The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) | Page 3

were subject to various proposals,
including selling or burning. These schemes of disposal extended to his
books and manuscripts, which were stored in St. James's Palace. John
Selden is credited with preventing the sale of the royal library.
Bulstrode Whitelocke was appointed keeper of the king's medals and
library, and on 28 October 1650 Dury was appointed his deputy.
According to Anthony a Wood, Dury "did the drudgery of the place."[6]
The books and manuscripts were in terrible disorder and disarray, and
Dury carefully reorganized them. As soon as he took over, Dury
stopped any efforts to sell the books and ordered that the new chapel,
built originally for the wedding of King Charles I, be turned into a
library. He immediately ordered the printing of the Septuagint copy of
the Bible in the royal collection.
In the same year that he became deputy keeper, Dury wrote the
following tract, one of a dozen he composed in 1650 on topics ranging
from the educational to the ecclesiastical. Among the latter was his
introduction to Thomas Thorowgood's book contending that the
American Indians are descended from the Israelites, a work that also
served as promotional material for New England colonization.
That Dury's _The Reformed Librarie-Keeper_ is part of his reform
program preparatory to the onset of the millennium is apparent both
from its setting and its content. It was published in 1650 along with two
other tracts (not reprinted here)[7] and Dury's supplement to his
Reformed School, which itself had appeared a few months earlier. The
Reformed School was a basic presentation of the ideas of Comenius,
Hartlib, and Dury for transforming the nature of education in such a
way that from infancy people would be directed in their striving toward
universal knowledge and spiritual betterment. The Supplement to the
Reformed School deals with the role that universities should take in
preparing for the Kingdom of God, a role making them more actively
part of the world.
Having placed educational institutions in the scheme of things

preparatory to the millennium, Dury then proceeds to place library
keeping and libraries in this scheme as well. Unfortunately, according
to Dury, library keepers had traditionally regarded their positions as
opportunities for profit and gain, not for "the service, which is to bee
don by them unto the Common-wealth of Israel, for the advancement of
Pietie and Learning" (p. 15). Library keepers "ought to becom Agents
for the advancement of universal Learning" and not just mercenary
people (p. 17). Their role ought not to be just to guard the books but to
make them available to those seeking universal knowledge and
understanding of the Kingdom of God.
The library and the library keeper can play important roles in making
knowledge available. As Dury points out, Oxford and Heidelberg have
failed to do so. Dury's work enumerates very practical problems that
need to be solved and integrates them into an overall picture of the
library keeper, the library, the school, and the church--all fundamental
components of a better world, if properly reformed. Reforming
involves practical changes directed by the spiritual goal of preparing
for the millennium. And it should be noticed that while Dury had time
to worry about how much librarians should be paid and how books
should be classified, and while he was occupied in getting the king's
books in their proper place on the shelf, he was also convinced that the
penultimate events before the onset of the millennium were about to
take place. A month after his official appointment as deputy library
keeper, Dury wrote the preface, dated 28 November 1650, to Abraham
von Franckenberg's Clavis Apocalyptica. This work in Dury's
translation of 1651 states on the title page that it offers a key to the
prophecies in the books of Daniel and Revelation and "that the
Prophetical Numbers com to an end with the year of our Lord 1655."
The work, which Dury strongly endorses, lists as events "which are
shortly to com to pass, collected out of the XI and XVI
Chapters
of the REVELATION," the destruction of the city of Rome, the end of
the Turkish Empire, the conversion of the Jews, and the ruin of the
whole papacy. Thereupon, the Devil will be cast out and shut up in the
bottomless pit, and the Son of God will take "possession of the
Kingdom" and reign for the millennium (pp. [164-65]).

As is all too evident, Dury's reform projects did not lead to the
millennium. He was active in England until sent abroad in 1654 as
Cromwell's unofficial agent. Again he traveled all over Protestant
Europe negotiating to reunite the churches. After the Restoration he
was unable to return to England and lived out his life on the Continent
trying to bring about Christian reunion. One of his last works, which