CHARLES ITS HEBREW BOOKS

DAVID GOLDSTEIN

T H E collection of Hebrew books in the British Library (formerly the Library of theBritish Museum) is acknowledged to be one of the greatest in the world, and I do nothave to expand on its importance, or on the wealth and variety of its manuscripts andprinted books. I should like here to examine a small, but vital, part of the collection.^ Irefer to the i8o Hebrew books that once belonged to Charles II, and that were given tothe Museum by Solomon da Costa Athias in 1759.1 intend to make my way back througha century of history from 1759 to 1659, to analyse the collection and to pursue itsfortunes, and even to try to ascertain its origins before it reached the library of CharlesII - although this, I am afraid, will be tentative and hypothetical.

Solomon da Costa's gift to the Museum in 1759 is well documented.^ He accompaniedhis gift with a letter to the Trustees, dated 31 May. The letter is both in Hebrew andin Da Costa's own English translation. The English version was published as abroadside, and has been reprinted many times since. Da Costa's original manuscriptcopy differs extensively in style, and was clearly revised before publication.^ In thisletter Da Costa itemized his gift as follows: 'a parchment roll, written in a beautifulcharacter, containing the law of Moses... as it is used in our synagogues;... a veryancient parchment manuscript book, containing the posterior and the twelve minorprophets;... another parchment manuscript book, containing the Pentateuch, or fivebooks of Moses, the Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Psalms,Proverbs, Job, and the after-lessons of the whole year. '̂ The last was copied by thefamous scribe Abraham Farissol of Avignon, who completed it in Mantua in 1481. Thismanuscript bears Da Costa's name on the binding, with the place and date, London1719.

The gift of these three Bible manuscripts alone would have ensured Da Costa anhonourable place in the annals of the British Museum, and he obviously considered themto be his major contribution, because the letter goes on: 'and I have added to them 180volumes of printed books, old editions, which were collected, and richly bound, by orderof Charles the Second ... and are marked with his cypher, all in the Hebrew language;which I purchased in the days of my youth.' Appended to his letter is a list of these 180volumes. Actually there are two lists of the books in Hebrew, and one in Latin andEnglish translation. There is also another list of the books in Latin only. The letter

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Fig. I. Title-page of liturgical poems by Isaac ben Reuben of Barcelona, Azharot (Leghorn,1655), displaying the arms of Grand Duke Ferdinand de' Medici, with the autograph 'Solomonda Costa, London, 1759'. I962.b.24

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appears in Hebrew in two copies, and one in English translation. All of these, it appearsto me, are in Da Costa's own hand.^

The list of books is in alphabetical order of title. After each title Da Costa puts inbrackets a brief summary of the contents of the book, usually but not always taken fromthe title-page; the place of printing; and the size. He puts the date of printing againstall titles that were printed on or before 1540. He therefore follows the usual practice ofthat time of segregating, as being of special importance, all Hebrew books printed beforethe beginning of the century tav-shin [i.e. 1540]. In other words, he notes all the reshin[i.e. pre-1540 imprints]. He also gives the lettering on the spine of those volumes whichcontain more than one work. For example, against the title Leshon Ha-zahav (no. 95) hewrites 'letter'd Maasse Hachamim' [Ma'ase Hakhamim], this being the first title in thevolume which also contains Leshon Ha-zahav. In addition Da Costa numbered each titleon the list, and wrote the corresponding number on the fly-leaf of the book itself. Wherethere is more than one work in a volume he writes all the numbers on the same fly-leaf.In one case there are no fewer than seven titles bound together in one volume. Da Costaalso signed the title-page of each volume, in Hebrew 'Solomon da Costa, London 1759'(cf. fig. i). In composite volumes he signed only the first title-page.

I have gone into so much detail because I want to show how careful and meticulousDa Costa was. We can understand this the more readily when we bear in mind that hewas himself a scribe of some note in his younger days, and examples of his work stillsurvive.^ Not that his list is free from error: occasionally he lists the same title more thanonce, and where, as happens rarely, the title-page of a book is missing he lists therunning-title and the two titles are not always one and the same. But these are minorimperfections. His list is generally reliable, and from it and from an examination of allthe books, we can say that Da Costa's gift consisted of 214 separate titles.^ Among these214 are ten duplicates.

From all that we know of Da Costa he was an honourable and honest member of theAnglo-Jewish community. Cecil Roth dates his birth to 1690. He came to London inabout 1705 from Amsterdam, and he made his fortune here in the city. He died in 1770.Nothing we know of him would lead us to think that he did not donate to the BritishMuseum all the books that he had acquired and that were once the property of CharlesII. One assumes that he kept nothing back. Certainly no other Hebrew books, I think,are known outside the Museum with a Charles II binding, although, of course, rebindingis always a possibility. In any event, I am supposing that the collection as donated wasintact. This is important when we come to consider the original source of the collection.An additional factor in arriving at this view is that Da Costa must have been promptedto make this handsome donation by the presentation to the British Museum of thecomplete Royal Library by George II, just two years earlier, in 1757. Da Costa no doubtwanted to complete that transfer by adding the Hebrew books that originally belongedto it.̂

Da Costa says in his letter to the Trustees that he purchased them in the days of hisyouth. An account of this purchase and the circumstances that led up to it is given by

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Thomas Hollis (d. 1774), a friend of Da Costa, who - as will be seen - was not a greatadmirer of Charles II, and whose words therefore must be taken critically. He writes asfollows in his Memoirs:

You will wonder, it is like, how such a number of books, and Hebrew books, should have beenbound by that man-hating riot King Charles the Second. It is my own opinion that they werecollected during the Commonwealth, when men of different spirit bore sway... to be bestowed,like other similar donations, on one of the universities,... but which fell, before bestowed, withthe nation, to Charles the Second, at the Restoration. But neither did that King give them to anylearned body, or person, nor take them into his own library, though they were magnificentlybound in morocco, with his cypher and the crown by his own order, and there they lay unnoticedfurther, and unpaid for at the bookseller's his whole reign; with three thousand other volumesin various languages, alike curious, bound with like elegance, and alike neglected and unclaimed.The same being the case during the reigns of James the Second, King William and Queen Anne,they were sold at length by the bookseller to other booksellers at loss, towards indemnifyinghimself for the binding and interest-money; and the Hebrew books preserved intire, and boughtsome time in the reign of George the First by the excellent Solomon da Costa, then a young man,greedy of knowledge... for fourscore pounds, though now invaluable.^

If we are to believe this, then Da Costa acquired these books some time after 1714, andsince he himself says that he made the purchase in the days of his youth, we may be safein attributing it to the early years of George's reign, perhaps 1719 (?), when we know heacquired the Farissol manuscript. Thomas Hearne says that he saw in 1708 'aconsiderable parcel of Printed Rabbinical Books' in the custody of Mr Sisson, a druggist,together with other books with royal bindings.^*' At all events the books were clearlywithheld from the Royal Library for many years, seemingly decades, because the binderand his heirs remained unpaid.

Further evidence about this state of affairs is afforded by John Evelyn, and this takesus back into the seventeenth century itself On 12 August 1689 he writes to Samuel Pepysabout the Royal Library at St James's:

There are in it a great many noble manuscripts ... and more would be, did some royal or generoushand cause those to be brought back to it, which still are lying in mercenary hands for want oftwo or three hundred pounds to pay for their binding; many of which being of the orientaltongues, will soon else find Jews and Chapmen, that will purchase and transport them, fromwhence we shall never retrieve them again."

When John Evelyn penned this letter it was the bookbinder's widow who was demandingthis 'two or three hundred pounds'. The binder himself had died six years earlier in1683. He was Samuel Mearne, bookseller and bookbinder, who had received a licence tobind volumes for the Royal Library in 1660. There are countless examples of his workin the British Library, apart from the Hebrew items acquired and donated by Da Costa.The Charles II binding is very distinctive. The 'cypher' is gold and consists of twoletters ' C intertwined back to back, surmounted by a crown, and placed within a pairof wings. The device is stamped on each of the four corners of a gold bordered panel as

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on the covers of the book itself, back and front, and also several times on the spine. Eachbook is bound in full leather, with all edges in gold. Most of the volumes still have theoriginal titles on the spine, in Latin characters. The binder was obviously advised bysomeone knowledgeable in Hebrew, probably a Jew.

A few of the volumes are bound in a handsome red turkey, but most of them are inbrown. This last point proved to be of interest to the late Howard Nixon, who wascertainly the greatest authority on Samuel Mearne and on royal bindings. When Idiscussed this matter with him, he gave it as his opinion that the brown bindings musthave been the last that Mearne did. All his work was in red, and indeed this is what onewould have expected. We can presume that he was paid for his early work, otherwise hewould not have gone on accepting new orders. It was only payment for his later workthat remained outstanding.

We have evidence that he stopped binding for Charles about the year 1667. In thelibrary at Longleat there are bills among the Thynne papers^^ - Henry and JamesThynne were Charles IPs librarians - relating to this very collection. There is anaccount for binding 180 Hebrew books, the amount demanded being £126. This bill isundated, but it is coupled with another of £60 for warehousing these books for the period1665-85. The accounts were submitted by Mearne's widow, and incidentally theycorroborate our view concerning the intact nature of the collection. The 180 volumes areexactly those enumerated in Da Costa's letter. We may therefore conclude that they werebound at the latest in 1665. Charles II therefore received them before that date.

This leads us on to the question of how the collection was formed, and how it foundits way into the Royal Library. The assumption has been that they were collected duringthe Commonwealth and that they came into the King's possession at the Restoration in1660. This view goes back to Hollis whom we have already quoted. He writes:' they werecollected during the Commonwealth... to be bestowed ...on one of the universities...but... fell, before bestowed ... to Charles the Second at the Restoration. '̂ ^ This versionhas the advantage of being paralleled by the collection of Hebrew books purchased byParliament in 1648 for Cambridge University, which has been well documented.^^

Solomon Schechter, in his history of the Hebrew collections in the British Museum,gives quite a different version of events. He writes: 'These books were intended as apresent from the London Jewish community to Charles for certain privileges which hehad bestowed on them. The sudden death of the King seems to have frustrated theintention of the first donors. The books were scattered and Da Costa had to collect themagain. '̂ ^ We now know that Schechter's final words were mistaken, because Charles hadreceived the books by 1665. But were they a gift from the Jewish community, and if so,when.''

To try to answer the question we need to look at the books themselves. And this I havedone. I am happy to report in my capacity as a Curator of the Hebrew collection thatall the books donated by Da Costa are still there! - which is no mean achievement,considering that the whole collection has been moved physically at least six times andthat individual items have been sent to the bindery for repair, and issued to readers, and

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been subject to the usual wear and tear of use and age. I must admit, however, that oneitem eluded me for several years (I started the examination in 1978), and turned up onlya few weeks ago. It was Mordecai Jaffe's Pinat Yikrat, part iii of his Levushe Or Yekarot,printed in Lublin in 1584. The book had actually been standing in its proper place onthe shelf all the time, and the reason why I could not find it is remarkable. The fact isthat it was not recorded in our catalogues. The Library possesses three copies of thiswork, but Joseph Zedner in his masterly catalogue, published in 1867, records only two;he missed Da Costa's copy. As you know, Zedner was one of the greatest and mostreliable Hebrew bibliographers of all time, and when I realized that he had made amistake I was filled with a great surge of confidence, because I knew at last that he andI had something in common! So the 180 volumes are all there.

Let the books now speak for themselves. Firstly, where were they printed and when?Remember we are dealing with 214 separate items, all in Hebrew (except for one inJudaeo-Spanish, Moses Almosnino's Hanhagat ha-hayim [Regimiento dela vida], Salonica1564). Of these, seventy-seven were printed in Venice and forty-two in Constantinople;eighteen in Salonica, and ten each in Mantua and Ferrara. Other places are representedby single figures only, and there are no books at all from Antwerp or Amsterdam. Theearliest dated items are the Mivhar Ha-peninim ascribed to Ibn Gabirol (Soncino, 1484),Albo's Sefer Ha-'ikarim (Soncino, 1485), and Landau's Agur (Naples, about 1490). Thelatest dated book, and this is crucial to our enquiry, is the collection of responsa byBaruch ben Solomon Kalai, entitled Mekor Barukh, and printed in Smyrna in 1659.Indeed we can be more precise about this. The printer states that it was completed onSunday, i Tammuz 5419, which is equivalent to Sunday, 23 June 1659. There is anotheritem of the same year also printed in Smyrna, the volume of homilies entitled ShemaShelomoh by Solomon Algazi. So we may conclude already that the collection did notreach its final form until the middle of 1659, at the very earliest, and more likely, ofcourse, until the end of 1659 or even 1660.

Secondly, what are the subjects covered by these books? Fifty of them deal withJewish law, most of these being responsa, codes, or commentaries. Forty-nine are Biblecommentaries, those on the Hagiographa, Esther, Song of Songs, Proverbs, and Psalmsbeing the most prominent. Then follow thirty-eight philosophical items, nineteenvolumes of sermons, fifteen dealing with Kabbalah, thirteen with Hebrew grammar, anda few on other subjects. There are no Bibles as such. There is no copy of the Tanakh[Hebrew Bible] or of the Humash [Pentateuch]. In Zedner's catalogue under the headingBIBLE, i.e. complete Bibles, or under BIBLE - PENTATEUCH, one will not find a single itemthat originated from Charles IPs collection. There are no volumes of Mishnah (exceptAboth) or Talmud. Prayer-books are very poorly represented. There are three [Passover]Hagadot and only one copy of the Mahzor (Lublin, 1567, volume i only). There are noSidurim, no Selihot, no Tikunim, or works of this nature. (It seems to me unlikely thatsuch gaps in Bible, Talmud and Liturgy are accidental, as we shall see.) There are noitems of Christian Hebraica. None of the books bears the signature of a censor. Thereis one book which in fact does have some lines obliterated, probably by a censor, but this

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also is unsigned, and could have escaped the attention of someone trying to exclude suchworks.

Lastly, we must look at signs of previous ownership before the books reached CharlesII. Fifty-two books bear names of owners that remain decipherable. There are otherswhere names have been intentionally obliterated. There are no names of Christianowners. Occasional Latin inscriptions are to be found, but these are invariablytranslations of the Hebrew title, or a record of the contents, and could have been addedat any time in the seventeenth or even the eighteenth century.

Nearly all the names of previous owners, as one would expect, are Sefardi. One - Isaacben Gershon Ashkenazi - is written in a Sefardi hand, and so is a Sefardi. There are justfour Ashkenazi signatures in Ashkenazi hand: Ben Meir ben David, Zelig Judah Zalman(both on the same book), Avigdor ben Jehiel Ashkenazi, and Meir ben Joseph MeirAshkenazi. We find the same signature on more than one item: Judah Zarko ownedthree; Teshuvah ben Moses Roman, otherwise Teshuvah ibn Paquda, owned two.Among names of interest are Solomon Colpo; Solomon, Eleazar and David Gallichi;Avtalion ben Mordecai (who is probably Avtalion ben Mordecai Modena, anacquaintance of Azariah de Rossi). Avtalion's signature is on the Mantua edition of theZohar. I would add to this list Samson Nieto, but the last name is difficult to decipher,and I could be mistaken.

None of the names corresponds with those of Jews known to have been in London justafter the Resettlement. One book has an inscription which allows us to place the ownerin a certain period of time. The responsa by Benjamin Motal, Tumat Yesharim (Venice,1622), bears the message on the reverse of the title-page: 'On Tuesday, 12 Tevet 5401[30 December 1640] the current coinage became invalid, and new coinage was mintedby Sultan Ibrahim.' The Ottoman Ibrahim reigned from 1640 to 1648. The book wasowned by someone resident in the Ottoman Empire, or by a merchant who had dealingsin that part of the world.

What can we deduce from this evidence.? It would appear that a definite process ofselection has taken place, unlike the books bought for Cambridge in 1648, which werea 'job lot'. The lack of a Bible, a Talmud tractate (or Mishnah), and the presence of onlyone substantial prayer-book, points to that fact. This alone, I think, would indicate Jewishselectors, and this hypothesis is strengthened by the lack of any Christian Hebraica, andthe absence of previous Christian owners or, to be more accurate, the absence ofChristian signatures. The exclusion of copies signed by censors also points that way.

So we have a collection of Hebrew books formed by Jews not earlier than late 1659.It is reasonable to assume that they were a presentation by the Jewish community toCharles, not as Schechter maintained 'for certain privileges which he had bestowed onthem*, but as a token of their loyalty to him at his restoration. The most reasonable datefor this presentation would be 1660, particularly near the end of that year, because it wasat this time that anti-Jewish agitation was being aroused by the City and by certainindividuals, and influence brought to bear upon the King to reverse the train of eventsthat had led to the readmission of the Jews during the Commonwealth. The small Jewish

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community in London, numbering not more than forty families at that time, petitionedthe King not to heed these hostile outbursts. This was at the beginning of December

Charles already had good grounds for being friendly towards the Jewish community.During his exile the Jews of Amsterdam had helped him, at his request, with money,supplies and arms for his forces, and they specifically distanced themselves fromManasseh ben Israel's dealings with Cromwell. They wanted to show that their loyaltylay with the Royalists and not with Parliament. This may explain why among our booksthere are no works by or connected with Manasseh ben Israel, nor indeed anythingprinted in Amsterdam, at all. We must also not exclude the possibility that the gift hadreligious or even messianic overtones. In seventeenth-century England religion andpolitics were never far apart. But I must leave others more learned in these matters toponder that question.

We have traced the history of Charles II's Hebrew books backwards from the datethey were given by Da Costa to the British Museum in 1759. Let us now summarize bygoing the other way. 180 Hebrew volumes, containing 214 titles, were given by theLondon Jewish community to Charles II in 1660. They were consigned to SamuelMearne for binding, and he did the work before 1667. He was unpaid. The books wereseen by Evelyn in 1689 and by Thomas Hearne in 1708. They were purchased by DaCosta after 1714, kept intact, and found their way to their present home in 1759, wherethey have remained ever since.

Finally, let us return to Solomon Schechter, whose opinion was that the books werea gift from the Jewish community in London to Charles. We think that he was right,although he got the date wrong. The question is, what led Schechter to this conclusion?I think the answer lies quite simply in his understanding of Solomon da Costa's letterto the Trustees of the British Museum. He says of the books nitkabtsu ve-nikhrekhu la-melekh Karolo lia-sheni. Da Costa's original translation was 'books which had beengathered and bound for King Charles the Second'. This is only slightly ambiguous. Thebooks were gathered for him, and bound for him. The printed translation, however,reads differently: 'which were collected, and richly bound, by Order of Charles theSecond'. This can easily be taken to mean that only the binding had royal connections,not the original assembling of the books.

Schechter relied on the original Hebrew, and this may indeed have been Da Costa'sown view: the books had not been collected during the Commonwealth, but specificallyfor Charles after the Restoration, and as I hope I have shown, at the beginning of hisreign. I doubt whether Charles opened a single volume. But I must thank him forallowing me the privilege of opening every one of them.

I This paper was originally presented as a lecture script, found among the late Dr Goldstein'sat a meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of papers in the Hebrew Section of the BritishEngland, London, in 1985. The text has been Library. Various notes and communicationsrevised for publication from the unedited type- from individuals in connection with Dr Gold-

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stein's research on the subject were included inhis 'Da Costa' file, and acknowledgement maybe given to them here: N. Barker, M. Foot, L.Fuks (Amsterdam), L. Hellinga, David Katz,Golda Kaufman (San Francisco), the late H. M.Nixon, the late J. C. T. Oates, A. K. Offenberg,S. Reif, M. L. Robertson (San Marino, Cali-fornia).

2 EDITOR'S NOTE: On Da Costa and the history ofthe Da Costa collection there are a number ofpublished sources, some of which are cited inthis paper, or within the cited literature. Themost important monographs are those by I. andA. da Costa, 'De Hebreeuwsche Boekwerken inhet Britische Museum, en de Boekdrukker daCosta', Konst en Letterbode (i860), Nos. 16 and17, reprinted in I. da Costa, Israel en de volken:Overzicht van de Geschiedenis der Joden tot opouzen tijd, 2nd edn. (Utrecht, 1876), pp. 546-50;A. M. Hyamson, 'Solomon da Costa and theBritish Museum', in Bruno Schindler and A.Marmorstein (eds.), Occident and Orient, beingstudies in Semitic Philology and Literature, JewishHistory and Philosophy and Folklore ...in HonourofHaham Dr. M. Gaster's 80th Birthday: GasterAnniversary Volume (London, 1936), pp. 260—6[most copies of this Gaster Festschrift weredestroyed during the bombing of London in1941]; E. R. Samuel, 'Anglo-Jewish Notariesand Scriveners', Transactions of the JewishHistorical Society of England, xvii (1953), pp.119-23; A. M. Habermann, 'Shelomoh de-Kostah, meyased ha-mahlakah ha-'ivrit be-Muzey'on ha-Briti [Solomon Da-Costa, Founderof the Hebrew Section of the British Museum]',in Ve-^im bi-gevurot [Ve^Im bigvuroth. Fourscoreyears: A Tribute to Rubin and Hannah Mass^(Jerusalem, 1974), pp. 173-8. There is anaccount by Golda Kaufman of 'The Gift ofSolomon da Costa' in the Jewish children'smagazine World Over, xxiii, no. 5 (New York, 8Dec. 1961), pp. 6-7.

See also 7"̂ !? Gentleman^s Magazine, xxx, Feb.and May 1760; [T. Hollis], Appendix to theMemoirs of Thomas Hollis (London, 1780), pp.613-15; M. Margoliouth, History of the Jews inGreat Britain (London, 1851), vol. ii, pp. 101-2;The Jewish Chronicle (London), 25 Nov. and 2Dec. 1859; S. Schechter, 'The Hebrew Col-lection of the British Museum', in his Studies inJudaism (London, 1896), p. 321; M. Gaster,History of the Ancient Synagogue of the Spanish

and Portuguese Jews ... in Bevis Marks (London,1901), pp. 109-10; E. N. Adler, Catalogue ofHebrew Manuscripts in the Collection of ElkanNathan Adler (Cambridge, 1921), pp. 81-2, andplates 25A and 98 (concerning manuscripts inDa Costa's hand); C. Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters,7/55-/9/7 (London, 1938), pp. 123-5, 144-7; J.Leveen, 'Introduction', in his vol. iv of G.Margoliouth, Catalogue of the Hebrew andSamaritan Manuscripts in the British Museum,pp. v-vi; idem, 'Joseph Zedner, 1804-1871',Studies in Bibliography and Booklore, i (Cincin-nati, 1954), p. 159; H. M. Rabinowicz, TheJewish Literary Treasures of England and America(New York and London, 1962), pp. 18 and 24;idem. Treasures of Judaica (New York andLondon, 1971), pp. 18-20, 32-3; and H. M.Nixon, English Restoration Bookbindings: SamuelMearne and his contemporaries (London, 1974),pp. 12-13, and plate 2 (photograph of thebinding of Pirke Avot, Venice, 1566).

There are also entries by G. Lipkind, 'Costa,Solomon da', in The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. iv(New York and London, 1905), p. 292; C. Roth,' Costa Athias, Salomo da', EncyclopaediaJudaica, vol. v (Berlin, 1930), cols. 675-6; andidem, 'Costa Athias, Solomon da \ EncyclopaediaJudaica, vol. v (Jerusalem, 1972), coL 989. Fivevolumes from the Da Costa collection, describedas such, and 'in the original binding as orderedfor Charles I I ' , were displayed in the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition in 1887; see J.Jacobs and L. Wolf, Catalogue of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition, Royal Albert Hall,London, 188/ (London, 1888), pp. 204—6, nos.216, 241, 242, 244, and 253.

Shorter discussions also appear in E. Edwards,Memoirs of Libraries (London, 1859), vol. i, pp.453-4; A. Esdaile, The British Museum Library:a short history and a survey (London, 1946), p.297; E. Miller, That Noble Cabinet: A History ofthe British Museum (London, 1973), pp. 73-4;N. Barker et al.. Treasures of the British Library(London, 1988), pp. 64, 142, 147, 210; and M.Caygill, The Story of the British Museum(London, 1992), pp. 14-15.

3 One version of the letter appears in TheGentleman's Magazine (London, Feb. 1760), andin the Appendix to the Memoirs of Thomas Hollis,p. 614, and reprinted in Margoliouth's History ofthe Jews m Great Britain, vol. ii, p. ioi. It is mostaccessible now in Cecil Roth's Anglo-Jewish

Letters, 1158-igij, pp. 123-5; and in Hyam-son's article (where the version is based on theprinted broadside). The Hebrew version wasprinted for the first time by A. M. Habermann,pp. 173-8, but Habermann did not publish theletter in its entirety.

4 The three manuscripts are to be identified,respectively, as Add. MSS. 4707 (Margoliouthno. 3, 'Sefardi hand probably of the fifteenthcentury'), 4708 (Margoliouth no. 135, 'Sefardihand of the twelfth to thirteenth century'), and4709 (Margoliouth no. 95). [EDITOR'S NOTE:These three manuscripts were described byKennicott in his Dissertatio Generalis in VetusTestamentum Hebraicum (Oxford, 1780; Bruns-wick, 1783), nos. 124-6; cf. B. Richler, Guide toHebrew Manuscript Gollections (Jerusalem, 1994),pp. 42-3, under Xosta Athias'. One might alsomention here another manuscript once belongingto Da Costa which passed to the Royal Society,and is now on permanent loan to the BritishLibrary. This is the 'Royal Society HebrewBible' on vellum (Kennicott no. 128), a fineexample of Spanish calligraphy of the fifteenthcentury, which was exhibited in the King'sLibrary in 1992; see Richler, p. 312, and [B. S.Hill], Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts from Iberia[British Library exhibition notes] (London,1992), no. 18.]

5 Hyamson, pp. 260-6, says that the Hebreworiginal of the letter * cannot now be found'. Onecan only presume that he was unlucky when hevisited the Museum - perhaps the manuscriptwas at the bindery - because it is certainly therenow, in two copies! The lists are in Add. MSS.4710, 4711, and Or. MS. 11268.

6 There is a photograph of the title-page of onemanuscript he copied in 1717 in the Encyclo-paedia Judaica, vol. V (Berlin, 1930), col. 675; seealso Adler, Gatahgue of Hebrew Manuscripts, pp.81-2, and plates 25A and 98.

7 Hyamson, p. 260, gives the figure as 220; cf. alsoHabermann, p. 173, n. 16.

8 Of the Hebrew books in the Museum before DaCosta's donation, there was a Talmud, as well asJoseph Colon's Responsa (Venice, 1519), thelatter not a royal volume, [EDITOR'S NOTE: On theBritish Library's 'royal' Talmud, referred to byJ. Winter Jones in his introduction to Zedner'sGatahgue of the Hebrew Books tn the Library ofthe British Museum (London, 1867; repnnted1964), p. V ('In 1759, when the Museum first

opened to the public, the editio princeps of theTalmud was the only Hebrew work it contained,and this was included in the royal librarypresented to the Museum by King George II'),see the corrective by T. A. Birrell, in 'TheReconstruction of the library of Isaac Casaubon',in Hellinga Festschrift / Feesthundel/ Melanges(Amsterdam, 1980), pp. 63 and 68, n. 41, withreference also to other Hebrew volumes fromCasaubon's library which formed the nucleus ofthe oriental collection of the Museum upon itsinception. (To these one should add a furthervolume, David Kimhi's Mikhlol, Venice, 1545,with Casaubon's own copious ms. notes, re-corded in Zedner, p. 199.) Birrell notes that thetwelve volumes of the Talmud, although re-bound in the nineteenth century as Henry VIIIbooks, were assigned in the Old Royal LibraryCatalogue to Casaubon, and do not figure in thecatalogue of Henry VIH's library in the PublicRecord Office. On another Talmud with flawedroyal pretensions, see D. Goldstein, 'HebrewBooks in the Library of Westminster Abbey',Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society ofEngland, xxvii (1982), pp. 151-4; E. Samuel,'The Provenance of the Westminster Talmud',ibid., pp. 148-50; and B. S. Hill, Hebraica [saec.X ad saec XVI): Manuscripts and Early PrintedBooks from the Library of the Valmadonna Trust(London, 1989), pp. 12 and 26 (n. 38), and entryno. 24.]

10 H. M. Nixon, English Restoration Bookbindings.,

P- 13-11 John Forster (ed.). Diary and GorrespoiBence of

John Evelyn (London, 1859) [ = Bohn's His-torical Library, vols. ix-xii], vol. iii, p. 305.

12 See Nixon, English Restoration Bookbindings, p.12:' Catalogue of Bookes belonging to the King'sLibrary at St James's in the hands of Mr Memehis Ma^^: Stationer. Besides 180 volumes ofHebrew Bookes in his possession', not dated,and a bill 'Due to Anne Mearne the Widow ofSamuel Mearne his Ma'^" Bookbinder deceasedfor binding severall Books to his Ma"^' LibraryRoyale', demanding j{]24i for English and Latinbooks (99 folio, 64 quarto, and 361 octavo andduodecimo), and ;(ii26 for 180 Hebrew books.

r3 This opinion was repeated by Hyamson.14 EDITOR'S NOTE: The collection of Hebrew books

at Cambridge was acquired from the Londonbookseller George Thomason, who had themfrom an Italian Jew, one Isaac Faraji (later cited.

corruptly, as Pragi); they were listed in Thom-ason's Gatalogus Librorum diversis Italiae locisEmptorum Anno Dom. 164J (London, 1647), pp.47-56 ('Libri Hebraici'). On their purchase forCambridge, see I. Abrahams and C. E. Sayle,'The Purchase of Hebrew Books by the EnglishParliament in 1647', Transactions of the JewishHistorical Society of England, viii (1918), pp.63-77; J-C. T. Oates, 'Abraham Whelock(1593-1653): Orientalist, Anglo-Saxonist, & Uni-versity Librarian', The Sandars Lectures inBibliography (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 55-67;

idem, Gambridge University Library: a historyfrom the beginnings to the Gopyright Act of QueenAnne (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 231-40; and DavidS. Katz, Philo-semitism and the Readmission ofthe Jews to England, 1603-1655 (Oxford, 1982),

PP- 175-7-15 Solomon Schechter, 'The Hebrew Collection of

the British Museum', p. 321.16 See the excellent articles on this subject by

Lucien Wolf, in vols. iv and v of the Transactionsof the Jewish Historical Society of England.

33