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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
Professor Birrell has remarked that there is ‘an extensive literature on how to describe a book, but there is no literature whatever on how to describe a library or a library catalogue’. Well, what follows is an account of a library in a Northumbrian-Catholic-Jacobite peer's house, not, admittedly, a common category but one having some cultural and recusant interest nevertheless.
1 Birrell, T. A., ‘Reading as Pastime: The Place of Light Literature in some gentlemen's libraries of the 17th century’, Myers, R. & Harris, M. (eds.), Property of a Gentleman: The Formation, Organisation & Dispersal of the Private Library 1620–1920 (1991), p. 116.Google Scholar
2 For the most recent treatment of the Radcliffes see: Gooch, L., The Desperate Faction: The Jacobites of North East England 1688–1745 (1995);Google Scholar Gooch, L., ‘A Northumbrian Recusant Gentry Family: The Radcliffes of Dilston in the Long Seventeenth Century’ (The Dilston Papers No. 1, 2007).Google Scholar
3 Both inventories are reproduced in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, [PSAN] (3rd series) vol. vi (1913) pp. 277–9, but have not been examined since.
4 Cf. British Book Trade Index (BBTI), on the web-site of the University of Birmingham, (an index of the names with brief biographies and trade details of people who worked in the book trade in England and Wales trading by 1851). See also Feather, J., The Provincial Book Trade in Eighteenth-Century England (1985) p. 29;Google Scholar C. J. Hunt, The Book Trade in Northumberland and Durham to 1860 (1915).
5 A ‘French peerage” autographed by the third earl is mentioned at Gibson, W. S., Dilston Hall (1850) p. 169 Google Scholar but its whereabouts is not known.
6 Catholic Encyclopedia vol. XI (1911).
7 Glickman, G., The English Catholic Community 1688–1745 (2009)Google Scholar provides an overview of these developments.
8 Sharratt, M. (ed.), Lisbon College Register 1628–1813, CRS Records vol. 72, (1991) pp. 51/2, 65, 213.Google Scholar
9 Gibson, pp. 167/8, says that Gother's prayer-book The Sinner's Complaints was used by the third earl when he was in the Tower. It appeared in 1707, and was reissued in 1717 and in several later editions. Blom, Cf., F., Blom, J., Korsten, F. & Scott, G., English Catholic-Books, 1701–1800 (1996)Google Scholar No. 1322.
10 ‘Registers of the English Poor Clare Nuns at Gravelines’, CRS Records vol. 14 (1914) subnomen.
11 There were 45 editions of the Imitation of Christ in English by 1700, over a dozen in Protestant versions. Rowlands, Cf. M. B., ‘Harbourers and Housekeepers: Catholic Women in England 1570–1720’, Kapland, B. et al. (eds.) Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands c. 1570–1720 (2009) p. 291.Google Scholar
12 Birrell, pp. 114/5.
13 Gibson, pp. 167/8. A seventeenth-century ‘breviary’ recording Radcliffe anniversaries apparently belonging to the first Countess of Derwentwater was sold c. 1913 but its present whereabouts are not known. Cf. PSAN (3) vi no. 9 (1913) pp. 101–3.
14 The chapel was then used as a storeroom and was converted to Anglican usage in 1733. Lady Derwentwater bequeathed Petre a chalice ‘with some church stuff that he had for many years in his keeping’, cf. PSAN (3) vi (1913), p. 134. A Plantin Missale Romanum printed in 1661 said to have belonged to the Earl of Derwentwater was kept at Ushaw College until recently when it was put on display at Dilston.
15 Thomas had died in 1715 and it is possible that Arthur Radcliffe is meant. A bachelor, Arthur was fifty-two years old at the time and he lived in Capheaton Hall, the seat of the Swinburnes, Catholics and family friends.
16 Gooch, L., ‘The Religion for a Gentleman: The Northern Catholic Gentry in the Eighteenth Century’, Recusant History vol. 23, no. 4 (1997) pp. 543–568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
