Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Verneuil, John
VERNEUIL, JOHN (1583?–1647), sub-librarian of the Bodleian Library, was born at Bordeaux about 1583, and was educated at the protestant university of Montauban, where he graduated M.A. He is said by Haag (La France Protestante) to have become a refugee in England on account of his religion, but when admitted as a reader in the Bodleian Library his object in coming to this country is described as having been the furtherance of his studies. The entry in the register was as follows: ‘Jan. 31, 1608. Joh. Vernulius, A.M. in partibus transmarinis, et in Angliam in majorem bonarum artium profectum adventus’ (Wood MS. E. 5, Bodl. Libr.). He was at first (as we learn from the dedication to Sir Thomas, first baron Leigh, and his wife, of the translation of J. Cameron's tract, infra) ‘refreshed’ in England with a ‘liberal maintenance’ by Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh, and for some years ‘belonged,’ he says, to his grandson, the above-named first Lord Leigh. Wood tells us that he was afterwards assisted at Oxford by the authorities (among others) of Magdalen College. He was matriculated at Magdalen College at the age of twenty-five on 4 Nov. 1608, but did not proceed in the regular course of graduation, being at length only incorporated as M.A. from his native university on 13 Dec. 1625. He was appointed sub-librarian of the Bodleian in 1618, in which year entries are first found in his handwriting in the library registers (not, as stated by an evident misprint in the Annals of the Bodleian Libr., in 1647, which was the year of his death). In 1644 he was ill (apparently of the plague) for fourteen weeks. His death took place at his house at the Eastgate in Oxford, at the end of September 1647; he was buried on the 30th of that month in the church of St. Peter-in-the-East, ‘at which time,’ says Wood, ‘our public library lost an honest and useful servant, and his children a good father.’ Of his children, a son Peter paid over some money on his father's account to the library after his death. Verneuil was succeeded as sub-librarian of the Bodleian by John Berry, M.A., of Exeter College.
His publications were: 1. ‘A Sermon preached before the King's Maiesty at Greenwich, the 15th of Iune, 1615, by Master Peter du Moulin, newly translated out of French into English by I.V.,’ Oxford, 1620, 4to; dedicated to the curators of the Bodleian. 2. ‘A Tract of the Soveraigne Judge of Controversies in matters of Religion; by John Cameron … Divinity Professor in the Academie of Montauban; translated into English by John Vernevil, M.A.,’ Oxford, 1628, 4to. 3. ‘La descouverte de la cautelle du cœur de l'Homme, par Daniel Dyke; trad. de l'Anglois par Jean Vernueil’ (sic), Geneva, 1634, 12mo; dedicated to Charles Herbert, son of Philip, earl of Pembroke, on his leaving Oxford, which was at the age of fifteen. 4. ‘Catalogus interpretum S. Scripturæ … in bibl. Bodleiana; accessit elenchus auctorum … in libros Sententiarum, Aquinatis Summas,’ &c.; appended, anonymously, to John Rouse's ‘Appendix ad Catalogum Librorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana,’ Oxford, 4to, 1635. 5. ‘A nomenclator of such Tracts and Sermons as have beene printed or translated into English upon any place of Holy Scripture,’ Oxford, 1637, 12mo; 2nd edit., entitled ‘A nomenclator [&c.] now to be had in the most famous and publique Library of Sir Thomas Bodley in Oxford,’ Oxford, 1642, 12mo; dedicated ‘to the faithfull ministers of the Gospel.’ A translation by one ‘I. V.’ of a homily, by Phil. de Mornay, on St. Matthew xvi. 18, printed at Oxford in 1615, has been supposed to be his work (Madan, Early Oxford Press, 1895, p. 103), but the only ground for the reasonable supposition is the identity of initials.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. iii. 221; Haag's La France Protestante, 1859, ix. 470; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Macray's Annals of the Bodl. Libr. 2nd edit. 1890, pp. 98–9, 103–5, 486. In Clark's Register of the University of Oxford, 1887, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 399, we find John Vernulio admitted as a white-bread baker, 17 Jan. 1621–2. Possibly the sub-librarian was driven to eke out his subsistence for a time in this trade.]