Humfrey Wanley (1672-1726)
Antiquary
Wanley was born in Coventry and apprenticed to a draper, but developed a passion for old books and documents at an early age. He matriculated at Oxford, at St Edmund Hall in 1695 and then at University College the following year, but never took a degree; this hampered his attempts later to secure senior posts in the Bodleian Library and the King's Library, and he was eventually appointed assistant to the Secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and later to the Secretary's post itself. Other antiquaries however, including George Hickes and Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, to whom he became Library-Keeper, were glad to employ him in a private capacity. His work is still revered by mediaeval scholars.
Wanley is believed to have visited the College Library at Edinburgh in 1696 in connection with his continuation of George Hickes' catalogue of Anglo-Saxon MSS "Antiquae literaturae septentrionalis" which he was preparing and which was published in 1705. He presented the Library with a small Bible, probably written in Paris in the 13th century (MS5).
