Thomas Bodley

Sir Thomas Bodley (2 March 1545 – 28 January 1613) was an English diplomat and scholar who founded the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Thomas Bodley was born on 2 March 1545, in the second-to-last year of the reign of King Henry VIII, in the city of Exeter in Devon.

He was one of the seven sons[3] of John Bodley (d. 15 Oct. 1591)[4] of Exeter, a Protestant merchant who chose foreign exile rather than staying in England under the Roman Catholic government of Queen Mary (r. 1553–1558).

They stayed in the town of Wesel, then in the imperial free city of Frankfurt, before eventually settling in Geneva, home of Calvinism and a great centre of the Reformation.

After Mary's death in 1558 and the accession of Queen Elizabeth, the family returned to England, and Bodley entered Magdalen College, Oxford, to study under Lawrence Humphrey.

), Bodley toured France, Italy, and the Holy Roman Empire, visiting scholars and adding French, Italian, and Spanish to his repertoire of languages.

In 1586 he was elected to represent St Germans in parliament, and in 1588 he was sent to The Hague as minister, a post which demanded great diplomatic skill, for it was in the Netherlands that the power of Spain had to be fought.

G. H. Martin speculates that the inspiration to restore the old Duke Humfrey's Library may have come from the renewal of Bodley's contact with Henry Savile and other former colleagues at this dinner.

His monument survives on the western wall of the north transept of the chapel, formed of black and white marble with pillars representing books and allegories of learning.

While he did have funding through the wealth of his wife, Ann Ball, and the inheritance he received from his father, Bodley still needed gifts from his affluent friends and colleagues to build his library collection.

Although not a completely original idea (as encouragement in 1412 the university chaplain was ordered to say mass for benefactors), Bodley recognized that having the contributor's name on permanent display was also inspiring.

According to Louis B. Wright, He had prepared a handsome Register of Donations, in vellum, in which the name of every benefactor should be written down in a large and fair hand so all might read.