John Bagford was born about 1650. The exact date of his birth is unknown, and he does not appear to have been acquainted with it himself, for a short time before his death he informed Mr. James Sotheby that he was either sixty-five or sixty-six years of age, he could not tell which. According to the belief of Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, he was born in Fetter Lane, London, and he was no doubt for some time a shoemaker, for in a very curious and entertaining little treatise on the Art of Shoemaking and Historical Account of Clouthing of ye foot, which is believed to have been written by him, and is now preserved among the Harleian manuscripts in the British Museum, the writer states that he was brought up to the 'craft of shoemaking.' This trade, however, he soon abandoned for a more congenial occupation, and he became a collector of books on commission for booksellers and amateurs. In pursuance of this work he made several journeys to the Continent, and acquired a great knowledge of books, prints, and literary curiosities. He was specially employed by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, Sir Hans Sloane, and John Moore, Bishop of Ely, who appear to have greatly appreciated his judgment, diligence, and honesty; and the last-named collector procured him, as some recompense for his services, admission into the Charterhouse. Nothing is known of Bagford's parents, and little of his domestic life, but he appears to have been married, for on the back of a leaf in one of the volumes of his collections we find the following memorandum in Bagford's writing: 'John, son of John and Elizabeth Bagford, was baptized 31st October 1675, in the parish of St. Anne, Blackfriars.' This son seems to have become a sailor in the Royal Navy, for in another volume in the same collections there is a power of attorney, dated April 6, 1713, signed by John Bagford, Junior, empowering his 'honoured father, John Bagford, Senior, of the parish of St. Sepulchre, in the county of Middlesex, bookseller,' to claim and receive from the Paymaster of Her Majesty's Navy his wages as a seaman in case of his death. Bagford, who took great interest in all descriptions of antiquities, was one of the little group of distinguished men who reconstituted in 1707 the Society of Antiquaries. He died, Dr. Birch informs us, at Islington on the 15th of May 1716, and was buried in the graveyard belonging to the Charterhouse.

During his researches for his employers Bagford amassed two great collections: one consisting of ballads, now known as the 'Bagford Ballads'; the other being a vast collection of leaves from manuscripts, title-pages and fragments of books, specimens of paper, book-plates, engravings, bindings, catalogues, advertisements, and various interesting and curious pieces. With the aid of these materials Bagford intended to write a history of printing, and in 1707 he published his Proposals for an Historical Account of that most universally celebrated as well as useful Art of Typography. The work, which was also to contain a history of bookbinding, paper-making, etc., was, however, never published, and it has been often stated that Bagford was quite incompetent to carry out such an undertaking. This may possibly have been the case, for although he was certainly a man of much ability, and possessed an extensive knowledge of books, he had received but little education. Several of his contemporaries, however, held a different opinion, and among them Hearne, who repeatedly expresses in his works his admiration of both Bagford's genius and his collections.

The method of compiling a history of printing from a collection of title-pages appears to be both a clumsy and a costly one, but it seems probable from entries in the diary of Oldys, and from Gough's memoir of Ames, that that bibliographer wrote his Typographical Antiquities with the aid of similar materials.

Bagford has been subjected to very severe censure for mutilating books for the purpose of forming his collection of title-pages. Mr. Blades, in his work The Enemies of Books, accuses him of being 'a wicked old biblioclast who went about the country, from library to library, tearing away title-pages from rare books of all sizes'; and Dr. Dibdin in Bibliomania states that he 'was the most hungry and rapacious of all book and print collectors.' The testimony of Hearne (who knew Bagford well, and who was also amply qualified to judge both of his merits and demerits), however, is very different. He writes: 'It was very laudable in my Friend, Mr. John Bagford (who I think was born in Fetter Lane, London), to employ so much of his time, as he did, in collecting Remains of Antiquity. Indeed he was a man of very surprising genius, and had his education (for he was first a shoemaker, and afterwards for some time a bookseller) been equal to his natural genius, he would have proved a much greater man than he was. And yet, without this education, he was, certainly, the greatest man in the world in his way.... 'Tis very remarkable, that, in collecting, his care did not extend itself to Books and to the fragments of Books, only, but even to the very Covers, and to the Bosses and Clasps; and all this, that he might, with the greater ease, compile the History of Printing, which he had undertaken, but did not finish. In this noble Work he intended a Discourse about Binding,... and another about the Art of making paper, in both of which his observations were very accurate.'

A great number of the title-pages and fragments collected by Bagford are evidently taken from books which could be purchased in his day for a few shillings, many of them probably for a few pence; while it is possible that some may have been salvage from the Great Fire of 1666, when we know immense quantities of books were burnt or damaged. The collections, it is true, contain fragments of the Gutenberg Bible, various Caxtons, and other rare books, but there is no reason to think that these were abstracted from complete copies; it is much more likely that they were odd leaves which Bagford had picked up, while the leather stains on some of the most valuable show that they once formed part of the padding of old bindings. Many of the books were probably acquired by Bagford when he took part in the book-hunting expeditions of the Duke of Devonshire, the Earls of Oxford, Sunderland, and other collectors, who amused themselves every Saturday during the winter in rambling through various quarters of the town in search of additions to their libraries. After Bagford's death Hearne was very anxious to obtain his collections, as he wished to publish 'a book from them, for the service of the public, and the honour of Mr. Bagford,' but much to his chagrin he was forestalled by Wanley, Lord Oxford's librarian, who acquired them for his employer's library, and they formed part of the Harleian Manuscripts, etc., purchased in 1753 for the British Museum. Wanley, however, does not appear to have secured the whole of Bagford's papers, as the Sloane collection contains four volumes of manuscripts and printed matter which belonged to him, and the Bodleian Library possesses some Indulgences which he acquired and gave to Hearne.

The Bagford collections in the British Museum consist of one hundred and twenty-nine[51] volumes, including three of ballads. The manuscript pieces are contained in thirty-six folios; the printed pieces in sixty-three folios, twenty-one quartos, and nine octavos. Among the more important manuscripts are Bagford's Commonplace Book; his Book of Accounts; his Account of Public and Private Libraries; Collections in reference to Printing; Names of old English Printers, with lists of the works which passed through their hands; an Account of Paper; Patents granted to Printers in England; Observations on the History of Printing; Lives of famous Engravers, etc. The collection also contains a large number of fragments of early Bibles, Service Books, Decretals, Lives of Saints, etc. These are almost entirely of vellum, and some of them are as early as the eighth century.

Among the printed fragments is a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible,[52] portions of the Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, the Polychronicon, the Book of Fame, and many other books from the presses of Caxton, Machlinia, Rood and Hunte, Pynson, Wynkyn de Worde, and other early printers, both English and foreign.

The maps in the collection are especially important and interesting, including a very rare one sometimes found in Hakluyt's Navigations and Discoveries of the English Nation, printed in the years 1599 and 1600, and worth at least two hundred pounds;[53] and the even more valuable celestial and terrestrial planispheres by John Blagrave of Reading, which are believed to be unique. There are also some rare documents relating to the Post Office; a number of early book-plates; some fine specimens of English, French, and German stamped bindings of the sixteenth century; several volumes of Chinese, marbled, and other papers; early almanacks; a quantity of engravings of towns, costumes, trades, furniture, etc.; curious advertisements of tobacco, tea, quack medicines, etc.; specimens of fine writing; and many other miscellaneous papers of much interest.

Bagford was the author of a letter on the antiquities of London, prefixed to the first volume of Hearne's edition of Leland's Collectanea; and also of an Account of London Libraries, first printed in 1708 in The Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs for the Curious. This little brochure was continued by Oldys, and the complete work published by Mr. James Yeowell in 1862. The Essay on the Invention of Printing, by Mr. John Bagford, in vol. XXV. of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, was, Dibdin says, drawn up by Wanley. The collection of ballads has been edited by the Rev. J.W. Ebsworth for the Ballad Society.