The first Birmingham Library was founded between 1635 and 1642 in Birmingham, England by the puritan minister Francis Roberts. [1] A letter to the Viscount Conway, surviving in the state papers of Charles I and dated 7 August 1637, possibly refers to a catalogue of the library:
I have spoken with Mr. Bellers for the catalogue of books he promise to send your Lordship and he tells me he did send for one but there is none drawne as yett, for that Mr. Burges (who oweth them) is little time where is bookes are and that Mr. Roberts, who was a curate to his father and one upon whose assistance and iudgemt in the drawing of a Catalogue Mr. Burgiss doth much rely, is now resideing nere Burmingeham, that is much infected with the sickenes and therefore doth not stir from thence but Mr. Bellers is very confident that the first catalogue that is delivered shall be to yr L'rp. [2]
A building was erected for the library between 1655 and 1656, and the accounts of the High Bailiff of Birmingham for 1655 include 3 pounds, 2 shillings and 6 pence paid to "Thomas Bridgens towards buildinge ye library", with £126 2s 9d following in 1656 "For buildinge the library, repayreing the Schoole and schoole-masters' houses". [3] The library's puritan tradition continued in 1656 when Thomas Hall left the finest examples from his book collection to "the library at Birmingham"; the rest, "being ordinary books and not fit for so publick a library" were left to the clergymen and schoolmasters of Moseley, King's Norton and Wythall. [4]
Although the library was one of the first public libraries in England, [5] its puritan origins meant that its collection was dispersed after the Restoration of 1660. [4]
Joseph Hall was an English bishop, satirist and moralist. His contemporaries knew him as a devotional writer, and a high-profile controversialist of the early 1640s. In church politics, he tended in fact to a middle way.
John Selden was an English jurist, a scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution and scholar of Jewish law. He was known as a polymath; John Milton hailed Selden in 1644 as "the chief of learned men reputed in this land."
The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre, commonly called the Bay Psalm Book, is a metrical psalter first printed in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was the first book printed in British North America. The psalms in it are metrical translations into English. The translations are not particularly polished, and none have remained in use, although some of the tunes to which they were sung have survived. However, its production, just 20 years after the Pilgrims' arrival at Plymouth, Massachusetts, represents a considerable achievement. It went through several editions and remained in use for well over a century.
Michael Wigglesworth (1631–1705) was a Puritan minister, physician, and poet whose poem The Day of Doom was a bestseller in early New England.
Chetham's Library in Manchester, England, is the oldest free public reference library in the English-speaking world. Chetham's Hospital, which contains both the library and Chetham's School of Music, was established in 1653 under the will of Humphrey Chetham (1580–1653), for the education of "the sons of honest, industrious and painful parents", and a library for the use of scholars. The library has been in continuous use since 1653. It operates as an independent charity, open to readers free of charge, Monday-Friday 09.00-12.30 and 13.30-16.30 by prior appointment. Tours of the Library for visitors are bookable online from 2 September 2019 via the Library website.
The Cotswold Olimpick Games is an annual public celebration of games and sports now held on the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday near Chipping Campden, in the Cotswolds of England. The games likely began in 1612 and ran until they were fully discontinued in 1852. However, they were revived in 1963 and still continue as of 2020.
Thomas Welde was an English clergyman, who became a Puritan, emigrant to New England, colonial missionary, author and polemicist. His sojourn in the New World turned out be brief lasting only nine years, but he left his mark over there. On returning to England, he was a parish priest and became embroiled in controversy with the Quakers. His son, Edmund, also came back to Europe and started an Irish Weld line and became chaplain to Oliver Cromwell.
Sir Peter Leycester, 1st Baronet was an English antiquarian and historian. He was involved in the English Civil War on the royalist side and was subsequently made a baronet. He later compiled one of the earliest histories of the county of Cheshire and as a result of this became involved in a controversy with the Mainwaring family. He developed a library in his home at Tabley Old Hall and made improvements to the house and estate, including building a private chapel in the grounds of the house. He was an active and conscientious justice of the peace, and used his position on the Bench to expound his staunchly conservative and Royalist political views.
Henry Scobell was an English Parliamentary official, and editor of official publications. He was clerk to the Long Parliament, and wrote on parliamentary procedure and precedents.
Richard Vines was an English clergyman, one of the Presbyterian leaders of the Westminster Assembly. He became Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, from 1644 to 1650.
William Gouge (1575–1653) was an English Puritan clergyman and author. He was a minister and preacher at St Ann Blackfriars for 45 years, from 1608, and a member of the Westminster Assembly from 1643.
Thomas Hall (1610–1665) was an English clergyman and ejected minister.
Thomas Blake (1597?–1657) was an English Puritan clergyman and controversialist of moderate Presbyterian sympathies. He worked in Tamworth, Staffordshire and in Shrewsbury, from which he was ejected over the Engagement controversy. He disputed in print with Richard Baxter over admission to baptism and the Lords Supper.
Nathan Paget (1615–1679) was an English physician, active during the English Civil War, under the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, and after the Restoration. Despite being a mainstay of a generally conservative profession, he was interested in the experimental methods of the Enlightenment. Although from a strongly Presbyterian background, he seems to have developed radical political and religious sympathies.
Francis Roberts (1609–1675) was an English puritan clergyman, author and librarian.
William Pelham (1759–1827) was a bookseller and publisher in Boston, Massachusetts, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He kept a shop and circulating subscription library at no.59 Cornhill, 1796-1810.
John II Dodderidge (1610–1659) of Bremridge in the parish of South Molton, Devon, was a lawyer who was elected MP for Barnstaple in 1646 and 1654, for Bristol in 1656 and for Devon also in 1656, and chose to sit for Devon, but was prevented by Oliver Cromwell from taking his seat.
Samuel Fisher was an English Puritan clergyman and writer, who was committed to a Presbyterian polity. After serving as a rural rector in Shropshire during the period of Charles I's absolute monarchy, he worked in London and Shrewsbury during the English Civil War and under the Commonwealth and in Cheshire during the Protectorate. After the Great Ejection of 1662 he settled in Birmingham, where he worked as a nonconformist preacher. The precise course of his career is a matter of some controversy.
John Hall (1627–1656), also known as John Hall of Durham, was an English poet, essayist and pamphleteer of the Commonwealth period. After a short period of adulation at university, he became a writer in the Parliamentary cause and Hartlib Circle member.
St. Philip's Parish Library, also known as the Higgs Library, was a public library attached to St Philip's Church in Birmingham, England between 1733 and 1927.