View source for Walter Cope 1553?-1614

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===[[personal title::Sir]] [[name::Walter]] [[name::COPE]]  [[date of birth::1553]]?-[[date of death::1614]]===

====Biographical Note====
Born probably at [[location::Hardwick Manor]], near [[location::Banbury]], son of [[family::Edward Cope]], a gentleman [[location::farmer]].  Entered at [[organisations::Gray’s Inn]] 1570.  Pursued an increasingly successful administrative career under the patronage of [[associates::William Cecil, Lord Burghley]], whose service he entered as a [[occupation::gentleman usher]] and whose [[occupation::secretary]] he was described as in 1593.  Official in the [[organisations::Court of Wards and Liveries]] 1574, [[occupation::Feodary of the Court]] for [[location::Oxfordshire]] 1580, for [[location::London]] and [[location::Middlesex]] 1601, [[occupation::Chamberlain of the Exchequer]] 1609, [[occupation::Public Registrar-General of Commerce]] 1612, [[occupation::Master of the Court of Wards]] 1612.  Served as an [[occupation::MP]] in several late 16th and early 17th century Parliaments.  He owned a large estate in [[location::Kensington]], where he built a grand house, [[location::Cope Castle]], which subsequently became [[location::Holland House]].  He engaged in various business dealings, not all of which were successful, and he is believed to have died with large debts owing.

====Books==== 
Cope is listed as a member of the early [[organisations::Society of Antiquaries]] and [[associates::Thomas James]]’s [[book title::''Ecloga Oxonio-Cantabrigienses'']] (1600) lists him as owning 215 medieval [[format::manuscript|manuscripts]].  He [[bequest::gave]] 40 to the [[beneficiary::Bodleian Library]] in [[date of bequest::1602]], whose range shows that his collection brought together manuscripts from monastic sources all over [[location::England]].  Despite having one of the major manuscript collections of the time, it is hard to determine whether he actively had any scholarly or intellectual engagement with them; Andrew Watson characterised him as a virtuoso, “a gentleman who liked to display scholarly interests”.  We have no knowledge of any printed books he may have owned.  He is also noted as a collector of curiosities from around the world, with “the best-known Wunderkammer in [[location::England]] in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries”. Examples: Bodleian Library mss Bodley 1, 158, 797, and others as listed by Watson.

====Characteristic Markings==== 
Cope’s books are hard to identify as he did not mark his ownership in any way.  A few manuscripts can be identified from numbers written in which correspond with numbers in James’s catalogue.  Many of the Cope manuscripts in the [[organisations::Bodleian library]] are in distinctive tawed leather bindings which at first sight look medieval, but are actually early 17th century; these were put on after they had been donated.

====Sources====
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*Allen, Elizabeth. [https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6257 "Cope, Sir Walter (1553?–1614), administrator."] ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''.  
*Peck, L. ''Consuming splendour'', Cambridge, 2005, 156-7.
*Watson, A. The manuscript collection of Sir Walter Cope, ''Bodleian Library Record'', 12 (1987), 262-97. 
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