William Cole (antiquary)

Cole was born in Little Abington, a village near Babraham, Cambridgeshire, on 3 August 1714. He was the son of William Cole of Babraham, a well-to-do farmer, and his third wife (of four), Elizabeth, daughter of Theophilus Tuer, merchant, of Cambridge, and widow of Charles Apthorp. He was descended from a family of respectable yeomen, who had lived for several generations in the part of Cambridgeshire bordering on Essex.

William (the son) received his early education in private schools at Cambridge, Linton, and Saffron Walden. From Saffron Walden he entered Eton College, where he remained for five years on the foundation. His principal friend and companion there – who became a lifelong friend – was Horace Walpole, who even at that early period used to make jocular remarks on his inclination to Roman Catholicism. While still a boy he was in the habit of copying monumental inscriptions, and drawing coats of arms in trick from the windows of churches. On leaving Eton he was admitted a pensioner of Clare College, Cambridge, on 24 January 1733;[2] and in April 1734 he obtained one of the Freeman scholarships in the college.[1]

Cole continued to live at Milton, where he died, aged 68, on 16 December 1782. His constitution had been shattered by repeated attacks of gout. He was buried in St Clement's Church, Cambridge, under the steeple (now removed), which bore on its front his motto, Deum Cole. On the right hand of the entrance to the church is a monument, with an inscription stating that the steeple was erected with money left by him for the purpose.

Cole numbered among his friends and correspondents some of the most learned men of his time, including Horace Walpole, who called him his "oracle in any antique difficulties", Thomas Gray, Michael Lort, George Steevens, Richard Farmer, William Bennet, John Nichols, Richard Gough, and Alban Butler. Although he published no separate work of his own, he rendered substantial assistance to many authors by supplying them either with entire dissertations or with minute communications or corrections.

He wrote the account of the School of Pythagoras at Cambridge in Francis Grose's Antiquities; and was a major contributor to James Bentham's History of Ely, 1771, writing the lives of the bishops and deans, and the description of the Ely tablet.[DNB 9][DNB 10][DNB 11] He also made significant contributions to Robert Masters' History of Corpus Christi College. Having a large collection of engraved portraits, he was able to assist James Granger in preparing his Biographical History of England. To Andrew Ducarel he sent a complete list of the chancellors of Ely, and afterwards several hints respecting his Tour in Normandy. To Gough's Anecdotes of British Topography he contributed in 1772 some remarks; as he afterwards did respecting Gough's Sepulchral Monuments; and when the Memoirs of the Gentlemen's Society at Spalding were printed in 1780, he supplied anecdotes of the early members. He was a frequent writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, and he gave John Nichols biographical hints and corrections for A Select Collection of Miscellaneous Poems, Anecdotes of Hogarth and History of Hinckley. He transcribed Browne Willis's History of the Hundreds of Newport and Cotslow in Buckinghamshire, and organised them in ten folio volumes from the originals in four volumes, which Willis had delivered to him a few weeks before his death. Cole's transcript is now in the British Library, while Willis's original copy is preserved, with his collections for the whole county, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.[DNB 12] His notes on Wood's Athenae Oxonienses are printed in Bliss's edition of that work. Finally he collected all the materials for Horace Walpole's Life of the Cambridge antiquary, Thomas Baker.

An idea of Cole's industry as a transcriber may be gathered from this passage in a letter to Walpole (12 September 1777): "You will be astonished at the rapidity of my pen when you observe that this folio of four hundred pages [Baker's History of St. John's], with above a hundred coats of arms and other silly ornaments, was completed in six weeks; for I was called off for above a week to another manuscript, which I expected would be demanded of me every day; besides some days of visiting and being visited." Again he remarks in a letter to Allen: "I am wearing my eyes, fingers, and self out in writing for posterity, of whose gratitude I can have no adequate idea, while I neglect my friends, who I know would be glad to hear from me."

As he freely jotted down his inmost thoughts as to the merits or demerits of his acquaintances, he took care that no one, with the exception of two or three intimate friends, should see his manuscripts, either during his lifetime or within twenty years after his death. On the occasion of his sending the History of King's College to Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, he wrote (2 March 1777) with reference to his manuscripts:

No person except Dr. Lyne and Mr. John Allen of Trinity College ever looked into them. Indeed, you are the only person that I should think a moment about determining to let them go out of my hands: and, in good truth, they are generally of such a nature as makes them not fit to be seen, for through life I have never artfully disguised my opinions, and as my books were my trusty friends, who have engaged never to speak till twenty years after my departure, I always, without guile, entrusted them with my most secret thoughts, both of men and things; so that there is what the world will call an ample collection of scandalous rubbish heaped together.

As an example of his strong prejudices, and occasionally violent style of expressing them, a passage which he added to his History of King's College only a few months before his death, may be cited:

Here I left off this work in 1752, and never began it again, quitting college that year for the rectory of Blecheley in Buckinghamshire, at the presentation of Browne Willis, esq., and so lost fifteen years of the best part of my life for disquisitions of this sort, and never having a relish to recommence this work when I retired into my native county again in 1767, when I made of an old dilapidated cottage at Milton near Cambridge, a decent gentleman's house, laying out upon the premises at least £600, the annual rent being only £17 per annum, hired of the college, and no lease till my time; yet after six years' occupancy Cooke, the snotty-nosed head of it, soon after his election, had the rascality, with Paddon, a dirty wretch, and bursar suitable to him, to alter my lease, and put new terms in it. But from such a scoundrel, and I am warranted to call him no other, and would call him so to his face the first time I see him, with the addition of a liar and mischief-maker through life, no other than dirty treatment can be expected. I write this 9 June 1782.[DNB 13]

Cole never married. He lived with his manservant Tom Wood, a maidservant, and a number of animals including 2 horses and a pony, a dog called Busy, a cat, and a parrot. He enjoyed entertaining and lived well, which may have contributed to his gout.[1]

Cole's chief literary monument is the notable collection of manuscripts, extending to nearly 100 folio volumes, in his own handwriting, which are now held by the British Library. He began to form this vast collection while at college, beginning with fifteen volumes, which he kept in a lock-up case in the university library, where he examined every book likely to yield information suitable to his purpose, besides transcribing many manuscript lists and records. The principal interval from this labour was during his residence at Bletchley (1753–67), but even there, with the aid of his own books and those he could borrow from his neighbours, he proceeded with his great undertaking, and on his frequent journeys he added to his topographical collections, illustrating them with neat copies of armorial bearings and rough but faithful drawings of churches and other buildings. At Waterbeach and Milton, where he was within an easy distance of Cambridge, he resumed his labour of love with renewed ardour, and in addition to dry historical matters, he carefully transcribed all his literary correspondence, and minutely chronicled all the anecdotes he heard respecting his contemporaries at the university.

As late as 1778 Cole was perplexed as to the disposal of his manuscripts. "To give them to King's College," he wrote, "would be to throw them into a horsepond", the members of that society being "generally so conceited of their Latin and Greek that all other studies are barbarous". At one time he thought of Eton College and of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but eventually he resolved to bequeath his collections to the British Museum on condition that they should not be opened until twenty years after his death. Accordingly, they did not become accessible to the public until 1803. Vol. xvii. never reached the Museum; it is conjectured to have contained a History of Queens' College. The multifarious contents of Cole's collections are described in great detail in the Index to the Additional MSS., with those of the Egerton Collection, acquired in the years 1783–1835, London, 1849, folio. There are also three thick volumes of Cole's own indexes in the reading-room of the Museum.[DNB 14] The most important sections of the manuscripts are:

• Parochial Antiquities of Cambridgeshire, illustrated with drawings of Churches, Monuments, Arms, &c.
• Collections for an Athenae Cantabrigienses, alphabetically arranged, Add. MSS 5862–85, 5954, 5955. These collections, though they have proved very serviceable to biographers, consist for the most part only of references to printed works, and do not contain connected narratives of the lives of Cambridge authors. Some extracts, relating for the most part to persons with whom Cole was personally acquainted, are printed in Samuel Egerton Brydges's Restituta.
• History of King's College, Cambridge, 4 vols, Add. MSS 5814–17.
• Collections relating to the University of Cambridge.
• Extraneous Parochial Antiquities, or an account of various Churches in different Counties in England, with drawings, Add. MSS 5806, 5811, 5836.
• Topographical, Genealogical, and Miscellaneous Collections.
• Parochial Antiquities for the County of Bucks, with drawings, Add. MSS 5821, 5839, 5840.
• Parochial Antiquities for the County of Huntingdon, with drawings, Add. MSS 5837, 5838, 5847.
• Transcript of Baker's History of St. John's College, Cambridge, with additions, Add. MS 5850.
• Literary correspondence, chiefly in Add. MS 5824.

A half-sheet print of Cole, from a drawing by Thomas Kerrich, was engraved by Facius. A portrait of him was also published in Malcolm's collection of Letters to Mr. Granger, 1805, and is reproduced in John Nichols' Literary Anecdotes.

Attribution:

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cooper, Thompson (1887). "Cole, William (1714–1782)". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 11. London: Smith, Elder & Co. The entry cites: