Monthly Archives: January 2026

The Broomfield Bible of Charles I

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To mark the anniversary of the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649, Archive Assistant Desmond Crone researched the Broomfield Bible which was created for King Charles I and presented to his librarian, Patrick Young.

A document in a sumptuous, embroidered cover showing the Royal Arms, donated to the parish of Broomfield by Sarah Atwood, a granddaughter of Patrick Young, the superintendent of the King’s library, in 1723.

The Bible was almost lost – Richenda Christy in the Essex Review of 1907 quotes a letter of 1892 from Colonel William James Lucas of Witham, member of the Essex Archaeological Society, relating how he had arranged for the font to be restored from the vicarage yard to the church, and also how he had picked up from the floor a volume in a dirty old brown paper cover and feeling the embossed cover through the paper realised that it was not rubbish.

Photograph of ornately decorated bible. It has a red background with a lion and unicorn embroidered in gold thread. There is a coat of arms in the centre and the letters "C" and "R" at the top.
Photograph of the spine of a bible.
Photograph of ornately decorated bible. It has a red background with a lion and unicorn embroidered in gold thread. There is a coat of arms in the centre and the letters "C" and "R" at the top.

According to Christy’s article, during the years of the Commonwealth Patrick Young lived with his daughter Elizabeth and her husband John Atwood at the Parsonage house in Broomfield, a house that was later inhabited by Philip Morant, the Essex historian.

Photograph of inside front page of the Broomfield Bible. There is a handwritten note from Sarah Atwood pasted onto the top righthand corner of the page.
Note from Sarah Atwood, grandaughter of Patrick Young D/P 248/28/1 “This Bible was King Charles the First’s afterwards was my Grandfathers, Patrick Young Esq, who was Library Keeper to His Majesty, now given to the church at Broomfield by me. Sarah Atwood Aug’t the 4th, 1723.”

The Burgess Roll of Dundee in Scotland has been transcribed and annotated by the Friends of Dundee City Archives. It states that Patrick was given the freedom of the Burgh in 1618 having shown “zeal in the service of the commonweal, and for the mode in which he has munificently increased the library of the Burgh.” He was one of the top Greek scholars of his time, and was Librarian to Prince Henry, King James VI and I and King Charles I.

Patrick was born in 1584 and was awarded his MA by the University of St Andrews in 1603. In addition to his role as royal librarian he held various church appointments during his career: he was a chaplain at All Souls College, Oxford and held rectories in Middlesex and Denbighshire as well as the posts of Prebendary and Treasurer of St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

He died at Broomfield in 1652 and is buried in the chancel of the parish church.

There are House of Lords records showing that he was paid a substantial amount for his work for the King to prepare an edition of the Codex Alexandrinus (which he did not complete), one of the earliest and most complete texts of the Bible which came to England in 1628 as a gift to the King from Cyril Lucaris, the Patriarch of Constantinople, presented to Thomas Roe, the English ambassador at the court of the Ottoman Sultan.

Photograph of the title page of the Broomfield Bible. A square in the centre of the page contains details of the contents of the Bible and information about the printers. The border is decorated with illustrations of sculptures of religious men.
A photograph of the New Testament title page in the Broomfield Bible. In the centre is some information about the contents of the New Testament section, as well as information about the printers. The text box is decorated with intricate patterns.

  • ‘King Charles I’s Bible at Broomfield’, Richenda Christy. Essex Review 16, 1907, pp. 89-93.
  • 1618, Magister Patrick Young, King’s Librarian City of Dundee Burgess Book
  • ‘Young [Junius], Patrick (1584-1652), librarian and scholar’, Elizabethanne Boran. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published 2004.