James Forbes 1628/9-1712

James FORBES 1628/9-1712

Biographical Note

Born in Scotland; MA King's College, Aberdeen 1648. Moved to England ca.1653, where he became preacher at Gloucester Cathedral the following year, and subsequently pastor to a congregational church there. He was ejected in 1660 but continued to preach in and around Gloucester, where he remained for the rest of his life apart from short periods in London. He was licensed to preach as a Congregationalist in Gloucester in 1672, but was regularly arrested and imprisoned from the Restoration onwards for his dissenting activities. A meeting-house was built for him in Gloucester in 1699.

Books

Forbes accumulated a library of ca.1,300 volumes, plus ca.300 pamphlets, which he sold to his church in 1710 for a nominal sum, to be held in trust as a continuing library for the benefit of nonconformist ministers in Gloucestershire. Books were to be lent one at a time to protestant dissenting ministers in Gloucestershire, provided they were returned within a month. The books were kept together, with only a little dispersal and few additions, and remained as a working library until put into storage at the end of the 19th century. They were deposited in Gloucester City Library in 1954 and in 1966 were sold to the University of Toronto, where they are held as a collection in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

The library includes a high proportion of theological material, including Biblical, patristic and exegetical texts, and strong holdings of 17th-cebtury nonconformist writers (e.g. Baxter, Goodwin, Owen, Preston.