{"id":10574,"date":"2025-07-21T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/?p=10574"},"modified":"2025-07-21T11:27:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T15:27:39","slug":"rbscspotlight-bibliomaniac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/rbscspotlight-bibliomaniac\/","title":{"rendered":"Bibliomaniac: The Library of Sir Thomas Phillipps<\/em> \u2014\u00a0a spotlight exhibit in Special Collections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Anne Elise Crafton, PhD, RBSC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Hesburgh Libraries<\/em><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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Sir Thomas Phillipps, 1st Bt, by Alexander George Tod<\/strong> (albumen carte-de-visite, late 1860s-early 1870s)

National Portrait Gallery, London; Photographs Collection, NPG x12731<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Few 19th-century antiquarians matched the obsession of English baronet Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872). A self-described \u201cvello-maniac\u201d (lover of parchment), Phillipps spent his life and fortune amassing what became the largest manuscript collection of his time \u2014 over 60,000 manuscripts, plus 20,000 printed works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Driven by a fear of biblioclasm, Phillipps\u2019 believed he was preserving manuscripts from destruction. This, however, came at a great cost. Life at his estate, Middle Hill, was characterized both by the extreme debts and temper of its master. Phillipps feuded with nearly everyone, including neighbors, tradesmen, tax collectors, scholars, Catholics, curators, his father, wives, daughters, and especially his son-in-law, James Haliwell. Despite near-constant financial ruin, he continued to buy relentlessly, often enlisting his daughters to help catalog and transcribe his acquisitions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The summer Spotlight Exhibit<\/a> (running from May through August), Bibliomania: The Library of Sir Thomas Phillipps<\/em>, features five items from this impressive collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three of the items in this exhibit are medieval English documents<\/a> known as \u201cprivate charters\u201d \u2014 that is, records of transactions between private citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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According to these documents, Ch_ang_01_12 (above) and Ch_ang_01_13 (below), on October 28, 1264, a man named Thomas conveyed vast tracts of land in Yorkshire to his daughters, Ramette and Berthe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Despite his vast collection, Phillipps infamously rarely read the items in his library. Indeed, one of the great criticisms levied against the collector was that he simply hoarded manuscripts without the ability or interest to use them. An exception, however, were charters. Driven by a passion for genealogy, Phillipps was known to scour deeds for names and places for use in studies of pedigree, which he published with his own private press.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, notwithstanding this personal interest, thousands of the deeds in his collection went uncatalogued during his lifetime. Only after his death did his grandson, Thomas FitzRoy Fenwick, receive legal permission to organize the collection for sale, at which point over 26,000 items were finally given their iconic Phillipps numbers. To streamline the process, Fenwick often gave the same number to related items, such as Ch_ang_01_12 and Ch_ang_01_13, both catalogued as Phillipps no. 27,951. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You can see the hand of Thomas FitzRoy Fenwick on the exterior of Ch_ang_01_09, the third charter in this exhibit. Ch_ang_01_09, which records a 14th century transaction between Robert of Cawthorne to Nicholas and Walter del Brom, is in its original “docketed” form \u2014 a pre-modern filing system in which documents were folded and labeled. Above the labels of “Scelmthorpe” (Skelmanthorpe, a nearby town) and “Lanc” (perhaps referencing the Lancaster family, lords of Skelmanthorpe), Fenwick wrote the number “29,202.” See the video below for how this charter unfolds!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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