This bookplate is closely related to the SPCK bookplate illustrated in the Winter 1983 issue of this Journal, but because of its association with the libraries founded by the Rev. Thomas Bray and his friends in America it is much more widely known and often reproduced. The books carrying this plate constituted the earliest public, or lending, libraries in British North America.

            Thomas Bray (1656-1730) was born to poverty, but was saved by the intervention of his vicar, who provided an education that led to an Oxford degree and ordination. In the years following Bray had considerable parish experience and a chance to observe the condition of the clergy and the church generally. He found that there were more clergymen than viable positions for them and that this resulted in poverty for many. Some received less than 30 pounds yearly; others less than 10. The proper figure was between 80 and 100 pounds. Although clergymen were supposed to have university degrees, many did not. The poorer clergy lamented the lack of books, books that cost three to six shillings a volume. Bray determined that a third of the clergy could not purchase the books needed to carry out basic duties. He saw the establishment of libraries as a part of the solution and through his effort some 125 libraries were assembled in parishes throughout England and Wales. The SPCK bookplate was placed in most of them.

            The situation in the American colonies was considerably worse. In Maryland, which became the major beneficiary of Bray's attention, the Church of England had been established on not very legal grounds in 1692, at which time thirty parishes had been created and laid out. In 1696 there were not above eight ministers among them. The bishop of London controlled colonial affairs of the Church, and in the person of Henry Compton, attempted to promote the migration of ministers by the gift of the "King's Bounty" of 20 pounds, given to any minister going over to the plantations. But this was still not enough to attract good men to leave their homes for a distant settlement, unguaranteed income, little or no authority except in the far removed bishop of London, great solitude, primitive conditions, and so on. Certainly anyone with good prospects in England would hardly consider a parish in America. The poorer clergy did, of course, often with disastrous results. In fact, he Anglican clergy in Maryland had a reputation for incompetence and worse.

            In the same year, 1696, Compton asked Bray to be is Commissary in Maryland. Bray characteristically responded with a proposal for a system of libraries for all the American colonies designed as a further inducement for westward clerical migration. Support for this idea was a condition of his acceptance of the Commissaryship.

            By the end of the century Bray and his supporters had made contributions to the library scheme a fashionable activity among the gentry and nobility, including the future Queen Anne, who had donated 44 pounds. The first library was prepared and sent out to the city named for her in 1696.

            In 1699 the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) was founded and took over the management of Bray's library programs. In 1700 Bray actually visited Maryland. In 1701 a second society was created to take the burden of foreign matters away from the already fully occupied parent society. The Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) controlled the appointment of missionaries in North America until the 1870s. It also continued creating libraries and dispersed many thousands of books.

            In addition to the library at Annapolis, major "provincial" libraries were started by Bray and augmented by the SPG in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and the West Indies. Additional parish libraries were established by Bray (22) and the SPG (11) for a total of 39 in British North America. Volumes survive from all of the provincial libraries, except Charleston, stamped with the name of the city on their covers, and sometimes the name of the monarch, William III.

            The books sent out by the SPG carried the bookplate illustrated here affixed to the verso of the titles. Because there was no provision for the insertion of the name of the parish on the plate (as there was on the SPCK plates) it is often impossible to identify the American library a book came from. And, of course, the importance of the plate has attracted collectors since the publication of Allen's American Book-plates in 1895, so that many have simply been removed from their books.

            The plate itself was engraved by William Jackson, who received payment from the SPG in 1703 and 1704. It is known in several states exhibiting considerable alteration, including the removal of the date. This example, from a private collection and no longer in a book, is of the first state. Another lifted plate, the second state, is in the Drake collection of bookplates in the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas. And the third state is reproduced by Brian North Lee in his British Bookplates (London, 1979), page 34.

            Jackson provided a second engraving of the same subject and size which was used in the publications of the Society. Its earliest appearance known to me is on the broadside Instructions for the Clergy Employ'd by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1706), and copies are in the Bodleian, British Library, University of Illinois, and John Carter Brown Library.

            The subject is a ship arriving at the American coast with a larger than life minister in clerical gown on the foredeck, appropriately reading aloud from an open book held in the right hand. On the shore natives rush to greet him. Suspended in the air between is a banderole with the words Transiens adjuvanos.

 John P Chalmers

Humanities Research Center

University of Texas at Austin