Correspondence and papers of Roger Gale

Three volumes of 'collections relating to the antiquitys of Britain etc' in the hand of Roger Gale, containing copies of his correspondence, 1715-44, and antiquarian discourses. The correspondents include Sir John Clerk, John Horsley, Maurice Johnson and William Stukeley. Each volume has a list of contents and an index. The last volume was completed by Gale's daughter-in-law Catherine; the first and second have occasional annotations by George Allan, who edited many of the letters and discourses for John Nichols, Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica (London: 1780-90), vol. iii.

Roger Gale (1672-1744) was an antiquary. See the Dictionary of National Biography for further details.

Entry to read in the Library is permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card (for admissions procedures see http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk).

Bought by the Library from Waterfields in 1984.

Collection level description created by Susan Thomas, Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts.

A description is available in the Library, where there is also a card index to unpublished catalogues.

Bookplate of Henry Gale (grandson of Roger); presumably sold when Scruton Hall was demolished in 1953; bookplate of K.K. Wood.

See Mary Clapinson 'Roger Gale, an eighteenth-century antiquary', Bodleian Library Record XII (1986), pp. 106-18.