SIR THOMAS ISHAM AN ENGLISH COLLECTOR IN ROME IN 1677–8

Abstract

Abstract It is a sign of the growing popularity of the Grand Tour that in 1677 the use of foreign travel was publicly debated at Oxford. Among the English travellers then in Italy was Sir Thomas Isham (1657–81), third baronet of Lamport in Northamptonshire, who had been a gentleman commoner at Christ Church in the previous year. As he had already been enjoying the pleasures of Rome for six months, he was probably amused rather than disconcerted to read in a letter from the agent in charge of his estate at home that ‘One of ye prime questions at ye encaenia in Oxford: was whither travelling be good for English Gentlmn.’ Sir Thomas had left England in October, 1676, when he was nineteen, with his twenty-five-year-old cousin the Reverend Zacchaeus Isham as his tutor, on a tour of Italy, Switzerland and France which was to last over two and a half years. About seventeen months (December, 1676-May, 1678) were spent in Italy—nearly a year longer than the time which English tourists normally devoted to the giro ...