List of manuscripts of Sir Kenelm Digby, compiled by Robert Payne

These small strips of paper in Robert Payne's hand include a list of manuscripts, presumably compiled by Payne, including works by Archimedes, Plato and Roger Bacon, with shelf marks. The recto headed: "Sr Kenel. Digbyes MSS. 1634" refers to the manuscripts listed, which were donated by Sir Kenelm Digby to the Bodleian Library in 1634. There is script on both sides of the larger piece of paper.
This list possibly provides us with information on the types of sources that influenced Payne and his work.

This item was evidently put into this series of material when it was assumed that the list was authored by Hobbes, not his friend Robert Payne.

HS/E/2 is also a list of books compiled by Robert Payne.

• This item is described on p. 19 of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts Report on the MSS and papers of Thomas Hobbes (1977) .
• This item is also listed by Peter Beal as catalogue (vii) in CELM under Hobbes's library, see: https://celm-ms.org.uk/introductions/HobbesThomas.html

Digby, Sir Kenelm (1603 1665), natural philosopher and courtier, was born on 11 July 1603 at Gayhurst, Buckinghamshire, the elder son of Sir Everard Digby (c. 1578 1606), later executed for involvement in the Gunpowder Plot, and his wife, Mary (c.1581 1653), only daughter and heir of William Mulsho. The Digbys were an ancient gentry family. They had held the manor of Tilton, Leicestershire, since the thirteenth century and the manor of Stoke Dry, Rutland, since the fifteenth. However, Sir Everard's bride brought him the richer manor of Gayhurst and there Kenelm and his brother, Sir John Digby (1605 1645), spent their childhood.

Late in 1632 his Oxford friend Thomas Allen died and left him a huge collection of manuscripts some of immense value and antiquity and all the printed books he fancied, apart from special bequests. Digby therefore added to his new home a library wing.It was from Gresham that he negotiated with Archbishop Laud his famous donation in 1634 to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, of more than 200 manuscripts inherited from Thomas Allen, together with about 100 of his own, all magnificently bound in 233 books. They were to be followed by thirty-six Arabic manuscripts in 1640 42.

[Source: Foster, Michael. "Digby, Sir Kenelm (1603 1665), natural philosopher and courtier." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press) 2004; https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-7629. By permission of Oxford University Press].