In 1714, George I, of the House of Hanover in Germany, assumed the throne of England—not an unusual event on the death of a monarch. However, in this case there were difficulties. George was a foreigner who knew little of the manners and customs—to say nothing of the language—of his new realm, and he was almost completely beholden to the political party which had brought him to power, the Whigs. Many in England opposed him vehemently, a circumstance which was to cause England trouble for decades.

            It must have been refreshing and encouraging to the new king, then, when the newly appointed vice-chancellor of Cambridge University (the office of the chancellor was largely ceremonial) gave an address loyal to the monarch. George I, in turn, rewarded the University in 1715 with the gift of the collection of books represented by the bookplate appearing in this issue of JLH.

            The collection had been the property of Dr. John Moore, bishop of Ely, a Whig supporter who had died the year before. George had bought the collection from the estate for the very sizable sum of 6,000 guineas. It consisted of some 29,000 books and 1,700 manuscripts, and formed the basis for the early nineteenth century bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin’s statement that Moore was the “father of black letter collectors in . . . [England].” But its importance may be seen another way as well. The approximately 30,000 volumes were more than twice as many as the Cambridge University Library, called then the Public Library, possessed at the time, and their accession had far-reaching consequences.

            It is not known exactly when the first library was established at Cambridge. The University itself was founded in the early thirteenth century, and its first public building was erected in 1400. There are records of books being kept there, but they are few. By 1574 dishonesty and neglect, ancient problems for libraries, had reduced the number of volumes to about 180, half the number reported in 1440. Various benefactions before that of George I improved conditions somewhat. However, the arrival of Bishop Moore’s library necessitated drastic rearrangement of facilities. Room was made for the vastly increased collection in former administrative quarters. This space received additions throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but by 1908 library activities were nearly paralyzed for lack of space. Not until 1934, however, was the present massive library building completed, with the help of a Rockefeller Foundation grant. Whatever would have happened without George I’s gift, Bishop Moore’s library proved to be the catalyst, along with the University Library’s 1709 designation as a copyright depository, for modern library development at Cambridge.

            The bookplate recording this gift was not prepared until 1736, a few years after the collection had finally received suitable housing. The engraver was John Pine, and to him was given the task of designing a bookplate appropriate to George’s munificent gift. Four sizes of the plate were engraved, in an elaborate allegorical style. The arms of the University are centered, with the figure of Phoebus Apollo on the left, a sample of the book collection at his feet. Minerva sits to the right, and the wreathed head of George I appears in the medallion below. Many of the bookplates now found in Bishop Moore’s books are late nineteenth century copies of Pine’s original engravings, made when the books had to be rebound.

Philip A. Metzger

Graduate School of Library and Information Science

The University of Texas at Austin

[Originally published in Journal of Library History, vol. 14, no. 4 (Fall 1979): 496-498.]