The John Bargrave Collection

John Bargrave (1610-1680) was born in Kent to Captain John Bargrave and Jane Crouch. He was educated at The King's School in Canterbury and then at Peterhouse (St. Peter's College), Cambridge, where he became librarian and a fellow of the college in 1637. He was ejected from his fellowship in 1644, presumably for Royalist tendencies. Bargrave then travelled on the continent, including tours to France in 1645 and to Italy between 1646 and 1647 (accompanying his nephew, John Raymond), returning to Rome three more times, in 1650, 1655, and 1659-60. He was in Rome during the papal conclave of 1655, which had some part in moving him to write Pope Alexander the Seventh and the College of Cardinals. After the restoration, Bargrave received a D.D. from Cambridge, held various church appointments, and was finally appointed a canon of the Canterbury Cathedral (following in the footsteps of his uncle, Isaac Bargrave, who ultimately became Dean of the Cathedral). Shortly thereafter, he participated in a mission to rescue English slaves in Algiers.

John Bargrave is in some respects typical of English collectors: a private individual of middle-class means who collected out of personal curiosity objects of little monetary value. He was a collector of the middle period, between the pioneers in English collecting at the turn of the seventeenth-century (Cope and Tradescant) and the collectors of the later seventeenth century, most of whom were associated with the Royal Society. Unlike most English collectors, he showed little interest in naturalia. Bargrave’s collection is largely intact in the archives of the Canterbury Cathedral, consisting of three cabinets and a few larger objects. Incorporated into these cabinets are his coins, some of which he collected himself, and some of which he acquired en masse from Meric Casaubon (1599–1671) in a bequest to the Cathedral but to be held pro tem by Bargrave.

In the eighteenth-century, Samuel Shuckford (1693/4-1754) attempted to catalogue the coins while he was a prebend of the Cathedral.

Principal Sources:

Bann, Stephen. Under the Sign: John Bargrave as Collector, Traveler, and Witness. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Bargrave, John. Pope Alexander the Seventh and the College of Cardinals. Ed. James Craigie Robertson. Camden Society Publications no. 92. New York: AMS Press, 1968.