Brian Twyne

Brian Twyne ( – 4 July 1644) was an English antiquary and an academic at the University of Oxford. After being educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and becoming a Fellow of the college in 1606, he published his one main work, a history of the university, in 1608. This was designed to prove that Oxford was older than Cambridge University, and has been described by a modern writer as a "remarkable achievement for a young scholar of twenty-eight."

In the light of Camden's publication, Twyne began collecting material to re-establish Oxford as the senior university. He was given permission by the university to borrow documents for this purpose in May 1606. The work (running to 456 pages in three volumes) relies upon archive documents held by the university, the colleges and the city of Oxford, as well as material from three Oxfordshire abbeys and the works of Homer, Aristotle, Cicero, and other classical authors. He submitted his work for inspection by a university committee in early 1608. It was approved, with one of the four committee members praising the book's style and learning. Gibson described it as "a remarkable achievement for a young scholar of twenty-eight." One more recent history of the university says that "even in his own time Twyne's opinions on this subject [i.e. when Oxford was founded] were received with amused tolerance by the better informed of English antiquaries."

Twyne dedicated the work to Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset: the 1st Earl had died earlier in 1608. It was published by the university printer, Joseph Barnes, who would have required guarantees for the costs: Gibson's view was that these were probably provided by Thomas Allen, with the Earl paying "the customary honorarium" as dedicatee.

Work at Oxford Twyne studied manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, founded by Thomas Bodley in 1602. Thomas Twyne, his father, gave books to the library. However, Twyne was displeased with the work of Thomas James, the first Bodley's Librarian, complaining to the library authorities in November 1613 about missing manuscripts, inaccurate records and delays in accessing new acquisitions, and about the librarian's poor attendance and his habit of scattering his papers around the desks. James was admonished for his conduct.

Thomas Anyan became President of Corpus Christi in 1614, and he appointed Twyne as Greek lecturer.

He did not secure any further academic advancement: he hoped to be appointed Camden Professor of Ancient History on the death or resignation of Degory Wheare (the first professor). According to Twyne, Camden promised this to him in a conversation in 1623, and a patent sealed by Camden in March of that year to this effect was read out to the university's governing body in January 1624. Camden, however, wrote to Wheare shortly after the patent was signed and said that he had been tricked by some "foul play" and did not intend to appoint Twyne. In the end, Twyne died three years before Wheare.

In 1624, a House of Commons committee criticised Anyan for, amongst other things, excessive lenience to Twyne for his drunkenness. Twyne was first appointed to a 28-strong committee for revising the statutes in 1614, although nothing came of their work. He led efforts to improve the archives of Corpus Christi in 1627 and 1628, producing 30 volumes of manuscript transcriptions of title deeds. Thereafter, he sought to obtain royal confirmation of Oxford's rights and privileges, to keep the city of Oxford subordinate to the university, and to match the position of Cambridge. Under Twyne and his successor as Keeper (Gerard Langbaine), the archives were moved into one of the rooms in the Tower of the Five Orders in the Bodleian Library; three of the wooden presses that were built at that time to store them are still in use.

Twyne advised the university authorities in their disputes with the city fathers in relation to courts, licensing, markets and other matters. As a result, his actions in rejecting even minor claims by the local inhabitants sometimes led to worthless litigation. He complained that his allowance was not enough to employ someone to carry out tasks such as making the fire, but his father was unsympathetic. His manuscript collections amounted to 24 main volumes (about 12,000 pages) with other supplementary material. He was buried in the chapel of Corpus Christi. A hard-working researcher and collector of manuscripts, he was highly regarded and consulted by the legal scholar John Selden, the historian William Camden and Archbishop James Ussher. Twyne's collections, he said, were "one of his greatest achievements, and in themselves a monument." They were used extensively by Antony Wood in his history of the university but (noted Gibson) without proper credit being given. As it happens, many of the town's medieval records were lost in the early 17th century and are only known because Twyne had copied them into his collection.

When Twyne was commemorated in 1934, James Patrick Ronaldson Lyell gave the Keeper of the Archives a copy of Twyne's Antiquitatis academiae Oxoniensis apologia.