Letter 2529

Hearne was told that Sloane possesses Mr Cowper’s manuscripts, which have ‘a great many Observations about our English Historians’. He wants to know if ‘Fordun’ is mentioned therein, for he is about to print ‘the Vth […] Volume’ of Fordun’s work. Thomas Hearne (bap. 1678, d. 1735) was an antiquary and diarist. He began working at the Bodleian Library in 1701. A nonjuror, his refusal to take an oath of allegiance to King George I led to his dismissal from the Bodleian in 1716. Hearne published the works of several English chroniclers (Theodor Harmsen, Hearne, Thomas (bap. 1678, d. 1735), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12827, accessed 2 June 2011]).