David Stokes 1590/92-1669

David STOKES 1590/92-1669

Biographical Note

Born in Lincolnshire. BA Trinity College, Cambridge 1615, MA 1618, DD 1630; fellow of Peterhouse 1618-25. Fellow of Eton College 1624, prebendary of Windsor 1628, precentor of Chichester 1629. Held a number of rectories, in various counties, during the 1630s, partly through the patronage of his father-in-law Richard Mountague, Bishop of Chichester/Norwich. An active supporter of the royalist cause, he was deprived of his preferments in 1647. His movements during the Interregnum are unknown; he was restored to his Eton fellowship, and Windsor canonry, in 1660.

Books

Stokes has been identified as the most plausible owner of the books auctioned by William Cooper in London, 1 December 1685 (Catalogus librorum ... Dris Stokes et aliorum). This sale comprised 2882 lots, divided between Latin theology (274), Theology and miscellaneous (363), Latin philology (but also including some French and Italian books) (735), Latin mathematical and astrological (374), English divinity (580), English philology (526), and 30 volumes of pamphlets. It is clear that the sale was made up from multiple properties, and Stokes’s books cannot be separated out. Stokes’s will specifies that his “librarie of bookes in Windsor and Eaton” should be sold or otherwise disposed of for the benefit of his three grandchildren, subject to his wife selecting any English books for herself or her children. He also made special mention of his [ms] sermons, and three other manuscripts, directing that these should be “safely laid upp” in the Library at St George’s Chapel, or Eton College, or Trinity College, until they could be printed, “that my great care and paines may serve to the use of manie others”. These mss were given to Trinity College, Cambridge, where they were received in 1677, but they were never printed; his only publications comprised sermons and other theological works issued during his lifetime.

Characteristic Markings

None of Stokes’s books have been identified.

Sources

• Will of David Stokes.
• Catalogus librorum theologicorum, philologicorum, mathematicorum, &c Dris Stokes et aliorum, 1685, ESTC r215416.
• Gaskell, P., Trinity College Library: the first 150 years, Cambridge, 1980, p.234.
• Matthews, A. G., Walker revised, Oxford, 1948.
• Wright, Stephen. "Stokes, David (1590x92–1669), Church of England clergyman." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.