From The Queen’s College to Montagu House: The History of the Thomason Tracts after the Restoration

Abstract

• Although the Thomason collection is rightly regarded as one of the treasures of the British Library, its survival was by no means inevitable. This chapter revisits the convoluted history of its fortunes after Thomason ceased collecting in 1661, shedding new light upon his own hopes and expectations regarding its fate, and reconstructing various attempts to effect its sale over the next hundred years, culminating in its acquisition by Lord Bute, and its presentation to the British Museum by George III. What emerges is new evidence about how the importance of the collection was promoted and recognized, thereby making comprehensible how it remained more or less intact, and came to be perceived as something that needed to be made safe for posterity, and that would be useful to the ‘publique’.