Alexandra Plane describes archival research undertaken thanks to the award of the Alasdair Ross Prize 2024
My PhD focused on the Scottish and English libraries of King James VI and I. Most of the books from James’s Scottish library have been lost over the last four centuries. As a result, my research has focused not only on the surviving books but also on the archival sources related to the library. A paper trail does survive, partly because the formation of the young king’s library was an extraordinary logistical achievement. The royal librarian, 25-year-old Peter Young, managed to acquire at least c. 600 books by the time the young king was twelve years old. Young accomplished this largely remotely from Stirling Castle, where he lived with his co-royal tutor George Buchanan and their young pupil.
Receiving the Alasdair Ross Prize from the Scottish History Society enabled me to extend my research in Scottish archives. I had already spent some time working through the Treasurers’ Accounts at the National Records of Scotland, which are a goldmine of fascinating information about the material world of the royal household in sixteenth-century Scotland. Unfortunately for book historians, however, while the young king’s outfits were recorded in exhaustive detail down to the last gold button, purchases for his library were generally recorded with the unhelpfully vague term ‘certane buikis’ (‘certain books’).
By studying these account books and Peter Young’s notes and letters synoptically, I was able to identify the names of several men involved in international trading who procured books for the royal library. Some of these were well-known merchants, while others appear briefly in the archival record and then sink without trace. One of the less well-known figures I encountered was George Hopper, who traded not only in books but also in bows. Unlike the others, who shipped goods between Scotland and the continent, Hopper specialised in trading between Scotland and England. I was able to establish this through a letter from the royal regent James Morton, 4th Earl of Douglas, recommending Hopper to Elizabeth I’s chief adviser William Cecil, Lord Burghley: he ‘has trade ofttimes at London commonly bringing books into this country [Scotland], whereby great good grows both to the religion and commonwealth’.
The Alasdair Ross Prize funding enabled me to return to the National Records of Scotland to seek Hopper out in the surviving sixteenth-century Edinburgh port books. After scouring several of the port books, I at last tracked him down in a section dedicated to ‘Inglis gudis’ (‘English goods’). These entries provide important evidence of Hopper’s trading routes and career dates. This new evidence of Hopper’s work as a book trader also sheds new light on the development of the Scottish book trade during the 1570-80s, a period when informal book circulation among personal and academic contacts was increasingly replaced by organised merchant networks. Their work was not without risk: another merchant who supplied books to the royal library had to go on the run after being accused of importing poison to kill one of Regent Morton’s enemies, while another had his books seized by English pirates.
By happy coincidence, when I attended the Early Scottish Book History Conference in Dundee to give a paper on Scottish bookbinding, I heard Dr Jade Scott’s paper on the book-buying of the Jacobean politician Annas Keith. She mentioned that she had come across an obscure figure named George Hopper in Annas Keith’s household accounts. I was thrilled to be able to supply my findings on his identity and career, and for us to discover this fascinating connection between the formation of the libraries of King James VI and that of one of the most significant women in his orbit.
If you are interested in reading more about Hopper and the formation of King James’s Scottish royal library, I have published more on these topics in ‘‘What needs his Majesty so many books?’ The Scottish Library of James VI’, History Scotland (Spring 2025) and ‘Buying a Library for King James VI’ in The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Volume 1, Part II: From the Earliest Times to 1707 – Networks, Collections and Genre (2026).
I would like to thank the Scottish History Society for awarding me the Alasdair Ross Prize and enabling me to carry out this additional research.
Alexandra Plane