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Updated: May 18, 2025
Casley, deputy librarian, hastened to rescue the famous Alexandrian MS. in the Royal library, and the books in the Cottonian press named Augustus, as being considered the most valuable. These are principally charts, maps, grants, and papal bulls, all relating to early English history.
A visit from David Casley, keeper of the Cottonian and Royal libraries, on the 4th November 1725, is suggestive of a certain amount of friction between the two rival librarians. It is nearly the last entry in Wanley's record: "Mr. Casley came to collate my Lord's MSS. of Titus Livius for Mr. D'Orville, by my Lord's order.
But, unhappily, we have to depend for our chief data on what Casley, the "dry as dust" pay excellence of librarians could tell us, and though his knowledge of the age of MSS. was admirable, he was remarkably uncommunicative regarding their pedigree, meagre in his descriptions, and apparently insensible to paleographic beauty.
It is interesting to note that a manuscript called Hegesippus De Bello Judaico, etc., still in the Royal library, is ascribed by Casley to the eleventh century, and may be identified with the former of these two books.
In the table drawn up by Casley in his appendix to the Royal library, not one volume in Otho is seen to be intact; 16 are marked defective, 55 as lost, burnt, or defaced so as not to be distinguishable. Vitellius was the next greatest sufferer, 46 volumes being preserved, 28 defective, and 34 seriously damaged.
I am civil to him, but when just now he offered me a South Sea bond as security to let him carry one of the said MSS. home to collate it there, I would by no means hearken to such a proposal." Perhaps Wanley would have regarded him with still greater suspicion if he had known that Casley was to be his successor in cataloguing the MSS. which he kept with so jealous a care.
Bentley resigned his office of librarian in 1724, in favour of his son, another Richard Bentley; but Casley, who, as deputy custodian, had been for many years the only working librarian, continued to fill that post.
After Casley, Hocker, deputy-keeper of the records in the Tower, undertook to continue the catalogue, but only completed it as far as the number 7355. When the collection was brought to the British Museum, after the death of the second Lord Oxford, Dr. Brown, Professor of Arabic at Oxford, and Dr.
The talents of the two men were very different, as the catalogue itself shows. That part of it for which Wanley was responsible contains a description and an abstract of each manuscript. Casley, whose knowledge of the age of manuscripts has never been surpassed, contented himself with fixing their dates without any reference to their contents.
* Narrative of the Fire which happened at Ashburnham House, 23rd October 1731. Report of the committee appointed by the House of Commons. On the 1st November the work of restoration began, and was carried out by Bentley, Casley, three clerks from the Record Office, a bookbinder, and others. The Speaker of the House of Commons was frequently present.
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