27 March 1776, and lasting for nine working days. A priced copy of the catalogue ('Bibliotheca Ratcliffiana') is in the British Museum, and the collection, which comprised many old English black-letter books, thirty Caxtons, and some fine manuscripts, is described as 'the very essence of old Divinity, Poetry, Romances, and Chronicles.' There were only 1,675 articles, but many of them consisted of numerous volumes. Four lots (10 to 13) comprised 155 plays. The last article but one was 'Mr. Ratcliffe's Manuscript Catalogue of the rare old Black Letter and other curious and uncommon Books,' in four volumes, which fetched 7l. 15s. The entire collection would at the present day have realised more pounds than it actually produced shillings. The Caxtons fetched on an average 9l. each.
[Nichols's Lit. Anecdotes, iii. 621–2, viii. 456–7; Gent. Mag. 1812, pt. i. p. 114; Dibdin's Bibliomania (ed. 1876), pp. 392–4; Notes and Queries, 4th ser. i. 556.]
RATCLIFFE or RATLIFFE, THOMAS (d. 1599), divine, matriculated as a pensioner of Peterhouse, Cambridge, in June 1573, his christian name being erroneously given as Robert. He migrated to Trinity College, and proceeded B.A. in 1578. He afterwards studied divinity, and was elected in 1585 a chaplain of St. Saviour's, Southwark, where he officiated and 'caterkised on the Saboth day afternoon,' at a salary of twenty marks a year (Vestry Minute-books). When St. Saviours-with-St. Mary-Overie became the parish church, Ratcliffe continued to act as priest or minister. The preface of his 'Short Svmme of the whole Catechisme wherein the Question is propounded and answered for the greater ease of the common people and children of Saint Saueries in Southwarke,' is dated from Southwark, 22 Oct. 1592. The work is extremely rare. Watt and Ames (Typogr. Antiq. ed. Herbert, 1277) both mention an octavo edition published by William Barley, Gracechurch Street, London, 1594, which is presumably the first. The Bodleian Library contains another octavo edition, London, 1619, but the British Museum has only a copy of a later, possibly altered, duodecimo edition printed in London by Edw. Allde in 1620. Ratcliffe died at Southwark, and was buried at St. Saviour's on 6 Feb. 1599.
[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 580; Manning and Bray's Hist. of Surrey, iii. 580; Hist. and Antiquities of St. Saviour's, Southwark, by the Rev. W. Thompson (pp. 89, 91), who also kindly contributed information from the register and vestry minutes.]
RATHBONE, HANNAH MARY (1798–1878), authoress of 'The Diary of Lady Willoughby,' daughter of Joseph Reynolds by his wife Deborah Dearman, was born near Wellington in Shropshire on 5 July 1798. Her grandfather was Richard Reynolds (1735–1816) [q. v.] In 1817 Hannah Mary Reynolds married her half-cousin, Richard Rathbone, a son of William Rathbone [q. v.] By him she had six children.
Although during the greater part of her married life Mrs. Rathbone's health was delicate, she sedulously cultivated her fine natural faculties. Her early training in drawing and painting she specially applied to minute work, and she excelled in illuminating on vellum from old manuscript designs. She contributed a series of charming designs of small birds to 'The Poetry of Birds' (Liverpool, 1832, 4to), and about the same time published a selection of pen-and-ink drawings from Pinelli's etchings of Italian peasantry. Later in life she took to landscape in water-colours. In 1840 she made her first modest literary venture by publishing a collection of pieces in verse entitled 'Childhood,' some of which were from her own hand; and in 1841 there followed 'Selections from the Poets' (12mo).
'So much of the Diary of Lady Willoughby, as relates to her Domestic History, and to the Eventful Period of the Reign of Charles the First,' the work which gained celebrity for its authoress, was published anonymously in 1844; a second and a third edition following in 1845, and a New York edition in the same year. Influenced by her father's tastes, she had read many histories and memoirs of the Civil war and adjacent periods, and her publisher (Thomas Longman) took great pride in bringing out the 'Diary' as an exact reproduction of a book of the seventeenth century, in which it was supposed to be written. He had a new fount specially cast at the Chiswick Press. In some quarters the 'Diary' was at once accepted as genuine; in others, author and publisher incurred indignant reproof as having conspired in an intentional deception. Readers speculated on the identity of the writer; and Southey, Lord John Manners, and Mr. John Murray were in turn suggested. In the third edition the publishers and author inserted a joint note avowing the real character of the book. In 1847 Mrs. Rathbone issued a sequel under the title 'Some further Portions of the Diary of Lady Willoughby which do relate to her Domestic History and to the Events of the latter Years of the Reign of King Charles the First, the Protectorate,
