Overview
Sir Mark Masterman-Sykes, 3rd Baronet (20 August 1771 – 16 February 1823), born Mark Sykes, was an English landowner and politician, known as a book-collector.
Life
He was eldest son of Sir Christopher Sykes, 2nd Baronet of Sledmere House, Yorkshire, by his wife Elizabeth (d. 1803), daughter of William Tatton of Withenshaw, Cheshire. He matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, on 10 May 1788. In 1795 he served as High Sheriff of Yorkshire, and in September 1801 succeeded on the death of his father to the baronetcy and estates.
On 14 May 1807 Sykes was returned Member of Parliament for the city of York, and retained his seat until 1820, when he retired on account of ill health. He died without issue at Weymouth, and was succeeded by his brother, Sir Tatton Sykes, 4th Baronet.
Collector
Sykes was famous as a bibliophile, and possessed a major private library, rich in editiones principes, incunabula, and Elizabethan poetry. There were manuscripts, including a copy of William Dugdale's Heraldic Visitation of York, 1665–1666. The editio princeps of Livy, by Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweynheim (Rome, 1469), with painted arms of the Borgia family, is the only copy on vellum extant, and after Sykes's death passed to Thomas Grenville who bequeathed it to the British Museum. A catalogue of the library was prepared by Henry John Todd.
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