Mathematical books and Frankfurt book fair catalogues: the acquisition of mathematical works by Robert Ashley in early modern London

Abstract

Robert Ashley (1565–1641) was a bibliophile, lawyer and translator who bequeathed his collection of approximately 5,000 books to establish a library at Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court. The collection is notable for several reasons, not least of which is its substantial number of mathematical books and Frankfurt book fair catalogues. These books and catalogues contain marginalia in Ashley’s hand which provide insight into this early modern reader’s use of an important collection of (mostly continental) mathematical books. Despite the lack of documentary evidence by way of commonplace books or correspondence by Ashley, some conclusions can be drawn about his intentions for his collection.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the two anonymous referees for their helpful reviews, which resulted in significant improvements to this paper. She is also grateful to Kate Anstey, Aidan Fusco, Yelda Nasifoglu, Jennifer Nelson, Julian Reid, Liam Sims, and Benjamin Wardhaugh for all of their assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 In 1895 the boundary change placed it in Hampshire. For full details on Robert Ashley’s life see Russell 1940 and Wood 1813–20, as well as his own autobiography: British Library, MS Sloane 2131 (subsequently ‘Vita’).

2 It is possible that Ashley was referring to the public lectures the Masters of Arts were obliged to give upon completion of their degree; see Fletcher (1986, 186). My thanks to Julian Reid for assistance with this point.

3 This exists in three manuscipt copies: the first, dedicated to Sir John Puckering, is at the Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 1117; the second is dedicated to Sir Thomas Egerton (1540–1617) and is at Trinity College Cambridge, R.14.20; Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) had a third undated copy, now in the Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 1148. Until recently it was thought that ‘Of Honour’ was an original work written by Ashley, but Antonio Espigares Pinilla (2017) has shown that it was a translation of Sebastián Fox Morcillo’s De honore.

4 The translated works were all printed in London; they are Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, L’Uranie ou muse celeste = Urania sive musa coelestis (John Wolfe, 1589); ‘Gentil-homme francois’, Discours politique = A comparison of the English and Spanish nation (John Wolfe, 1589); Louis Leroy, De la vicissitude ou variete des choses en l’univers = Of the interchangeable course (Charles Yetsweirt, 1594); Miguel de Luna, Verdadera historia del rey Don Rodrigo = Almansor (William Stansby for John Parker, 1627); Cristoforo Borri, Relatione della nuova missione delli PP. della Compagnia di Giesu, al regno della Cocincina = Cochin-China (Robert Raworth for Richard Clutterbuck, 1633); Virgilio Malvezzi, Il Davide perseguitato = David persecuted (John Haviland for Thomas Knight, 1637).

5 No further evidence of Sir Robert’s instruction for Ashley to visit France and Spain has been traced.

6 National Archives, PROB 11/187/248. Ashley’s will does not detail how many books he left.

7 Middle Temple Archive, MT/2/TRB/4 for the bill of receipt for Cox’s work.

8 See Middle Temple Archive, MT/9/LCA 16 for an example. The catalogues have been digitised and can be accessed at: https://www.middletemple.org.uk/archive-history/archive-information-access/sources-resources/digitised-records/library-manuscript.

9 At various points in the catalogue reference is made to items ‘not found in the other catalogue’.

10 Middle Temple Archive, MT/2/TRB/5.

11 Middle Temple Archive, MT/2/TRB/10. The records do not indicate whether the books were accessible while they were stored in his chamber or in the Parliament chamber.

12 The Liber benefactorum (MS137) lists all book donations made starting in 1641. Between 1641 and 1654 only six books were donated.

13 A full transcription of the catalogue is currently being undertaken, with analysis linking the original to the current holdings. See: https://hcommons.org/docs/transcription-of-middle-temple-library-ms-catalogues/ for current transcription updates.

14 Middle Temple Archive MT/9/LCA12.

15 Excluding the blank entries, there are 259 items in total listed in the ‘Mathematicall sciences’ volume, but twenty-five post-date the Ashley bequest. Multi-volume sets were assigned individual entries, so these were amalgamated to obtain the figure of 227. None of the titles were listed in the Liber benefactorum. Analysis of all sixteen catalogue volumes shows that titles were not duplicated across catalogues and no other titles fall under the broad umbrella of ‘mathematicall sciences’. The present-day holdings agree with the original catalogue entries and can be searched in the online catalogue: www.middletemplelibrary.org.uk.

16 The earliest full recording of the tracts appears in the 1734 printed catalogue, Catalogus librorum bibliothecæ Honorabilis Societatis Medii Templi, Londini.

17 The volumes donated by Petyt are identified by his hand-written tract volume number, for example: ‘Volumen quintum lib 1’. The estimate of 1,100 was calculated by averaging the number of titles within the 104 non-Petyt tract volumes, which equals 11, and rounding the figure down. Full analysis is pending on the tract volumes to determine more definitively Ashley provenance; it will also show whether selected tract titles were recorded in all catalogue volumes, as appears to be the practice in the ‘Mathematical sciences’ volume, which records two tracts: Galileo Galilei, Sidereus nuncius (Frankfurt, 1610) and Peter Ryff, Quaestiones geometricae (Frankfurt, 1621).

18 One title is now missing. Simon Stevin’s Problematum geometricorum (edition unknown) was originally included in volume 106, according to the handwritten title list included at the front of the volume.

19 The dedicatee is not specified.

20 English Short Title Catalogue, S117287.

21 Johannes Muller, Bibliotheca clarissimi doctissimia viri (Emden, 1612); Index librorum prohibitorum (Rome, [1629]); Elenchus librorum omnium tum in Tridentino … (Rome, 1632); Conrad Gessner, Bibliotheca universalis (Zurich, 1545–1549).

22 Only the Gessner bibliographies contain Ashley’s marginalia.

23 These are: Duncan Burnet, Iatrochymicus, sive de præparatione et compositione medicamentorum chymicorum artificiosa tractatus (Frankfurt, 1616); Michael Maier, Symbola aureae mensae duodecim nationum (Frankfurt, 1617); Verum inventum, hoc est, Munera Gemaniae (Frankfurt, 1619); Tractatus de volucri arborea (Frankfurt, 1619); Fridericus Casander, Natura loquax, quà miracula totius vniuersi ex præcipuis mundi partibus (Frankfurt, 1630); Johann Ludwig Gans, Corallum historia (Frankfurt, 1630).

24 The entries for the 1608 catalogue have been discounted, as the marginal notations differ significantly, consisting of manicules and x’s which are not in Ashley’s hand.

25 Rab died in 1620, so the actual printer was likely to have been his son George Rab, in conjunction with Johann Georg von Muderspach. See the entry for this book in the Heritage of the Printed Book database: https://gso.gbv.de/DB=1.77/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=1016&SRT=YOP&TRM=cid±SpMaBN.01.BNE19949191033.

26 The volume contains in this order: Martin Ruland, Nova, et in omni memoria omnino inaudita historia, de aureo dente (Frankfurt, 1595); Zebelis regis et sapientis Arabum vetustissimi … (Prague, [1592]); Tommaso Campanella, De sensu rerum et magia, libri quatuor … (Frankfurt, 1620); Tommaso Campanella, Apologia pro Galileo (Frankfurt, 1622); Wolfgang Waldung, Lagographia (Amberg, 1619); Michael Maier, Examen fucorum pseudo-chymico-rum detectorum et in gratiam veritatis amantium succincte refutatorum (Frankfurt, [1617]); Oratio funebris dicta honori et memoriae V. Cl. D. Petri Pavii (Leiden, 1617); Johannes Jessenius De sanguine, vena secta dimisso, iudicium (Prague, [1608]).

27 Ashley’s elaborate entry is found on folio 12^v of the Liber admissorum (Bodleian Library, e.532). He used the Bodleian’s copy of Verdadera historia del rey Don Rodrigo for his translation of Almansor (folio A1^r).

28 The adoption of ‘Arabic-numeral arithmetic [took place] between 1590 and 1650, with the main transition period beginning in the 1620s and 1630s and continuing through to 1650’ (Otis 2017, 456).

29 Catalogus (1630, folio C1^r).

30 See the entry for 13 September: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/domestic/chas1/1628-9/pp327-341 and Raven (2007, 52).

31 Marked with a dot in Bill’s (London) autumn 1619 catalogue.

32 Ashley’s annotation is difficult to decipher due to the iron gall ink bleeding through the page, but appears to read thus:

In insula madin nobis eccliae sive trianguli io vocantur sancti Petri apud Leydensis Batavos marmoreo lapidi inscribetur subeo requiefere Adopham van Ceulen Polonum Mathematicus ibid professorem qui quadrature circuli compendio fiore inq. viam [infra?] [in?]diantur cuius operae sive industriae specimena figuris et c[?ya]bris algorismi euisdem marmorii inscriptus ibi representatur q[uo]d ibi vidi Aug. mensis 1617.

(In the Protestant church in Leiden called St Peter’s there is an inscription on the tomb of the mathematician Ludoph van Ceulen, who taught in that city and who worked on the quadrature of the circle. His labour adorns the stone on which a figure is represented and certain digits. I saw this August 1617.)

33 See: http://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Van_Ceulen.html for a full-length explanation of van Ceulen’s mathematical disputes.

34 ‘In the year of our Lord 1620. Paul Yvon of La Rochelle, lord of Laleu, most honourable senator and mathematician, [upon the] testimony of John Dunbar, Scotsman, published a certain literary output on the tetragonism of a circle and a certain logesmum on the squaring of a circle and the doubling of a cube, for the proposed prize (a gold chain that equals the weight of a thousand gold crowns) to the person who is first able to reveal that tetragonism as false, for money over and above the prize accessuris from that which was promised and proposed to the mathematician from La Rochelle’. Jennifer Nelson provided the translation of this passage, and corrected the transcription, with gratitude from the author. It is not clear why Ashley’s transcript mentions 1620 when Yvon’s books were first published in 1619.

35 See: http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/dunbar/intro.html and Wilke (2017, 183). Wilke gives the title of Dunbar’s work as Quadrationis circulis (La Rochelle, 1619), but the Heritage of the Printed Book Database lists it as Circulum quadrandi et cubum duplicandi modus verus (La Rochelle, 1619). Both cite the author as John Dumbar, but the English Short Title Catalogue lists the author as John Dunbar, Epigrammatist.

36 The source for the biographical information on Paul Yvon has not yet been traced.

37 Compare Petrus Ramus, Scholarum mathematicarum, libri unus et triginta (Basel, 1569), fol. K2^r and Proemium mathematicum (Paris, 1567), fol. X2^r. With heartfelt gratitude to Yelda Nasifoglu for identification, comments and assistance with these passages.

38 Compare Johannes Thomas Freig, Quaestiones geometricae et stereometricae in Euclidis & Rami (Basel, 1583), fol. β4^v.

39 The Scholarum included all three books of the Proemium: with gratitude to an anonymous referee for highlighting this fact.

40 Compare David Chytraeus, Regulae studiorum (Jena, 1593), fols A3^v–A4^r.

41 Compare Girolamo Cardano, De Sapientia libri quinque (Nuremberg, 1544), fol. n3^v.

42 ‘In the beginning, certainly seek counsel from the geometer and from the arithmetician and also Galen: not only where they might be very certain; but also where they burden us with contradiction and with everything ancient. For both Plato and Aristotle firstly learnt geometry and arithmetic’.

43 Compare Victorinus Strigel, De locorum theologicorum pars quarta (1584), fol. Bb4^r.

44 Ashley wrote ‘Paraliporra’, but it should be Paralipomena (i.e., παραλϵιπόμϵνα). ‘In Paraliporra Victorinus J. Strigelius, [look] to the fourth part of the Loci Theologici, p.71. Philosophers marvel at the genius of Euclid with which the method of geometry is thus formed, so that every demonstration of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and other innumerable subjects is both customarily and ought to be constructed from very brief recitations from Euclid’s Elements’. With gratitude to Aidan Fusco for his translation of these two passages.

45 Compare to Richter, ed., Criseis Melanchthonianae (Eisleben, 1597), fols R4^r, R7^r and R3^v–R4^r respectively. Although there is no evidence that Ashley owned all of the titles excerpted in the Euclid volumes, he did own thirteen books by Cardano, eight by Chytraeus, including Ad regulas studiorum (Jena, 1595), and three by Ramus, including Arithmeticæ libri duo (Leiden, 1613), Rudolphi Snellii in P. Rami geometriam praelectiones (Frankfurt, 1596) and Arithmeticae libri tres (Paris, 1555). He also owned four works by Philipp Melanchthon.

46 It is not clear why so few of Ashley’s books contain his motto. The collection was entirely rebound at various stages, and trimming may have obliterated other instances of the motto. The other books with his motto are books on emblems, church history, philosophy and Christopher Columbus.

47 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justus-lipsius/.

48 The note which follows the van Ceulen information reads: ‘Ph. Cluverius a Polonian having married an English woman is there now Professor of Geography yet readeth no lecture: but hath lately published a great work called Germania antiqua’.

49 One anonymous reviewer suggests that ‘Ashley’s interest may have touched upon the utility of mathematics to dialectic’, thus unifying his interest in works by Galen, Cardano, Ramus, Melanchthon, and Lipsius. The research required to provide the evidence for this was not possible for this paper but would warrant further attention.

50 This is now Bodleian Library, Savile Z9 (2). Ashley’s reasons for presenting Bainbridge with a copy of his translation are unknown. They may be due to the latter’s interest in Arabic studies, and/or because of Almansor’s interest in learning and higher education. His library was said to contain 55,722 books covering ‘all kind of sciences, in their several languages’ and he established seven academies during his lifetime (see pp. 39–46 of Almansor).

51 See for example the advertisement leaf in Ashley’s copy of Browne 1624: A new almanacke and prognostication: ‘These arts are taught by the author viz. Arithmeticke … geometry … Instruments made in brasse by Mr. Elias Allein over against St. Clement … Instruments made in wood by … Nathaniel Noble in the Strand’. Ashley’s copy contains annotations, including in July a note that he lent ‘Mr. Ro. Berley Leg. Albertus De[?]. D’Italia’. This presumably refers to Leandro Alberti, Descriptio totius Italiae. Charles Whitwell, the instrument maker who sold Thomas Hood’s sector, was based ‘without Temple Barre against St. Clement’s Church’ in 1598. See: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG81296.

52 Arithmeticæ in numeris et speciebus institution (London, 1631); and To the English gentrie, and all others studious of the mathematicks (London, 1634?)

53 There is a manuscript addition to the errata slip in To the English gentrie, ‘D: pag.6, line 4. breadth’, but it is difficult to determine with certainty if this is in Ashley’s hand.

54 With gratitude to a referee who suggested this additional use for Ashley’s mathematical books.

55 It is worth noting that Ashley’s copy of Hood’s The making and use of the geometricall instrument, called a sector (London, 1598) contains four pages of notes on the end leaves authored by a ‘D.G.’ concerning a theorem on triangles.

56 T A Birrell (1991) has discussed the aspect of ‘show’ and the place of light literature in seventeenth century gentry libraries.

57 An analysis of this miscellany has been submitted for publication. The miscellany can be viewed online at: https://collections.carli.illinois.edu/digital/collection/nby_dig/id/2695. There are no mathematical extracts within it, but its longitude and latitude tables appear to have been copied – not calculated – by Ashley.