The Rev. Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, to whom the British Museum is indebted for some of its most precious collections, was the son of Colonel Mordaunt Cracherode, who commanded the Marines in Anson's voyage round the world. He was born at Taplow in 1730, and was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, taking the degree of B.A. in 1750, and that of M.A. in 1753. After leaving the University he took holy orders, and for some time was curate of Binsey, near Oxford, but he did not seek any preferment in the Church. On the death of his father he inherited a fortune of about three thousand pounds a year, which enabled him to acquire a library of not less than four thousand five hundred volumes, remarkable for their rarity and beauty; seven portfolios of drawings by the great masters, and a hundred portfolios of prints, many of which were almost priceless; and in addition to these a splendid collection of coins and gems, and a cabinet of minerals. Mr. Cracherode, who never married, was a shy, retiring man, who lived entirely among his collections, and it is said that he never mounted a horse, nor travelled a greater distance than from London to Oxford. One great drawback to the happiness of his quiet life was the dread that he might possibly be called upon to officiate at a coronation as the King's cupbearer, as his manor of Great Wymondley was held from the Crown subject to the performance of this duty. Dibdin, in his Bibliographical Decameron, says of him that he had 'a dash of the primitiveness of the old school about him, and that his manners were easy, polished and engaging. He was a thorough gentleman, and no mean scholar.' He devoted his life to his favourite pursuit, the formation of his collections; and Edwards, in his Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, tells us that—'For almost forty years it was his daily practice to walk from his house in Queen Square, Westminster, to the shop of Elmsly, a bookseller in the Strand, and thence to the still more noted shop of Tom Payne, by the "Mews-Gate." Once a week, he varied the daily walk by calling on Mudge, a chronometer-maker, to get his watch regulated. His excursions had, indeed, one other and not infrequent variety—dictated by the calls of Christian benevolence—but of these he took care to have no note taken.... The ruling passion kept its strength to the last. An agent was buying prints, for addition to the store, when the Collector was dying. About four days before his death, Mr. Cracherode mustered strength to pay a farewell visit to the old shop at the Mews-Gate. He put a finely printed Terence (from the press of Foulis) into one pocket, and a large paper Cebes into another; and then—with a longing look at a certain choice Homer, in the course of which he mentally, and somewhat doubtingly, balanced its charms with those of its twin brother in Queen Square—parted finally from the daily haunt of forty peripatetic and studious years.' Mr. Cracherode is also mentioned in the Pursuits of Literature, by T.J. Mathias:—

'Or must I, as a wit, with learned air,
Like Doctor Dibdin, to Tom Payne's repair,
Meet Cyril Jackson and mild Cracherode there?
"Hold!" cries Tom Payne, "that margin let me measure,
And rate the separate value of the treasure."
Eager they gaze. "Well, Sirs, the feat is done.
Cracherode's PoetÆ Principes have won."'

Mr. Cracherode, who was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries, and a Trustee of the British Museum, died at Queen Square on the 5th of April 1799, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He bequeathed the whole of his collections to the nation, with the exception of two books. A copy of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible was given to Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham, and a princeps Homer, once the property of De Thou, to Cyril Jackson, Dean of Christ Church; but these volumes ultimately rejoined their former companions in the British Museum.

The library formed by Mr. Cracherode is marvellously rich in choice copies of rare and early editions of the classics; a large proportion of them being printed on vellum. The volumes are almost always in faultless condition, and beautifully bound. Many of them were once to be found in such renowned collections as those of Grolier, Maioli, Henry II. of France and Diana of Poitiers, Katharine de' Medici, De Thou, Longepierre, Count von Hoym, etc.; and have bindings by Nicolas and Clovis Eve, Le Gascon, Padeloup, Derome, and Roger Payne. Among them are magnificent copies of the editions of Pliny printed at Venice by Joannes de Spira in 1469, and by Nicolas Jenson in 1476. The latter formerly belonged to Grolier, and the binding bears his well-known motto. A copy of the first edition of Æsop's Fables, printed at Milan about 1480, and a very beautiful example of the first edition of the Greek Anthology, on vellum, printed in capitals by Laurentius de Alopa at Florence in 1494, in the original binding, are also deserving of special notice. Other remarkable and interesting books are the Greek Grammar of Lascaris, printed at Milan in 1476; the Liber Psalmorum, printed at Milan in 1481; Maioli's copy of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, printed at Venice by Aldus in 1499; and a fine copy of Petrarch's Sonetti e Canzoni, on vellum, printed by Aldus in 1501, which formerly belonged to Isabella d'Este, wife of Gian-Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. This was the first Italian book printed in italic type.

The library contains three Caxtons: Boethius de Consolatione PhilosophiÆ, the Mirrour of the World, and the Boke of Eneydos.

A copy of Tyndale's New Testament on vellum, which once belonged to Queen Anne Boleyn, with her arms emblazoned on the title-page, and the words 'Anna Regina AngliÆ' painted in gold on the edges of the leaves, and a handsome Shakespeare first folio, ought also to be mentioned.

Mr. Cracherode's classical attainments were by no means inconsiderable, but his only writings were a Latin poem printed in the Carmina Quadragesimalia of 1748, and some Latin verses in the collection of the University of Oxford on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1751.

A portrait of Mr. Cracherode appears in Clarke's Repertorium Bibliographicum, and in Dibdin's Bibliographical Decameron. This was engraved, contrary to his express wishes, from a drawing made by Edridge for Lady Spencer. An explanation is given by Dr. Dibdin of the circumstances under which the likeness was reproduced.