# The Reformed Librarie-Keeper/Chapter 2

JOHN DURY 1596-1680
IF ancestry counts in determining a man's career, John Dury could not easily have escaped following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, and entering the ministry.
His grandfather was that John Dury (1537-1600) who, as a monk of Dunfermline suspected of heresy, was ordered to be shut up till death, the sentence being pronounced by his cousin, George Dury, abbot of Dunfermline, to whose hatred of the new doctrines many of the persecutions that took place in Scotland during this stormy period ​of history may be traced. At the time of the Reformation, John Dury made his escape and became an exhorter and later a Presbyterian minister, and devoted adherent of John Knox.
He married Marion, daughter of Sir John Majoribanks, provost of Edinburgh, and the second of their three sons, all in the Presbyterian ministry, was Robert, the father of our John.
The life of an earnest and ​conscientious Presbyterian divine of the sixteenth century was likely to be a strenuous one, and the first John Dury did not escape the rigours of the law. A man of singular strength of character and devoutness, he was a sturdy fighting Scotchman withal, conspicuous in the conflicts between the Church and the king. Becoming a minister in Edinburgh in 1573, he was twice banished from the city, and once imprisoned in Edinburgh castle. Returning from one of his banishments he was met at Leith by the people of Edinburgh, who marched him up to the city, and along the High Street, singing the 124th Psalm ("If it had not ​been the Lord who was on our side") in four parts, "showing not only their attachment to their minister, but their skill in psalmody."
Although a man of no great learning, his preaching was forceful and to the point, and his words, like his deeds, carried weight. A letter from Henry Woddrington to Secretary Walsingham describes a service conducted by Dury. After mentioning with satisfaction that he prayed the Lord either to convert or confound the Duke of Guise, Woddrington writes: "The sermon was very longe, godly and plaine, to the great comfort and rejoice of the most ​nombre that herd yt, or doe here of yt."
He was an athlete as well as a preacher, for James Melville, the Scottish reformer, who married Dury's daughter Elizabeth, tells us that "the gown was no sooner off and the Bible out of hand in the kirk, when on went the corselet and up fangit [snatched up] was the hagbut, and to the fields." Melville writes, too, of his father-in-law that he prayed and communed with God in so remarkable a manner that he counted it one of the privileges of his life that he had come in contact with this manly, fearless and earnest soul. John Dury died in 1600, ​"in a manner becoming the life which he had spent;" and his friend Andrew Melville, uncle of James, honoured his memory in many Latin epitaphs in praise of his courageous opposition to the king and court.
Robert Dury was a worthy son of his father, and threw himself zealously into work for the Scottish Church. Besides faithful labour for his parishes of Abercrombie and Anstruther, he made missionary visits to the island of Lewis, the Shetland Islands, and the Orkneys, where a desire for Protestantism was beginning to manifest itself.
As courageous as conscientious, he did not hesitate, in 1605, ​to attend as a member the General Assembly at Aberdeen which the king had prohibited. For this he was summoned before the Privy Council and ultimately banished with five others, their conduct during the trial gaining the highest esteem and admiration. Driven from his home in the midst of the severities of a Scottish winter, Robert Dury, with his large family of young children, sought refuge in Holland, that haven for the oppressed of the seventeenth century, and was made first minister of the Scottish Church at Leyden, where he died eleven years later.
Although but four years old when his grandfather died, John ​Dury's childish recollection of that honest, sturdy character had doubtless been strengthened and deepened by fireside tales of imprisonment and escape, banishment and recall, and all the storm and stress of that life of religious conflict, both as monk and minister. A lad of nine when his father was banished, he was yet old enough to understand the cause, and to feel rebellious resentment against the war of sects that made such injustice possible. What wonder that he early felt yearnings for Christian unity and that the opportunity, when it came, found him ready to devote to the cause the labours of half a century!
​A minister by every inclination, as well as by family tradition, John Dury was yet made of gentler stuff than his father and grandfather, and worthily won for himself the title of the "Great peacemaker of the seventeenth century."
His father sent him to his intimate friend and fellow-exile, Andrew Melville, to be educated for the ministry at Sedan, and the great scholar, always paying particular attention to his fellow-countrymen at the university, seems to have had a special interest in young Dury. The friendly relations between master and pupil are testified to by the following extract from a ​letter written by Melville to the father at Leyden, who was eagerly looking for a favourable report of his son: "Receive fra this bearer, your sonne John, his oration with thanks, and great hope he shall be a good instrument after our departing."
Leaving Sedan, John continued his studies at Leyden, and later went to Oxford. In 1628 we find him ministering to a congregation of British merchants at Elbing in West Prussia. There he fell in with Dr. Godeman, a civil judge and privy councillor of Gustavus Adolphus, who held West Prussia at the time. It is ​through the influence of this Dr. Godeman that the thoughts which must have long been taking shape in Dury's mind seem to have finally crystallized, for the privy councillor invited him to cooperate in an effort to bring about ecclesiastical peace among Protestants, and Dury eagerly threw himself into the enterprise, which had received the ready sanction of Gustavus Adolphus.
It happened that Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador, was at Elbing, and he entered into the scheme to reconcile the Lutherans and the Reformed churches with lively interest. He persuaded the great Oxenstiern ​to use his influence with the Lutheran clergy, and advised Dury to go to England and lay his plans before the prelates, recommending him to Charles I, and influencing in his favour both the Puritan Archbishop Abbott and Bishop Laud. Dury was successful in England in so far that he was authorized to carry to Prussia the assurance of the coöperation of the English clergy in the recommendations that all parties abstain from disputes in the pulpit, from calling hard names and disturbing legal ceremonies of worship.
After a visit to Gustavus Adolphus, Dury undertook a tour of the Continent (1631-3), ​attending, with unfailing zeal, courts and churches, state assemblies and synods. Dr. Charles A. Briggs had the good fortune, a few years ago, to discover in London the manuscript of Dury's "Summarie Relation" of this journey, with its vivid description of Europe during the Thirty Years' War, and published it in the Presbyterian Review for April, 1887, together with a short account of the author's noble work for Christian union.
The death of the great Swede at Lützen was a blow to Dury's hopes, for Oxenstiern refused to give formal sanction to his plan for a general assembly of evangelical churches, and in 1633 ​he returned to England, discouraged and burdened with debt. Being told that he must accept Episcopal ordination in order to carry on his work of pacification as a representative of the English Church, he was ordained the year after his return, not, however, renouncing his previous ordination. He was made one of the king's chaplains, and received a small living, which, we are told, cost him more for a curate than he received himself. Not long content to abstain from active labour for his beloved cause, we find him soon after his ordination attending the Frankfort Assembly, and the following year was ​devoted to work in the Netherlands.
"Never, perhaps, was there such an example of zeal and perseverance as that exhibited by Duraeus, who, during the space of forty years, suffered vexations and underwent labours which required the firmest resolution and the most inexhaustible patience, wrote, exhorted, admonished, entreated and disputed: in a word, tried every method that human wisdom could suggest to put an end to the dissensions and animosities that reigned among the Protestant churches." We have ​glimpses of him in Sweden, ill in bed but ordered out of the kingdom by Queen Christina; visiting Denmark without success; holding meetings at Oldenburg, Hainault and Hamburg; planning treaties of alliance by the aid of Calixtus; passing through Holland, and sending letters to France and Switzerland. Though his undertaking was generally approved, he found few who were seriously disposed to give active assistance to his work.
Returning once more to England, Dury attached himself to the Royalist party, and a little later was sent to The Hague as tutor and chaplain to Princess ​Mary of Orange, who, according to the terms of her marriage contract of the previous year, was taken to Holland by her mother, Henrietta Maria, to join her husband in 1642, having reached her twelfth year. Conditions at The Hague, together with the uncompromising disposition of the high-spirited little princess, made Dury's position an uncomfortable one, and he resigned it before Mary was fully installed in her position; but perhaps some of the pathetic gravity, ease and decorum with which, shortly afterwards, at the mature age of thirteen, she gave audiences, received ambassadors, and mingled in court festivities may ​be attributed to the gentle teachings of this kindly master.
Summoned home to attend the Assembly of Divines, Dury was one of those who drew up the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechism.
He had met with some success and made some friends in Ireland, among them Lady Catherine Ranelagh, and in the spring of 1645, when nearly fifty years old, he was married to an Irish lady, aunt to this Lady Ranelagh, who took much interest in his work, and who owned an estate worth £400 a year, most of which went, when it was forthcoming at all, toward providing a garrison for Parliament against ​the so-called rebels in Ireland. Their only child, Dora Katherina, married in her early twenties the somewhat austere scholar and scientist, Henry Oldenburg, a man of twice her years, who had been tutor to her young kinsman, Richard, Earl of Ranelagh. There is a record that she brought him an estate in the marshes of Kent worth £60 a year, inherited from her father.
But what has all this to do with The Reformed Librarie-Keeper, and when in his incessant round of journeyings, disputations and correspondence did John Dury find time to study library economy? A small incident, summed up in a few ​lines or entirely unnoticed in most accounts of his life, scarcely realized beside the greatness of his life work, explains the connection.
In 1649 Bulstrode Whitelock was appointed keeper of the king's medals and library, which latter he had previously prevented from being sold "rather . . . because he was put upon it by Selden and other learned men than that he himself, being accounted learned, took great delight in such matters." Not always having leisure to attend to his new duties, Whitelock, we read, "had a deputy allowed ​him, and one John Dury, a traveller, did the drudgery of the place." Dury had lodgings assigned him at St. James's, and, in spite of the "drudgery," must have found this peaceful interim in his wearying life not entirely unpleasing. At all events, he seems to have taken a thorough interest in his work, and made a careful study of what the right-minded librarian should be, and we can have no doubt that the king's library was "kept" carefully and well during his short administration.
He recommends what we should call a civil service examination to determine a librarian's fitness for his position; is ​hot against "graft" in the profession; insists that a librarian should be a "Factor and Trader for helps to learning," "a Treasurer to keep them, and a dispenser to apply them to use;" gives keen hints for advantageous buying and wise selection; advises yearly reports and a judicious keeping in touch with the board of directors, influencing them to use their knowledge of various branches for the needs of the library; would have his books well classified and catalogued; condemns the Heidelberg library, whose vast resources are like unto the talent which the man hid in the ground. But above all, and ever ​reccuring, is the idea of stewardship and faithful service. Have library ideals yet reached the standard set by old John Dury?
Dury set forth his notions of "librarie-keeping" in two letters to his friend, Samuel Hartlib, that philanthropic writer on education and husbandry, to whom Milton addressed his treatise on education. Hartlib published the letters, together with Dury's Supplement to the Reformed-School, a Latin description of the Wolfenbüttel Library, and John Pell's Idea of Mathematics, in 1650, the year of Dury's appointment at St. James's. The tiny volume was printed by William Dugard, ​shortly after his release, through Milton's efforts, from Newgate, where he had been imprisoned for printing Salmasius's defence of King Charles.
Libraries did not occupy all of Dury's attention in 1650, for at least nine other works were published by him in that year, the last being a plea in his own defence, entitled, The unchanged, constant and singlehearted Peacemaker. For Dury did not escape bitter animosity and attacks from those who suspected his extraordinary zeal to arise from "mysterious and sinister motives," and from bitter partisans like Prynne, who called forth the above-mentioned ​defence by publishing a tract called The time-serving Proteus and ambidexter divine uncased to the world.
Four years later, Dury started again on his travels, this time with the approbation of Cromwell, an alliance which brought upon him many reproaches. But it mattered little to John Dury whether king or protector ruled if he saw any chance of furthering his work of pacification. With this thought only at heart, after the Restoration he sought the favour of Charles II, but his action under the Commonwealth was remembered, and his letters and plea for an interview were disregarded.
​Disappointed, but not utterly cast down, he went to Cassel, where the Landgrave of Hesse, and afterwards the Landgrave's widow, favoured his plans and protected him. From his home in Cassel, he continued his labours, travelling back and forth throughout Germany until his death in 1680. But his later years were full of discouragement and disappointment. "The only fruit," he cried, "which I have reaped by all my toils is that I see the miserable condition of Christianity, and that I have no other comfort than the testimony of my conscience."
In spite of his life of almost unceasing active labour, Dury ​found time to publish about fifty books and tracts, most of them bearing directly or indirectly upon the subject dearest to his heart. While his English is excellent, he seems to have been almost equally ready with French and Latin, and was everywhere noted for his extensive learning. Men like Richard Baxter, Bishop Hall and Robert Boyle were his warm admirers, and bear witness to his universal benevolence, perseverance and solid piety. He had some leanings toward the Mystics and Quakers, and in his later years widened his scheme of unity to embrace all Christians, Protestant and Roman Catholic.
​"John Dury died," says Dr. Briggs, "without seeing the fruit of his life-long labours, but he did not live and work in vain. Like Richard Baxter, James Ussher and John d'Avanant, he was the prophet of a better age of the world. He was sowing the seed and preparing the germs of Christian toleration, liberty and union that have unfolded in later times," and he worthily takes his place among the "heroes of the seventeenth century, who laboured so faithfully and so well."
RUTH SHEPARD GRANNISS
* ↑ There is no real reason to doubt this relationship, although James Melville, who was son-in-law of John Durie, and an intimate friend and companion of Robert Durie, never explicitly mentions it.—Dictionary of National Biography.
* ↑ Life of Andrew Melville, by Thomas M'Crie. Edinburgh, 1824, ii, 529.
* ↑ An Ecclesiastical History, by J. L. von Mosheim. London, 1842, ii, 180-2.
* ↑ Athenae Oxonienses, by Anthony à Wood. London, 1813-20, iii, 1043.