Humfrey Wanley

Humfrey Wanley (21 March 1672 at the Vicarage House adjoining Jesus Hall, Coventry - 6 July 1726, of dropsy, at Clarges Street, Hanover Square, Piccadilly) was a librarian, palaeographer and scholar of Old English, employed by manuscript collectors such as Robert and Edward Harley.

Starting out as a draper in his home town, he soon tired of this and moved to Oxford University to study in 1695 thanks to his patron William Lloyd, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. There he worked as an assistant at the Bodleian Library until 1700, when he moved to London, where he gained temporary jobs as secretary to the SPCK and assistant to Hans Sloane (Sloane was secretary to the Royal Society, and Wanley was elected a Fellow of it in 1706), before landing a settled job with the Harleys which he held to the end of his life.

Wanley, together with John Bagford and John Talman, was one of three ‘founder members’ of the reconstituted ‘Society of Antiquaries’ , which first met at the Bear Tavern on the Strand on 5 December 1707. [R. Sweet, "Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain," (Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 84]

Wanley married twice and is buried at St Marylebone Church.

External links

* [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28664 Humpfrey Wanley] at the Dictionary of National Biography (requires subscription)

References