![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
Sir Thomas Brooke (1830–1908), a Huddersfield woollen cloth manufacturer and company director, was a major collector of books and manuscripts. His library, valued at his death at over £25,000, was one of the more notable of Victorian Britain. This article provides some biographical information about him and his family and describes the scope and areas of particular interest of his library. It includes the books and manuscripts that he bequeathed to the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, whose president he was for 42 years from 1866 until his death. It also considers some aspects of the dispersal of his library after his death.
Notes
1 Girouard, Life in the English Country House, 180, 234, although a reassessment of the country house library in the wider context of private libraries has since been made in Purcell, “The Country House Library.”
2 Doncaster Archives, Cromwell (Copley) of Sprotbrough, DD/CROM/13/1-11.
3 de Ricci, English Collectors, 141, 143. See also the entries for Francis Mary Richardson Currer and Richard Richardson in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The information about the individuals referred to in this article has been drawn from de Ricci and the ODNB unless stated otherwise.
4 Wheatley, Prices of Books, 171; Yorkshire Post, 4 June 1885, ‘The Sale of the Hartley Library’ and 5 June 1885.
5 Barker, Roxburghe Club, 12, 17.
6 Davenport-Hines, “Address”.
7 Gray, Bookmen: London, 128.
8 See Dent’s entry in Fisher ed., The History of Parliament.
9 See Crump and Ghorbal, Huddersfield Woollen Industry, esp. 46–7, 76, 89, and 116–20, and Giles, “The Huddersfield Woollen Industry and Its Architecture,” 275–302.
10 Anon, Huddersfield Examiner, 15 June 1878, obituary of John Brooke.
11 West Yorkshire Archive Service, Kirklees (hereafter WYASK), box 31, Account book of the Thomas Brooke (senior) family trust, 1859–1924, and box 36, copy will of Anne Brooke, 6 Jul 1878.
12 Anon, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 17 July 1908, obituary of Sir Thomas Brooke.
13 Deedes, ed. Charles Edward Brook.
14 Ellis, Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Printed Books, vol. I, v.
15 Smith and Benger, The Oldest London Bookshop, 65–71; McKitterick, Cambridge University Library, 593,667.
16 For Ellis’s links with Morris and his circle, see MacCarthy, William Morris, 240–1, 290, 335–6, and 668. A photograph of Ellis appears there as plate 115.
17 McKitterick, Cambridge University Library, 667.
18 WYASK, C296, Eaton, Smith and Downey of Huddersfield, solicitors, box 34, Testamentary papers and accounts of the Brooke Family: Valuation [1938].
19 Barber, “Personalities and Publishing.”
20 Fowler, ed., Coucher Book of Selby Abbey, xviii, where Boone is misspelt as Bone.
21 WYASK, C296, Eaton, Smith and Downey of Huddersfield, solicitors, box 35: Testamentary papers and accounts of Sir Thomas Brooke.
22 Brooke, MSS. Chiefly Concerning Yorkshire at Armitage Bridge, 1896, 18; Parkes, Medieval Manuscripts of Keble College Oxford, 192, 297.
23 The information given there is disputed in Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum 1905–1910, 126–9.
24 Parkes, Medieval Manuscripts of Keble College Oxford, entries 28, 32, 34, 35, 38, 48, 50–2, 54, 55, 56, 58, and possibly 64 (Bragge), 39, 45 (Tite), 42, 61–3 (one volume in three parts) (Jarman).
25 British Library, Yates Thompson Manuscripts, 1–52. There are also six Bibles and four Psalters.
26 Catalogue, 1891, vol. II, 333–443, but there are also many index entries to particular volumes which appear throughout the catalogue.
27 These, and the manuscript creators mentioned subsequently have entries in the ODNB, and so are not considered further here. The records bequeathed by Brooke to the YAS are described in Lancashire, Catalogue, (1913), as MS 1-MS 287, ‘as well as most of the Miscellaneous MSS and several parcels of deeds’ (page iii). There are 292, 293–5, 297, 304, 308, 316–9 and 338, and probably others not yet identified. The rental was published as Michelmore, The Fountains Abbey Lease Book.
28 Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1905–1910, 129–30 and 131–2, MS 37,769 and MS 3771; Fowler, The Coucher Book of Selby Abbey, xviii; Farrer, The Chartulary of Cockersand Abbey.
29 Puttick and Simpson, Catalogue of the Manuscript Library of the late Dawson Turner, 205, lot 478. Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, Catalogue of the Second Portion of the Library of the late James Crossley, 1885, item No. 3089. Brooke identified the source of the Thoresby purchases in [T. Brooke], MSS. Chiefly Concerning Yorkshire at Armitage Bridge, 1896, 20. (A manuscript draft copy is to be found in the University of Leeds, Brotherton Library, Special Collections, YAS/MS 1198.).
30 Munby, Formation of the Phillipps Library up to the year 1840, 88–91.
31 Catalogue of the… Burton Constable Manuscripts, 1889, in Catalogues of Sundry Sales 1883–1902, (YAS 0851). Brooke bought lots 65, 173–6, 540, and 505.
32 These formed lot 100 and were subsequently purchased by the Bodleian Library from a Sotheby auction sale in 1937.
33 Munby, Phillipps Manuscripts Catalogues, Introduction, unnumbered pages.
34 Lot 876, sale of June 1893, now YAS/MS 3 and 4.
35 Catalogues of the Phillipps’ Sales 1889–1897 and Catalogues of the Phillipps’ Sales 1898–1911, (YAS 0852–0853).
36 Now YAS/MS 338, published as Clay, ed., Yorkshire Church Notes.
37 Munby, Formation of the Phillipps Library from 1841 to 1872, 75.
38 Lot 437 cost Brooke £31, but this was a composite lot of 10 volumes.
39 Lancashire, Catalogue, 18.
40 Hall and Thomas, Descriptive Catalogue of… the Jackson Collection, Prefatory Note, esp. x-xi, and 276–81. The Hunter lots bought by Jackson were 440, 445 and 468 in the Phillipps sale of 22 March 1895.
41 Hall, Catalogue of the Charters, 63–7.
42 Munby, Phillipps Manuscripts Catalogues.
43 Munby, Formation of the Phillipps Library from 1841 to 1872,121 and Dispersal of the Phillipps Library, 51.
44 It now has the reference MS Egerton 2823, and see Burton, ed., The Cartulary of Byland Abbey.
45 Barber, “George Walker’s Costume of Yorkshire.”
46 The Walker materials are not listed in Lancaster’s or Crossley’s later Catalogue as they were classed as part of the library until the 1990s. They are now YAS/MS 1000.
47 The history of the library is explained in Grazioli, “La dispersa bibliotheca dei conti Piloni di Belluno.”
48 20,000 lire in 1875 would have equivalent to about 5.81 kg. of gold, or around UK £720 at then-current values.
49 Society of Antiquities of London, Roxburghe Club, Minute Book, 1835–1901, containing list of members, 1901, and list of toasts (at end).
50 Barker, Roxburghe Club, 61, 80, 123, 126, 149, 303.
51 SAL, Roxburghe Club, Minute Book, 1835–1901, 9 May 1900, 12 June 1900 and Minute Book, 1902–1936, 10 February 1904.
52 The Times, 21 May 1908, 16, reporting on an exhibition of liturgical manuscripts at the Burlington Fine Arts Club.
53 Dewick, “On a Pontifical MS. of a Bishop of Metz.”
54 Brooke catalogue, II, 523. A full description can be found in Dewick’s article.
55 Barker, Roxburghe Club, 133.
56 WYASK C296, Eaton, Smith and Downey of Huddersfield, solicitors, Testamentary papers and accounts of the Brooke Family. Those relating to Sir Thomas are to be found unsorted in boxes 34–6; Calendar of Probates, 1908, 242 and probate of will, proved at Wakefield District Probate Registry, 9 October 1908.
57 Wheatley, The Prices of Books, 175.
58 British Library, Additional Manuscripts, 37,768–71.
59 British Library, Additional Manuscript, 38,521.
60 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 298; The Times, ‘Two Famous Manuscripts,’ 14 January 1919, 10.
61 McHugh and Barber, “Yorkshire Archives and a League of Gentlemen.”
62 An exception is Brooke’s Calendars of State Papers, now held by Bury Archives, which were given to the society by Sir Thomas during his lifetime.
63 Parker, The Medieval Manuscripts of Keble College Oxford, manuscripts 27 to 65; ms 66 appears not to have been part of Sir Thomas’s library.
64 British Library, Additional Manuscripts 40,075, 40,077–79. Add MS 40,076 came from the library of Sir John, but had formerly belonged to John Bateman, the Derbyshire antiquary and archaeologist.
65 de Ricci, English Collectors, 168, and WYASK, C296, Eaton, Smith and Downey, box 33: Valuation (gross) of Sir John Brooke’s library.
66 WYASK, C296, Eaton, Smith and Downey, box 34.
67 Obituary of Humphrey Brooke, The Times, 26 December 1988; Rouse and Cartolai, ‘Illuminators and Painters in Fifteenth-Century Italy,’ 116; Christie’s auction sale catalogue, No. 12,141, 1 December 2016.