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Patrick Young
Seaton, Forfarshire, Scotland, 1584 - 1652, Essex
LC Heading: Young, Patrick, 1584-1652
Biography:
Young [Junius], Patrick (1584–1652), librarian and scholar, was born on 29 August 1584 at Seaton, Forfarshire, the fifth son of Sir Peter Young (1544–1628), tutor to James VI of Scotland, and his first wife, Elizabeth Gibb (d. 1593). John Young (1585–1654) was his younger brother. He was educated at the University of St Andrews, graduating MA in 1603.
On the accession of James I, Young accompanied his father south in the train of the king. Initially attached to Bishop George Lloyd of Chester as his librarian, he was incorporated at Oxford in 1605 with the degree of MA. On appointment as deacon he became a chaplain of All Souls College. His sojourn in Oxford not only benefited his development as a Greek scholar as he also developed an interest in history. On his return to London his patron, James Montagu, bishop of Bath and Wells, ensured Young's welfare by obtaining for him a pension of £50 a year in return for occasional work as a secretary for the king.
Young is best known for his role in the reorganization of the Royal Library, indeed he has been credited with its virtual refoundation, and, in so doing, creating the preconditions for the eventual foundation of the British Museum. Since the petitions for the re-establishment of a royal library by John Dee in 1556, and by Robert Cotton in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, had fallen on deaf ears, the royal library at St James's Palace at the time of Young's appointment consisted principally of the collections of Henry VII. Faced with only two surviving sixteenth-century library catalogues—the 1534 collection of Richmond and the 1542 Westminster library catalogue—not to mention other unlisted royal collections at Greenwich, Hampton Court, and Windsor, Young began a systematic cataloguing of the disparate royal collections. The initiative received an invaluable encouragement with the acquisition by Henry, prince of Wales, of the Lumley collection for his private library in 1609. In 1609 and 1610 Young undertook the construction of a new library building at St James's Palace, and on the death of Henry the prince's vast library became part of the Royal Collection. Young also played an important role in the acquisition of the library of the renowned scholar Isaac Casaubon, travelling to Paris for the purpose in 1617.
In 1622 Young was ordered ‘to make search in all cathedrals for old manuscripts and ancient records, and to bring an inventory of them to His Majesty’. This initiated a programme of compiling useful library catalogues for a number of cathedral libraries, starting with Lichfield, St Paul's, Salisbury, Winchester, and Worcester, and endeavouring to ensure that the works within these libraries would be made known to scholars and that copies of some manuscripts should be placed in the Royal Library. Seven years later Young joined Dr Augustine Lindsell in drawing up an inventory of the Barocci collection of 251 manuscripts for the Bodleian Library, to which was appended a 1628 catalogue of the Greek manuscript collection of Sir Thomas Roe. Young's readiness to collate material from other libraries—such as his collation about 1619 of the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis at Cambridge—sometimes led to confusion among his contemporaries as to which library he was assigned to, which is evident from Jean Morin's identification of him as the librarian of the university library at Cambridge.
Young was the recipient of various ecclesiastical and secular honours. His income was augmented in 1613 when he became a prebend of Chester Cathedral and on 9 January 1618 he was made a burgess of Dundee. In 1620, shortly after marrying his wife, Elizabeth, he was allocated the salary of the rectory of Llanynys in Denbighshire, and he was also incorporated as MA at Cambridge. In 1621 he was appointed a prebend of St Paul's and a treasurer of the same cathedral. 1623 witnessed his appointment to a rectorship of Hayes, Middlesex, a position that he held until 1647. By 1624 he had been appointed to the office of Latin secretary by Bishop John Williams.
As secretary and royal librarian Young acted not only as a vital node in British scholarly networks, but his contacts and reputation extended into continental Europe where he developed long-lasting collections with individual scholars such as Lucas Holstenius (1596–1661). This was sustained by his considerable academic ability, most notably in the field of Greek studies. Young's published works are relatively few in number, but he did much to encourage contemporary authors such as Daniel Heinsius who, though interested in classical scholarship, published works chiefly concerned with biblical scholarship, with Young acting as either his editor or his translator. Young and Thomas Reid worked as translators on James I's Serenissimi ... principis Jacobi ... opera, which had been edited by Young's patron Montagu, and was published in a Latin edition in London in 1619. Young continued to translate works, particularly from Greek to Latin, as his 1637 edition of Nicetas's Catena Graecorum patrum in beatum Job collectore Niceta testifies. This work was followed in 1638 by his edition of a treatise by Bishop Gilbert Foliot, Gilberti Foliot episcopi Londinensis, expositio in Canticum. As early as 1613 he contemplated an edition of the works of Origen and Theodoret, and by 1628 he was entrusted with the task of preparing an edition of the famous Alexandrian codex of the Septuagint, which had been presented to the Royal Library. 1633 saw the publication of his Clementis ad Corinthios epistola prior. Latinè vertit, et notis brevioribus illustravit. P. Junius, Gr.a Lat, at Oxford, (a work by Pope Clement I). Some works appeared only after his death. An edition of his annotations on the Alexandrian manuscript was appended to a 1657 edition of a polyglot Bible: P. Junii annotationes quas paraverat ad MS Alexandrini editionem, in quibus codicem illum antiquiss. cum textu Hebr ... confert. His comments on and abridgement of Louis Savot's work on the coins of the Roman emperors were published with Leland's Collectanea (vol. 5, 1770 and 1774).
Young was deprived of his position as royal librarian in 1649 and he retired to the house of his son-in-law, John Atwood, at Broomfield in Essex, where he died on 7 September 1652, leaving two daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah. The true extent of his fame among contemporaries is evident from the many eulogies of him following his death, cited in his chief biography by Thomas Smith.
Elizabethanne Boran
(Elizabethanne Boran, ‘Young , Patrick (1584–1652)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2012 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/30276, accessed 15 Jan 2016])
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Last Updated8/7/24
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