Transcript of Sir Richard Gipps'Antiquitates Suffolcienses

A transcript of Gipps' writings on Suffolk families, with many additions written and pasted in. The transcript was probably written for one of the Smyth family. The spine on the original binding bears the legend Smyth: Suffolk families. Both volumes are indexed by family name.

Sir Richard Gipps (1659-1708) was a London lawyer and Suffolk antiquarian. He joined Gray's Inn as a law student in 1667 and was made master of the revels there in November 1682, and a knighthood soon followed. He later retired to his family estates in Suffolk and took to studying the local history. He wrote a large number of notes upon the subject, of which the originals are at the British Library and the Bodleian Library.

Source: J.M. Blatchly, 'Gipps, Sir Richard (bap. 1659, d. 1708)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. By permission of Oxford University Press - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/10767.

The manuscript is available for consultation by any accredited reader.

Purchased by the John Rylands Library from Messrs Poole and Pemberton in May 1916.

Description compiled by Henry Sullivan and Jo Humpleby, project archivists, with reference to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article on Sir Richard Gipps.

Catalogued in the Hand-List of the Collection of English Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, 1928 (English MS 138).

Former owner: Sir Robert Smyth, fifth baronet (1744-1802).

The JRUL also holds English MS 139, Davy's List of Suffolk Arms and Gipps' Antiquitates Suffolciensis (GB 133 Eng MS 139).

The British Library, Manuscript Collections, holds Gipps' antiquarian collections relating to Suffolk (ref.: GB 058 Add MS 20695 and Harleian MS 4626), and a commonplace book, c 1685-1708 (ref.: GB 058 Eg MS 3880).

Suffolk Record Office, Bury St Edmunds Branch, holds notes relating to the history of Suffolk, probably by Gipps.

The original copies of Gipps' antiquarian manuscripts are located at the British Library (Harleian MS 4626) and the Bodleian Library (Tanner MSS).