A rare find

This turned up on ebay last week, so I bought it, and it's quite a find.  The only other copy we know of is in the Master's house.
It's a small book with a flimsy and damaged cover, but the inside is in good condition.  Published by the Charterhouse trustees in 1906, just 4 years after the trustees had their first meeting, it contains documents, and lists of documents, most of which are in the archives, but in a really useful form.
First there are the medieval charters and licenses, in translation but some of them with the original Latin as well.  They start with the License in mortmain of 3 August 1383 for the site of the Charterhouse.  Then comes the foundation deed of 1 March 1384.  The preface states: "The original of the following charter is preserved amongst the records in the custody of the Charterhouse Trustees, in the 9th drawer of the Charterhouse deed chest.  It is written on one skin of vellum.  The seal of Sir Michael De-La-Pole is appended by a plaited cord of red and purple silk.  Space has been left for an ornamental initial "O", which, however, has never been inserted.  On the back are endorsements recording its exhibition at Archiepiscopal visitations in 1567 and 1579, and a further endorsement recording its production before a Commission at Beverley in 1758, in a Chancery suit between the Hull Corporation and the Rev. John Clarke, the then Master of the Hospital.  There is a copy in Latin, made in 1572, amongst the Corporation records (B.B. iv. ff. 90-93), but its readings cannot always be trusted.  In a manuscript book of the time of Henry VIII, amongst the Charterhouse records, there is a translation into English of the entire deed, which translation is substantially identical with the versions printed in the histories of Hull by Hadley and Tickell.  There is an entirely independent translation in Mr. John Travis-Cook's History of the Charterhouse (pp. 29-39)."  

I have yet to discover what happened to the deed chest itself.  The first reference to such a chest comes in 1847, when two of them were bought by the Aldermen to store all the documents and deeds of the charity.
After the foundation deed comes the full text of the 1901 scheme of governance which set up the trustees and the rules under which the Charterhouse was to be run.  It's a long and very detailed text and there's a summary of it in an earlier post.
Then there's a list of all the properties which the charity owned at November 1901, with their current tenants, and the other sources of income.  There are farms and other pieces of land at Hessle, Willerby and Cottingham, and various properties in Hull; shops (including a public house and a malt kiln), warehouses and offices; and finally a list of investments.
The final section is a comprehensive list of all the records.  As well as those listed above, these are mostly conveyances.  We can glean some interesting details from the list, including the fact that the chalk quarry in Hessle, which only closed in the mid-20th century, was already in operation in 1337.
It's always worth checking ebay!

Cook and Wildridge; History and Art

My first step in researching the history of the Hull Charterhouse was to read a borrowed copy of a book by John Cook, The History of God's House of Hull, commonly called the Charterhouse, published in Hull in 1882.  It remains the only published book on the subject, and a few copies are still to be found.  John Cook was a Hull solicitor, born in 1850.  He tried his hand at writing fiction, not very successfully, and then turned to the story of the institution (for which he was retained as solicitor).
The book is very important, but there are problems with it.  At times, particularly when dealing with the earliest period, it relies on documents which Cook obviously had access to but which have now disappeared.  We have to take Cook's word for it, which is never satisfactory.  More important is what he misses out.  He has little or no interest in the inmates, so we learn nothing about the conditions in which people lived, or even how they came to be awarded a place.  In his defence, he was reliant on many of the same records which the modern historian has, and they tell us very little; but he shows no curiosity about the residents even of his own day.  The Masters are the important people.
The main problem, however, is Cook's focus on piety.  The Charterhouse is a Christian institution, and its Masters are all well-intentioned men of God.  It was a common approach at the time; there are many locally-published books about individuals which read like hagiographies.  But it leads to distortions.  This is most obvious when we consider the corruption which set in over the awarding of places in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  Cook clearly knew about it; but he chose to swerve around it.

John Cook had an admirer in Thomas Tindall Wildridge.  Two years after Cook published his History, Wildridge published Old and New Hull, containing short articles about the city's people ("Local Worthies" in his subtitle) and its institutions.  He is fulsome about Cook's work:

"This work, in the first place, is on absolutely reliable authority, and while preserving scrupulous accuracy, is rich in well-conceived argument and conjecture; in addition, it is written with such power and endearing picturesqueness as to be the model of a topographical book. Under the fierce light which his patient investigation caused to beat upon the little Kingdom of the Charter House, errors in the accounts of all previous historians are plainly seen."

There is more in the same vein.
Wildridge includes his own article on the Charterhouse in his book.  He gives a complete transcript of a long document from 1451, an agreement between the Prior and the Mayor; but he does not modernise the spelling so it is hard to follow, and not very rewarding.  Wildridge was an archivist and so he demonstrates his access to documents by giving us a good deal of financial information.
More interesting, however, is a drawing, his "Bird's-Eye View of the Charterhouse".  Wildridge had ambitions to be an artist.  His few surviving paintings show little talent, and when he makes drawings from portraits to illustrate his book they are not particularly good copies.  But he was a good draughtsman and his picture is accurate.

However, a mystery surrounds another print. one which is displayed inside the entrance of the Charterhouse today.  It purports to be the ruins of the entrance to the old priory, and bears the signature "TTW".  The assumption has been that it's by Wildridge, although it doesn't appear in his book.  If it is by Wildridge, or even if it isn't, it's a deceit.  We know that such an archway existed at least up to the end of the 18th century.  Tickell's book on the history of Hull shows a picture, dated 1796, of the 1780 Charterhouse building and the ruin is there in the background, roughly where Charterhouse Lane now becomes Sykes Street.  Not only does the "TTW" drawing look nothing like it; 
it is actually a meticulous copy of a 1776 engraving of the ruined archway of Coverham Abbey.