Sir Thomas Bodley (1545-1613) was a diplomat English, remained famous as a founder of the Bodleian Library with Oxford.

It was born the March 2nd 1545 with Exeter. During the reign of Marie Tudor, his father, John Bodley, who had adopted the Anglicanism under Henri VIII and was close to the Protestants, was constrained with the exile on the continent, ending up gaining Geneva in 1557. The Thomas young person on the occasion to briefly follow there, in spite of his young age, of the courses of Jean Calvin and Theodore de Bèze. The death of the Marie queen, followed accession to the throne of his/her half-sister Elisabeth, in 1558, came however to stop the Genevese exile. Of return in England, Thomas Bodley entered to the Magdalen College to Oxford. He obtained his diploma of bacheler are arts in 1563, and entered then to the Merton College. He continued his studies, improving in philosophy, in the field of arts and in old Greek.

Leaving Oxford in 1576, it undertook a turn of Europe. Shortly after its return, it was named usher to the court of Elisabeth.

In 1584, it was elected appointed with the Parliament, representative Portsmouth, then St German' S in 1586.

In 1585, it was missionné by the queen to create an alliance between Frederic II of Denmark and several German princes to come to assistance of king de Navarre, future king de France Henri IV.

In 1587, it married Ann Ball, a widowed rich person, girl of a sior Carew of Bristol.

It was also dépéché in secret mission in France. Then, in 1588, it was accredited with $the Hague as ambassador, station which required treasures of diplomacy because of the conflict opposing the Spain and the United Provinces. This mission was moreover complicated by various intrigues between the Ministers for the queen in London. Bodley returned to England in 1596 but, running up against the competitor interests of Burleigh and the count d' Essex, he preferred to withdraw public life. The successor of the Queen Elizabeth, Jacques Ier, the adouba knight in 1604.

In addition to its diplomatic action, Sir Thomas Bodley remained famous to have founded the Bodleian Library, which was one of the public first Bibliothèque S in Europe. According to him, in fact disillusions of the political life led it to want to devote itself to another activity. In 1598, it proposed its assistance with the Université of Oxford, which accepted it, to restore the old library, including one most of the collections had been dispersed during the past century.

With this intention, it devoted major its personal fortune, but encouraged moreover many his friends to make important gifts, of books as silver, with the library in the course of gestation. It did itself gift with the library, in its will, of the major part of its remaining goods.

He died the January 28th 1613 with Oxford, and was buried in the chorus of the vault of Merton College, where was set up in its honor a black and white marble monument.

Sir Thomas Bodley had written his autobiography in 1609, which was republished in 1703 with London by Thomas Hearne, in a volume entitled Reliquiae Bodleianae, gold Authentic Remains off Sir Thomas Bodley and which also the first outline of the statutes worked out for the library and its letters with the librarian contained, Thomas James.

Sources

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