Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

Thomas Warton in his History of English Poetry. He was a friend of Isaac D’Israeli and
of Dawson Turner and his London home with its vast collections of manuscripts and
antiquities was a popular resource for other scholars to whom he was generous. He could
be difficult but Bulkeley Bandinel then Bodley Librarian cultivated him tactfully and as a
result his collections were bequeathed, largely, to Oxford.
John Gage (1786-1842)
Gage, the youngest son of Sir Thomas Gage of Hengrave Hall in Suffolk took the
name of Rokewode when he succeeded to the baronetcy. He is the only one of my
subjects who belonged to the gentry. As a Catholic, however, he remained something of
an outsider, unable to attend university. He studied law but his antiquarian interests were
his main preoccupation and he was Director of the Society of Antiquaries from 1829-42.
Gage specialised in the history of Suffolk, publishing his History and Antiquities of
Hengrave in 1822 and History and Antiquities of Hingoe Hundred in 1838. He also
edited the Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond which was published by the Camden Society
and formed the basis of Carlyle’s Past and Present. His correspondence, in the
Cambridge University Library, reveals him as an amiable spider at the centre of an
extensive web of antiquarian connections. He knew most of the subjects of this thesis and
is the only one who seems to have been on terms of close friendship with Langlois.
E-H Langlois (1777-1835)
Born at Pont de l’Arche near Rouen, Langlois was the son of an official in the
Royal Department of Woods and Waters. His career was determined by the Revolution.
When his father lost his job in 1793 he allowed Langlois to fulfil his ambition to go to
Paris and become a painter. He studied with David, was briefly imprisoned under
Napoleon, conscripted into the army and finally returned to Rouen after the war with a
wife and children. Living in an abandoned convent in terrible poverty Langlois
assembled a collection of antiquities and fragments from buildings destroyed in the
Revolution. He wrote a number of books but found it difficult to complete his work. Most
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