Samuel Radcliffe ca.1580-1648

Samuel RADCLIFFE ca.1580-1648

Biographical Note

Son of Samuel Radcliffe, of Lancashire, gentleman. BA Brasenose College, Oxford 1601, MA 1604, BD 1611, DD 1615; proctor 1610, Principal of Brasenose 1614. Entered at Gray’s Inn 1614. Rector of Steeple Aston, Oxfordshire 1617; of Boxford, Bedfordshire 1618. He was ejected from his livings and Oxford post shortly before his death in 1648.

Books

In addition to monetary bequests to Brasenose for building a new chapel, Radcliffe also bequeathed his books to the College. Many survive there today.

Characteristic Markings

Radcliffe did not typically inscribe his books. They were marked with one of two printed gift labels (Lee 147). His collection includes a quantity of gilt-tooled Oxford bindings of the first half of the 17th century, not particularly luxurious but notable as being a step up, decoratively, from the entirely plain options of the period.

Sources

Foster; A. G. Matthews, Walker revised. Oxford, 1948; P. Morgan, Oxford libraries outside the Bodleian. 2nd edn, Oxford, 1980; D. Pearson, ‘Book collectors in Oxford 1550-1650’ in R. Myers and M. Harris (eds), Antiquaries, book collectors and the circles of learning, 1996. A. J. Butler, An account of benefaction, monograph IV in Brasenose College quatercentenary monographs, Oxford, 1909, vol.1, 23-24. J. Mordaunt Crook, Brasenose: the biography of an Oxford college, 2008, 75-7.