University of Virginia Library

John Warburton as Antiquary and Collector: Evidence from the Sale Catalogue of his Collection
by
Michael D. Bliss

John Warburton (1682-1759) is today remembered as the bumbling fool who collected some fifty manuscript plays and later "lodgd them" with his servant (apparently his cook), who either burned or "put under Pye bottoms" all but three of them. However, he was, as we might expect, very differently regarded by his contemporaries who knew nothing of the burned plays. They viewed him with a substantial, if at times grudging and somewhat qualified, respect; the record of his antiquarian and collecting activities provides a more precise definition of the quality of this respect.

For a more objective view of Warburton as antiquary and collector, though, we should be happy to know specifically the scope and nature of his collection. John Nichols reports that at the time of his death Warburton had amassed "an amazing collection of MSS, books, prints, &c. relating to the History and Antiquities of England, which were sold by auction, after his death, in 1759."[1] The catalogue of this sale, which would give us just such a view, seems to have dropped out of sight early in the nineteenth century. Joseph Haslewood published a brief "extract" from it in 1807 in connection with his notice of Warburton's list of destroyed plays,[2] but there appear to be no later accounts. When W. W. Greg came to consider the question of Warburton's list in his classic essay, "The Bakings of Betsy,"[3] he was unable to find a copy of the catalogue and had to rely on what information Haslewood provided. Similarly John Freehafer, whose recent paper in Studies in Bibliography argues for the credibility of Warburton's story, makes no use of the sale catalogue, although in his conclusion Freehafer rather misleadingly suggests that he has made "a new examination of Warburton's list, memorandum, sale catalogue and surviving manuscripts."[4] Most recently, Anne Lancashire, in a note correcting Freehafer's argument that Edmond Malone had examined Warburton's

list as early as 1778, quotes briefly from the sale catalogue, but only to show that it, rather than Warburton's list, was Malone's source for information on Warburton's collection.[5] There are, however, at least five copies of the Warburton sale catalogue in libraries and private collections here and in England;[6] from it we may gain a more exact view than has been hitherto available of Warburton's interests as a collector of literary texts and manuscripts.

In his early life Warburton was a minor civil servant (an exciseman), and in 1720 was appointed to the office of Somerset Herald,[7] a position of genteel duties and impressive opportunities for income, which he held for the rest of his life. He was thus enabled to indulge himself in that modern passion which had its beginnings in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, collecting, and it was as a collector and antiquary that Warburton was known in his own day. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1719)[8] and the Society of Antiquaries (1720); he assembled a considerable collection of manuscripts and antiquities; and he published a number of local maps based on actual surveys (1716-49), and at least two books.

The earlier book, London and Middlesex Illustrated (1749), is a defense of some five hundred coats of arms which he had included in the border of his most recent map; the arms, belonging mostly to merchants and tradesmen, had been attacked as illegitimate. Warburton here sets out his evidence for the authenticity of these arms. Thus his purpose was both to vindicate himself and, as he points out in his preface, to democratize

arms, to attack those who hold that "trade and gentility" are incompatible (Preface, p. iii). The whole force of the work is revealing of Warburton himself, for it is a document of the new classlessness that yet above all aspires to class. Warburton's antiquarian interests reflect the same pattern, for such tastes were, especially in the first quarter of the century, the tastes of men of wealth and title, like Robert Harley, Queen Anne's minister and Earl of Oxford.[9]

The second book, Vallum Romanum: or the History of the Roman Wall . . . in Cumberland and Northumberland (1753), was, in fact, a thorough plagiarism of John Horsley's Britannia Romana; or, the Roman Antiquities of Britain (1732), a book regarded with great respect by modern archeologists.[10] Warburton claims to have participated with Horsley in the original researches—and he may well have—but the extent of the plagiarism is nearly total, whereas Warburton acknowledges only a modest dependence.

There are also two items of Warburton apocrypha, both printed well after his death, and both of a narrowly antiquarian interest: Some Account of the Alien Priories (1779), a catalogue of the 146 Norman priories in England until the time of Henry V, and A Treatise on the History, Laws, and Customs of the Island of Guernsey (1822). Warburton's hand in both these works is, at best, doubtful; but it is revealing of Warburton's reputation as an antiquary that he should have been regarded as a possible author, and one who would bring credit to the works as well. Even sixty years after his death it apparently made sense to refer to him as "the celebrated Antiquary" (as he is called in the Guernsey volume, by an editor who knows almost nothing else about him).

Since no one has ever taken the time to do so, let me say what can be briefly said on these two books. Our impression of Warburton depends on understanding such matters. The original issue of the Alien Priories (1779) was anonymous, the publisher (John Nichols) asserting he was "not at liberty to mention the author's name." A re-issue (1786) bore a new title page: "collected from the MSS. of J. W. and Dr Ducarel." Andrew Ducarel, a well-known antiquary who had been born in Normandy, had many connections with Nichols (one of his works is advertised as in press at the end of the 1779 volume) and with B. J. Pouncy, who did the engravings for the book. He also had a clear interest in Normandy and had published a number of books in ecclesiastical history; Warburton, so far as we know, had no such interests, and if he had any part in the book it

must have been very small. Nichols later seems to testify that Warburton had no part in the work: in a long biographical footnote on Warburton in his Literary Anecdotes (1812-1815, VI, 142) he mentions the two acknowledged publications and concludes that "these, with some prints, are the whole of his publications." Presumably the phrase of the 1786 title page, "collected from the MSS. of J. W.," best describes Warburton's involvement; perhaps Ducarel used MSS formerly in Warburton's collection, but not by Warburton. It is still puzzling, though, that Nichols should have attached Warburton's name to the volume in such a way as to suggest that his share was equal to Ducarel's, for it is fairly certain that the book is substantially Ducarel's work.

The Guernsey treatise was published more than sixty years after Warburton's death, and although the editor is vague on just who Warburton was and when he lived, he clearly imagines that the name is not wholly forgotten and will add some glow of authority to the work. The treatise, he writes, was "drawn up by Mr. Warburton, a Herald and celebrated Antiquary in Charles II's reign. It bears the date of 1682" (p. 1).

This study could not be by Warburton; first, it is a wholly anonymous work, without the little interjections of ego that characterize Warburton, and second, there is no other evidence of his interest in the Channel Islands. It seems more likely that the book was printed from a manuscript owned by Warburton, which thus had his name on it. The date (1682, the year of Warburton's birth) probably stood in the manuscript, and thus led the editor to place Warburton's career in the reign of Charles II (who died in 1685). The date, however, seems to be wrong, since a list in the text (p. 52) goes down to 1713. Could the date of Warburton's birth have been written in by Warburton himself, or by a subsequent owner? Or was it the date of composition, with the later years in the list having been written in by Warburton? No real conclusion is possible, or necessary. What we are interested in is Warburton's reputation, and from these two books, neither probably written by Warburton, we can conclude that he must have been regarded as a man who might have written them.

From what little we know, then, a curious portrait emerges. Warburton seems to have been both a successful and even admired antiquary and, at the same time, a somewhat foolish and disagreeable character. In 1720, when he was only thirty-eight, Warburton's collection of manuscripts and antiquities was important enough to interest Humfrey Wanley, the self-taught scholar of Middle English who was in charge of the great library then being formed by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford. Wanley offered 100 guineas for a part of the collection; Warburton asked for 300, "a price," wrote Wanley, "in my poor Opinion, by much too horribly exorbitant to be complied with."[11] Warburton then pretended that he had another offer,

and, that failing, attempted a second approach. Wanley has preserved an account of it:

Thus Wanley, who clearly had no great respect for Warburton personally—he elsewhere calls him "extremely greedy, fickle, & apt to go from his Word" (Diary, I, 56)—was nonetheless happy to acquire for his patron important material which Warburton had managed to collect—a number of manuscripts, two pictures, and "some Brass-pieces of Antiquitie."

This theme of Warburton's personal unpleasantness as contrasted with his value as a collector turns up elsewhere. Among the Lansdowne manuscripts is a journal and a collection of drawings made by Warburton during a surveying trip in Yorkshire in 1718-19. The journal itself is of no great value, although it does give us a view of Warburton's tastes and interests. It reveals, in fact, something close to the virtuoso that Pope would soon be satirizing. A typical entry records Warburton's visit to

The nineteenth-century editor of this journal obesrves that Warburton's "Latin is generally unintelligible, and his remarks on places and persons very jejune and uninforming" (p. 62), and yet goes on to emphasize the very great historical value of the more than 360 drawings of "gentlemen's seats and places of interest in Yorkshire" which accompany the journal.

Francis Grose (1731?-1791), the lexicographer of the vulgar tongue, has also recorded his impressions of Warburton, whom he regarded as a scoundrel. "He had little or no education, being not only ignorant of the Latin, but incapable of writing two sentences in good English. All the publications under his name, both books and maps, were done by others hired by him."[13] But then, Grose was an acerbic man; in his biographical notes on Dr. Johnson he tells with considerable emphasis the story of Johnson's delivering to his publisher already printed material for the Dictionary in order to get a second payment (p. 161).

Warburton was frequently on bad terms with his colleagues in the College of Arms,[14] and we can guess why. He seems to have been vain and self-important, and yet at the same time obsequious before the rich, the powerful, and the titled. His position as Herald is symbolic of his parvenu aspirations, as was his collecting. As an antiquarian, however, he seems to have gained a considerable reputation, in spite of the wholesale plagiarism involved in his single antiquarian publication. No doubt his collection counted for nearly all of this reputation; Humfrey Wanley's Diary shows continuing interest in Warburton and his antiquities right up to 1726, the year of Wanley's death, when he returned a batch of manuscripts to Warburton asking him "to deferre his offer of Selling the same unto my Lord, for some longer time."[15]

Thus, in spite of the poor character which all commentators agree in giving Warburton,[16] he was an effective and successful collector. The judgment of Mark Noble, the early-nineteenth-century historian of the College of Arms, is typical in striking this balance. "Impartiality has compelled me to give what I find relative to a character which I admire for his love of science, and detest for his dishonesty and querulous scurrility."[17]

The sale of Warburton's collection after his death occupied six days, beginning on Monday, 19 November, and comprised 764 lots. It was not, then, a huge collection, and was perhaps more notable for its curiosity than its size. Some thirty-three volumes of manuscripts from this sale found their way into what we now know as the Lansdowne collection, but since William Fitzmaurice Petty (became Lord Shelburne 1761, created Marquis of Lansdowne in 1784) did not begin collecting books until 1765,[18] and was in fact probably abroad during November 1759,[19] it is not likely that

he purchased the volumes directly at the Warburton sale. In fact, it has recently been revealed that the Grolier Club's copy of the Warburton sale catalogue contains an auctioneer's invoice for various lots sold to Philip Carteret Webb.[20] One of the lots is #212—now MS Lansdowne 807, the volume containing the remnants of Warburton's play collection, his list, and his memorandum describing the destruction of the balance of the collection. Since Webb's widow is known to have sold some manuscripts to Lord Shelburne after Webb's death in 1771,[21] it is fairly certain that Webb was the intermediate owner of the Warburton manuscripts now in the Lansdowne collection. In any case, the present MS Lansdowne 807 was in Shelburne's hands by 1780, when it is so described by a correspondent (George Steevens) in the St. James's Chronicle for May of that year.[22] James West, later President of the Royal Society and a collector and antiquary of some note, has been more than once suggested as this intermediate purchaser,[23] but that suggestion was never more than speculation. In 1805 Lansdowne died and, after some protracted negotiations, Parliament in 1807 voted 4,925 pounds to purchase his manuscript collection for the British Museum, where it is now housed.[24]

At the Warburton sale in 1759 MS Lansdowne 807 was purchased for only 14/-[25] by Philip Carteret Webb, who apparently later sold it to Lord Shelburne, in whose hands it was to become familiar to literary scholars. However, although this volume of dramatic manuscripts is today the thing most often associated with the name of John Warburton and his "amazing collection," it was in no way characteristic of that collection.

As we have seen, as early as 1720 Humfrey Wanley purchased twenty-two items from Warburton's collection for the library of Robert Harley. The Harleian collection was largely historical in emphasis—at the time of its dispersal (1743) it contained some 27,000 manuscripts of which 14,000 were charters.[26] And, in fact, Wanley's list of the volumes purchased from Warburton for this collection shows a similar balance, with perhaps rather more than usual in the way of religious items. There is only a single literary

title, "Sr John Gowers English Poem's, Illum. & Adorned with the Armes of divers Families,"[27] and one at least half suspects that Warburton's interest was more in the arms than the verse. Further, Wanley mentions Warburton at several other points in the Diary, concerning charters (II, 406), "a MS. relating to Waltham-Abbey" (I, 130), and an "Heraldic MS" (I, 71).

A similar emphasis is apparent in the Warburton sale catalogue. The library, comprising some 764 lots,[28] is advertised by Paterson as

The sale was conducted over six days, with the last two given over to the County Collections described by Paterson. These last two parts account for some 180 lots, leaving something under 600 to be disposed of in the first four days. Of these, some 278 consisted of printed books. This collection of printed books again reflects Warburton's historical, topographical, and heraldic interests, although there are a half-dozen books on painting and the fine arts and perhaps twice as many of literary interest. These latter are about evenly divided between books of contemporary literature and editions of classic writers. In the first group we find Denham's Poems (1704), Cowley's Works (1674), Howard's Plays (1700), and Dryden's Virgil (1709); in the second, Gavin Douglas's Aeneid (1553), Sandys' Ovid's Metamorphoses (1640), and "Chaucer's Works, printed by Caxton, imperfect." Three more titles, less easily categorized, are "The History of George a Green, Pindar of Wakefield, 1706" (the prose romance,[29] not the play printed 1599), Phineas Fletcher's Purple Island (1633), and "Plays and Poems, 4 vol." The last item immediately precedes Fletcher's Purple Island, but that circumstance gives us no help in identifying it. Of course it must be in part dramatic, and thus it comprises all the dramatic works to be found amongst this collection of printed books.

Manuscripts, together with prints, drawings, copperplates, coins and medals, and "Sundry Curiosities" account for the more than 300 lots remaining, and of this number the great bulk are manuscripts, regularly divided by the cataloguer into "Heraldic" and "Miscellaneous." Again we find mostly historical and topographical works in the "Miscellaneous" category, although occasionally the lots are strangely various. Thus lot #103 includes

Besides this lot there are perhaps eleven more of literary interest and, although they form only a small part of this collection of manuscripts, they deserve to be given in full for the light they shed on Warburton's interests as a collector of literary manuscripts.

• 204. The Character of a Trimmer, fol.
• 208. A Romance, without a Title, fol.[30]
• 209. A Tragedy, without a Title, fol.
• 210. Demetrius and Marsina, or the Imperial Impostor and Unhappy Heroine, a Tragedy, fol.
• 211. The Tyrant, a Tragedy, 4to[31]
• 212. The Queene of Corsica, a Tragedy, written by Fran. Jaques 1642—The second Mayden's Tragedy, Licens'd by the Duke of Buckingham, 31st Oct. 1611—The Buggbears, a Play, very ancient, fol.[32]
• 213. A Collection of Divine and Moral Poems, by William Tipping, Gent. in 12 vol. 4to, and 3 vol. 8vo.
• 214. Original Compositions, Extracts, &c. in several Languages (but chiefly in Spanish) by Mrs. Catherina Sabina Stevens
• 319. . . . The Miser jilted, a Novel, from the Spanish, by [Captain John Stevens, husband of Catherina] . . . The Friend in Distress, a Novel—The Ungrateful Fair, a Novel—
• 328. A Poem, inscribed to Sir Julius Caesar, by Henry Skipwith, 4to.
• *328. The Christian Hero, a Tragedy 1734, 4to

These manuscripts are perhaps most distinguished by their miscellaneous nature; very little in the way of pattern or intention is apparent. Rather Warburton seems to have acquired what he could find. For instance, lots #214 and #319 represent a large group of manuscripts "of the late [d. 1726] Capt. John Stevens," most of which were catalogued together among the lots sold on the third day.[33] It seems likely that Warburton acquired them as a group, just as he must surely have acquired the fifteen

volumes of William Tipping's poems (#213). Where literary manuscripts were concerned, then, Warburton seems not to have been a connoisseur, assiduously and patiently seeking out any scraps that might add to his knowledge and store, but rather more simply a collector of curiosities, and it is in this latter light that his collection of manuscript plays ought properly to be seen.

The evidence of the sale catalogue also makes plain another point: it is not true, as is often assumed, that MS Lansdowne 807 represents the only dramatic manuscripts in Warburton's collection. In 1759 there were four more manuscript plays: #209, an untitled tragedy, #210, Demetrius and Marsina, #211, The Tyrant, and #*328, The Christian Hero. The untitled "Romance," #208, is almost certainly not dramatic. The term "romance" has been applied to plays only in this century and, further, this MS fetched only one shilling, while the three plays immediately following it each realized nearly three times that amount.

Two of these four plays have substantial earlier histories, and one, The Tyrant, is included on Warburton's list of lost plays. It is there ascribed to Massinger, suggesting one of three possibilities: (1) that Warburton was more expert at finding information in manuscripts than were the compilers of the sale catalogue, (2) that the manuscript he recorded had suffered loss or damage resulting in the obliteration of Massinger's name by 1759, or (3) that there were two manuscripts of the play in his collection. Simplicity favors the first two possibilities. Joseph Haslewood, who as we have seen published an account of the Lansdowne volume, also examined Warburton's sale catalogue and printed from it the descriptions of lots #208-212. In his discussion of The Tyrant he remarks that "there is little doubt of its still being in existence."[34] In spite of this optimism (Haslewood gives no other grounds for his statement) the manuscript has not come to light in the intervening one hundred and sixty odd years.

The Tyrant, also attributed to Massinger, is included in Humphrey Moseley's 1660 entry in the Stationers' Register of 26 plays, including nine which he had entered before. This list includes three manuscripts surviving today, The Faithful Friends, Believe as You List, and The Soddered Citizen, and the fact that a fourth title still existed in 1759 gives this group of plays an unusually high survival rate. It is likely that this group of 26 plays went from Moseley through some unknown intermediaries to Warburton in a block.

The Christian Hero by George Lillo was first performed at Drury Lane in January 1734/5 and was published twice, in octavo, in 1735. Both its late date and its separation from the other dramatic manuscripts in the catalogue suggest that it is independent of the latter.

Demetrius and Marsina is wholly unknown, and probably has nothing to do with Fletcher's Demetrius and Enanthe, or the Humorous Lieutenant (1619). The subtitle rather suggests a Restoration than a Jacobean or

Caroline play, although such impressions cannot be given much weight. The play was no doubt based on the impostor who claimed to be Demetrius, the son of the Czar Ivan, and usurped the Russian throne in 1605-6; thus it cannot be earlier than this. The fourth dramatic manuscript, a titleless tragedy, can only tell us how often title pages were lost.

Warburton's collection of books and manuscripts, as it is represented by his sale catalogue, was, as we should have expected, largely historical, topographical, and heraldic in emphasis.[35] Literary materials formed a small part, and the evidence suggests that Warburton's interest in dramatic manuscripts was a limited one. The collection as a whole, though, is eminently respectable, demonstrating, particularly in the County Collections, considerable thoroughness and care. Warburton's library shows us that his contemporary reputation as an antiquary was not undeserved, while some of the more recent epithets applied to the "pie-eating Somerset Herald" perhaps are.

Notes