Mendham Collection To Go Under The Hammer

Subject: Mendham Collection update

The Sotheby's catalogue is now available online at http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2013/the-mendham-collection-l13409/overview.html

The Law Society of England and Wales is pressing ahead with plans to dismember the Mendham Collection, an important resource (of antiquarian books and some manuscripts) for both Protestant and Catholic history, and which has been on deposit at Canterbury Cathedral Library, and thereby accessible to scholars, since 1984.

Sotheby's have now announced a 'Highlights from the Mendham Collection'

auction, to be held in London at 10 am on 5 June 2013. The sale catalogue is available online. The following overview is on the Sotheby's site:

The Mendham Collection was assembled by the Anglican clergyman Joseph Mendham (1769-1856) and contains mostly fifteenth and sixteenth century books relating to the dawn of the Reformation, particularly relating to England.

There are early Bible printings (including Greek and polyglot versions), rare liturgical texts, the first publications of the Church of England, and a substantial collection of the Catholic Church's notorious Index of Prohibited Books. Also included are some early pilgrim's guides to Rome, the 'Mirabilia Romae' and a group of early sixteenth-century English bindings, one of which (Duranti's 'Rationale') was originally in the library of St Cuthbert's Cathedral Priory, Durham."

The items being sold are presumably drawn from the 300 or so volumes removed from the 5,000 item Collection by Sotheby's last summer with a view to their valuation and subsequent sale (the latter then thought likely some time from November 2012).

The auction is proceeding notwithstanding:

a) A strong public campaign and petition against the sale mounted last summer and co-ordinated by the University of Kent

b) Private interventions with the Law Society by a number of expert groups, including the Religious Archives Group (RAG)

c) Doubts expressed as to whether the Law Society has unfettered legal title to sell the Collection

d) The condition attached to a cataloguing grant awarded to the Collection by the British Library that it should not subsequently be dispersed

Following the public campaign, matters went quiet for some time, during which (it is understood) negotiations took place between the Law Society and the University of Kent to keep the Collection at Canterbury Cathedral Library. These were unsuccessful, as - evidently - has been the more recent attempt by the Society to interest major UK universities in buying the Collection intact.

Confirmation of the impending sale and dispersal of the Mendham Collection is extremely disappointing, representing a serious potential loss to scholarship and to the country's religious patrimony. If it proceeds, it will reflect very badly on the Law Society. Hopefully, there is still time for an eleventh-hour solution which will prevent the break-up of this historic library, which Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch Kt, the distinguished church historian and member of RAG, publicly criticized last August as "an act of vandalism".

Dr Clive D. Field, OBE