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Detailed record for Harley 1957
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| Author |
Randle Holme, John Holme |
| Title |
Sketchbook and household ledger |
| Origin |
England, N. W. (Chester) |
| Date |
c. 1688-1692 |
| Language |
English |
| Script |
Cursive |
| Artists |
Randle Holme and John Holme |
| Decoration |
18 tinted drawings, 23 pen drawings and 15 pencil sketches. |
| Dimensions in mm |
150 x 90 |
| Official foliation |
ff. 56 (+ 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 3 at the end). |
| Collation |
Leaves are individually mounted or pasted onto modern paper leaves. |
| Form |
Paper codex. |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. 19th-century; marbled endleaves. |
| Provenance |
Randle Holme III (b. 1627, d. 1700), herald painter: his signature (ff. 8, 10, 13, 14).
John Holme, son of Randle III: his signature (ff. 9, 15, 16, 20, 24).
Many of the household notes are dated between 1688 and 1692 (ff. 18, 28, 37, 38, 48-49, 52, 53v)
? A member of the Holme family, Chester, arms painters and antiquaries: possibly acquired with other Holmes manuscripts by Robert Harley in 1710 through the mediation of Francis Gastrell, bishop of Chester.
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts.
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library. |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), no. 1957. |
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