No More Learning

On the other hand, the copy of this
book which he presented to the queen was in an elaborate and
beautirul embroidered binding, possibly in deference to the taste of
Elizabeth, whose preverence appears to have been for embroidered
7


## p. 406 (#428) ############################################

406
The Book-Trade, 1557–1625
bindings and for books bound in velvet, especially red, with
clasps of gold or silver. This taste was shared by her successor,
for whom, in 1609, Robert Barker, at that time printer and binder
to the king, bound books in 'crymson, purple, and greene velvet,'
and 'in taffity, with gold lace. ' James I, who was a lover of
sumptuous bindings, also had many books finely bound in leather,
and these usually bore the royal arms stamped in gold on the
side, the ground being powdered with fleurs-de-lis or other small
emblems. Another style which obtained in the sixteenth century
was a plain binding of leather or velvet, decorated with corners
and clasps of pierced silver work. The elaborate embroidered
bindings in which coloured silks, gold and silver thread, and oc-
casionally pearls were employed was an essentially English art.
Among the notable collectors who dressed their books in
distinctive coverings were Thomas Wotton, who adopted the style
and adapted the motto of Grolier, and Robert Dudley, earl of
Leicester, whose most characteristic style was a plain binding
having his well known badge, the bear and ragged staff, with his
initials stamped on the side. But there were book lovers as well
as book collectors, and one's heart warms much more towards
the scholarly library of archbishop Parker, or the plain brown
folios of Ben Jonson with their familiar inscription Sum Ben:
Jonsonij, and his motto 'Tanquam explorator.
In the early seventeenth century, there worked at Eton a
good binder, who commonly had ‘his hands full of worke, and
his head full of drinck'; at Oxford, Pinart and Milles bound
for Sir Thomas Bodley; and, from Cambridge, where good work
was being carried on, Nicholas Ferrar obtained the craftswoman
'that bound rarely,' and the result of her instruction is seen in the
bindings of that distinctive character which is associated with the
settlement at Little Gidding and the name of Mary Collet.
Notwithstanding the keen competition in the book trade and
the great number of works which were issued from the press,
books were by no means cheap. They were, it is true, no longer
a luxury for the rich alone, and it is quite probable that the
prices at which they were sold brought them fairly within the
reach of most of those who were able to use them. The prices
of those days multiplied by eight will, approximately, represent
present day values, and it should be noted that the cost mentioned
is often that of the book in sheets, the binding being an additional
expense.


## p. 407 (#429) ############################################

Prices
407
The prices of books published under official auspices were
sometimes limited by a special regulation; thus, the first
cdition of the Book of Common Prayer (1549), as appears by
the king's order printed at the end of the book, is not to be
sold above the price of 28. 2d. a piece, and bound in paste or
boards not above 38. 8d. Such a regulation was rendered the
more necessary by the fact that the right to print such books
was usually granted as a monopoly to some individual printer,
and they were not therefore subject to the healthy influence of
competition. A curious tract entitled Scintilla, or a Light broken
into darke Warehouses, published anonymously in 1641, throws
some interesting light on the doings of the monopolists and the
way in which they had raised the prices of the books which they
had gotten into their grasp. Church Bibles, which formerly cost
thirty shillings, are now, it is said, raised to two pounds, and large
folio Bibles in roman print, which used to sell at 128. 6d. , now
cost twenty shillings. The prices of other editions, before being
raised, were: the Cambridge quarto Bible, with Psalms, 78. , the
London quarto Bible, with notes and concordance, also 78. , and
Bibles in octavo, 38. 4d. Testaments in octavo cost 10d. , and in
duodecimo, 7d. ; the Book of Common Prayer, 38. in folio, and
18. 6d. in quarto. The Grammar of Oxford and Cambridge cost
5d. , and Camden's Greek Grammar, 8d. ; there was also an edition
of the latter printed in France which was sold at 41d.
In 1598, the Stationers' company, with a view to prevent the
excessive prices of books, made a general order that no new copies
without pictures should be sold at more than a penny for two
sheets if in pica, roman and italic, or in english with roman and
italic; and at a penny for one sheet and a half if in brevier or long
primer letter. A quarto volume of 360 pages in small type might
thus cost, in sheets, two shillings and sixpence, equal to about
one pound at the present day. At this rate, the first folio
Shakespeare, which contains nearly one thousand pages, should
have cost about fourteen shillings; an oft quoted statement that
the actual selling price was one pound appears to be based on
the insufficient evidence of a manuscript note in a copy not now
traceable. For a copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets, Alleyn the actor
paid fivepence in June 1609. Quarto plays and similar productions
were mostly issued at sixpence, and ephemeral pamphlets were
sold at twopence, threepence, or fourpence.
In 1576, the hall Bible at King's college, Cambridge, to be
read during meals, cost sixteen shillings; and, in 1585, New


## p. 408 (#430) ############################################

408
-
The Book-Trade, 1557–1625
college, Oxford, paid ten shillings for a copy of Estienne's edition
of Diodorus Siculus. Corpus Christi college, Oxford, a frequent
purchaser of books, in 1604 gave three shillings and sixpence for
the De idololatria ecclesiae Romanae of John Rainolds. The
college also bought Bacon's History of Henry VII for seven
shillings on its appearance in 1622, and paid £3. 88. 6d. for Purchas
his Pilgrimes, which appeared in four volumes in 1625. In 1621,
Dodoens's Niewe herball and Selden's Titles of Honour cost six
shillings and five shillings respectively. It is probable that, in all
these instances, the price included the binding of the book.
The methods employed by the bookseller and publisher for ad-
vertising his books are mainly a matter of surmise. Book buyers who
lived in the metropolis would, no doubt, frequent the stationers'
shops and there see and dip into new books; and the title-page of
the latest pamphlet, stuck up on the door post of the shop or any
other prominent place, would catch the eye of those eager to see
and read some new thing. Ballads may have been hawked in the
streets and at busy corners, but books were certainly not allowed
to be thus vended, for the Stationers' registers record the seizure of
certain books which were 'goynge hawkynge aboute the stretes
which ys contrary to the orders of the Cytie of London. ' Cata-
logues were not yet in fashion; occasionally, other works by the
same author are mentioned in the preface of a book, but it is not
till well into the seventeenth century that one now and again
meets with a paragraph telling the 'courteous reader' to expect
shortly from the press some new work by the same writer; and it
was still nearer the end of the century before the publisher hit
upon the expedient of impressing a spare leaf at the end of a book
into the service of announcing other books issued by him.
The provinces were supplied by stationers in the larger towns
and by the great periodical fairs, while popular literature was carried
into the remoter country districts in the pack of the travelling
merchant or chapman. Stationers carried on business in most of
the important towns, and sometimes published books, printed, of
course, in London; or joined with a London stationer in a similar
venture, the portion of the impression taken by the provincial
bookseller generally bearing his name in the imprint. At York,
there existed a company of stationers and bookbinders, who had a
new code of laws confirmed by the corporation in 1554. In the
east, Norwich, and, in the west, Chester and Exeter, were prominent
centres of the trade; at Shrewsbury, Roger Ward, the pirate


## p. 409 (#431) ############################################

Cambridge
409
printer of London, kept a shop, and thither he despatched a large
number of his illegally printed A BC and Catechism in 1582; and
John Norton had a shop in charge of his servant Edmond Wats, as
far away as Edinburgh. Among the principal provincial fairs were
those of Oxford, Bristol, Salisbury, Nottingham, Ely, Coventry,
and, chief of all, the renowned Sturbridge fair near Cambridge.
These marts played an important part in the internal trade of the
country, and were largely depended upon for the laying in of supplies
for the year. Stationers, both from London and the provinces,
attended them, and a large trade in books was one of the features
of the multifarious business transacted there; indeed, so far as the
provinces were concerned, new books were practically published at
these fairs, and the issue of books was frequently timed with a view
to the dates on which they were held.
In the first half of the sixteenth century, printing had been
carried on in the provinces at Oxford, St Albans, York, Cambridge,
Tavistock, Abingdon, Ipswich, Worcester and Canterbury. The
productions of these presses were mainly works of a theological,
liturgical, or grammatical character, and contributed little or
nothing to English literature, if we except a few books such as the
translation of Boethius's Boke of Comfort, printed at Tavistock
monastery in 1525, Lydgate's Lyfe and Passion of Seint Albon,
attributed to John Herford's press at St Albans in 1534, and the
undated edition of the same author's Churle and the Bird which
John Mychell may have printed at his Canterbury press.
By 1557, the year in which the Stationers' company was incor-
porated, all these presses had already ceased; and, until the revival
of the Cambridge press in 1583, the only printing carried on in
England, outside London, was that by Anthony de Solempne, who,
from 1568 to 1580, was printing Dutch books in Norwich for the
use of the refugees there, for which he seems to have obtained the
queen's authority. Although the monopoly conferred upon the
company did not contribute to the extinction of the provincial
presses, the opposition to the re-establishment of the Cambridge
press clearly indicates that any attempted revival would have been
promptly strangled.
The right to elect 'three stationers or printers or sellers of
books' had been granted to the university of Cambridge by
Henry VIII in 1534, but, though printers were regularly appointed
under this grant, no actual printing was done in Cambridge from
the cessation of John Siberch's press in 1522 until the appointment
in 1582 of Thomas Thomas as university printer. The Stationers'


## p. 410 (#432) ############################################

410
The Book-Trade, 1557–1625
a
company, having got wind of this intention to establish a university
press, scented dangerous competition and infringement of their
privileges, and the presse and furniture’ intended for Mr Thomas's
establishment, having been discovered by their searchers, were
seized and detained. In this action, the company was supported
by the bishop of London (John Aylmer), who, though professing
great concern for the interests of printing, was, no doubt, alarmed
at the power which this new press might place in the hands of the
puritan party in Cambridge. The university appealed to their
chancellor, lord Burghley, for the restoration of the press, and
succeeded in vindicating their claim to the privileges of the patent;
but a jealous struggle with the London company continued for
many years, with varying successes and reprisals on both sides, the
university, on the whole, steadily gaining ground and, in the end,
completely establishing its right to print.
Besides his work as university printer, Thomas, who was a
fellow of King's college, is known as the author of a Latin
dictionary, of which eight editions had been issued from the Cam-
bridge press by 1610. Thomas was succeeded on his death in
1588 by John Legate, who, in 1609, removed to London, and
was followed in the office by Cantrell Legge. Among the pro-
ductions of this press, books in divinity and scholastic subjects
naturally preponderate, and there is very little of literary interest.
Certain things such as The Returne from Parnassus (1606),
Tomkis's Albumazar (1615), and Ruggle’s Ignoramus (entered
18 April 1615), which, being university plays, one might very
well expect to find with a Cambridge imprint, were, nevertheless,
printed and published in London.
The revival of printing at Oxford, two years later, met with no
such stormy reception, though the university possessed no printing
patent similar to that of Cambridge. Its immunity from inter-
.
ference may have owed something to the protection of the earl of
Leicester, chancellor of the university, under whose auspices the
press was established. Anyhow, Joseph Barnes, the printer
appointed by the university, at once carried the attack into the
London camp, and, in the very year (1585) in which he began work,
reprinted one of their most vendible copies. John Wight, the
bookseller to whom the book (Parsons's Christian Exercise) had
been entered in the Stationers' register, on hearing of the piracy,
sent his son to Oxford, who there bought the impression and paid
Barnes ready money for it, Barnes making faithful promise that he
would never reprint the book. But, notwithstanding this promiso
>


## p. 411 (#433) ############################################

411
>
Oxford
and Wight's 'curteous dealinge' with him, Barnes, being thus
furnished with money, forthwith prints two other impressions of
the work; and, when the London printers in retaliation reprint
Thomas Bilson's Christian subjection and unchristian rebellion,
which Barnes had just published, they are stopped by the privy
council, their printing tools seized, and one of their number thrown
into prison. The Oxford press was officially recognised in 1586, by
a Star chamber ordinance allowing one press and one apprentice.
In 1586, Barnes brought out Chrysostom's Homilies printed in
Greek type, and, in 1595, his first Welsh book Perl mewn adfyd, a
translation from Otto Wermueller. Before his resignation in 1617,
Barnes had issued from his press a rendering into English verse of
ix poems of Theocritus (1588), Richard of Bury's Philobiblon
(1599) 'the first English edition of the first book on the love of
books,' two editions of John Davies's Microcosmos, captain John
Smith's Map and description of Virginia (1612), and works by
Nicholas Breton, Thomas Churchyard and Richard Hooker. Barnes
was succeeded by John Lichfield, who printed till 1635; the issue
of the first four editions (1621-32) of Burton's Anatomy of
Melancholy lends distinction to his press. Archbishop Laud, when
he became chancellor of the university in 1630, bestowed much
care in forwarding the interests of printing at Oxford, and one of
his earliest actions in this direction was to procure from king
Charles I a charter which conferred upon the university privileges
equal to those possessed by Cambridge.
In 1610–13, an edition of Chrysostom's works in Greek, in
eight volumes folio, was printed at Sir Henry Savile's press at
Eton college by John Norton, the king's printer in Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew. Five other books are known to have issued from the
Eton press before its cessation in 1615. The celebrated Greek
type, the ‘silver letter' as it was called, was afterwards presented
by Sir Henry Savile to the university of Oxford.
The rigorous enforcement of the policy of regulating printing
in the interests of church and state naturally drove the opponents
of the establishment, the papists on the one side and the puritans
on the other, to resort to secret printing, and several illicit presses
were at work during the latter part of the sixteenth century. At
the secret press of Thomas Cartwright, the puritan opponent of
Whitgift, was printed in 1572 An Admonition to the Parliament;
and several other allied tracts followed before the press was run
down and seized at Hempstead. In 1580—1, a Jesuit press, with
which Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion were connected, was


## p. 412 (#434) ############################################

412
The Book-Trade, 1557–1625
at work first at Greenstreet House, East Ham, and afterwards, at
Stonor Park. But the chief of these secret and fugitive sources of
contraband literature was that known as the Marprelate press, of
which an account has been given in a previous volume of the
present work?
The art of printing was introduced into Scotland in 1508, and
the work of the Scottish press at once assumed that strongly
national character and detached attitude towards the outside
world which continued to be its distinguishing feature until the
eighteenth century brought with it the Union and other elements
of a broadening influence. Its chief productions were official
documents, such as statutes and proclamations, for the service of
the state, native Latin works for the scholar, school books for
youth, vernacular literature for the people, and theology for all.
As in the case of the first English press, Chepman and Myllar
of Edinburgh made their first essay with a series of small tracts of
a popular nature, and of these there have survived nine pieces, each
extant in a single copy. There has also been recorded a fragment
of an edition of Blind Harry's Wallace, printed in the same type.
The Aberdeen Breviary, the real work for which the press had
been imported, was printed by Chepman alone in 1509—10, and
with it the work of this press came to an end.
John Davidson, who was printing in Edinburgh in 1541, issucd
shortly before that date a folio edition of Bellenden's translation
of 'Boece's History of Scotland, which is one of the monuments of
early Scottish printing. From a fragment of a single leaf, dis-
covered by the late David Laing, it seems probable that an edition
of Gawin Douglas's Palice of Honour was also printed by David-
son. John Scot, who printed at St Andrews and afterwards at Edin-
burgh between 1552 and 1571, issued works by Sir David Lyndsay,
Quintin Kennedy and Ninian Winzet. The earliest Scottish printer
whose extant issues reach any considerable number is Robert
Lekpreuik, who began printing in 1561; he is to be especially
remembered for the numerous ballads by Robert Sempill and other
reformation politicians, which in his broadsides have survived to the
present day. The first Bible printed in Scotland, which, after some
vicissitudes, made its appearance in 1579, was the work of Bassan-
dyne and Arbuthnet, the latter of whom also published in 1582 the
first and faulty edition of Buchanan's Rerum Scoticarum Historia.
The earliest known edition of the collected works of Sir David
Lyndsay is that printed in Edinburgh in 1568, to which the
1 Sce vol. II, chap. XVII.


## p. 413 (#435) ############################################

The Scottish Press
413
publisher, Henry Charteris, who probably began his long career
with the issue of this book, prefixed an introduction. Charteris,
who, in 1580, acquired John Ross's printing business, is the most
notable figure among the Scottish booksellers of the sixteenth
century. In addition to works by Barbour, Blind Harry, Henryson
and others, he issued, before his death in 1599, at least six editions
of the works of Sir David Lyndsay. The position occupied in
Edinburgh by Henry Charteris in the sixteenth century was, for
the first twenty years of the following century, held by Andro
Hart, the bookseller, who took up printing in 1610 with the acqui-
sition of the plant which had been used by Charteris. The first
book known to have been issued from his press is a folio Bible
(1610), which gained considerable reputation for its correctness;
and among the large number of interesting books which he printed
are first editions of works by Drummond of Hawthornden, Napier of
Merchiston and Sir William Alexander, earl of Stirling, also several
reprints of the older writers. John Wreittoun, who printed in Edin-
burgh from 1624 to 1638, issued in 1627 an edition of Venus and
Adonis, the only work by Shakespeare known to have been printed
in Scotland before the eighteenth century.
The strongly national character of the productions of the
Scottish press has already been indicated; but it must not be
forgotten that these by no means represent the whole literary
output of the country. The close intellectual and commercial
intercourse between Scotland and the continent, together with the
restricted facilities at home, naturally resulted in many of the
works of the more scholarly writers, who wrote almost entirely in
Latin and appealed to a European audience, being published
abroad, and scholars not unfrequently made the journey overseas
for the purpose of seeing their work through the press.
There was in Scotland no trade combination corresponding to
the London Stationers' company; indeed, the limited number of
persons engaged in the trade rendered such an organisation un-
necessary. Measures, however, were adopted from time to time by
the state for preventing the printing or importation of undesirable
books, and a more or less watchful eye was kept on the trade; but,
on the whole, there was considerable liberty, and it was not until
the latter half of the seventeenth century that the cramping effects
of monopoly were experienced. When Edinburgh booksellers felt
themselves aggrieved by incursions of alien traders, they found
means of protecting themselves by appeal to their town council,
and Thomas Vautrollier, John Norton, and others were on various
occasions proceeded against in this manner.


## p. 414 (#436) ############################################

414
The Book-Trade, 1557—1625
>
The inventories of property recorded with the wills in Scottish
registers of testaments afford some extremely interesting glimpses
of the stock-in-trade of the printer and bookseller of this period,
and those of the printers indicate that the impressions of many of
the popular works were surprisingly large. The list of the books
in the inventory of Robert Gourlaw, bookbinder and bookseller of
Edinburgh, who died in 1585, occupies no less than six pages as
printed in the Bannatyne Miscellany, and, if it may be taken to
represent the current demand, points to a wide and cultivated
standard of reading. Most noticeable are school books, chiefly
Latin, and small books of devotion, such as psalms and books of
prayers. The classics are well represented in the Iliad and the
Odyssey, Ovid's Metamorphoscs, the Ethics of Aristotle, Virgil,
Terence, Apuleius and Silius Italicus. Erasmus is much in
evidence, probably in school editions. Theology, especially of a
contemplative character, is the chief element; two copies of Brad-
ford's Meditations are followed impartially by three copies of ‘ane
lytill Fortoun buik. The immense popularity of Sir David Lyndsay
is easily perceived, and lighter literature is well represented in
ballads and other vernacular pieces. Piers Plowman and Sir
John Mandeville appear, but contemporary English literature is
practically absent, and there are no plays. There are also two
copies of Gargantua and a Hebrew grammar.
The beginning of printing in Ireland is represented by the Book
of Common Prayer which was printed in Dublin in 1551 by
Humphrey Powell, who had migrated from London a year or so
previously. The other extant productions of this press are two or
three broadsides, and a theological tract which he issued in 1566.
In 1571, a broadside poem on Doomsday, and John Kearney's
ABC and Catechism (Aibidil Gaoidheilge, agus Caiticiosma) were
printed in the first fount of Irish characters. John Franckton, who
began printing in Dublin apparently in 1600, printed also, in Irish
characters, archbishop Daniel's Irish versions of the New Testa-
ment (1602) and Book of Common Prayer (1608). In 1618, Franck-
ton's press was acquired by the Stationers' company of London,
who continued it until about 1640, when it was taken over by
William Bladen; but the only productions of any literary interest
before the publication of Sir James Ware's History of Ireland
in 1633, are editions of Sidney's Arcadia in 1621 and Sir Thomas
Overbury's Wife in 1626.


## p. 415 (#437) ############################################

CHAPTER XIX
THE FOUNDATION OF LIBRARIES
IN previous volumes of the present work, some account has
been given of early monastic libraries, of collections of books
made by such men as Richard of Bury, of the contents of a
typical collegiate library as illustrating the reading of the
medieval student and of the effect upon libraries of the dissolu-
tion of the monasteries. The work accomplished by Sir Thomas
Bodley within the period covered by the present volume provides
an occasion for a brief retrospect of the foundation of libraries
generally, and for the presentation of certain details regarding
monastic, cathedral and collegiate libraries, supplementary to the
references which have been already made.
A recent publication? enables us to realise the conditions
under which such collections were preserved and accumulated,
from the days when the papyrus rolls began to multiply on the
shelves in the archives of Assur down to those of dean Boys of
Canterbury, who, to the day of his death, in 1625, still adhered
to the practice of placing the volumes of his library on the shelf
with their fore-edge outwards.
Beginning our retrospect, however, with the time when the
roll,'book' or volume,' began to take shape as a series of leaves
fastened together by the art of the binder, we find the movable
press, with shelves and doors, and supported on legs, appearing
as the most ancient form of the bookcase. As the press became
larger and heavier, the legs were discarded, and in those cathedrals
or convent churches in which there was a triple apse, one of these
would be used for keeping the service books, while the armarium
(or chest) would be sometimes represented by a recess in the wall
closed by a door. The apse also, not unfrequently, served as the
.
depository for the library of the choir school, and of this, together
with the service books, the precentor would sometimes be the
custodian ; but, in larger cathedrals, the duty would be assigned
to a second functionary, known as the armarius.
· The Care of Books, by J. W. Clark, 2nd ed. Cambridge, 1902.


## p. 416 (#438) ############################################

416
The Foundation of Libraries
'An examination of the statutes affecting the library in the
codes imposed upon the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge shows
that their provisions were borrowed directly from the monastic
customs. ' But it is not less certain that the monastic rules
themselves were partly derived from practice anterior to western
monasticism itself. In Vitruvius (who wrote probably in the time
of the emperor Augustus) it is laid down as a canon that 'bed-
rooms and libraries should face the East, their use requiring the
morning light; while in libraries, books will be preserved from
rotting? ' But where the presses were movable, it was the practice
to place them at right angles to the windows; and it was not
until the accommodation thus afforded became insufficient, that
shelves, resting against the wall, began to make their appearance,
and, in many cases, ultimately superseded the movable press. In
either case, the volumes on the shelves were generally placed
with their edges outwards, and with their titles, or certain dis-
tinctive marks, inscribed on the same, the covers being compressed
together, sometimes with massive clasps, sometimes with strings,
and each volume secured in its place by a hanging chain which.
fastened on a rod passing along the transom of the bookcase.
This rod was itself made fast by a vertical metal plate attached
to the end of the case, and opened or closed by a lock. Under-
neath the lock, there would be a framed list of the contents of
the shelves.
In monasteries, and especially in those of the Benedictine
order, libraries gradually assumed a more important character,
and the practice of lending volumes began to come into vogue.
A limited number would be distributed among the members of
the house for temporary personal use, while the larger and more
valuable portion would be kept in safe custody in a separate
chamber. Then it became not unusual for one house to lend a
volume to another community, and, in this manner, volumes have
occasionally been found among collections belonging to various
houses, which, by the character of the ornamentation, or by the
binding, could be shown to have originally belonged to another
house, although it by no means follows that they had been purloined.
The library of the monastery at Durham, a Benedictine house,
1 J. W. Clark, The Care of Books (2nd ed. ), p. 126.
2 De Architectura, lib. vi. c. 7; ed. Valentin Rose. Willis and Clark (Architectural
History of the University of Cambridge, III, pp. 414—6) have given the orientation of
the college libraries of both Oxford and Cambridge.
3 See J. W. Clark's Medieval and Renaissance Libraries, pp. 43, 45 and 48.


## p. 417 (#439) ############################################

>
Monastic Libraries
417
appears, from a catalogue drawn up in the twelfth century, to
have possessed 366 volumes ; that at Croyland, if any credit
attaches to the fifteenth century writer who wrote under the
name of Ingulphus, possessed, at the time of its destruction by
re (1091), 300 volumes and some 400 tracts; that of the neigh-
bouring monastery of St Peter at Peterborough (where the
original library had been destroyed by the Danes in 870) received,
through the good offices of abbot Benedict, secretary of Thomas
Becket, some eighty different works especially transcribed for its
enrichment. At Glastonbury, the collection, at first of but small
importance, contained, in 1247, 500 works in 340 volumes.
The fact that abbot Benedict's gift to Peterborough consisted
entirely of transcriptions, reminds us that another stage had been
reached in the history of monastic libraries; and it is at about the
same time that we find one Henry, a monk of the Benedictine
abbey at Hyde, near Winchester, becoming known for his industry
as a copyist—his transcripts including Terence, Boethius, Suetonius,
Claudian and other classical authors. It is, indeed, to such labours,
far more than to the growth of new literature, that we must
attribute the great increase in the numbers of volumes, in the cata-
logues of monastic and cathedral libraries alike, which becomes
observable throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the
transcriber's toil, from time to time, receiving an abnormal stimulus
from some fire which may have resulted in the entire destruction
of a library in a single night. At Canterbury, the catalogues of
its two monasteries, that of Christ Church, compiled about the
year 1300, and that of St Augustine’s, nearly two centuries later,
afford valuable evidence: the former contains nearly 3000 titles
(or about 1850 volumes), and, while abounding in patristic and
scholastic literature, is characterised as also ‘respectable in science
and rich in history? '; the latter numbers over 1800 volumes,
including a large collection of French, and more especially
Romance, writers. Here the numerous duplicates are another
noteworthy feature, attributable, doubtless, to the desire of en-
abling several members of the community to study the same
author concurrently, and also attesting the increasing activity of
the copyists. The St Augustine's catalogue, however, is obviously
incomplete, and the same may be surmised to be the case with
1
1 Edwards, 1, 62; see, also, for an analysis of the contents of both libraries, the
introduction to M. R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover,
Cambridge, 1903.
See Sir F. Madden, in Notes and Queries (2nd ser. ), 1, pp. 485—6.
E. L. IV. CH. XIX.
27


## p. 418 (#440) ############################################

418
The Foundation of Libraries
the catalogue at Peterborough, which, in 1380, contained no more
than 300 volumes. The society at Worcester, although 280 volumes
still remain, is conjectured to have lost more than double that
number, and no contemporary catalogue exists. The Benedictines
at Dover possessed in 1389 some 449 volumes; and their house at
Bury St Edmunds, at the close of the same century, as many as
2000. At Durham, to which, after the Danish invasions of the
ninth century, the devastated monasteries of Wearmouth and
Jarrow had become affiliated as 'cells,' the reserved' library, by
which we are to understand, probably, the collection kept under
especial surveillance in the spendimentum (or bursary), contained,
in 1416, 500 volumes.
A brief account may here be given of a library remarkable
alike for its character and its history. The foundation known as
Syon monastery', some twelve miles from London, at Isleworth,
was one of the Brigittine order, the only one of its kind in England,
its rule being 'planned to suit the needs of religious men and
women serving God together in one church and dwelling in adjoining
houses. ' There were, however, separate libraries for the two sexes,
and the catalogue which has come down to us (now in the library
of Corpus Christi college, Cambridge) appears, by internal evidence,
to be that of the library for men. The value attached to its main-
tenance and increase is indicated by the fact that there was a rule
enjoining that masses should be said for the souls of all donors,
even of a single book, and the librarian himself was charged with
the duty of offering up such intercession or seeing that it was made.
The extent to which the practice of lending books had, by this
time, obtained among monasteries partially accounts for the
numerous losses which the collection had sustained prior to the
dissolution? The binding appears to have been executed without
regard to contents-a Horace, for example, being bound up with
a life of Thomas of Canterbury, and a Rabanus Maurus with a
Latin translation of Homer. No less than 1421 titles were duly
entered in the catalogue, and, of the entire collection, only six
volumes have as yet been traced.
But all such collections, whether those of the monastery,
the friary, or the cathedral, were exposed to special dangers.
Neither Sion college (see post, p. 433), now on the Thames Embankment (formerly
in London Wall), nor the Sion nunnery now existing at Chudleigh, in Devonshire, is in
any way connected with the ancient institution at Isleworth.
* Catalogue of the Library of Syon Monastery, Isleworth. Ed. M. Bateson,
Cambridge, 1898, preface, p. I.
• Ibid. pp. xvii, xviii.


## p. 419 (#441) ############################################

Monastic Libraries
419
At monasteries, the traveller was wont to receive shelter and
hospitality, and, if wealthy, would seek to make some return, his
gratitude not unfrequently finding expression in the gift of an
addition to the library. On the other hand, the opportunity thus
afforded to the outer world of gaining access to the interior itself
rendered the library liable to losses which not even the vigilance
of the guardian of the spendimentum could always prevent. At
friaries, whose members were in closer touch with the laity, owing
to the fact that their houses were generally within the precincts of
some city or large town, and sometimes in a main thoroughfare,
the risk, probably, was still greater. Thomas Gascoigne describes
the house of the Franciscans, as it existed in Oxford in the middle
of the fifteenth century, in the following terms:
They had two libraries in the same house; the one called the convent
library, the other the library of the schools; whereof the former was open
only to graduates; the latter to the scholars they called seculars, who lived
among those friars for the sake of learning 1,
Gottlieb, in commenting on this passage, points out that such a
division of libraries was, probably, a regular custom, and that it
affords an obvious explanation of the fact that not a few of their
catalogues, many of them very old, contain nothing but classical
authors and manuals of instruction? . That, among the mendicant
orders, Franciscans and Carmelites were especially distinguished
by their zeal for learning and energy as book hunters, is well known;
and, as early as 1381, we find them sharing with the university of
Cambridge the dislike of the townsmens. According to Mabillon, a
like arrangement with respect to their libraries existed among the
larger monasteries, especially those of the Cluniac order, on the
continent, one library being that of the choir of the monastery
church, the other that for the exclusive use of the monks—the
libri scientifici et ascetici ; and, in like manner, in the English
cathedrals, the respective duties of the armarius and the praecentor
(also cantor) point to the same distinction, although, at minor
foundations, the duties of each were often discharged by the same
individual. But, at all alike, there would generally be among the
service books one or more beautiful antiphonals, richly illuminated
and adorned with massively embossed covers; and an additional
temptation was thus presented to the despoiler, when the disso-
lution came, besides that of the gold and silver chalices, censers,
Dagdale, Monasticon, vi, p. 1527.
2 Mittelalterliche Bibliotheken, p. 305.
• Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, I, pp. 120–1.
1
27-2


## p. 420 (#442) ############################################

420 The Foundation of Libraries
crosses, ewers and candlesticks which adorned the altar and
the chapels. Such entries, again, as occur in the sales of the
plunder which took place in 1548, of 'fourteen great books in the
quire, 148. ', 'four prycksong mass books of paper,' certainly bear
out the view, that the love of choral song (noted by Erasmus as an
interesting feature in the social life of the English), had been to a
great extent fostered by those monastic or cathedral choirs of
youths and boys, whom he described as “singing, to the accom-
paniment of the organ and with harmonious modulations of voice,
their matin song in honour of the Virgin. '
Generally speaking, however, accounts contemporary with the
reformation are wanting, and we must rely on much earlier
evidence, derived from inventories, for such information as the
following, which relates to the chapel of the collegiate church of
Windsor, where,
in addition to the service books there were (temp. Richard II) 34 books on
different subjects (diversarum scientiarum) chained in the church; among
them a Bible and a concordance, and two books of French romance, one of
which was the Liber de Rosel.
This, however, was an exceptionally wealthy foundation.
The work of destruction that went on at the dissolution of the
monasteries has been dealt with in a previous chapter of this work.
Well might Thomas Fuller, as he bemoaned the havoc, more than
a century later, exclaim
What beautiful Bibles, rare Fathers, subtile Schoolmen, useful Historians,-
ancient, middle, modern; what painful Comments/were here amongst them!
What monuments of mathematics all massacred together-seeing every book
with a cross was condemned for Popish,- with circles, for conjuring? Yea,
I may say that then holy Divinity was profaned, Physics hurt, and a trespass,
yea a riot, committed on Law itself. And, more particularly, the History of
former times then and there received a dangerous wound, where of it halts
at this day, and, without hope of a perfect cure, must go a cripple to the
grave 3.
Cathedral libraries suffered far more serious losses during the
civil war than at the reformation. They were less carefully guarded
than those of the monasteries, there being no regulation requiring
their annual inspection; partly owing to the fact that the collec-
tions were mostly small : it is rarely that, prior to the fifteenth
century, we find evidences of their being catalogued; and, even
1 Victoria County History of Berkshire, 11, p. 109.
? In allusion, perhaps, to the use of symbols, which mathematicians were beginning
to resort to in their works. See W. W. R. Ball, Short History of Mathematics,
pp. 211-215; also his Hist. of Mathematics at Cambridge, pp. 15, 16.
Church History of Britain (ed. Nicholls), 11, pp. 248-9.


## p. 421 (#443) ############################################

Cathedral Libraries
421
where a catalogue existed, the entirety of the library which it
represented was too often left unverified. The Restoration marks
a third stage in their history, when churchmen made an effort to
replace, to some extent, the vanished treasures; and collections,
large or small, were brought in from localities where they were
likely to be less serviceable, the newly-introduced volumes, as at
York and Wimborne, requiring the practised eye of the expert to
distinguish them from the remnants of the original collections.
In the early decades of the seventeenth century, the library of
the minster at York still possessed the MSS brought from the
abbey at Rievaulx, and, in 1628, it received from the widow of
its former archbishop, Tobias Matthew, his valuable collection of
printed books; but the costly volumes relating to liturgic use and
to ritual were not acquired until the eighteenth century. Llandaff,
at this time, still possessed the library which it afterwards trans-
ferred to Cardiff castle for safety, but only to be destroyed
by Cromwell's soldiery. Durham had suffered severely at the
reformation, losing no inconsiderable portion of its fine illuminated
manuscripts, but still owned St Cuthbert's copy of the Gospels
(now at the British Museum), and the editio princeps of Tacitus,
by Vindelin de Spira. Here, the former refectory of the monastery
(rebuilt in 1685) contains the chapter library, while the fine
library presented by Cosin-a thoroughly representative collection
of the Jacobean era, of which the catalogue, on vellum, still exists
-has been transferred to the castle. Rochester has preserved
but few manuscripts of any interest; but, among the printed books,
there is a copy of the first printed English Bible of 1535, and a fine
a
missal (Salisbury use) printed by Regnault in 1534. Lichfield
possesses little that can be considered strictly monastic, its library
dating from the benefaction of Frances, duchess of Somerset, in 1672.
Ceadda's (St Chad's) copy of the Gospels, however, found its way
thither from Llandaff, and the collection also includes a fine MS of
the pocms of Chaucer. Hereford, on the other hand, preserves (but in
a special building) a library which presents, both in its literature and
in its furniture, a singularly pleasing example of a medieval institu-
tion—the catalogue itself chained to the desk, the volumes arranged
according to the then customary classification, while the Mappa
Mundi is of world-wide fame. There is also a copy of Coverdale's
Bible of 1535. None of the preceding, however, could compare in
regard to literature with Salisbury, which can still show an array
of MSS filling one hundred and eighty-seven volumes, remained
intact for a period of four hundred years and included produc-
tions ranging from the ninth to the fourteenth century, among
a


## p. 422 (#444) ############################################

422
The Foundation of Libraries
them the Gallican Psalter of the ninth century, an English version
of the Gospel of Nicodemus, Chaucer's translation of Boethius and
a MS of Geoffrey of Monmouth. The Inventory of the Riches of
the Cathedral Church of Sarum, 'made by Master Thomas
Robertson, Treasurer of the same Church in 1536,' contains a
list of items which attest the wealth of the ancient foundation.
Winchester, on the other hand, did not become possessed of its
fine collection of Bibles, bequeathed by bishop Morley, until 1684.
The collection also includes the early editions of Izaak Walton's
works. At Lincoln, many of the MSS have suffered mutilation;
while, about the middle of the seventeenth century, the ancient
library was greatly injured by fire. There is still, however, to
be seen a MS of Old English romances, collected (c. 1430) by
Robert de Thornton, archdeacon of Bedford. Exeter possesses no
catalogue earlier than 1683. Out of the sixty volumes given by
Leofric, its first bishop, the library can still show its Liber
Exoniensis, to which reference has been made in volume 1 of the
present work. At Wells, there are the five volumes of the Aldine
Aristotle, one of them with the autograph of Erasmus. Ely
possesses no editiones principes, but there is a considerable
number of tracts relating to the history of the Nonjurors. At
Lambeth, the valuable collection (which may be said to have
originated in the bequest of archbishop Bancroft) remained un-
catalogued until the time of Edmund Gibson, bishop of London,
who made a beginning, which was not carried to completion until
the time of Ducarel, its librarian towards the end of the eighteenth
century. At Chichester, the library possesses MSS of the statutes
of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and of an account of the foundation of
Christchurch, Oxford. At Westminster, Hacket tells us that John
Williams, when dean,
converted a waste room . . . into a goodly library, modeld it into decent shape,
furnish'd it with desks and chairs, accoutred it with all utensils and stored it
with a vast number of learned volumes. For which use he lighted most
fortunately upon the study of that learned gentleman, Mr Baker of Highgate,
who in a long and industrious life had collected into his own possession the
best authors in all sciences, in their best editions, which being bought at 500 1.
(a cheap pennyworth for such precious ware) were removed into this store
honsel.
The libraries in both universities sustained irreparable losses
during the period of the reformation.
It is clear, from Leland's Collectanea, that Clare College possessed in his
time a large number of books of which there is no trace now. We have in
print catalogues of the old libraries at Corpus Christi, Trinity Hall, King's,
· Life of Williams, pt. 1, p. 47.
1


## p. 423 (#445) ############################################

Cambridge College Libraries
423
Queens', St Catherine's, and the University. At the present moment [1899]
19 of the University Library books are known to exist out of 330. At Corpus
Christi, 3 out of 75; at Queens', I believe, none; at King's, 1 out of 176; at
Trinity Hall, 1; at St Catherine's none out of about 1001,
On the other hand, most of these libraries had also been receiving
considerable accessions. Perne, who held the mastership of Peter-
house from 1553 to 1589, was distinguished by his efforts on behalf
of the university library and also of the library of his own college.
In relation to the former, Bradshaw says that we may fairly look
upon him as the principal agent in its restoration at this period. '
While, as regards the college, he not only provided for the erection
of the present library, but 'enriched it with a large share of his
magnificent collections? ' None of the colleges (with the exception
of Corpus Christi) bestowed greater care than did Peterhouse on its
books and on their preservation-a tradition, possibly, from those
earlier days, when, as night came on, the town gates were closed,
and the little society without was called upon to trust solely to its
own vigilance, against the marauder and the purloiner. As early
as 1472, the library had been further augmented by the bequest of
the royal physician, Roger Marshall, and a portion of his bequest
had, by his instructions, been placed in apertiori libraria,
evidently with the design of rendering the volumes more generally
accessible, without allowing them to be borrowed. Eight years
later, however, during the mastership of John Warkworth (the
reputed author of the Chronicle), further regulations were enacted,
whereby it was made permissible to lend a volume to a member of
the society for a term of two years, but with the precaution of first
obtaining a valuation of the book so as, in the event of its not being
returned, to mulct the borrower in its full value. At Corpus Christi
college, at the time when archbishop Parker bequeathed his noble
collection, the original library had almost disappeared. He made
it his first care, on succeeding to the mastership in 1544, and
finding many volumes in the library scattered about without any
safe keeping,' to take measures which involved a radical reform.
The earliest catalogue—that compiled by John Botener in 1376
and other records, enable us to realise the serious losses which had
been sustained and also to understand how such experiences may
IM. R. James, The Sources of Archbishop Parker's Collection of MSS at Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge, Camb. Ant. Soc. , Octavo Publications, vol. XXXI; Willis
and Clark, Architectural History, etc. III, p. 404.
T. A. Walker. For an account of the original library, see vol. II, obap. xv,
pp. 362—7.
3 See A Catalogue of the Books bequeathed to C. C. College by Tho. Markaunt in
1439, ed. J. O. Halliwell, Camb. Ant. Soc. Publ. vol. 11, pp. 15–20.
a


## p. 424 (#446) ############################################

424 The Foundation of Libraries
well have seemed to him to justify the almost unprecedented
regulations wherewith he sought to guard against their recurrence.
In 1578, the college chapel was rebuilt, and rooms were constructed
over it; and, in a small chamber over the ante-chapel, the famous
Parker MSS were safely housed for some 250 years.
Parker stands at the head of the race of modern book-collectors. As
Archbishop of Canterbury during the early years of Queen Elizabeth's reign,
he had the first pick of the whole of the plunder of the libraries and muni-
ment-rooms of the dissolved religious houses; and his suffragans were only
too ready to gain his favour by almost forcing upon him the treasures of the
Cathedral librariesl.
A series of catalogues, from those compiled by Parker himself to
that drawn up by M. R. James, give proof of what may be described
as a continuously growing sense of the value of the entire col-
lection. Among the chief treasures, the MS of the four Gospels
(no. 286) is asserted to have been one of the volumes that pope
Gregory the Great sent from Rome for the use of St Austin of
Canterbury; two chronicles (nos. 16 and 26) are supposed to have
been composed, written and illustrated by Matthew Paris,
historiographer of St Albans. The collection is also strong in
liturgiology; but it is, perhaps, most widely known by its wealth in
Old English literature, of which there are five distinct classes :
Gospels, Annals of England, Glossaries, Homilies (Aelfric's Lives
of the Saints) and Canons. James has identified no less than
47 volumes as formerly belonging to Christ Church priory, and
26 to St Augustine's abbey, both at Canterbury.
The losses against which Parker had sought to guard his
bequeathed treasures either menaced, or actually overtook, other
colleges, but not until long after his death, and then chiefly
in connection with political events, of which the experience of
Emmanuel college affords a singularly noteworthy but somewhat
complicated illustration. Richard Bancroft, who had been educated
at Christ's college and was, subsequently, a fellow of Jesus, becom-
ing, finally, archbishop of Canterbury, died in 1610, bequeathing a
valuable library to his successors in the see; but his bequest was
accompanied with certain conditions which proved difficult to carry
into effect. Those who were to inherit it were to give security for
its due preservation in its entirety, a requirement which the
enforcement of the covenant rendered impracticable. Failing this
proviso, the collection was to become the property of Bancroft's
projected foundation of Chelsea college, of which the scheme,
1 Bradshaw and Wordsworth, Lincoln Cathedral Statutes, Pt. 1, p. 184.


## p. 425 (#447) ############################################

Cambridge College Libraries
425
however, altogether collapsed. And, finally, the donor, in antici-
pation of such miscarriage, had designated the university of
Cambridge as the recipient. For thirty years, however, owing to
.
certain obstacles, although the collection was augmented by con-
siderable gifts from both archbishop Abbot and his rival Laud, it
remained stowed away in 'the study over the Cloisters at Lambeth,'
until parliament, on being formally petitioned, intervened, and
order was given, in February 1645/6, that the entire collection,
now unrivalled as a source of information with respect to church
history in the Jacobean era, should be sent to Cambridge. It
was not, even then, until after John Selden and others had
used their influence that these instructions were carried into
effect. On the arrival of the books, the imposing array was
described by the academic authorities as evoking no little 'exulta-
tion’; and parliament itself, on learning that the first result had
been to render increased accommodation imperatively necessary,
was induced to grant £2000 ‘for the building and finishing the
Public Library at Cambridge. ' The Lords, although unable to
give their assent, concurred, notwithstanding, in a separate grant
for the purchase from Thomason of a valuable collection of
Hebrew books-noted by Henry Bradshaw as constituting the
nucleus of the Hebrew library of the university. The volumes
given by Abbot and other later donors had not been sent with
Bancroft's, but in the following year (1649) these also arrived. It
was at this juncture that the death of Richard Holdsworth gave
rise to unlooked for complications. Holdsworth was a distinguished
scholar who had filled the office of public orator with marked
ability, but, owing to his refusal to take the covenant, had been
ejected, in 1644, from the mastership of Emmanuel and, subsequently,
imprisoned in the Tower. He was well known, however, to Man-
chester, the puritan general, and had, consequently, been able to save
his own valuable library from sequestration by declaring his inten-
tion of bequeathing it to his college ; but, at his death, in 1649, it
was found, on opening his will, that he had finally decided to leave
the collection to the university library should the Bancroft collec-
tion ever be reclaimed for Lambeth. When the Restoration came,
it was one of Juxon's first measures as primate to make that demand,
as it was one of his last, to provide for the fit reception of the books
by the erection of the noble building which bears his name. The
university promptly complied; but, when it sought to obtain some
compensation for its loss, by applying for the transfer of Holds-
worth's library (then in London) to its own shelves, the authorities
at Emmanuel contested their claim, and a suit was consequently


## p. 426 (#448) ############################################

426
The Foundation of Libraries
begun in the court of Arches. Eventually, the matter was left to
be dealt with by three adjudicators—the archbishop of York, the
bishop of London and the bishop of Ely-who, in December 1664,
gave a formal award on parchment to the following effect :
(1) Holdsworth’s printed books and MSS were to come to the
public library at Cambridge ; (2) duplicates were to be disposed
of, as Holdsworth had directed in his will; (3) Emmanuel college
was to receive from the university £200 in settlement of its claim,
and also to be repaid its costs, provided the said costs did not
exceed £20.
To St Catharine's belongs the credit of having been the first to
print its entire catalogue, 1771; but that by Stanley, of the Parker
MSS at Corpus, had appeared in 1722; and, in 1827, Queens'
college printed (its catalogue, compiled by Thomas Hartwell
Horne, in two large octavo volumes.
The library of St John's college, Cambridge, affords an ex-
cellent example of both the literature and the architecture of the
period, having been built in 1624, by John Williams, the lord
keeper (whose arms are over the doorway), in the style known
as Jacobean Gothic; the interior, with its white-washed walls,
dark oak ceiling and presses, still presenting very much the same
appearance that it must have done in 1654, when John Evelyn
pronounced it the fairest of that university. ' The presses, more
particularly--each with its sloping top, designed, originally, to serve
as a reading-desk, and list of contents at the end, enclosed under
folding panels—are a good illustration of the medieval arrange-
ments already described! Among the contents to be noted are:
the so-called Cromwell's Bible, printed (on vellum) partly in
Paris and partly in London, and 'finished in Aprill, A. D. 1539'-
a vast folio, splendidly illuminated, bearing the arms of Thomas
Cromwell; the service books used by Charles I and archbishop
Laud at the coronation of the former, and that used by Sancroft
at the coronation of James II; a curious Irish Psalter supposed to
be of the ninth century, with grotesque drawings, and interlined
throughout with Latin glosses written in Celtic minuscules? ; and an
' ¡lluminated book of Hours, an admirable specimen of Flemish art,
containing the autograph of the foundress, the Lady Margaret.
Neither the statutes of Michael house nor those of King's ball
(the two foundations subsequently absorbed in Trinity) contain
any reference to books, and the erection of the magnificent library
i See ante, p. 416.
2 See M. R. James's introduction (p. xciii) to The Ancient Libraries oj Canterbury
and Dover.


## p. 427 (#449) ############################################

are
dos
fis
e Pais
008
Oxford College Libraries
427
of Trinity, of which the plans were first begun by Sir Christopher
Wren in 1676, belongs to a period beyond our present limits.
Among the donors to the Trinity collection, Sir Edward Stanhope,
a fellow of the society, bequeathed fifteen manuscripts and over
300 volumes, among them the Polyglot Bible, known as king
Philip's Bible; and James Duport, vice-master of the society, and
afterwards master of Magdalene, was a liberal donor of 'English
books,' under which denomination the compiler of the catalogue
includes not only works in the English language, whether printed
in the country or abroad, but books which 'though not in the
English language, have a distinct connection with the English
Church, history, or literature? '
The original catalogue of Magdalene college library is still
preserved, 'a volume with an illuminated heraldic frontispiece
bearing the arms of Thomas Howard, a distinguished benefactor
to the society, whom king James had created first earl of Suffolk
in 1603; while, on the opposite page, the names of the earliest
donors to the library appear on the leaves of an olive-tree. The
list begins with the name of Thomas Nevile, of Pembroke college,
whom the earl had appointed master in 1582. A Nuremberg
Chronicon (folio, 1493); an Aesop (de Worde, 1503); a Manuale
ad usum Sarum (Rouen, 1504); a Salisbury breviary (London,
1556), are among the chief rarities?
At Oxford, college libraries had, in most instances, been
unscrupulously plundered by the Edwardian commissioners, and
little of value or importance remained at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. At Balliol, the college of that great patron
of learning, William Grey, bishop of Ely, the newly-built library
possessed, in 1478, two hundred volumes (including a printed copy
of Josephus), by virtue of his bequest ; but, by Anthony à Wood's
time, most of the miniatures in the volumes that remained had dis-
appeared. At Merton, the library retained every structural feature
of bishop Rede's original work, and continued, down to the year
1792, to afford, with its chained volumes, an excellent example of
a medieval interior. Oriel still preserved its catalogue of 1375,
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1 See Catalogue of the English Books printed before MDCI. now in the Library of
Trinity College, Cambridge, by Robert Sinker, Cambridge, 1885.
? A few words may here be added by way of anticipation respecting the Pepysian
library, which, along with the M8 of the donor's diary (in cipher) he bequeathed to the
college, although they were not actually received until 1724. By his directions they were
placed in a separate chamber, the catalogue having been compiled by himself. Among
the contents are six Caxtons, five folio volumes of old ballads, & splendid Sarum missal
(1620) and a valuable collection of prints, chiefly portraits.