If you’ve ever visited Magdalen’s Old Library, you’ll have encountered the legacy of John Warner, Bishop of Rochester (1581-1666). You may have noticed his large, imposing portrait presiding above the medieval entrance. As you walked up the central aisle, you will have passed at least eighty early printed books bought with his funds. Warner was one of the Old Library’s earliest and most generous benefactors.
Warner’s Turbulent Life
Warner’s life story is one of considerable ups and downs. Born in 1581 to an affluent London tailor, he enjoyed a comfortable childhood, and his academic career was very promising. In 1599 he won a Demyship (full scholarship) to Magdalen, followed by election to a Fellowship in 1604. After fifteen years of successful college life, he decided to pursue his theological interest further and enter the Church. He worked his way up through rectorships and chaplaincies, impressing King Charles I, who appointed Warner as his personal chaplain in 1633. Then in 1637, Warner was promoted to the Bishopric of Rochester. That was when his troubles began.
Warner’s first term as Bishop was marred by his decision to appoint new canons without consulting Parliament. He did this with the support of Archbishop William Laud and several other bishops – all of whom felt strongly that Church and State should be kept separate – but in the volatile political climate of the time, with the English Civil War brewing, going against any parliamentary interest was extremely risky. The House of Commons impeached Warner in 1641. Thanks to the skilful defence of his lawyer Chaloner Chute, Warner narrowly escaped being sent to prison, but all of his lands and possessions were taken away and he had to go into hiding.
Not until 1649 (eight years later) was Warner was allowed to pay a fine to reclaim his property. By this time, England had been overturned by the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan government had abolished all bishoprics, and Warner’s close supporter King Charles I had been executed. The disgraced Warner would have to wait until the Restoration in 1660 for his livelihood in the Church to be returned to him, but during the 1650s he could at least begin to recover in a home of his own, without needing to rely on the hospitality and secrecy of friends.
Warner was a little more fortunate than some Royalists, thanks to the inheritances he had received from his father and godmother in around 1610. Even when unable to own any possessions, he was not short of money, and he used his money for the good of others as well as himself. Across several decades, he donated over £1,000 (at least £100,000 in today’s terms) to Magdalen to enable us to expand our library provision.
When Warner came to the end of his life, he made a will stipulating that his remaining funds should continue to go to his favourite libraries – Magdalen College Library, Rochester Cathedral Library, and Canterbury Cathedral Library – and to other charitable projects, including a home for clergy widows in Bromley and a scholarship fund for Scottish students in Oxford. His nephew, then Archdeacon of Rochester, carried out these instructions. It is known that Warner also had a wife, but sadly her name has been lost to history, along with most other details of his family life.
Books Bought For Magdalen
Warner’s funds were used by Magdalen to purchase at least eighty books for the Old Library, then known as the Fellows’ Library. (Magdalen would not begin to develop its student library in Longwall Quad until the 1930s – prior to this, students relied upon Fellows to access the collections on their behalf.) The books chosen were up-to-date for their time, dating between 1618 and 1703. They made an interesting mix, covering subjects as diverse as cosmology, law, travel, metallurgy, theology, botany, history, and politics. Most notably, they tended to be books that were also held by several other college libraries, suggesting that the priority in building the collection was undergraduate teaching rather than specialised research.
Some of the highlights of the collection have already been written about in Illuminating Magdalen. Regular readers may remember the enormous celestial images of Andreas Cellarius’s Harmonia Macrocosmica (1661), the grand Roman scenes of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio’s De architectura (republished in 1649, and the first architecture book ever to be bought for Magdalen), or the botanical and linguistic richness of Hortus Malabaricus (1678-1703). It is possible that none of these treasures would have made it to Magdalen had it not been for Warner’s generosity.
Alongside the resources in popular demand, there were occasional rarer items, which remain almost the only copies in Oxford. Hamon L’Estrange’s 1656 Calvinist perspective on King Charles I would no doubt have interested Warner. Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693) seems more of a practical instruction manual than an “academic” book – perhaps it was bought for the Fellows’ extra-curricular use, and to help plan the development of Magdalen’s beautiful grounds. Gaufridus Grosso’s 1649 biography of Saint Bernard of Tiron explores a figure little studied then or now: Magdalen remains the only college library to stock any book about Bernard of Tiron at all, so it is intriguing to wonder whether we had a Fellow eager to promote a personal favourite saint. Other specialised interests featured include the assaying of metals and the minor legislation of the early 1650s. As mentioned previously, though, these books are anomalies in the Warner collection. Many of the Oxford college libraries that existed during the seventeenth century have copies of the majority of the collection, including such seminal classics as the works of Tacitus and Cicero, Horace Walpole’s biography of King Richard III, and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. The Fellows would have been very grateful to Warner for giving Magdalen members convenient access to the cornerstones of the curriculum.
Nowadays, all of the books have taken on a new significance, as historical and material sources rather than day-to-day textbooks. They are carefully conserved and consulted only for research, but it is nice to remember their past adventures in the tutorial rooms and Fellows’ offices of seventeenth-century Oxford.
Written by Jessica Woodward, Special Collections Librarian
Further Reading
Lee-Warner, E. (1899). ‘Warner, John (1581-1666)’, in Stephen, L. and Lee, S. (eds.), Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900: Volume 59. London: Smith, Elder.
Pearson, D. (2020). John Warner 1581-1666. Available at: https://bookowners.online/John_Warner.