1. John Selden was an English jurist, a scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution and scholar of Jewish law.
30 Facts About John Selden
1. 2.
John Selden was known as a polymath; John Milton hailed Selden in 1644 as "the chief of learned men reputed in this land".
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John Selden was born at Salvington, in the parish of West Tarring, West Sussex, and was baptised at St Andrew's, the parish church.
4.
John Selden's father, named John Selden, had a small farm.
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John Selden was nominated reader of Lyon's Inn, an office he declined to undertake.
6.
John Selden was then removed, under less rigorous conditions, to the Marshalsea, until Archbishop Laud arranged for him to be freed.
7.
John Selden was not elected to the Short Parliament of 1640; but to the Long Parliament, summoned in the autumn, he was returned without opposition for Oxford University.
8.
John Selden opposed the resolution against episcopacy which led to the exclusion of the bishops from the House of Lords, and printed an answer to the arguments used by Sir Harbottle Grimston on that occasion.
9.
John Selden joined in the protestation of the Commons for the maintenance of the Protestant religion according to the doctrines of the Church of England, the authority of the Crown, and the liberty of the subject.
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John Selden was equally opposed to the court on the question of the commissions of lieutenancy of array and to the parliament on the question of the militia ordinance.
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John Selden assembled a famous library which eventually became part of the Bodleian Library's collection in 1659.
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John Selden's tomb is today clearly visible through glass plates in the floor of this church.
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John Selden made much of the complexities of the ancient Jewish customs on tithes.
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John Selden published in 1642 Privileges of the Baronage of England when they sit in Parliament and Discourse concerning the Rights and Privileges of the Subject.
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In 1628, at the suggestion of Sir Robert Cotton, John Selden compiled, with the assistance of two other scholars, Patrick Young and Richard James, a catalogue of the Arundel marbles.
16.
John Selden employed his leisure at Wrest in writing De successionibus in bona defuncti secundum leges Ebraeorum and De successione in pontificatum Ebraeorum, published in 1631.
17.
In 1650 John Selden began to print the trilogy he planned on the Sanhedrin, as the first part of De synedriis et prefecturis juridicis veterum Ebraeorum through the press, the second and third parts being severally published in 1653 and 1655.
18.
The circumstances of its delayed publication, in 1635, suggest that during the early 1630s Selden inclined towards the court rather than the popular party and even secured the personal favour of the king, Charles I It had been written sixteen or seventeen years earlier, but for political reasons Charles's predecessor, James I, had prohibited its publication.
19.
John Selden's last publication was a vindication of himself from certain charges advanced against him and his Mare clausum around 1653 by Theodore Graswinckel, a Dutch jurist.
20.
John Selden believed in free will, which was inconsistent with Calvinism.
21.
John Selden was sceptical of the legend of King Arthur as it had grown up, but believed Arthur had existed.
22.
The popular image of a Druid descends via a masque of Inigo Jones from a reconstruction by John Selden, based on ancient German statuary.
23.
John Selden is commemorated in the name of the John Selden Society, a learned society concerned with the study of English legal history, founded in 1887.
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John Selden is commemorated in place-names in Salvington, including "The John Selden Inn", which purports to be on the site of his dwelling; Selden Road; and the Selden medical centre.
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John Selden's reputation lasted well, with Mark Pattison calling him "the most learned man, not only of his party, but of Englishmen".
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John Selden contested the scholastic position, after Cicero, that "right reason" could by its dictates alone generate obligation, by claiming that a formal obligation required a superior in authority.
27.
John Selden's will left his intentions for this library somewhat ambiguous, although the will and codicil seem to suggest that he intended to bequeath most of his Oriental manuscripts, Greek manuscripts, a Latin manuscript, and his printed Talmudic and Rabbinical books to the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
28.
John Selden's collection was the largest received by the Bodleian in the seventeenth century, comprising around 8,000 items.
29.
Since then, the original collection has been enhanced by further acquisitions, most notably by a group of forty John Selden manuscripts purchased by the Bodleian from James Fairhurst in 1947.
30.
Beyond manuscripts, the John Selden collection contains several notable printed works.