Bookplate of the historian and author of The decline and fall of the Roman Empire from a copy of Walter Harte's The history of the life of Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, Sirnamed, the Great (1759). See Geoffrey Keynes, The library of Edward Gibbon, 1940, p. 145 for further details.

The first volume of the Library's copy of Robert Fludd's Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia (1617-1621) bears a dedicatory inscription to John Williams by Fludd himself.

The Elizabethan polymath, humanist and spiritualist John Dee, who studied at St John's, amassed a huge library of at least 3,000 printed volumes, as well as a large number of manuscripts, which he initially housed in his residence at Mortlake. Almost as soon as he departed for Poland to embark on that period of his life which caused most controversy, his communications with spirits, his house was raided and many books were stolen.

The gold-stamped arms of Sir Walter Chetwynd, historian of Staffordshire and antiquary, from a copy of Aristotle's Rhetoric (London, 1619).

The autographs of Thomas Cartwright, puritan controversialist, and Hugh Broughton, divine and Hebraic scholar, who both studied at St John's and became Fellows of the College, from the front fly-leaf of an edition of Hesychius' Lexikon (1521), which also has a contemporary blind-stamped binding.

Two bookplates on the front fly-leaf of a tract on the Lord's supper from 1641. The first belongs to Henry Ellacombe, a pioneer of campanology, and the second to Thomas Brushfield, a specialist in lunacy, who pioneered relatively humane treatments for patients at Surrey County Asylum, including non-restraint.

The bookplate of Joshua Barnes, Greek scholar and antiquarian, which is to be found in two volumes in the Library. Barnes composed various works which blended classical and biblical scholarship, including Gerania, a new discovery of a little sort of people called pygmies (1675), before publishing editions of various classical texts and works on English history.

Evidence of the exchange of books as gifts between scholars is to be found in several volumes in St John's associated with Roger Ascham. These comprise four volumes given by Ascham, each bearing a dedicatory epistle of several pages in his fine handwriting, as well as one given to him. The volumes he gave were destined for three recipients. Two were given in 1554 to Cuthbert Tunstall (1474-1559), initially envoy to the Duke of Burgundy, and later Bishop of Durham, who survived the reigns and changing religious alliegances of four Tudor monarchs.

One of three volumes in St John's Library bound for the seventeenth century antiquary and collector Ralph Sheldon, who built up a fine library at his home in Warwickshire. Two of these were given by Richard Duffield, another by Hugh Wharton Gatty.

Bookplate of Joseph Smith, book collector, patron, and British Consul in Venice, from an edition of Madame Riccoboni's Recueil de pièces détachées (1765).