Editing Cotton library (section)

===Ashburnham House fire===
[[File:CottonGenesisFragment26vAbrahamAndAngels.JPG|thumb|right|The [[Cotton Genesis]] was badly damaged in the Ashburnam House fire.]]

On 23 October 1731, fire broke out in Ashburnham House, in which 13 manuscripts were lost, while over 200 others faced severe destruction and water damage.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.uky.edu/~kiernan/eBeo_archives/articles90s/ajp-pms.htm | title=Their Present Miserable State of Cremation }}</ref> Bentley escaped while clutching the priceless ''[[Codex Alexandrinus]]'' under one arm, a scene witnessed and later described in a letter to [[Charlotte Clayton, Baroness Sundon|Charlotte, Lady Sundon]], by [[Robert Freind]], headmaster of [[Westminster School]]. The manuscript of ''[[The Battle of Maldon]]'' was destroyed, and that of ''[[Beowulf]]'' was heavily damaged.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Library: An Illustrated History|last=Murray|first=Stuart A. P.|publisher=Skyhouse|year=2009|isbn=978-1616084530|location=Chicago}}</ref> Also severely damaged was the Byzantine [[Cotton Genesis]],<ref name=":0" /> the illustrations of which nevertheless remain an important record of Late Antique [[iconography]]. One of the collection's two original [[Exemplified copy|exemplifications]] of the 1215 [[Magna Carta]], ''Cotton Charter XIII.31A'', was shrivelled in the fire, and its seal badly melted.<ref name="mc">{{cite book |editor1-last=Breay |editor1-first=Claire |editor1-link=Claire Breay |editor2-last=Harrison |editor2-first=Julian |title=Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy |publisher=The British Library |location=London |year=2015 |pages=66, 216–219 |isbn=978-0712357647 }}</ref>

[[Arthur Onslow]], [[Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom)|Speaker of the House of Commons]], as one of the statutory trustees of the library, directed and personally supervised a remarkable programme of [[Conservation and restoration of parchment|restoration]] within the resources of his time. The published report of this work is of major importance in bibliography.<ref name="Commons1732">{{cite book|author=Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons|title=A Report from the Committee Appointed to View the Cottonian Library|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m3pbAAAAQAAJ|year=1732|publisher=House of Commons}}</ref> Copies of some of the lost works had been made, and many of those damaged could be restored in the nineteenth century. However, these early conservation efforts were not always successful: bungled attempts to clean the Magna Carta exemplification rendered it largely illegible to the naked eye.<ref name="mc"/><ref>{{cite web |last=Duffy |first=Christina |title=Revealing the secrets of the burnt Magna Carta |url=http://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/revealing-the-secrets-of-the-burnt-magna-carta |publisher=British Library |access-date=13 October 2023 |archive-date=18 June 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160618145117/http://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/revealing-the-secrets-of-the-burnt-magna-carta |url-status=dead }}</ref> More recently, advances in [[multispectral]] photography have enabled imaging specialists at the [[British Library]] led by Christina Duffy to scan and upload images of previously illegible early English manuscripts damaged in the fire.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Duffy|first1=Christina|title=Revealing hidden information using multispectral imaging|url=http://blogs.bl.uk/collectioncare/2013/07/revealing-hidden-information-using-multispectral-imaging.html|website=British Library: Collection Care|access-date=18 September 2017}}</ref> Images will form part of [[Fragmentarium]] (Digital Research Laboratory for Medieval Manuscript Fragments),<ref>{{cite web|title=Digital Research Laboratory for Medieval Manuscript Fragments|url=http://fragmentarium.unifr.ch|website=Fragmentarium|access-date=18 September 2017}}</ref> an international collaboration of libraries and research institutions to catalogue and collate vulnerable manuscript fragments, making them available for research under a [[Creative Commons]] [[public domain license]].<ref>{{cite web|last1=Dunning|first1=Andrew|title=Fragmentarium and the burnt Anglo-Saxon fragments|url=http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2017/09/fragmentarium-and-the-burnt-anglo-saxon-fragments.html|website=British Library: Medieval Manuscripts|access-date=18 September 2017}}</ref>