William Bedford, to whom they had been given by Hearne,44 and he bequeathed them with other property to the University of Oxford. The auctioneers who dispersed Thomas Rawlinson’s large collections were Charles Davis and Thomas Ballard.
The sale of the valuable library of John Bridges at his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn by Mr. Cock, in February 1726, was an event of much literary interest. The number of lots was 4313, occupying twenty-seven days, and the total proceeds of the sale were £4001. This is therefore worthy of note as the first sale at which the prices averaged nearly one pound per lot.
There was much dissatisfaction among the buyers at the high prices, and a conspiracy to “bull” the market was suspected.
Humphry Wanley expressed his opinion strongly on this point—
“Feb. 9, 1725-6.—Went to Mr. Bridges’s chambers, but could not see the three fine MSS. again, the Doctor his brother having locked them up. He openly bid for his own books, merely to enhance their price, and the auction proves to be, what I thought it would become, very knavish.”
“Feb. 11, 1725-6.—Yesterday at five I met Mr. Noel and tarried long with him; we settled then the whole affair touching his bidding for my Lord [Oxford] at the roguish auction of Mr. Bridges’s books. The Reverend Doctor one of the brothers hath already displayed himself so remarkably as to be both hated and despised, and a combination among the booksellers will soon be against him and his brother-in-law, a lawyer. These are men of the keenest avarice, and their very looks (according to what I am told) dart out harping-irons. I have ordered Mr. Noel to drop every article in my Lord’s commissions when they shall be hoisted up to too high a price. Yet I desired that my Lord may have the Russian Bible, which I know full well to be a very rare and a very good book.”45