Stonyhurst’s remarkable manuscript collections are already recognised through a small group of well-known volumes, especially some of those among the Boardman Collection of Medieval Manuscripts. However, beyond these few items, very little is widely known. Over a number of years, a project has been underway to make these materials more accessible to researchers, and better understood within and beyond Stonyhurst. A new catalogue has recently been completed to provide more information to prospective researchers in early modern fields about the manuscript holdings at Stonyhurst.

The new catalogue records details of all bound manuscripts which date between 1550 and 1799, and bound manuscript transcriptions of early modern texts. The date boundary of 1550 was originally decided by Fr Charles Boardman in the first formal cataloguing project for manuscripts at Stonyhurst (established by the terminus ad quem of Boardman’s 1862 catalogue of ‘manuscripts written before 1550’). Entries for Stonyhurst manuscripts predating 1550 can be found in the Catalogue of the Boardman Collection of Medieval Manuscripts recently updated by Dr Peter Carlson.

There have been a number of significant discoveries amongst this recently catalogued material. Previously unknown manuscripts have been identified, including those by mathematician Edmund Gunter (1581-1626),Footnote ¹ poet Anna Chamber, Countess Temple (d.1777),Footnote ² and College of Arms herald Robert Glover (1544- 1588).Footnote ³ Other items can be placed in newly-understood contexts, such as a music partbook from the circle of Samuel Webbe (1740-1816) at one of the London embassy chapels.Footnote ⁴

A collection of manuscripts related to one Lancashire family has the potential to alter our understanding of the production and dissemination of printed works through manuscript culture in the early modern period. Members of the Craven family of Craven Fold, Dinckley can be linked to seventeen manuscript copies of Catholic printed texts produced in the mid- and late seventeenth century, and texts copied by identified scribes Giles and Richard Craven may provide a new perspective on scribal copying practices at that time.Footnote ⁵

The most significant discovery begins with a past misidentification. A group of three manuscripts were previously attributed to John Thorpe SJ (1726-1792), including lists of books and objects which had been presumed historically to have belonged to the noted Jesuit and antiquarian. However, through assessment of internal evidence and palaeographic comparison, those three manuscripts – with a further two – can now be acknowledged as works by Thomas Wagstaffe the Younger (1692-1770), nonjuring Anglican chaplain to the Jacobite court in Rome.Footnote ⁶

The manuscripts include Wagstaffe’s meandering notebook entitled ‘Observations on Rome,’ which provides a detailed understanding of his activities and research interests in the city.Footnote ⁷ There is a pair of catalogues, one containing lists of his books, the other of coins and medals.Footnote ⁸ The latter records materials Wagstaffe was sending back to England, via contacts in other Italian cities. There are also two bound volumes which provide a view into Wagstaffe’s relationships at the Jacobite court in Rome.Footnote ⁹ These items paint an extraordinary picture of Wagstaffe’s life in Rome in the mid-eighteenth century, and may mark him as a key individual, in his own right, for the Grand Tourists in the city.

Fr Thorpe’s important role in the eighteenth-century Grand Tour in Rome has long been acknowledged and doubtless will be further explored in future.Footnote ¹⁰ However, this new discovery provides a different perspective on his work and necessitates that Thorpe’s antiquarian activities be revisited. Wagstaffe was Thorpe’s predecessor as a well-connected English cleric and learned antiquarian in Rome. His work (and overlapping period with Thorpe) must be more fully considered to better understand the context into which Thorpe arrived in Rome in 1756.

This is the first time any catalogue of these Stonyhurst materials has been made publicly available, and it is intended to encourage more research into these remarkable manuscript collections. A PDF of the new catalogue can be downloaded from the Archives webpage on Stonyhurst’s website, alongside the Boardman Catalogue of Medieval Manuscripts:

https://www.stonyhurst.ac.uk/about-us/stonyhurst-college-historic-collections/archives

A digital copy can also be sent by email on request to museumandarchives@stonyhurst.ac.uk