The Chained Parish Library of Chirbury, with Reference to Herbert Family Provenances

The parish library of Chirbury, in Shropshire, was founded following the death of its long-serving vicar, Edward Lewis, in 1677. The collection is notable for having been one of the earliest parish libraries in the county and for having been a chained library.¹ A further topic of interest, with which this study is particularly concerned, is the presence in a handful of its books of inscriptions by members of the Herbert family. The Herberts had a longstanding association with the nearby town of Montgomery and their more distinguished members included the polymath Edward, first Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581/2–1648),² the priest and poet George Herbert (1593–1632/3), and Sir Henry Herbert (1594–1673), who served as Master of Revels before and after the Inter regnum. The library contains books which are reputed to have been owned by each of these men,³ who happen to have been brothers, although the strength of these claims has not previously been tested. This study—based on an examination of all the library’s known surviving books—will assess the library’s history, its contents, and its supposed association with the Herberts.

The history of the library

Lewis became vicar of Chirbury in 1628.⁴ Little is known about his origins or education, except that he had a BA at the time of his admission to Chirbury and that he later received an MA.⁵ He is not known to have had any children and seems, in later life, to have turned his attention to charitable ends. His chief act in this regard was the foundation of a school in Chirbury. It was specified in indentures dated 13 and 14 April 1675 that a schoolhouse should be built in the churchyard at Chirbury and that various lands, which Lewis had assigned to twelve trustees, should be used to provide an income for the school.⁶ A schoolmaster was to be employed at a stipend of £20 per annum and was to reside in the schoolhouse.⁷ The building was completed later that year, as is apparent from another document, dated 22 November 1675, which refers to its having been ‘lately erected’.⁸ The school (which is now Chirbury Church of England Primary School) was moved to a new building in the nineteenth century and the original schoolhouse later became a private residence, though it has recently been returned to educational uses.

Lewis died in 1677 and was buried on 31 December.⁹ His will, which was proved at Ludlow on 15 January 1677/8, enlarged the school’s endowment and established a parish library.¹⁰ Lewis bequeathed his manuscripts to a relation, John Farmer, and directed that the rest of his books should be ‘kept for a Lybrary in the Schoole house in Cherbury for the vse of the Schoole M[aste]r or any other of the parishoners who shall desire to read them but not moueing them from the afores[ai]d Lybrary’.¹¹ Parish libraries such as this were becoming more common in England and Wales, owing in part to rising literacy rates and the growing availability of books.¹² Though it is unclear what contribution the books made to the religious and intellectual life of Chirbury, many of them were still present in the schoolhouse in the nineteenth century when they were reportedly found in a cupboard.¹³ Years later, a collection of chains, which had apparently been attached to many of the books before being forcibly removed, was discovered in the school’s attic.¹⁴ The books were transferred to the vicarage and, at some point, the chains reattached.¹⁵ In the 1960s, the books were deposited at Shropshire Archives, where they remain.

It is uncertain at what point the library became a chained library. There is nothing to suggest that the books were chained in Lewis’s lifetime and there is no reference to chains in his will. Nor are there any early financial records for the school or any records of the purchase or fitting of chains...