DR. JOHN BARGRAVE AND HIS COLLECTION
One of the most unusual of the many treasures at Canterbury, in the
care of the Dean and Chapter, is the Bargrave Collection. This small,
private museum of a much-travelled seventeenth—century gentleman
will have been in the Cathedral Library for three hundred years next
year.
Dr. John Bar rave himself belon ed very firmly to Canterbury and its
immediate neigibourhood. His fatléer, another John, came from along
line of tanners and yeomen at Willesborough, just outside Ashford,
whom we can also trace at Wye, Faversham, Dover and, eventually, at
Bridge and Patrixbourne a couple of miles south-east of Canterbury.
This earlier John seems to have fought as a mercenary in the Dutch Wars
at» the end of Elizabeth’s reign. He invested in the early stages of the
colonisation of Virginia. One of his brothers, Captain George,
commanded a ship sailing there, and another, the Reverend Thomas,
left his Sussex rectory to go out as a minister to the colonists. A much
younger brother, Isaac, went out to Venice as embassy chaplain and rose
rapidly in the church to be Dean of Canterbury from 1625 until his death
in 1643.
The older John Bargrave prospered, perhaps by some unrecorded
military exploit like a lucky capture of a wealthy enemy, whom he could
ransom, or a bit of quiet piracy. Or perhaps his wife, a London
merchant’s daughter, was somethin of an heiress. He built a country
house at Patrixbourne and gave it tlie Latin name Bifrons, “the two-
faced” or “double-fronted”. Here the younger John, our collector, grew
up with an older brother and three younger sisters. He went to the King’s
School in the close and on to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he obtained
a fellowship. In his fifties, our John returned home to Canterbury as a Six
Preacher and then Canon until his death in 1683.
But John Bargrave’s collection has nothin at all to do with
Canterbury. It has to do with almost the whole of tie known world of his
day. There are specimens from America, Asia, Africa and from most
parts of Europe, France, Germany, Austria and, above all, Italy, but
none from Britain. Not many of the individual objects are of very great
intrinsic merit: of fifteen antique figurines, four seem to be genuine,
eight are fakes, while the remaining three are doubtful. Continental
nobles and princes often had an ornate mountain of silver ore from the
Tyrol. Bargrave brought home a sensible small pocket-sized lump. But
he took the trouble to write down the story, vividly bringing to us more
than three centuries later the day in November 1656 when he got the
lump. As an example of his many stories, it is worth quoting in full:
“At Hall, near Insprugg in Tiroll, among the hearts of the Alps, I had
the curiosity to be droven in a wheelbarrow almost 2 miles under
ground, to see the labourers there in the gold and silver mines belonging
to the Archduke of that country. It was horrid to go thither, and more
horrid to see, but they told us the Emperor and the Empress, and all the
royal house of Austria use out of curiosity to go thither. I and my
companion having on canvass frocks to keep us from the wet and filth,
we having a mountain of the Alps 3 or 4 mile high over our heads,_and a
A
torrent of water under us, and a bridge ofboards most otthe way. When
we came into the vast high vaults, where hundreds and hundreds of mcn
or Vulcans were at work, one of the overseers (a genteel person), out ot
courtesy, would have let us see their art by blowing up a part of the mine
hy gunpowder; but we diirst notventure it. This stone is a piece tifthe ore
they digg out of those mines, out of which, by the force of fire, is
extracted the silver and the gould, being separated from the dross, which
is there cast up and down into great hills near the places where the
fornices for melting are."
This vivid tale takes us back, not only to Austria in the 16505, but also
to the prebendal lodgings in the close at Canterbury, now Linacre House
of the King's School, and, as we read the words, we can almost see John
Bargrave‘s twinkling eyes as he told and retold his visitors how he
preferred not to experience an underground explosion in the mines,
Elhikie this lump of ore from the actual mines was passed from hand to
an .
In this intensely personal quality, Bargrave’s collection seems to be
unique. lt is unique too in other ways: there still survive several early lists
of objects as well as Bargraves own handwritten catalogue. Various
specimens, such as littlc chunks ofstone from the Colosseum or the Arch
of Constantine at Rome, are still wrapped in the actual scraps of paper in
which Bargrave wrapped and labelled them in 1647. Others still have
the stands on which they stood on his shelves. Four of the bags and
purses and ten of the little pill-boxes in which Bargrave packed his
souvenirs still remain today. These lists, labels, stands, early containers
and collectors’ tales give the collection a unique completeness that
cannot be matched in this country and may prove to be unmatched
abroad.
John Bargraves one wild adventure, to Africa, took place when he
was fifty-two, just settled at last as a Canon of Canterbury, after fourteen
years wandering and touring on thc Continent as a travelling tutor. He
was sent out to the piratical port of Algiers to ransom captured British
seamen and merchants. He took with him £10,000 in foreign coin and
came home with 162 Englishmen Whom he had "bought slave by slave
from each particular Turkish patron. as one buyeth horses in
Smithfield.“ This trip also produced a number of touching mernentoes.
The collection still contains the portrait of the Dey of Algiers, a
miserable piece of work artistically, but painted by an Italian slave-
painter while Bargrave was negotiating With, and slipping extra bribes
to. the Dey. A pair of long boots and three pairs of slippers represent
local Algerian crafts. The ransomed slaves’ gratitude is marked by a
most remarkable set of North American lndian ceremonial costume,
brought back probably from deep in Hudson's Bayby some early voyage
oi exploration. And finally the wildlife ofAfrica is there in the form of a
dried Chameleon, which died from lack of flies on the voyage home.
Almost every object that was in Bargr-ave‘s house when he died in
1683 survives today. For three centunes they have been kept in the
Cathedral Library in three small cabinets. One cabinet had belonged to
the leamed Mcric Casaubon, an elder colleague ot Bargrave‘s on the
Chapter. Another very like it was made for Bargrave in Cantcrllmry in

about 1670. "Die third must have been rnadc for the Library soon alter
1685, to ‘">use the objects from Bargrave’s study-shelves. Many of the
specimens are in astonishingly good condition.
But alas, the collection cannot be freely visited because of the risk of
deterioration. An illustrated handlist, The Gentle Traveller, has been
published and may be bought for £1 from the Cathedral Librarv. Study
of the collection is under way, with the help of a generous grant from the
British Academy, and a detailed account will be published. One day, We
must hope, suitable premises will become available for this amazing and
unique reminder of a never-quite-forgotten Canon to be displayed to
the public under suitable lighting and atmospheric conditions.
DAVID STURDY.
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