Thomas Smith, Bishop of Carlisle, has featured on this blog already.

I didn’t then mention Thomas Smith’s library. When he died, in 1702, Bishop Thomas Smith left his library to Carlisle Cathedral. It comprised some 1,500 books and has, since the early 1700s, been housed in the Fratry building.

Thomas Smith’s library

Visit the new Fratry café today (recommended!) and you can still walk up the stairs into a large room edged with book cases.

Like most ‘grand’ libraries – the sort you find in stately homes – you have to wonder how many of those books were actually read from cover to cover.

I mean, some of them don’t exactly look like page-turners!

James Graham, first Marquess of Montrose

A couple of weeks ago, peering into one bookcase, I spotted one that DID look interesting (to me): 

Montrose Redivivus.

I took a photo, to remind myself to look it up. And discovered it was written about 1647 by Dr George Wishart, later Bishop of Edinburgh. 

Dr George Wishart

Wishart (1599-1671) was, by all accounts a jolly good egg, and a man of principle, who knew James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, really well (in person).

James Graham studied at Wishart’s college, in Edinburgh. And Wishart was to owe his liberation from the notorious Thieves’ Hole prison, in that city, to the military success of Montrose against his Covenant jailers. The two men (with companions) later sailed together to Norway, in 1646, as exiles ‘when all hope was for the present gone’.

After the fall of Montrose, Dr George Wishart became chaplain to a Scottish regiment of the Prince of Orange, and minister at Schiedam.  At the restoration of the monarchy, he was appointed rector of Newcastle, before becoming Bishop of Edinburgh in 1662. You can read about him here.

Thomas Smith and James Graham

Thomas Smith was teaching in Oxford in the 1640s, when King Charles I – having fled London – made the city his headquarters. 

He would have been 29 when James Graham rode south to join the exiled court. Montrose was just two years older.

Did they ever meet? 

It is recorded that Thomas Smith preached before King Charles I during his stay in Oxford. So it is not inconceivable that he was aware of James Graham’s visit to the court, even if they never sat down for a chat.

Two years after Charles I was executed and one year after James Graham met the same fate, Thomas Smith moved home to Cumbria. There, he was to marry Catherine, the widow of Sir Henry Fletcher, of Hutton in the Forest, who had  been killed at the Battle of Rowton Heath, fighting for the King against Parliament in 1645.

It’s safe to say, Thomas Smith not only had first-hand experience of the Civil War, but also more than one reason to be interested in a biography of James Graham.

Thomas Smith’s library

Going back to Thomas Smith’s library… having taken a photo to remind me to look up one book, I then decide to look up the others in the snap.

I should note that not every book on the Fratry shelves dates from the 1600s. Many of the books weren’t Thomas Smith’s: some 240 had belonged to Henry Hutton (who died in 1655), and they weren’t the last to add to the collection. However, Hutton’s books are noted:

‘as largely theological and patristic‘ (Source).

Whereas Thomas Smith’s:

‘…include history, law, literature, mathematics, and the sciences’ (Source).

But for sure, seven of the eight books in the snap were written in Thomas Smith’s lifetime. Some are in Latin. And they are not theological or patristic.

I have no idea how many of them Bishop Thomas Smith read, but it does seem to modern eyes that some were more (literally) ‘worth the candle’ on a dark evening than others!

Thomas Smith’s library – 11 volumes

• Euclides Physicus: 1657. Written by Thomas White, an English Roman Catholic priest and scholar, known as a theologian, censured by the Inquisition, and also as a philosopher. This book apparently translates into English as ‘Euclid the physicist, or On the principles of Stoic nature’.
• Whyte on the Law: the internet has no idea on this one!
• Art of Brewing: Thomas Tryon, 1691. A New Art of Brewing Beer, Ale, and Other Sorts of Liquors: So as to Render Them More Healthfull to the Body and Agreeable to Nature.
• Huet on Romances: Pierre-Daniel Huet. The History of Romances: An Enquiry in to Their Original Instructions for Composing Them an Account of the Most Eminent Authors. English translation likely 1715.
• Hudibras II: A vigorous satirical poem (on the Civil War), written in a mock-heroic style by Samuel Butler (1613–1680), and published in three parts.
• The Heroine Musqueteer: novel by Jean de Préchac, written in 1678 as l’Heroïne mousquetaire.
• Bacon on Spira: First published in 1638, although the story had circulated in the 16th century. ‘A Relation of the fearful state of Francis Spira, after he turned apostate from the Protestant church to popery’.
• The court and character of King James I: 1650. by Sir Anthony Weldon. This is a collection of scandalous gossip about James and Charles I and their ministers and favourites. Weldon summed up James I as “the wisest fool in Christendom”.
• Montrose Redivivus: A biography of James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, written circa 1647 by Dr George Wishart, partly from first-hand experience.
• Quaestio quodlibetica, or, A discourse, whether it may be lawfull to take Use for Money. Originally published 1653.
• Pathomyotomia, Bulwer: 1649. Pathomyotomia Or A Dissection of the significative Muscles of the Affections of the Minde. Being an essay to a new Method of observing the most Important movings of the Muscles of the Head, as they are the neerest and Immediate Organs of the Voluntarie or Impetuous motions of the Mind.