Babington's Books

The British Jesuit Archives holds a large number of sixteenth and seventeenth century books, and we are in the process of cataloguing them.  Alongside the cataloguing work, we are doing provenance research, attempting to trace the ownership of individual books over the centuries.  We have recently identified two books with very similar provenance marks in them, with known histories stretching from the 1550s until the present day.

A/788 Sonnius' Demonstrationsum A/239 Gardner's Confutatio

One of the books is Confutatio cavillationum by Stephen Gardner, printed in Leuven in 1554 by Petrus Colonaeus, reference number ALBSI/A/239.  Gardiner (1483-1555) was an English Catholic bishop who served as Lord Chancellor in Mary Tudor’s reign.  He and Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer were engaged in a debate about the nature of the Eucharist.  Cranmer had published a book titled Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ in 1550, in which he attacked transubstantiation and Gardiner’s support for it.  This work is Gardiner’s reply, and he is very critical of Cranmer’s arguments and cited a range of sources that he believed supported the doctrine of the corporeal presence of Christ. We have focussed on this book in a previous blog post, especially its binding and the materials used and reused (spoiler alert: lots of medieval parchment!) Click here to read more: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle the 17th Century Way

The second book is a textbook on dogmatics, by Franciscus Sonnius, titled Demonstrationum religionis Christianae ex verbo Dei, reference number ALBSI/A/788. It was printed in Antwerp by Martinus Nutius in 1557.  Dogmatic theology sets out to establish what constitutes a doctrine of Christian faith, and to elucidate it, and to connect the individual doctrines into a system.  Dogmatic theology was not only a locus of much debate in the sixteenth century, but Jesuit theologians were at the heart of it.  This book is a summary of the positions taken, and perhaps Babington used it for teaching or even keeping abreast of the debate.

Both of these title pages have the same series of markings.  ‘Babington’, ‘Coll Conc. pA SJ’ and a stamp for Mount St Mary’s College.  Babington in a sixteenth century inscription, Coll Conc pA SJ is seventeenth, and Mount St Mary’s College was founded in 1842, so the stamp is nineteenth or twentieth century.

‘Babington’ was Francis Babington, sometimes spelled Babyngton. He was an English priest and academic, and his career during the changing religious landscape of the mid sixteenth century reflects the difficulties faced by many at the time.  It is not known when he was born, but he came from Leicestershire, and by 1544 was at Christ’s College, Cambridge, becoming a fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge in 1551.  Although there is no evidence of his religious leanings during the reign of the protestant Edward VI, he subscribed to the Roman Catholic articles of faith in 1555, when he moved to Oxford. A fellow of All Souls College, he was prominent in enforcing Catholic orthodoxy in Oxford. Babington was ordained into the church of England and acquired a number of church livings.  When Elizabeth I acceded, he professed himself protestant, and in the early 1660s was involved in installing a protestant warden on the Catholic fellows of Merton College.  He became chaplain to Lord Robert Dudley.  When Dudley’s wife, Amy Robsart, died in 1560, Babington preached at her funeral – as did Edmund Campion, future Jesuit martyr and saint.  The period 1559-1563 was the apogee of his career, being appointed in succession Master of Balliol College, Vice-Chancellor of the University, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and Rector of Lincoln College.   But suspicions about his faith continued throughout, and eventually led to his downfall, resulting in his resignations from his posts in 1563 and 1564.  In 1565 he left for the continent, where he died in exile in December 1569.

Babington’s inscription in Gardiner, A/239, reads ‘Babington . – ijs viijd’.  It was not unusual for sixteenth and seventeenth century book owners to write the price they paid for a book inside it. Here, Francis Babington was recording that he paid 2 shillings and 8 pence for this book. 

On the title page of the other book, A/788, Francis Babington wrote his name no fewer than three times.  At the top of the page, he wrote ‘Babington’ and after his name is a symbol, which has been interpreted as the number 11.  However, it is unclear whether this symbol was written by him, as the ink seems a slightly different shade to that used for his name.  Lower down the page he wrote ‘Babington 1559’, and just below the printer’s device he wrote his name in full ‘franc[is] Babington’.  The year 1559 was the first year of Babington’s meteoric rise at Oxford. 

A/788 Sonnius' Demonstrationsum, detail. A/239 Gardner's Confutatio, detail.

Babington’s signature in these books is comparable to one held by Lincoln College Archives, where he signs himself ‘Franciscus Babyngton Rectoris’, in what is clearly the same handwriting.  He was Rector of Lincoln from 1560-1563, so this signature is close in date to the one in A/788 which is dated 1559.

Babington was a well read scholar.  He had an extensive personal library and collected manuscripts as well as printed books.  He owned works by the church fathers and medieval theologians, and writings by his contemporaries including Erasmus, also some mathematical and scientific works.  He wrote his name in many of his books, and thirty-six books that he owned have been identified by the bibliographer Neil Ker, as well as some manuscripts.  Some of his books stayed at Lincoln College Oxford – presumably he left them there, or they were confiscated when he had to flee abroad. A number of the others were acquired by the Jesuit College of the Immaculate Conception.  This was an administrative district of the English Jesuit Province covering Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, with bases at Holbeck in Nottinghamshire and Spinkhill in Derbyshire.  It came into existence in the 1620s, and we don’t know where Babington’s books were for the 50 years between his death in 1569 and the College of the Immaculate Conception’s creation.   A large number of the books from the College have been identified, and many have the inscription ‘Coll Conc pA SJ’ in the same format – indeed in the same handwriting and ink as used in both these books.  In 1679 over a thousand of the books owned by the College of the Immaculate Conception were confiscated by the authorities in a raid on Holbeck.  Some of these are now in the Lambeth Palace Library, and the same style of inscription can be seen in these. [1] This means we can be sure the inscription dates from before 1679. 

The Jesuit base at Spinkhill also had a library, and books clearly moved between Spinkhill and Holbeck, which are only about 8 miles apart.  We know some of the books that were at Spinkhill in the early 18th century because one of the Jesuits there, Fr Joseph Blundell SJ, made a list of them in 1721, which survives in the Jesuit Archive in London. The late eighteenth century was a time of intense upheaval for the Jesuits, as the Society was suppressed by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, and not officially restarted until 1814, although in England they were re-grouping as Jesuits from 1803.  Despite this turmoil, the books at Spinkhill seem to have remained on site throughout this time, and when in 1842 Jesuit Provincial Randal Lythgoe SJ founded Mount St Mary’s College there, the ownership of the books was simply transferred to the new College. 

The oval ownership stamp for Mount St Mary’s College is clearly visible on both title pages, and the books remained at the College at Spinkhill until they were transferred to the Jesuit Archives in London in the early 21st century. 

If you are interested in seeing the Babington books in person please make an appointment to visit us using the contact form, or send an email to archives@jesuit.org.uk The full references for the books are as follows:

Gardiner, Stephen, Confutatio cauillationum : quibus sacrosanctū eucharistiae sacramentum, ab impiis Capharnaitis impeti solet. Leuven, Petrus Colonaeus. 1554. ALBSI/A/239

Sonnius, Franciscus, Demonstrationum religionis Christianae ex verbo Dei lib. III.  Antwerp, Martinus Nutius. 1557. ALBSI/A/788

[1] Dijkgraaf, Hendrik, The Library of a Jesuit Community at Holbeck, Nottinghamshire (1679) Libri Pertinentes No. 8. Cambridge, 2003. p 321