# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Rye, William Brenchley

​RYE, WILLIAM BRENCHLEY (1818–1901), keeper of printed books in the British Museum, born at Rochester on 26 Jan. 1818, was the younger son of Arthur Rye, a medical practitioner in that city. He was educated at the Rochester and Chatham Classical and Mathematical School, but the death of his father in 1832 left him with slender means, and in 1834 he came to London and entered the office of a solicitor, where he met John Winter Jones [q. v.], afterwards principal librarian of the British Museum, who in 1838, soon after his own appointment, obtained for him a subordinate post in the library there. His diligence and efficiency gained for him the good opinion of Sir Anthony Panizzi, then keeper, who in 1839 secured his appointment as a supernumerary assistant, and in 1844 he was placed on the permanent staff. On the bequest to the nation in 1846 of the splendid library of Thomas Grenville, Rye was entrusted with its removal to the British Museum and afterwards with its arrangement there. At a later date he selected and arranged the library of reference in the new reading-room opened in 1857, and he devised the plan showing the placing of the books which is still in use. He became an assistant - keeper in the department of printed books in 1857, and succeeded Thomas Watts in the keepership in 1869, but failing health and eyesight compelled him to retire in July 1875. The Weigel sale of block-books and incunabula in 1872, at which some important purchases were made, was the chief event of his brief term of office.
Rye's tastes were antiquarian rather than literary, and he possessed a great store of information relating to old English literature and to mediæval architecture and antiquities. He also practised etching. He edited for the Hakluyt Society in 1851, with an introduction and notes, Richard Hakluyt's translation of Fernando de Soto's Portuguese narrative of the 'Discovery and Conquest of Terra Florida,' but his principal work was 'England as seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and James the First' (1865), a collection of the narratives of ​foreign visitors, with a valuable introduction, and etchings by himself. He contributed to the early volumes of 'Notes and Queries,' and papers on 'A Memorial of the Priory of St. Andrew at Rochester' and 'Visits to Rochester and Chatham of Royal, Noble, and Distinguished Personages, English and Foreign, 1300–1783,' to the 'Archæologia Cantiana,' as well as others to the 'Antiquary,' in which that on 'Breuning's Mission to England, 1595,' appeared in 1903. The etchings which he contributed to the 'Publications of the Antiquarian Etching Club' (1849–1854) were brought together in a privately issued volume in 1859. His collections for a 'History of Rochester,' in three quarto volumes, are in the British Museum.
Rye, who in his last years was totally blind, died at West Norwood, from an attack of bronchitis, on 21 Dec. 1901, and was buried in Highgate cemetery. He married twice; secondly, on 13 Dec. 1866, Frances Wilhelmina, youngest daughter of William Barker of Camberwell, by whom he left two sons and one daughter. The elder son, Wilham Brenchley Rye (1873–1906), became an assistant librarian in the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the younger, Reginald Arthur Rye, is Goldsmiths' librarian of the University of London, and author of 'The Libraries of London' (2nd edit. 1910).
[Library Association Record, Jan. and Feb. 1902, by Dr. Richard Garnett, reprinted privately with corrections; Athenæum, 4 Jan. 1902; information from Mr. Reginald A. Rye.]
R. E. G.