Lot 50•
WESLEY AND THE CITY OF YORK Album Amicorum kept by Richard Burdekin, bookseller and Wesleyan of York, containing some 200 autograph entries from eminent Wesleyan ministers, missionaries and authors, York, May 1825 to November 1882
11 March 2020, 13:00 GMT
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £8,187.50 inc. premium
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WESLEY AND THE CITY OF YORK
Album Amicorum kept by Richard Burdekin, bookseller and Wesleyan of York, containing some 200 autograph entries from eminent Wesleyan ministers, missionaries and authors, many collected on the occasion of district meetings and conferences, with much other material, including: John Wesley (printed Methodist ticket endorsed "Nov 1755/ Ann Lepitre" depicting an angel carrying the text 'Now is the Accepted Time'), verses written by Arctic explorer and clergyman William Scoresby Jnr ("Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of Man cometh at an hour when athink not"), Elihu Burritt ("God is love: love to our human brethren is the earthward reflection of the heart filled with the light and life of the love of God..."), Robert Southey (autograph address panel and signature, 1834), Jabez Bunting and his son William, William Martin, self-styled Natural Philosopher and poet (several poems and a ticket to one of his lectures in 1850 illustrated with a pen and ink sketch of a lion), Titus Close, Theophilus Lessey, Robert Goodacre, Robert Spence, Gideon Ouseley, William Naylor, James Everett, Richard Stoner, George Marsden, Samuel Dunn, exortations on the evils of alcohol by popular preacher and early agent of temperance William Pollard, the painter Henry Purlee Parker and George Hudson ("the Railway King"); with several contributors from overseas such as Kahkewaquonaby ("Peter Jones") Missionary and chief of the Chippeway Indians of Upper Canada ("While I was lost in the woods, Jesus found me..."), William Fisk of Connecticut and Edward Fraser, freed slave and missionary from the West Indies; other items include a printed broadsheet 'A Negro Woman's Lamentation' sold by Joseph Phillips with manuscript verses entitled "Negro Slavery" pleading "the injured Negro's cause" written on the reverse by Phillips "late of Antiqua", and two manuscript lists of subscribers and subscriptions received by the York Methodist Society as at 3 October 1775, raising money to build side galleries on the Peaseholme Green chapel (the first Wesleyan Chapel in York where Wesley himself preached in 1759) and list of works undertaken; with various printed ephemera of religious and local interest ("An Evangelical Dialogue", "An Address from the first 'High' Sherriff of York to his 'Low' Sherriff", minutes of meetings, uplifting texts, tickets etc.), and newspaper cuttings, with loose index book, 459 numbered pages (including blanks), contemporary half calf over marbled paper boards, old leather dust-jacket, spine lettered in gilt detached, worn with losses, 280 x 225mm., index book with marbelled paper cover, 270 x 120mm., York, May 1825 to November 1882
Footnotes
'I WAS THE GUEST OF MR BURDEKIN – FROM WHOM AND THE WHOLE FAMILY I HAVE RECEIVED MUCH KINDNESS'; a remarkable collection spanning nearly sixty years and bringing together luminaries of the Wesleyan movement.
In addition to worthies of the church, Burdekin seems particularly interested in one Jonathan Martin, a former lapsed Wesleyan preacher and arsonist, who famously set the fire that destroyed large parts of York Minster in February 1829. Burdekin must have visited him in the York County Gaol as the album contains three pages of religious ramblings written directly into the book and dated 15 March 1829, shortly before his transfer to Bethlem Hospital where he died in 1838; "...may the Lord grant that these fue simpler remarks may have a Blessing to all that need them the Lord will not despise the Day of small things your sincere Friend and Brother in the Lord...". Martin was also known prior to his arson attack for attaching strongly-worded notices denouncing the clergy on various ecclesiastical buildings and one of these, written at Lincoln in October 1827 is included in the collection - "O clergyman", he writes, "I right to warn you to repent... Father's right Hand luks down upon you with Dridful Gillisey and he like a clap of Thunder and as quick as lighting... and you go down & live into the Dridful pit of Hell to be turmenteed with the firey Tigers and Lions of Hell...".
Richard Burdekin was a highly respected bookseller and stationer in the city of York. He began his long career in bookselling as a travelling salesman and became famous for riding his favourite horse 30,000 miles in search of orders. He went into business with fellow Wesleyan Robert Spence under the name Spence and Burdekin and was to write Spence's biography in 1837. One of his two shops was destroyed by fire in 1855 but he continued to trade in Parliament Street until his death in 1860. In the words of his obituary published in The Bookseller, 'Mr Burdekin joined the Wesleyan Methodist Society early in life. He became a zealous local preacher and class-leader in that body... As he lived, so he died, a happy Christian, at a good old age'. The album was added to by family members after his death and has remained in the family.
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