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Shelfmark: MS 5
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Humfrey Wanley
(1672-1726)
Antiquary
Wanley was born in Coventry and apprenticed to a draper, but developed
a passion for old books and documents at an early age. He matriculated
at Oxford, at St Edmund Hall in 1695 and then at University College
the following year, but never took a degree; this hampered his attempts
later to secure senior posts in the Bodleian Library and the King's
Library, and he was eventually appointed assistant to the Secretary
of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and later to the Secretary's
post itself. Other antiquaries however, including George Hickes and
Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, to whom he became Library-Keeper, were
glad to employ him in a private capacity. His work is still revered
by mediaeval scholars.
Wanley is believed to have visited the College Library at Edinburgh
in 1696 in connection with his continuation of George Hickes' catalogue
of Anglo-Saxon MSS "Antiquae literaturae septentrionalis"
which he was preparing and which was published in 1705. He presented
the Library with a small Bible, probably written in Paris in the 13th
century (Borland MS 5)
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