John Rylands the John Rylands Library, of which the famous Althorp Library, purchased by her from Earl Spencer in 1892, and Lord Crawford's manuscripts, purchased by her in 1901, form part of the contents. The library was inaugurated on 6 October 1899, when Mrs Rylands received the Freedom of the City of Manchester. The first day of opening was 1 January 1900. A posthumous grant of arms to John Rylands was obtained in 1893 in which the arms of Tennant are impaled with those of Rylands. Rylands died at his home, Longford Hall, on 11 December 1888, at the age of 87.
Rylands Library Papyrus P52 formula_1, nevertheless continued to maintain that "The Rylands papyrus may therefore be accepted as of the first half of the second century". An altogether different approach to dating New Testament payri has been proposed by a number of paleographers in recent years, drawing on the notion of "graphic stream" developed by Guglielmo Cavallo. Rather than comparing letter forms of undated papyri directly with dated comparators, it is proposed that the hand in question should first be identified to a graphic stream representing the overall development of a particular handwriting style. "The way that individual letters are formed within these graphic