions in print. Hearne accomplished all this with little help from others, with only the income he derived from his subscribers, and with the chief authorities of the university looking askance at him. It is satisfactory to know that he lived to see what he had published for 2l. 2s. sold for 12l. 12s., and that at his death over 1,000l. was found in his possession. He does not