VI THE HANCOCK MUSEUM AND ITS HISTORY 



museums — that of Newcastle excepted — are owned and 

 supported by municipalities. It is not that other natural 

 history societies have not formed their own museums. They 

 have done so in quite a number of cases up and down the 

 country. A good many of the museums so founded were 

 taken over by the towns after the passing of the Museums 

 and Gymnasiums Act, or at least formed the nucleus of town 

 museums started at that time. Others, instituted years ago 

 with a good deal of local enthusiasm, are now lingering on in 

 a neglected condition, only too often doing more harm than 

 good to the cause of natural history. Our local society is 

 therefore pardonably proud of its record, and of the fact that 

 its museum stands as practically the only successful instance 

 of " what private effort can do." 



As a matter of fact, the " private effort " to which the 

 present form of the museum is due was largely concentrated 

 about the year 1880, and was stimulated chiefly by the energy 

 of the man whose name the museum now bears. But the 

 history of the institution goes back very much further than 

 that — more than a hundred years further in fact. It was 

 about the year 1770 that Marmaduke Tunstall, a young 

 gentleman of fortune and leisure, began to form the private 

 museum which has developed, through many vicissitudes, 

 into the Hancock Museum of to-day. This Marmaduke 

 Tunstall came of an ancient and distinguished family. Sir 

 Thomas Tunstall received the manor of Thurland Tunstall, in 

 Lancashire, from Henry IV., and the family long flourished at 

 Thurland Castle. Scott mentions Brian Tunstall, the " stain- 

 less knight," in the sixth canto of Marmion ; and Sir Brian's 

 brother, Cuthbert Tunstall, was a celebrated Bishop of Durham 

 at the time of the Reformation. Marmaduke Tunstall himself 

 was the last of the line. He was of literary and scientific 

 tastes, and the collection that he brought together, though 

 particularly rich in birds, included also other objects of 

 natural history and ethnology, as well as a good many 

 antiquities. He began his collecting in London, and after- 

 wards, when he settled at his country seat at Wycliffe on the 



