BODLEY, SIR THOMAS English diploma tist and scholar, founder of the Bodleian library, Oxford, was born at Exeter March 2 and died in London Jan. 28 1613. Bodley was educated at Geneva, where his father had gone to live on account of his Protestant principles. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth he returned with his father to England and soon after entered Magdalen college, Oxford. In 1563 he was admitted a fellow of Merton college. In 1569 he was proctor, and for some time deputy orator. In 1584 he entered parliament as member for Portsmouth, and represented St. Germans in 1586. In 1585 Bodley was sent to form a league between Frederick II. of Den mark and certain German princes to assist Henry of Navarre. He was next dispatched on a secret mission to France, and in 1588 he was sent as minister to The Hague. The essential difficulties of his mission were complicated by the intrigues of the queen's ministers at home, and Bodley repeatedly begged that he might be recalled. He was finally permitted to return to England in 1596, but, finding his preferment obstructed by the jarring interests of Burleigh and Essex, he retired from public life. He was knighted on April 18 1604. He is remembered specially as the founder of the Bodleian library at Oxford. He determined, he said, "to take his farewell of State employments and to set up his staff at the library door in Oxford." In 1598 his offer to restore the old library was accepted by the university. In 1611 he began its permanent en dowment, and the greater part of his fortune was left to it. He was buried in the choir of Merton college chapel, where a monu ment of black and white marble was erected to him.