The 1589 Geneva Bible featured today is bound in contemporary leather with a 1591 edition of The Whole Booke of Psalms and signed five different times by female reader Jane Horsley. Like many 16th-century books, it contains layers of ownership inscriptions from various eras.
Jane, who has repeated her inscription (“Jane Horsley Booke 168[1 or 4] / Jane Horsley booke 1679”) twice above one of the woodcut ornaments, was the earliest owner to date the book. Absent any earlier inscriptions, it is difficult to say whether she acquired the then 90-year-old Bible as a secondhand purchase or inherited it from a family member.
As with most of the female book owners featured within this blog, her identity is ambiguous. We know she cannot be the Jane Reay of Newcastle who married John Horsley of Milburne Grange in 1699, as our Jane used the surname Horsley as early as 1679.
Subsequent inscriptions can sometimes be a clue to an earlier female owner’s identity, but in Jane’s case the Hansons are almost certainly unrelated. One page covered in genealogical records, some faded and others clear, reads in part:
Grace Hanson Born July 3[d?] day 1724 and babtizd July 3[?]
Samuell Hanson born [M]arch 16 1726 and babtizd M[ar]ch 31
Rachel Hanson Born Febr.y 25 1727/8 and babtizd march 16
Fanny Hanson Born June 21 1731 died 6 Mar.
Jon Hanson Born about midle of
FebruaryJanuary 1733-4Joshua Hanson Book Bought on ye year of our Lord 1729
On the verso of the divisional New Testament title page, yet another inscription reads “John Iles and for yor[?]. Beneath it is a line to indicate a separation and the inscription “John Iles Borne June y 25 and Baptized July 2nd 1714.” Further down the page is another inscription by Joshua Hanson, “If any one upon me loke I am Joshua Hanson Book ~ ~ .” It is possible that Jane Horsley could have married an Iles, though probably likelier that the book had left her possession sometime in the roughly thirty-year period between the 1680s and 1714.
The book remained in the Hanson family early into the 20th century, when it was gifted to the Cheales family. From the bookseller’s description:
The bookplate of Samuel Hanson (1804-1882) bears the family crest and logo, Deo favente et sedulitate (By the favour of God and by assiduity). Samuel passed it onto his son Sir Reginald Hanson (1840-1905) on the 5th of December 1880. Sir Reginald Hanson was a conservative MP and elected Lord Mayor of London in 1886 during which time Queen Victoria celebrated her Jubilee year. Having previously been knighted, in 1887 he entertained Her Majesty and was created a Baronet. The Bible was gifted by Lady Hanson to the Cheales family on July 14, 1905, three months after Sir Reginald passed away. It has remained with the Cheales family until now.
Samuel, the second child recorded in the family genealogy, therefore inherited the book from his father Joshua and passed it onto his own son Reginald two years before his death.
While it is true that more recent book owners tend to be easier to identity, it also cannot be denied that male book owners are, as a whole, easier to identify than female. Even John Iles can be identified and is linked to the Hanson family. In 1723, the widow Grace Iles (née Mallory) married Joshua Hanson. She was married in 1713 to an Iles; hence the June 25th birth of John Iles in 1714. Remarkably, the Hanson family Bible is mentioned in the first volume of Yorkshire Notes and Queries (1888), page 156. It is likely that Sir Reginald Hanson made it available to the editor of the book.
It is splendid to have so much information about the Iles and Hanson families, but frustrating to be unable to easily find the same basic biographical data for Jane. Despite writing her name on the book’s title page, her identity disappears amid the other ownership markings.
Source: Book offered for sale by Archives Fine Books (Brisbane) in November 2022. Images used with permission.
Early Modern Female Book Ownership 