About The Library Special Collection

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The Library Special Collection contains some 12,000 early printed books and pamphlets, and a small number of manuscripts, from the 15th to 19th centuries.

English Catholic recusant items were listed in A. F Allison & D. M. Rogers' Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation 1558-1640 (Volumes I & II, 1989). Pre-1700 titles are currently being included in the Universal Short Title Catalogue (University of St Andrews).

In the 1960s, a detailed printed catalogue was produced which forms the basis of the present online catalogue, currently being updated, and is searchable online.

To access the Special Collection catalogue only, without entering the main library catalogue, click on ‘Enter Library’ as directed. Type the word ‘Special’ in the box marked Reader Code (top right) and click on log in. In a few seconds, the background colour will change to green, indicating that you are in the Special collection catalogue.

What is in the library?

The Special Collection contains c1100 items from the Harvington Secular Clergy Library, founded at Harvington Hall, Worcestershire in 1696 by Lady Mary Yate for the use of her family chaplains. Recusant devotional and controversial works from other local Catholic missions, including Old Oscott, Brailes and Brewood have also been deposited.

The Special Collection also contains the library of Marchese Luigi Marini, purchased in Rome in 1839. The owner was related to Luigi Gaetano Marini (1742-1815), the scholarly Prefect of the Vatican Archives and Vatican Library, some of whose library was passed to the next generation of his family. It is of considerable cultural and scholarly importance, and includes items bequeathed by Cardinal Giuseppe Garampi, (d. 1792), notably the Dissertationes Biblicae and Opuscula Theologica, many from German Protestant universities, and over a hundred items with ownership marks of the Colonna family.

The new college in the 19th century attracted significant personal bequests, including the library of Rev. Dr John Kirk of Lichfield, (1760-1851), who left books dealing with English Catholicism, and the European Catholic Enlightenment, including the works of Muratori.

Canon Edmund Estcourt’s (1816-1884) collection of original works related to the English martyrs, and the extensive library of Mgr. John Crook (d. 1909), contributed a wealth of materials on Church history, scripture, theology, and canon law.

In our collection

Harvington Catalogue

Devotional and controversial works, mostly from local Catholic missions, including Old Oscott, Brailes and Brewood, sit alongside some 1100 items from the Harvington Secular Clergy Library. The owner of the Worcestershire recusant house, Harvington Hall, in the 1670s, Lady Mary Yate, endowed it as a secular clergy mission. 

In 1697, Lady Yate left her books ‘for the use of the clergyman that shall assist’. John and Edward Kynne were successively appointed Archdeacon of Worcestershire by the Chapter and they enhanced Lady Yate’s legacy by the provision of a library at Harvington for the use of local clergy. 

It is likely that much of the library belonged to Charles Dodd, author of a controversial history of the Church, written at Harvington between 1722 and his death in 1743, but none of the books are signed by him. Dodd’s successor at Harvington, Arthur Vaughan, catalogued the library, listing 1728 items, of which c1100 survive at Oscott, forming the largest component in the Special Collection. Every Harvington book was marked, possibly by Vaughan, Harv. Sec. Cler. Bib. Over sixty of them have Edward or John Kynne’s signature, or both.

Luis De Granada, owned by Mary Dorrington

The first home of Oscott College was a property left to the local Catholic community to house a mission by a priest, Andrew Bromwich. His father was convicted for recusancy in 1667 and Andrew was imprisoned and sentenced to death in 1679.

He was eventually freed from prison, and under a secret supplement to his will, Bromwich left his property for the maintenance of a secular priest ‘to live at my house at Oscott...[to] help the poor Catholics in and about the Handsworth parish’. The Oscott mission was set on a firm footing by Bromwich’s bequest.

Mrs Juliana Dorrington, who kept house for him and his successor until they fell out, continued to be noted in Returns of Papists in 1705 and 1706, and by 1706, had an estate for life of £30 per annum and two servants (as a result of Bromwich’s bequest). Among his bequests were his books, 21 of which have been identified in the Collection, including those left to Juliana Dorrington or her sister Mary.

Volume Three of the so-called Jansenist Bible, printed in Paris in 1722

The Special Collection also contains the library of Marchese Luigi Marini, purchased in Rome in 1839. The owner was related to Luigi Gaetano Marini (1742-1815), the scholarly Prefect of the Vatican Archives and Vatican Library, some of whose library was passed to the next generation of his family.

It is of considerable cultural and scholarly importance, and includes items bequeathed by Cardinal Giuseppe Garampi, (d.1792), notably the Dissertationes Biblicae and Opuscula Theologica, many from German Protestant universities and over a hundred items with ownership marks of the Colonna family.

Dives and Pauper

The oldest printed book at Oscott is Dives and Pauper, a popular 15th century text, with a whiff of Lollardy about it, produced by Richard Pynson in 1493. Based on the story in Luke’s gospel of Dives and Lazarus, it is structured around the Ten Commandments. The narrator, Pauper, discusses each commandment in turn, catechizing the rich man on his social and religious responsibility.

It has several ownership marks, including Harv. Sec. Cler. Bib., and the signatures of Edward and John Kynne. This survivor of the medieval world was owned by Richard Smith, appointed by Henry VIII as the first Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. He later disappeared into exile, returned to Oxford under Mary I, preached at the burning of Latimer and Ridley, and got himself elected vice-chancellor in order to preside over Cranmer's trial.

Smith went into exile again in 1561, becoming professor of scripture at the newly established Catholic University of Douai, provost of the collegiate church of St Peter, and vice-chancellor of the University. He died in Douai in 1563. Why then did he own a copy of Dives and Pauper, signed in the year of his death and how did it get to Douai and to recusant Worcestershire a century later?

The Boke Named THE Royall

Other early printed books include The Boke Named the Royall, a 13th century treatise on dying a good death by order of Philip III of France, and translated into English by William Caxton.

This edition was published in 1507 by Caxton’s follower, Wynkyn de Worde, who played a significant role in shaping an audience for illustrated printed books in England, before the Reformers began to make powerful use of imagery. The Boke Named the Royall contains an extensive collection of woodcuts.

Milner’s copy of The Faith of Catholics (1813)

The Special Collection began its life at Oscott through the work of John Milner, vicar apostolic of the Midland district, who took over control of the newly-founded Oscott College in 1808. He ordered the transfer of the Harvington Library, to augment the small collection of books at Oscott.

Milner was a scholar and controversialist in his own right and left copies of his own works, as well as some of those he owned in the Oscott library. His most prolonged and contentious dispute was with some of the priests in his own District, in particular, Joseph Berington and John Kirk. Kirk’s personal library of some 200 items also survives.

Kirk’s most significant collaboration with Berington, The Faith Of Catholics, was published in 1813. It was a version of a 1680 text, refuting the idea of a pope ‘pretending to absolve or to dispense His Majesty’s subjects from their allegiance, on account of heresy or schism’. By 1813 Milner was in the ascendant, fighting a one-man battle to avoid the British government having a right of veto over the appointment of Catholic bishops. His copy of The Faith of Catholics has, scrawled in Milner’s own hand across the title page: ‘This is not a full or accurate exposition of the Catholic Faith. J Milner+’.

Every Man His Own Gardener

Not everything in the Oscott Special Collection pertains to religion. Every Man His Own Gardener: Being a New and Much More Complete Gardener's Calendar and General Directory Than Any One Hitherto Published (1767) was the work of John Abercrombie, one of the 18th century’s most prolific gardening writers, known to have been a chain-smoking, tea-drinking vegetarian.

The son of a market gardener, in 1745 he witnessed the Battle of Prestonpans, as it took place beneath his father’s garden wall. By 1751 he was working in the royal gardens at Kew. Later he worked as a journeyman gardener for a succession of clients across Britain.

Every Man His Own Gardener was published in 1767 but not under Abercrombie’s own name. Instead, the title page carried the name of Thomas Mawe, gardener to the Duke of Leeds. It went through 18 editions in his lifetime and several more after his death (this is the 20th).

Open to researchers

The Special Collection is kept securely, and is not open to visitors. It is, however, available to bona fide researchers, who are welcome to request access to specific items. Please identify the item(s) you wish to see, from the online catalogue, and contact the librarian, Paul Meller, to arrange an appointment. General enquiries about the content of the Special Collection may also be addressed to the librarian. 

Email paul.meller@oscott.org

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The Birmingham Archdiocesan Archives look after our archives. They are happy to support the research of undergraduate and postgraduate degree students, academic researchers, local historians, parish historians, teachers and family historians.

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The Glancey Library

Containing over 40,000 catalogued physical items, this library is the main library of the college and is largely made up of texts covering the Church and general history, theology and philosophy.

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Museum

Established in 1839 by renowned, Gothic-revivalist architect Augustus Welby Pugin, our museum collection tells the story of the college and the Victorian Catholic revival.

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