Richard Fletcher d.1617

Richard FLETCHER d.1617

Biographical Note

Born at Bangor, second son of Thomas Fletcher, a member of a minor gentry family in north Wales. BA St John's College, Cambridge 1608, MA 1611, fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge 1611. He remained there as a fellow and tutor until his death six years later.

Books

Fletcher's probate inventory (transcribed as BCI 192), which is damaged and incomplete, includes a list of ca.50 books (there may have been more) valued at ca.£20, from a total estate valued at £64 10s 8d. The contents include a mixture of classical and theological texts, reflecting Fletcher's academic career in Cambridge, with a bias towards contemporary protestant/Calvinist authors (Beza, Calvin, Paré, Piscator, Zanchius). He also had a sprinkling of geography, medicine and science.

In his will, he made a number of specific bequests of books, including a set of Zanchius to Jesus College, a Plantin Bible to John Preston of Queens' College, Cambridge, Kepler's Optics to Thomas Hooker of Emmanuel, and Josephus in Greek and Latin to Geoffrey Watts of Jesus. He divided his "paper books" between his old tutor Thomas Henshaw ("those paper bookes he hath of mine and my comen place bookes and al my loose sermons"), and his tutee Thomas Griffin. The rest of his books were to be sold with the proceeds divided between members of his family. The Zanchius is now Jesus, Cambridge.

Sources

J. Venn, Biographical history of Gonville & Caius College. Cambridge, 1897; E. S. Leedham Green, Books in Cambridge probate inventories, 1986, v.1 p.572-4; W/ Griffith, 'Richard Fletcher of Bangor', Caernarvonshire Historical Society Transactions 39 (1978), 44-73.