Thomas Isham 1657-1681

Sir Thomas ISHAM, 3rd bart 1657-1681

Biographical Note

Son of Sir Justinian Isham of Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire, from whom he inherited the title and estates in 1675. Matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford 1675, but did not graduate; he spent some years travelling in Europe under the tutleage of his cousin Zacheus Isham before returning to Lamport in 1679. He died in London, of smallpox, two years later.

Books

The Isham family library at Lamport Hall was developed over many generations, beginning around the turn of the 17th century, until its dispersal from the 19th century onwards (although many books still remain at Lamport today). Our knowledge of Thomas relies largely on a Latin diary which he kept between 1671 and 1673, at his father's request, while he was living at Lamport and completing his pre-Oxford education. This has been edited and translated (see below); it contains many details of the minutiae of estate life, with references to broader national affairs, but has few mentions of books. There are however surviving letters between Thomas and his father which reflect engagement with books, requesting particular texts to help with his studies. In a 1674 letter to Sir Justinian's younger son (also Justinian), advice was given on how to look after books, while a student at Oxford: "if you keep not yr books in a study lockt up to yr selfe where no bed is, then for all yr lesser books then [i.e. than] folios, get 2 shallow boxes wth little shelves in which you may lock them up, & take out as you have occasion to use them" (The diary, p.36).

Thomas died too young to have made much impact on the Lamport library, but he is known to have bought many books (as well as paintings, prints and furniture) in Italy. He is also noted as an early British user of bookplates. Surviving letters to him from the engraver David Loggan in 1676 show that Loggan sent him 200 "prints" of his coat of arms, apologising shortly afterwards for an heraldic mistake in them which he went on to correct; these were used as bookplates (Franks 16123).

Sources

• Sir Thomas Isham, Wikipedia.
• Gambier Howe, E. R. J. Franks bequest: catalogue of British and American book plates bequeathed to the ... British Museum. London, 1903.
• Graves, R. The Isham books, Bibliographica 3 (1897), 418-29.
• Jackson, W. A. The Lamport Hall – Britwell Court books, in his Records of a bibliographer (1967), 121-133.
• Hallam, H. Lamport Hall revisited, The Book Collector 16 (1967) 439-49.
• Hardy, W. J., Book-plates, London, 1893, 8-10.
• Isham, G., (ed),The diary of Thomas Isham of Lamport (1658-81), 1971.
• Lee, B. N., ''British bookplates, Newton Abbot, 1979, 9-10.
• Rhodes, D. E., Some English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish book-collectors in Italy, 1467-1850, in Rhodes, D. E. (ed), Bookbindings and other bibliophily: essays in honour of Anthony Hobson, Verona, 1994, 247-76, p.262.