Page 41 - Hindsight Issue 26 April 2020

BooKs
would be kept secure. Additionally, the library and archive have strong links, in terms of academic research, with exeter University. However, I still yet had to track down the individual who initially donated this extraordinary and special book.
eventually, I did discover the person who donated it to the society in 2012. Contacting him, I explained the situation and the results of the research. I was delighted that he agreed it could be passed onto exeter.
the following day I contacted the Cathedral Library and Archives and offered them the book. to say they were elated would be an enormous understatement. Letters of gratitude and thanks were sent to both the society and the person who originally donated the book, which was very much appreciated. It was thought too valuable and rare a book to post, so it was agreed it would be better to deliver it in person.
We were very well looked after on the day by Peter thomas, the Cathedral Librarian and Ann Barwood, the Cathedral Archivist, who together had arranged a display of their other Joseph Hall books. A joint exhibition, held in conjunction with exeter University, displaying medieval cathedral documents had closed the previous week but was held open for our visit. there was an informal handover of the book followed by a walk around the cathedral. It was, without doubt, a superb and very rewarding day out.
In his later years we know that samuel lived in Finedon from at least 1865. the “NB 2033 years old” annotation on the flyleaf was solved when I discovered a subtraction, written in the book in the same hand, “1865 – 1632 = 233”. It is my hypothesis that samuel was given (or bought) the book in 1865 and calculated how old it was at the time but transcribed the result incorrectly on the flyleaf. samuel died at Finedon on 13 April 1871 aged 73 and is interred in the Friends’ Meeting House burial ground.
After 387 years this book has gone full circle – written by the Bishop of exeter and has now been returned to the cathedral where it will be kept safe and secure in perpetuity, as well as being readily available for future academic research that it so richly deserves.
Photos acknowledgement: Finedon Local History society
A subtraction written in the book calculating its age
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