Gentlemen and their book-plates

Brian North Lee

Thomas Gore of Alderton, whom John Aubrey in a 1671 letter called ‘My stiffe starcht friend T.G., Cuckold & Esq.’,¹ was too finicky, self-important and unusual to guide us on book-plate usage by gentlemen of his time. In his copious will,² however, he details:

A Plate of copper wherein is engraven my atchievement containing my coat Armour well marshalled…and Two more Copper plates containing…my Quarterings…and foure other copper plates of several sizes containing my Paternall Coate with Crest and Motto, which I desire also may be transmitted to Posterity. As also two other plates of copper in one of which is my Paternal Coate of Arms engraven in the midst with many faire flourishings at each end for Prints to be placed on the Top of Epistles dedicatory in Books. In the other is only engraven a Basket of Fruite and Flowers, for Prints to be set at the end of Books (below the Finis) for ornaments sake. As also my Paternall coate of Arms environ’d with Laurell engraven in Brass and set in Wood for a stamp to make an impression on the Covers of Books.³ (See fig.1)

It totals nine coppers and a book stamp, and his will is dated 20 July 1683. His finest and first-named plate was by William Faithorne the elder. ⁴ There are five ex-libris and two book stamps recorded for Samuel Pepys;⁵ and Sir Philip Sydenham, who became 3rd Baronet in 1696 and died in 1739, used eleven book-plates of which 23 varieties are known.⁶  The first are dated 1699, and his bookpile is one of the first three examples in the style, devised by none other than Pepys (fig.2). Arthur Charlett, Master of University College, Oxford, in 1698 asked Pepys to make a cypher of his initials and suggest a motto for his ex-libris, and so, as related in the Bodleian Library Record,⁷ ‘Pepys was responsible for the chief features of the bookplate...a rectangular pile of books in three tiers, each row resting on books laid horizontally’. Surely either Charlett or Pepys showed Sydenham the design, for within a year he had Charlett’s composition copied for himself. The only other 1699 bookpile was, understandably, for William Hewer, Pepys’s secretary and friend.⁸

The majority of gentlemen settled for a single book-plate, except where it was desired to indicate ennoblement or new dignity; and no one matched Sydenham’s prolificity until it was belittled by the Victorian Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, 9th Baronet,⁹ 131 of whose plates are in the British Museum Franks Collection (nor has he since been equalled in Britain). Ornament and emblems being of absorbing interest to him, clearly the designing of personal ex-libris was an attractive pastime (fig.3). Despite general satisfaction with a single book-plate, it is surprising how many occur in varieties of state, with motto, arms or design amended or the engraver’s signature erased; and the occasional somewhat slavish copying of an individual’s book-plate was probably due to the original copper’s being lost. Until the late 1800s most book-plates were the work of trade engravers, called on for serviceable compositions, so few ex-libris are outstanding engravings. The possession of a library, desire for identity, or response to stylistic fashion encouraged many sons to have their own book-plates, but as a cheap alternative inscriptions could be changed or scissors brought into service. One of a series of book-plates by the engraver of Blome’s Gwillim, 1679,¹⁰ illustrates the latter alternative (fig.4). Doubtless used by Sir Thomas Windsor Hunloke, 3rd Baronet, ¹¹ who succeeded his father in 1715, he simply cut off the inscription, which read: ‘Sr. Henry Hunloke of Winger-worth in Derbyshire Bart. In ye Escotcheon of pretence is ye Armes of Katherine his Lady, who was sole daughter & heyre of Francis Tyrwhit of Kettleby in Lincolnshire Esqr ye last of ye Eldest branch of ye great & antient family.’ Heraldically, of course, Sir Thomas should have quartered his mother’s arms, not kept them in pretence, but the copper or unused prints would be at hand, so why not use them?

Book-plate history will always be incomplete, partly due to the removal of ex-libris from books in the heady days of collecting, 1880 to 1910. The carelessness or inadequacy of engravers or their commissioners in detailing arms, or deliberate use of unentitled arms, often inhibit ascription, as does use of just the paternal coat when an impalement would have been in order. Mere plates for books were not high amongst most gentlemen’s priorities. An anonymous and unambitious woodcut armorial in Franks serves as instance (fig.5). Cadwallader impaling Pelsant are there questioned as the arms, being badly done; but the plate belonged to the Rev. Arthur Collier, and is printed on the verso of the half-title of a memoir of him by Robert Benson.¹² Benson tells us, incidentally, that Collier died in embarrassed circumstances, and that ‘such portions of his effects as his relatives deemed it indelicate to sell’ were sent to relatives. Among them he lists a drinking-glass and the wood block of his arms. It was a gentlemanly consideration.

These details indicate that personal whim furthered early book-plate usage in Britain and that ex-libris could be valued possessions; but (excepting collegiate book labels, which were printed and not engraved) ex-libris were so rarely used that they were a minimal part of the output of any engraving shops until c.1700. Three plates are known of the 16th century, and upwards of 200 in the next, mostly made in its last quarter and as yet inadequately researched. Two of the former and some of the latter were not ex-libris per se, but adapted, mostly after serving as illustration or ornament in books. Our earliest plate, for Sir Nicholas Bacon’s gift of books to Cambridge University, uses a woodcut from Leigh’s Accedence of Armory.¹³ Ex-libris of John Marsham, of Kent, as esquire and baronet, illustrated title-pages as well,¹⁴ as no doubt did others (fig.6). The modest but dignified Ent armorial long puzzled collectors. Its incorrect, single arms¹⁵ are unhelpful, and Franks questioned the attribution. G.H. Viner suggested it was David Loggan’s work, based on a design by Michel le Blon,¹⁶ its tassels and double serifs like those on Sir Thomas Isham’s plate, documented as Loggan’s work. Anthony Pincott, however, found it printed on the verso of the title-page of Ent’s Laureae Apollinari, Padua, 1636. It was thus decades earlier than Loggan, and served in a book. Sir George Ent,¹⁷ a medical man and original fellow of the Royal Society, was son of a merchant from the Low Countries; and his book-plate is still found in books, including P. Heylin’s A Help to English History, 1672, in the Society of Antiquaries’ library. The Dictionary of National Biography actually details his arms in the above-mentioned book of poems, so it is surprising that the book-plate was not identified long ago.

Not surprisingly, however, few book-plate users actually designated themselves ‘Gentleman’ (abbreviated to ‘Gent.’) in their book-plate inscriptions, though one recalls a dozen who did in the 18th century, including John Gore of London (fig.7). One feels the designation should be implicit, unlike ‘esquire’, proper on book-plates (but rarely elsewhere) in indicating right to bear arms below knightly rank. In preparing this address ‘gentleman’ posed questions. Good birth and social standing (technically above yeoman status) are implied, and in some usages the nobility. Honourable and refined, by modern understanding of the term, gentlemen were also somewhat leisured, and it follows that the best of them had time for books. Gore’s Jacobean plate is one of the finest in the style. James Bengough, Gent., declares himself on his Early Armorial plate (fig.8) to be of Inner Temple in 1702, and he is named in the 1705 records, but there is no evidence he was called to the bar.¹⁸ More significant here is that his book-plate was from William Jackson’s workshop near the Inns of Court. Jackson, who clearly employed several engravers, produced over 600 book-plates between 1695 and 1715, and was thus the prime populariser of book-plate usage in Britain. His pattern book, called the ‘Brighton Collection’ (on account of its having been found there in the last century), is in the British Museum. What has it to tell us?

It was not assembled early in his career, for many of the plates are grubby, and there is some duplication among its 640 examples. Jackson impressively promoted use of book-plates in two sizes, for large and small books – a good idea which never caught on significantly. The Duke of Beaufort’s plates¹⁹ are an instance, the smaller being about 3¼ inches high (fig.9). In Cambridge and then Oxford, 1700-1704, he acquired orders for college ex-libris, supplying coppers and prints and undertaking the arduous pasting of plates into books. Though institutional plates are outside our brief a point they evidence must be mentioned: existence in the ‘Brighton’ book of otherwise unknown armorials for Balliol, Wadham and Oriel Colleges (All Souls bought a copper from Jackson but never used it) strongly implies that he engraved the plates before offering them. This view is supported by the book-plates of individuals which were evidently not used, Sir Godfrey Kneller’s (fig.10) and John Evelyn’s being instances. Most likely they were approached but turned his offer down. Jackson was but one of many able trade engravers in London, and it is inconceivable that (at a rough count) about 100 of the nobility (including 14 dukes), over 60 baronets, about 30 knights and over 250 gentry and others just gravitated to him for ex-libris. He simply must have sought them out.²⁰

References

  1.  See Anthony Powell’s John Aubrey and his friends, 1948, for an account of the vicissitudes of his relationship with Thomas Gore (1632-84).

  2.  The full passage relating to the coppers is quoted in The Ex Libris Journal, Vol.13, 1903, p.117. The will is printed in full in ‘The Last Will of Thomas Gore, the Antiquary’, by the Rev. Canon J.E. Jackson, fsa (Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine, XIV, 1873).

  3.  See the writer’s British Bookplates, 1979, p.30, No.13, for comment on the armorials. Five of the Gore plates, with a duplicate and a copy, are in the Franks Collection (F.12321-12325). Examples in the Henderson Smith Collection at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, include the arms ‘with faire flourishings’ and the basket of fruit and flowers.

  4.  The elder William Faithorne (1616-91) engraved four other book-plates: a large armorial, probably for Sir George Hungerford of Cadenham; large and small armorials for the Mariots of Whitchurch; and a portrait plate recording the bequest of books by John Hacket, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, to Cambridge University Library.

  5.  See British Bookplates, 1979, p.28, Nos.11 & 12; The Ex Libris Journal, Vol.3, 1893, pp.165-169; ibid. Vol.4, 1894, p.105; and Cyril Davenport’s English Heraldic Book-Stamps, 1909, pp.308-311.

  6.  See F.J. Thairlwall’s article, ‘Men of many bookplates’, in The Ex Libris Journal, Vol.9, 1899, pp.157-161, and Carnegy Johnson’s article, ‘Book-plates of Sir Philip Sydenham’, ibid, Vol.12, 1902, pp.5-8.

  7.  Vol.2, No.17, December 1941, p.23.

  8.  See The Ex Libris Journal, Vol.11, 1901, pp.152-153, pp.164-169, and Vol.12, 1902, pp.9-10,

  9.  (1818-78). Scolar Press in 1988 published David Weston’s A Short Title Catalogue of the Emblem Books and Related Works in the Stirling Maxwell Collection of Glasgow University Library.

10.  Others in the series were for Sir John Berkenhead, Walter Chetwynd, Randolph Egerton, Justinian Pagit, Samuel Pepys, Charles Pitfeild, Sir Robert Southwell and William Wharton.

11.  (1684-1752).

12.  Robert Benson, Memoirs of the life and writings of the Rev. Arthur Collier, 1837.

13.  The woodcut first appeared in the second edition, 1568, replacing the arms of the first edition (Bacon having in the meantime received a new grant of arms from the College of Heralds). It was then used for the book-plate, and subsequently in four later editions of the book; but even at the third edition’s printing, in 1576, further wear to the block is evident, and this is even more marked later.

14.  F.19825, Marsham’s plate as esquire, was also used on the title-page of Diatriba Chronologica, 1649.F.19825, his plate as baronet, occurs on the title of Chronicus Canon Aegyptiacus Ebraicus Graecus & Disquisitiones D. Johannis Marshami Eq. Aur & Bar., London, 1672. (The latter is easily distinguished from the title-page cut since it has wide margins and lacks ‘Aristoteles’ printed on the back).

15.  Before identification, it was questioned whether this anonymous armorial related to Ent(e), Bell or Skene on the evidence of its arms. Debate is now, of course, irrelevant; but both Papworth and Burke indicate that the field should be azure not sable.

16.  Viner noted in Dr Strohl’s Heraldischer Atlas a page of some 15 facsimile reproductions of early mantled shields with helms (without arms and crests). The first ten were by Theodore de Bry; 11-15 were attributed to Michel le Blon (c. 1590-1656) and had affinity to two of the Loggan plates. They also occur in Fox-Davies’s The Art of Heraldry, the illustrations on p.cix and the information concerning them on pp.434-5. See also ‘Bookplates engraved by David Loggan’, by the late G.H. Viner, The Bookplate Society Newsletter No.4, October 1974, pp.2–6.

17.  (1604–89).

18.  See ‘The bookplates of Serjeants at Law’ by J.H. Baker, The Bookplate Journal. Volume 3, Number 2, September 1985, p.67.

19.  Henry, 2nd Duke of Beaufort (1684-1714) married in 1706, as his second wife, Rachel, daughter and co-heir of Baptist, Earl of Gainsborough. It is interesting to note that the 1706 book-plate was engraved for the Duchess, and amended in its inscription for the Duke.

20.  For an account of Jackson and his book-plates see ‘Oxford bookplates by William Jackson – new light on the Brighton Collection’, by Anthony Pincott, The Bookplate Society Newsletter, No.6, June 1974, pp.3–10.