Bertram Ashburnham, 4th Earl of Ashburnham

Bertram Ashburnham, 4th Earl of Ashburnham (23 November 1797 – 22 June 1878) was a British peer. He was the fourth son of George Ashburnham, 3rd Earl of Ashburnham. As the eldest son still living when his father died in 1830, he succeeded as Earl of Ashburnham, Viscount St. Asaph and Baron of Ashburnham.

He married Katherine Charlotte Baillie, daughter of George Baillie and Mary Pringle, on 8 January 1840 in Earlston, Berwick, Scotland. They had four daughters and seven sons, including: Bertram (28 October 1840 – 15 January 1913), the 5th Earl, who succeeded his father in 1878; and Thomas (8 April 1855 – 12 May 1924), the 6th Earl, who succeeded his brother in 1913 when the latter died without a son.

The Ashburnham library

The 4th Earl of Ashburnham was a bibliophile who amassed an important collection of printed books and manuscripts and was known as "one of the great collectors of the nineteenth century". His incunabula included two copies of the Gutenberg Bible and approximately thirty volumes that had been printed by William Caxton. Ashburnham's heir, the 5th Earl, sold off the book collection in a series of auctions in 1897 and 1898, realising a total of £62,712 for the 4075 lots sold. In 1845 Libri offered to sell his collection of manuscripts to the British Museum. Frederic Madden, head of the Museum's manuscript department, recommended the purchase but the Treasury would not grant the necessary funds. Libri then offered the collection to Lord Ashburnham, who purchased it in March 1847 for £8,000. Notable among the manuscripts was a 7th-century illuminated manuscript of the Pentateuch which Libri had stolen from the library at Tours, where it was known as the Tours Pentateuch. Since its acquisition by Lord Ashburnham it has been called the Ashburnham Pentateuch. The collection also included manuscripts of Dante and Napoleon's correspondence. In 1850 Libri, who had fled to England, was convicted in absentia of theft by a French court. The French government asked Ashburnham to return the Libri manuscripts, offering to reimburse the amount he had paid, but he refused on the grounds that he believed Libri was innocent and had not received a fair trial.

Ashburnham was not accused or suspected of knowingly purchasing stolen goods. He eventually conceded, based on evidence put forward by Paul Meyer and Léopold Delisle of the Bibliothèque nationale, that some of the Libri and Barrois manuscripts had been stolen but he declined to return them to their rightful owners.