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Librarian’s Favourite Books from the Special Collection – Kay Walters
Taken together, these various measures of the participation, influence and integration of bankers give little evidence that they broke the aristocratic dominance of club life. Certainly, there were some banking families who were influential in elite circles, but this was restricted to a small element that had long entertained that distinction. There is little evidence here that any newfound influence of bankers was being channelled through their participation in club life. It should be noted, however, that this project is still in an early stage. The next stage of the project will be to include a deeper analysis of the role of MPs within these clubs, which should shed further light on the emergence of a ‘gentlemanly capitalist’ class.
Aurelius Noble, PhD Candidate in Economic History at the London School of Economics. Researching the social capital and networks of banking elites in Victorian London.
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Cartoon by Dan Cohn-Sherbok
Librarian’s Favourite Books from the Special Collection No.18
Oxonia Illustrata, by David Loggan. Oxford, 1675. Our copy bears the armorial bookplate of George James Welbore Agar-Ellis, 1st Baron Dover (1797–1833), a founder Member of the Athenaeum.
David Loggan (1634–1692) was the only son of John Loggan, a merchant of Scottish descent, who had settled in Oxfordshire, but lived in Danzig, where David Loggan was born. Loggan studied engraving under Willem Hondius and, after his death, under Crispijn van de Passe II in Amsterdam, before settling in London in1656, where some of his engravings began to be published. In 1568 he gained recognition through a pencil portrait he made of Oliver Cromwell, drawn shortly before the latter’s death (right). He went on to engrave a view of St Paul’s Cathedral for Daniel King, and the title page for the Book of Common Prayer (1662), as well as plates for William Dugdale’s Origines Judicales (1666) (for which his portraits of Edward Hyde and Edward Coke, below, were made). Oliver Cromwell, drawing by David Loggan in the
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, 1609–74 Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), Chief Justice of the King’s Bench
In the early 1660s he became well known for his black lead (plumbago) portraits drawn from life on vellum. The portraits, which included representations of Charles II and numerous courtiers and divines, were highly accomplished, and several were engraved (below).
Charles II by David Loggan General Monck by David Loggan
Moving to Oxfordshire with his wife to avoid the Great Plague in 1665, and settling in Nutfield, Loggan produced an engraved portrait of Mother Louse (right), an Oxford innkeeper, which brought him to the attention of the members of Oxford University, and he soon built up a flourishing local portrait practice. Loggan was acquainted with the antiquary and diarist Anthony Wood, who introduced him to, among others, antiquary and politician Elias Ashmole and the writer John Aubrey, whose portraits he drew.
Mother Louse by David Loggan
In 1669, he was appointed engraver to the University of Oxford, made a member of the University in 1672, and naturalised in 1675. The main legacy of his time at Oxford was his first folio – Oxonia Illustrata (1675), a set of engravings and birds-eye views of all the Oxford Colleges, halls and university buildings, and a map. It was intended to accompany Anthony Wood’s The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford (1674). Loggan’s meticulously detailed views were the first accurate representations of the buildings and gardens of the university. It was the first illustrated book on Oxford, and one of the major works of the seventeenth century.
Map of Oxford from Oxonia Illustrata
Balliol College Jesus College
New College Queen’s College
Trinity College Wadham College
In 1676 he began work on a new folio, Cantabrigia Illustrata, a comparable volume of plates of all the Cambridge colleges and university buildings, which was published in 1690, when he was made engraver to the University. In producing his plates of Oxford and Cambridge, Loggan was assisted by Robert White, Michael Burghers, and a Dutchman, Evaradus Kuckius.
Clare College Cambridge
In 1675, Loggan moved to London, where he continued to draw and engrave portraits, and acted as agent for portraits by Sir Peter Lely. Loggan died at his house in Leicester Fields in July 1692, leaving debts of £140, and was buried at St Martin-in-the-Fields in August 1692. More than 100 of his portraits are held by the National Portrait Gallery. Our copy of Oxonia Illustrata was previously in the Library of George James Welbore Agar-Ellis, 1st Baron Dover (1797–1833), who was one of the founder Members of the Athenaeum. It bears his armorial bookplate, and still has its original vellum binding.
Bookplate of George Agar-Ellis, Lord Dover Original vellum binding of the Library’s copy of Oxonia Illustrata
Lord Dover was a politician and patron of the arts. The only son of Henry Welbore Agar-Ellis, 2nd Viscount Clifden (also a Member of the Athenaeum), he was born in London, and graduated MA from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1819. He entered Parliament in 1818. Dover helped secure government support for the purchase of the Angerstein collection of pictures, which formed the nucleus of the National Gallery collection. By 1830 he had been sworn in as a member of the Privy Council, and appointed Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, but was compelled by ill health to resign his office within two months of appointment. He was created Baron Dover on 20 June 1830. He died at Dover House, Whitehall, in 1833, and was buried in the family vault at St Mary’s Church, Twickenham.
Lord Dover was a generous patron of the fine arts and formed a valuable collection of paintings by English artists. He edited an edition of the Letters of Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, which was highly praised by Macaulay. He was a trustee of the British Museum and president of the Royal Society of Literature.
