Helen Kemp: ‘All My Manuscripts Papers of My Own Hand to be Carefully Preserved in the Study of the Said Library’

Early modern scholars collected information for a variety of reasons. During the seventeenth century, historians and antiquaries used pre-and post-reformation documents to find evidence for the history of England; naturalists wanted to make data available for their contemporaries and followers to encourage the generation of new knowledge; and circles surrounding leading figures in the Church of England -- like Lancelot Andrewes -- used the information they collected for political aims. What has not been considered in depth is the way in which the more prosaic clergy collectors formed their own ‘Treasuries of Knowledge’: what materials their collections consisted of, how they used them during their own lifetimes, and how they viewed them in terms of legacy. My research addresses this particular issue through an examination of the manuscript collection, which Thomas Plume left as part of a much larger legacy in the library he endowed at Maldon in Essex. This paper focusses on a few examples from the collection that demonstrate the ways in which he used the papers and notebooks, and how he expected them to be regarded in the future. I argue that a close examination of Thomas Plume’s use of his manuscript collection, the types of documents he collected, and his instruction that they should be ‘carefully preserved’, indicate that he had a variety of reasons for valuing them. This research will help to demonstrate how different types of information-collector in the seventeenth century shared practices of collecting and use, as well as highlighting variations in the metaphorical ideals those collectors attached to their ‘Treasuries’.