The Little Gidding Concordance
The story behind one of the treasures of the Royal Library
The provenance of the Royal Library's Concordance
The concordance held in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle is the last, largest and most magnificent volume made by the community. The book was almost complete in 1642.
It is over 70cm tall and, with over 450 pages, is almost 10cm thick. It weighs 23.5 kg (3.7 stone) and two people are required to move it. The book is bound in purple velvet with elaborate gold tooling and contains well over 1,000 engravings.
This concordance is entitled The Whole law of God as it is delivered in ye five bookes of Moses methodically distributed into three greate classes morall ceremonial politicall ... It contains all of the laws and ceremonies in the first five books of the Bible (otherwise known as the Books of Moses or the Pentateuch).
The community only made one other concordance of this type, and it is much smaller and less complex than the copy in the Royal Library. The smaller copy was made first, in 1640, for Archbishop William Laud. This concordance, along with much of Laud's library, was given to St John's College Cambridge after his death, and it remains there today.
It is almost certain that the Royal Library's concordance, which is so much larger, more elaborate and bound in purple velvet, was a Royal commission from the then Prince of Wales, later Charles II. It is possible that the prince saw Laud's volume presented, and requested a copy of his own at that time.
Records tell us that the King and his eldest son saw the book in 1642 when they visited the community on their way North from London. At this point, the tooling on the book's binding was not finished, and they did not take it away with them. It was described by one of the party as 'the Gallentest Glorious largest Booke, and such as the world can not compare with it'.
Because of the ensuing civil war, the book was never presented to Charles II, and not much is known about its history. Inscriptions indicate that the book was bought by one Mr Bourdillon in 1776. At some point after this it was hidden behind a false wall in a cupboard in Brookmans House near Hatfield in the UK. In the early nineteenth century the then owner of the house rediscovered the book. One of his descendants presented the volume to Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 and it has remained in the Royal Library since that time.
