Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/453

 ii s. vi. NOV. 9, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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(chap, viii.) he holds up Oliveretto to exe- cration as one of those who obtained power through crime. He states that he perished a year after his great crime at Fermo, which thus must have taken place in 1501 or very early in 1502. W. A. B. COOUDGE.

CHAINED BOOKS (11 S. vi. 69, 136, 177, 215, 274). Mr. E. A. Judges deVotes the whole of chap. vii. of his interesting quarto ' In and Around Guildford : Old and New,' to an account of ' The Royal Grammar School,' with beautiful illustrations, both of the state before restoration (in 1889) and of the state at the time of the publica- tion of his book in 1895. We find on p. 57 the names of those responsible for the various parts of the old buildings, thus learning that

" it was left for George Austen, son of John Austen [one of the many Mayors of Guildford who helped the school], to complete the west wing begun by his father. With the aid of sub- scriptions from Sir William More and other county gentlemen, he accomplished this task in 1586, and at the same time converted into a library the gallery which connects the two wings and completes the street front."

P. 61 gives us an account of the School Library and its chained books :

" To one of its old boys the School was indebted for the foundation of its library. John Parkhurst [Bishop of Norwich] in 1574 bequeathed his Latin books of divinity to the service of the school of the town. The Bishop's executors were loath to carry out his instructions, and it was only after much difficulty and litigation that some of the volumes were obtained and safely brought to the Guildford School. Other dona- tions followed, and for a time due care was taken of these treasures, a large number of the books being chained in accordance with the custom of the day. In 1648 Mr. Arthur Onslow gave eight oaks as materials for new book-shelves, and during this and the following century the library was well cared for and enriched by many further gifts. Unhappily this state of things was not maintained in later years. The day came when, as Mr. J. Willis Clark has said, ' the books were evidently looked upon as so many white elephants that could not be got rid of, but for which it was somewhat onerous to provide a stable. No definite abiding-place was assigned to them, but they were put as a measure of security first in one room and then in another, and at one period even under the floor of the principal schoolroom. Their number, which at one time must have been considerable, probably became less at each removal, and it may have been on one of these occasions that the most valuable of all-, a priceless Caxton, disappeared altogether.' The collection, however, still num- bers over 400 volumes, of which thirty retain their chains, and all are now being carefully warehoused. Almost, if not quite unique among the Grammar Schools of the country in the possession of a chained library, the Guildford

School has an obvious duty to turn its treasures to better account than has been the case of late years."

These notes and extracts will show the REV. J. B. McGovERN that, although for a long time this valuable library was greatly neglected, it has been known, and its history recorded, in quite recent years. Some expla- nation of the difference between the numbers ("thirty retain their chains") mentioned by Mr. Judges and the " eighty-five chained volumes " recorded by MB. McGovERN would be interesting.

G. YARROW BAXDOCK.

When I visited Berkswell Church, War- wickshire, on 21 Aug., 1906, I saw some chained books there. They were placed in the splayed window recesses in the south aisle, and consisted of three volumes of Foxe's ' Acts and Monuments.' They were well preserved, except that all the title- pages were missing. A pencil note in the third volume gave their date as 1684. The church has since been restored.

JOHN T. PAGE.

MR. McGovERN is mistaken in supposing that the Guildford Library has been over- looked. There are two references to it in Mr. Courtney's ' Register of National Bibliography,' s.v. ' Guildford,' in vol. i. and in the supplementary volume. The first is to the Proceedings of the Cambridge Anti- quarian Society, viii. 11-18, where J. W. Clark gives an historical account of the buildings and fittings ; and the second is to a Catalogue of the library published by Mr. Herbert Powell in 1900.

W. R. B. PRIDEAUX.

BISHOP KEN (11 S. vi. 289). Jon or Ion Ken second son of Thomas Ken, attorney, and Martha, daughter of Jon Chalkhill elder brother of the Bishop, was baptized, at St. Giles's, Cripplegate, 10 July, 1632 ; sole executor to his brother John Ken, 31 May, 1651 ; and sometime Treasurer of the East India Company. He married Rose, sister of Sir Thomas Vernon of Cole- man Street, London ; and was bequeathed a mourning ring by his brother-in-law, Izaak Walton, in August, 1683. His children included : - Ken, a son, in Cyprus about 1707 ; Martha Ken (living 1714), who mar- ried Christopher Frederick Kreinberg, Resi- dent for the Elector of Hanover in London ; and Rose Ken of Marylebone, spinster, the administration of whose effects was granted to her mother in March, 1700/1.

A. R. BAYLEY.