Robert Metcalfe was a native of Beverley in Yorkshire. He graduated from St John's in 1605, gained his MA in 1606, and subsequently become a Fellow. In 1616 he was elected preacher at St John's, and later became vicar of Burwell in Cambridgeshire. He was appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew, and became college lecturer in Hebrew at Trinity in 1646, after he had migrated there the previous year. Leading a fairly solitary life, he was able to leave numerous charitable bequests, particularly with regard to education and the poor, in both his native town and Cambridge.

Metcalfe's bequest to the Library

Metcalfe left £100 each to the libraries of Trinity and St John's for the purchase of divinity texts. Certainly at St John's this is what the money was used for, providing for over 100 texts of a theological nature from the mid-seventeenth century.

Provenance markings

The books bought with Metcalfe's money bear a book label detailing his bequest. In translation this reads:

Robert Metcalfe Doctor of Sacred Theology, a pious, learned, and most wholesome man, born at Beverley in Yorkshire, and once a Fellow of this College, thereafter public professor of the holy language and finally vice-master of Trinity College, left by his will 100 pounds to furnish this Library, with which this and other books were bought. In the year of our Lord 1653.