CHAPTER III LIBRARIES OF THE GREAT ABBEYS--BOOK-LOVERS AMONG THE MENDICANTS--DISPERSAL OF MONKISH LIBRARIES I

THE Conquest wrought both good and evil to literature—evil because the Normans thought books written in the vernacular unworthy of preservation;[90] good because the change brought to the country settled government, and to the church an opportunity for reformation. Lanfranc was the moving spirit of reform, both in church administration and in the learning of its members. While still in Normandy he had built up a reputation for the monastic school at Bec, and probably had a share in collecting the excellent library that we know the monastery possessed in the twelfth century.[91] When he was appointed to the see of Canterbury he continued to work for the same ends, although his primacy can have left him little leisure. A fresh beginning had to be made in Canterbury. In 1067 a fire destroyed the city, including the cathedral and almost the whole of the monastic buildings; and in this disaster many “sacred and profane books” were burned. It was Lanfranc’s task to repair this loss. He brought books with him,[92] and introduced some changes and more method in the making and use of them. In the customary of the Benedictine order which he drew up to correspond with the best monastic practice, he included minute instructions about lending and reading books. He was also responsible in the main for the substitution of the continental Roman handwriting for the beautiful Hiberno-Saxon hand. In another respect his influence was more beneficial. Both at Bec and in England he aimed to turn out accurate texts of patristic books, and the better to achieve this end he himself corrected manuscripts. In the abbey of St. Martin de SÉcz at one time there was a copy of the first ten Conferences of Cassian with his corrections; and in the library of Mans is a St. Ambrose which was overlooked by him.[93] Happily he was in a position to lend texts to monks for transcribing, and his help in this direction was sought by Abbot Paul of St. Albans. Recent research by Dr. Montagu James suggests that Lanfranc’s work for the Canterbury library was a good deal more practical and influential than has been usually believed. Among the survivors of the Canterbury collections at Trinity College, Cambridge, and elsewhere, “are some scores of volumes undoubtedly from Christ Church, all of one epoch,” the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and all written in hands modelled on an Italian style. “Another distinguishing mark,” writes Dr. James, “in these volumes is the employment of a peculiar purple in the decorative initials and headings.... The nearest approaches I find to it in England are in certain manuscripts which were once at St. Augustine’s Abbey, and in others which belonged to Rochester. It can be shown that books did occasionally pass from Christ Church to St. Augustine’s, and it can also be shown that certain of the Rochester books were written at Christ Church.” All these books, therefore, Dr. James believes, were given by Lanfranc or produced under his direction.[94]

Lanfranc also encouraged original composition, for Osbern, monk of Canterbury, compiled his lives of St. Dunstan, St. Alphege, and St. Odo under his eye.

In this work of bookmaking and collecting Lanfranc was supported or his example was followed by other monks from Normandy: by Abbot Walter of Evesham, who made many books;[95] by Ernulf of Rochester, who compiled the Textus Roffensis; and by many others. At this time grew up the practice of using English houses to supply books for Norman abbeys; this partly explains the number of manuscripts of English workmanship now abroad. A manuscript preserved in Paris contains a note by a canon of Ste-Barbe-en-Auge referring to Beckford in Gloucestershire, an English cell of his house, whence books were sent to Normandy.[96]

From Lanfranc to the close of the thirteenth century, was the summer-time of the English religious houses. The Cluniac or reformed Benedictines settled here about 1077. In 1105 the Austin Canons first planted a house in this country. The White Monks, another reformed Benedictine order, entered England in 1128, and in the course of four and twenty years founded fifty houses. Soon after, in 1139, the English Gilbertines were established, then came the White Canons, and in 1180 the Carthusian monks. The land was peppered with houses. In less than a century and a half, from the Conquest to about 1200, it is estimated that no fewer than 430 houses were founded, making, with 130 founded before the Conquest, 560 in all.[97] Many were wealthy: some were powerful, because they owned much property, and popular because, like Malmesbury, they were “distinguished for their ‘delightful hospitality’ to guests who, arriving every hour, consume more than the inmates themselves.”[98] The Cluniacs could almost be called a fashionable order.

During this prosperous age some of the great houses did their best work in writing and study. Thus to pick out one or two facts from a string of them. In 1104 Abbot Peter of Gloucester gave many books to the abbey library. In 1180 the refounded abbey of Whitby owned a fair library of theological, historical, and classical books.[99] About the same time Abbot Benedict ordered the transcription of sixty volumes, containing one hundred titles, for his library at Peterborough.[100] By 1244, in spite of losses in the fire of 1184, Glastonbury had a library of some four hundred volumes, historical books consorting with romances, Bibles and patristical works almost crowding out some forlorn classics.[101] Nearly half a century later

Abbot John of Taunton added to Glastonbury forty volumes, a notable gift in those days of costly books, while Adam of Domerham tells us he also made a fine, handsome, and spacious library.[102] In 1277 a general chapter of the Benedictines ordered the monks, according to their capabilities, to study, write, correct, illuminate, and bind books, rather than to labour in the field.[103]

To such facts as these should be added the record of the Canterbury, Dover, and Bury libraries, the histories of which have been so admirably written by Dr. M. R. James.[104] Of the library of St. Albans Abbey we have not such a fine series of catalogues. Yet no abbey could have a nobler record. From Paul (1077) to Whethamstede (d. 1465) nearly all its abbots were book-lovers.[105] Paul built a writing-room, and put in the aumbries twenty-eight fine books (volumina notabilia), and eight Psalters, a Collectarium, books of the Epistles and Gospels for the year, two copies of the Gospels adorned with gold and silver and precious stones, without speaking of ordinals, customaries, missals, troparies, collectaria, and other books. Here, as everywhere, the library began with church books: later, easier circumstances made the stream of knowledge broader, if shallower. The next abbot also added some books. Geoffrey, the sixteenth abbot, was the author of a miracle play, an industrious scribe, and the donor of some books finely illuminated and bound. His successor, at one time the conventual archivist, loved books equally well, and got together a fair collection. Great Abbot Robert had many books written—“too many to be mentioned.”[106] Simon, the next abbot (1167), a learned and good-living man who encouraged others to learn, was especially fond of books, and had many fine manuscripts written for the painted aumbry in the church. He repaired and improved the scriptorium. He also made a provision whereby each succeeding abbot should have at work one special scribe, called the historiographer, an innovation to which we owe the matchless series of chronicles of Roger of Wendover, Matthew Paris, William Rishanger, and John of Trokelowe. In a Cottonian manuscript is a portrait of Abbot Simon at his book-trunk, a picture interesting because it illustrates his predominant taste for books, as well as one method—then the usual method—of storing them.

John, worthy follower of Simon, was a man of learning, who added many noble and useful books to St. Albans’ store. William of Trompington (1214) distinguished himself by giving to the abbey books he had taken from his prior. Abbot Roger was a better man, and gave many books and pieces; but John III and IV and Hugh are barren rocks in our fertile valley, for apparently they did nothing for the library. Richard of Wallingford did worse than nothing. He bribed Richard de Bury with four volumes, and sold to him thirty-two books for fifty pounds of silver, retaining one-half of this sum for himself, and devoting the other moiety to Epicurus—“a deed,” cries the chronicler, “infamous to all who agreed to it, so to make the only nourishment of the soul serve the belly, and upon any account to apply spiritual dainties to the demands of the flesh.”[107] Abbot Michael de Mentmore, who had been educated at Oxford, and became schoolmaster at St. Albans, encouraged the educational work of the abbey by making

studies for the scholars. As he also ordered the morning mass to be celebrated directly after prime, or six o’clock, instead of at tierce, or about nine, to allow the students more time, it is safe to assume he was more zealous than popular. He also gave books which cost him more than £100. His successor, Thomas, enlarged his own study, and bought many books for it; and, with the assistance of Thomas of Walsingham, then precentor and master of the scriptorium, he built a writing-room at his own expense.

But Whethamstede was St. Albans’ greatest book-loving abbot. An ardent book-lover, especially fond of finely-illuminated volumes, he indulged his passion for manuscripts, and for conventual buildings, vestments, and property, until he got the abbey into debt, and was led to resign. After the death of his successor, Whethamstede was re-elected. In his time no fewer than eighty-seven volumes were transcribed.[108] In 1452-53 he built a new library at a cost of more than £150. Another library was erected for the College of the Black Monks at Oxford, for £60.[109] It was described as a “new erection of a library joyning on the south-side of the chapel, containing on each side five or more divisions, as it may be partly seen to this day by the windows thereof, to which he gave good quantity of his own study, and especially those of his own composition, which were not a few, and to deter plagiaries and others from abusing of them, prefixt these verses in the front of every one of the same books, as he did also to those that he gave to the publick library of the University:

“In other books which he gave to the said library these:

This, in brief, is the story of St. Albans’ tribute to learning. In most monasteries the same kind of work went on, in a more circumscribed fashion, and without the same distinction of finish, which could probably only be attained at the big places where expert scribes and illuminators could be well trained.[111]

§ II

Fortunately, just when the great houses had attained the summit of their prosperity, and were beginning the slow decline to dissolution, learning and book-culture were freshly encouraged by the coming of the Friars.

The Black Friars settled at Canterbury and in London, near the Old Temple in Holborn, in 1221. The Grey Friars were at London, Oxford, and Cambridge in 1224, and by 1256 they were in forty-nine different localities.[112] It is strange how the latter order, founded by a man who forbade a novice to own a Psalter, came to be as earnest in buying books as the Benedictines were in copying them. St. Francis’ ideal, however, was impossible. The peripatetic nature of their calling, and their duty of tending the sick, compelled many friars to learn foreign languages, and to acquire some medical knowledge. Books were, therefore, useful to them, if not essential; as indeed St. Francis ultimately recognized. However, they could not own books themselves, but only in common with other members of the convent. If a friar was promoted to a bishopric, he had to renounce the use of the books he had had as a friar; and Clement IV forbade the consecration of a bishop until he had returned the books to his friary. When a book was given to a friar—and this often happened—he was in duty bound to hand it to his Superior. But if the friar was a man of parts the gift was devoted to acquiring books for his studies, or to giving him other necessary assistance; the duty, it was held, which the Superior owed him.[113] But these principles do not seem to have been strictly observed. In little more than thirty years after St. Francis’ death it was found necessary to draw up rules forbidding the brethren to own books except by leave from the chief officer of the order, or to keep any books which were not regarded as the property of the whole order, or to write books, or have them written for sale.[114]

By the end of the thirteenth century the Mendicants of Oxford were fairly well provided with books. Michael Scot came to Oxford, at the time of the greatest literary activity of the brethren, and introduced to them the physical and metaphysical works of Aristotle (1230).[115] Adam de Marisco seems to have been responsible for the first considerable additions to the collection. From his brother, Bishop Richard, he had already received a library; possibly this, with his own books, came into possession of the convent. Then out of love for him, Grosseteste left his writings or his library—it is not clear which—to the Grey Friars.[116] This gift may have formed part—it is not certain—of the two valuable hoards existing in the fifteenth century in the same friary, one the convent library, open only to graduates, the other the Schools library, for seculars living among the brethren for the sake of the teaching they could get. In these collections were many Hebrew books, which had been bought upon the banishment of the Jews from England (1290).[117] Such books were not often found in the abbeys, although some got to Ramsey, where Grosseteste’s influence may be suspected.

The White Friars also had a library at Oxford, wherein they garnered the works of every famous writer of their order. They are praised for taking more care of their books than the brethren of other colours.[118] In later times, at any rate, some cause for the complaint against the Grey Friars existed. They appear to have sold many manuscripts to Dr. Thomas Gascoigne (c. 1433). He ultimately gave them to the libraries of Lincoln, Durham, Balliol, and Oriel Colleges. As the friars’ mode of life grew easier and the love of learning less keen, they got rid of many more books. In Leland’s time the library had melted away. After much difficulty he was allowed to see the book-room, but he found in it nothing but dust and dirt, cobwebs and moths, and some books not worth a threepenny piece.[119]

Roger de Thoris, afterwards Dean of Exeter, presented a library to the Grey Friars of his city in 1266.[120] What became of it we do not know. About the same time, in 1253 to be exact, the will of Richard de Wyche, Bishop of Chichester, is notable for its bequests to the friars; thus he left books to various friaries of the Grey Brethren—at

Chichester his glossed Psalter, at Lewes the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John, at Winchelsea the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, at Canterbury Isaiah glossed, at London the Epistles of St. Paul glossed, and at Winchester the twelve Prophets glossed; as well as some volumes to the Black Friars—at Arundel the Book of Sentences, at Canterbury Hosea glossed, at London the Books of Job, the Acts, the Apocalypse, with the canonical epistles, and at Winchester the Summa of William of Auxerre.[121] Such friendliness for the Mendicants was far from common among the secular clergy. Besides the southern places mentioned in this bequest, friaries in the east, at Norwich and Ipswich, and in the west, at Hereford and Bristol, had goodly libraries.

The friary collections in London seem to have been important, especially that given to the Grey Friars in 1225,[122] just when they had settled near Newgate. The Austin Friars may have owned a library before 1364, when two of their number left the London house, taking with them books and other goods.[123] Early in the fifteenth century a library was built and a large addition was made to the books of this house by Prior Lowe, a friar afterwards occupying the sees of St. Asaph and of Rochester.[124] At this time the friars of London were specially fortunate. The White Friars enjoyed a good library, to which Thomas Walden, a learned brother of the order, presented many foreign manuscripts of some age and rarity.[125] The Grey Friars’ library was founded or refounded by Dick Whittington (1421).[126] The room “was in length one hundred twentie nine foote, and in breadth thirtie one: all seeled with Wainscot, having twentie eight desks, and eight double setles of Wainscot. Which in the next yeare following was altogither finished in building, and within three yeares after, furnished with Bookes, to the charges of” over £556, “whereof Richard Whittington bare foure hundred pound, the rest was borne by Doctor Thomas Winchelsey, a Frier there.”[127] On this occasion one hundred marks were paid for transcribing the works of Nicholas de Lyra, a Grey Friar highly esteemed for his knowledge of Hebrew, and “the greatest exponent of the literal sense of Scripture whom the medieval world can show.”[128]

Of few of the friary libraries have we definite knowledge of their size and character. But in the case of the Austin Friars of York, a catalogue of their library is extant. The collection was a notable one. The inventory was made in 1372, and the items in it, forming the bulk of the whole, with some later additions, amounted to 646. One member of the society named John Erghome was a remarkable man. He was a doctor of Oxford, where he had studied logic, natural philosophy, and theology. More than 220 books were his contribution to this splendid library, and he it was who added the Psalter and Canticles in Greek and a Hebrew book,—rarities indeed at that date. Classical literature is fairly well represented in the collection as a whole, but theology, and especially logic and philosophy, make up the bulk.[129]

In Scotland, too, the Grey Friars were busy library-making. We find the convent at Stirling buying five dozen parchments (1502). Fifty pounds were paid for books sent to them this year by the Cistercians of Culross, and to the Austin Canons of Cambuskenneth in the following year about half as much was paid; and similar records appear in the accounts.[130]

Other interesting testimony to the bookcraft and collecting habits of the friars is not wanting. Adam de Marisco writes to the Friar Warden of Cambridge asking for vellum for scribes.[131] Or he expresses the hope that Richard of Cornwall may be prevailed upon to stay in England, but if he goes he will be supplied with books and everything necessary for his departure.[132] From this letter, it was evidently usual for friars to seek and obtain permission to carry away books with them when going abroad, or going from one custody to another.[133] Then again Adam writes asking Grosseteste to send Aristotle’s Ethics to the Grey Friars’ convent in London.[134] In getting books the friars were sometimes unscrupulous. A royal writ was issued commanding the Warden of the Grey Friars at Oxford and another friar, Walter de Chatton, to return two books worth forty shillings which they were keeping from the rightful owner (1330).[135] More striking testimony to the book-collecting habits of the friars is the complaint to the Pope of their buying so many books that the monks and clergy had difficulty in obtaining them. In every convent, it was urged, was a grand and noble library, and every friar of eminence in the University had a fine collection of books.[136] Archbishop Fitzralph, who made this statement, detested the friars, and was besides prone to exaggerate; but he was not wholly wrong in this instance, as De Bury tells a similar tale. “Whenever it happened,” he says, “that we turned aside to the cities and places where the mendicants ... had their convents, we did not disdain to visit their libraries ...; there we found heaped up amid the utmost poverty the utmost riches of wisdom. These men are as ants.... They have added more in this brief [eleventh] hour to the stock of the sacred books than all the other vine-dressers.”[137] Instead of declaiming against the hawks, De Bury trained them to prey for him, and was well rewarded for his pains. Nor is it beyond the bounds of probability that he enriched his own collection at the expense of the Grey Friars’ library at Oxford.[138]

The friars were not merely collectors. The scholarship of Bacon and other brethren does not concern us. But their correction of the texts of Scripture, and their bibliographical work, are germane to our subject. In mid-thirteenth century some Black Friars of Paris laboured to correct the text of the Latin Bible; and to enable copyists to restore the true text when transcribing, they drew up manuals, called Correctoria. One such manual, now known as the Correctorium Vaticanum, was prepared by William de la Mare, a Grey brother of Oxford, in the course of forty years’ labour; and it is “a work which before all others laid down sound principles of true scientific criticism upon which to base a correction of the Vulgate text.”[139]

Another special work of the Grey brethren, the Registrum Librorum Angliae[140] was less important, although it more clearly illustrates their high regard for books. Some time in the fourteenth century, by seeking information from about one hundred and sixty monasteries, some friars drew

up a list of libraries under the heads of the seven custodies or wardenships of their order in England, and catalogued the writings of some eighty-five authors represented in these collections. In this way was formed a combined bibliography and co-operative catalogue. Of this catalogue we are able to reproduce a page on which are indexed five authors, with numerical references to the libraries containing each work. Early in the fifteenth century a monk of Bury St. Edmunds, John Boston by name—possibly the librarian of that house—expanded the register by increasing to nearly seven hundred the number of authors, and by adding a score of names to the list of libraries. He also provided a short biographical sketch of each author “drawn from the best sources at his disposal; so that the book in its completed form might claim to be called a dictionary of literature.”[141]

§ III

We would fain fill in the outline we have given, for the friars and their book-loving ways are interesting. But enough has been written to show the origin and growth of libraries among the religious both of the abbeys and the friaries. Of the later days of monachism it is not so pleasant to write. The story has been well told many times, but no two writers, even in a broad and general way, let alone in detail, have read the facts alike. On the one hand it is urged that monachism became degenerate, both in reverence for spiritual affairs and in love of learning. Many monks, we are told, came to find more enjoyment in easy living than in ascetic and religious observances. Apart from the savage onslaughts in Piers Plowman, and the yarns of Layton and Legh, now quite discredited, we have the most credible evidence in Chaucer’s gentle satire:—

The friars, too, were sometimes “merye and wantoun,” and

And an indictment of some force might be based on the fact that the general chapter of the Benedictine order at Coventry in 1516 found it necessary to make regulations against immoderate and illicit eating and drinking, and against hunting and hawking.[142]

No doubt also many a monk would argue with himself:—

De Bury declaimed against the monks’ neglect of books. “Now slothful Thersites,” he cries, “handles the arms of Achilles and the choice trappings of war-horses are spread upon lazy asses, winking owls lord it in the eagle’s nest, and the cowardly kite sits upon the perch of the hawk.

“And as if the simple monastic folk of modern times were deceived by a confusion of names, while Liber Pater is preferred to Liber Patrum, the study of the monks nowadays is in the emptying of cups and not the emending of books; to which they do not hesitate to add the wanton music of Timotheus, jealous of chastity, and thus the song of the merrymaker and not the chant of the mourner is become the office of the monks. Flocks and fleeces, crops and granaries, leeks and potherbs, drink and goblets, are nowadays the reading and study of the monks, except a few elect ones, in whom lingers not the image but some slight vestige of the fathers that preceded them.”[143] Specific instances of neglect and worse are recorded. We have already mentioned the giving and selling of books by the monks of St. Albans to Richard de Bury. From the account books of Bolton Abbey it would appear that three books only were bought during forty years of the fourteenth century.[144] At St. Werburgh’s, Chester, discipline was very lax. Two monks robbed the abbot of a book valued at £20, and of property valued at £100 or more, and stole from two of their brethren books and money (1409). About four years later one of the thieves was elected abbot, and his respect for learning may be gauged from the fact that in 1422 he was charged with not having maintained a scholar at Oxford or Cambridge for twelve years, although it was his duty to do so by the rules of his order.[145]

At Bury books were going astray in the first half of the fifteenth century. Abbot William Curteys (1429-45) issued an ordinance in which he declares books given out by the precentor to the brethren for purposes of study had been lent, pledged, and even stolen by them. Some of them he had recovered, and he hoped to secure more, but the process of recovery had been expensive and troublesome, both to himself and the people he found in possession of the books. He therefore sternly forbade the brethren to alienate books, and decrees certain punishments if his order was disobeyed. Brethren studying at the University seem to have been not immune from such faults.[146] The prior of Michelham sold books, papers, horses, and timber for his own personal profit (1478). A visitation of Wigmore showed that books were not “studied in the cloister because the seats were uncomfortable.”[147] Bishop Goldwell’s visitation of his diocese of Norwich in 1492 showed that at Norwich Priory no scholars were sent to study at Oxford, and at Wymondham Abbey the monks “refused to apply themselves to their books.” At Battle Abbey, in 1530, the one time fine library was in a sad state of neglect; no doubt books had been parted with. And as the last years of the monasteries coincided with a renewed interest among seculars in learning and with a revival of book-collecting, the monks of all houses must have been sorely tempted to sell books which laymen coveted, as the monks of Mount Athos have been bartering away their libraries ever since the seventeenth century.

But among so many houses some were bound to be ill-conducted. And it is important to remember that irregularities would be recorded oftener than more favourable facts. What had been usual would go unnoted; what was strange, and a departure from the highest standard of monachism, would be observed with regret by friends and dwelt on with spite by enemies. Although human memory is apt to register evil acts with more assiduity and fidelity than good, yet a contrary view of the last state of monachism may be argued with as much reason and with the support of equally reliable evidence. The great majority of the houses were not under lax control. The general organisation was not defective; nor was every monk a “lorel, a loller, and a ‘spille-tyme.’” Setting aside the question of general conduct, with which we have little to do, plenty of evidence may be collected to show that the work of the earlier periods was not only continued in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but that some of the monks enjoyed special distinction among their contemporaries. Writing was encouraged by directions of chapters in 1343, 1388, and 1444.[148] The early part of the fifteenth century was an age of library building, in the monasteries, as at the Universities. Special rooms for books were put up at Gloucester, Christ Church (Canterbury), Durham, Bury St. Edmunds, and other houses. Large and growing monastic libraries were in existence—at St. Albans and Peterborough, two at Canterbury of nearly two thousand volumes each, two thousand volumes at Bury, a thousand and more at Durham, six hundred at Ramsey, three hundred and fifty at Meaux. When John Leland crossed the threshold of the library at Glastonbury he stood stock still for a moment, awestruck and bewildered at the sight of books of the greatest antiquity. In 1482, the abbess of Syon monastery, Isleworth, entered into a regular contract for writing and binding books.[149] Some forty years later this abbey had at least fourteen hundred and twenty-one printed and manuscript volumes in its library.[150] More facts of similar character will be noted in the next chapter. Here we will content ourselves with noting a few of the most conspicuous instances of monkish scholarship in these later days. At Glastonbury, Abbot John Selwood was familiar with John Free’s work; indeed, presents a monk with one of that scholar’s translations from the Greek.[151] His successor, Bere, was a pilgrim to Italy, and was in correspondence with Erasmus, who desired him to examine his translation of the New Testament from the Greek. A monk of Westminster, who became abbot of his house in 1465, was a diligent student, noted for his knowledge of Greek.[152] At Christ Church, Canterbury, Prior Selling was particularly zealous on behalf of the library, and was one of the first to import Greek books into England in any considerable quantity.[153] Two manuscripts now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and one in New College, were transcribed by a Greek living at Reading Abbey (1497-1500).[154] These few references to the study of Greek are especially significant, as the revival of Greek studies had only just begun.

§ IV

The whole truth about the later days of the monasteries will never be known. Many of the original sources of our knowledge are tainted with partisanship and religious rancour and flagrant dishonesty. What does seem to be true is that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries monastic influence grew slowly weaker, although the system may not have been degenerate in itself. The cause is to be found in the very prosperity of monachism, which brought to the religious houses wealth and all its responsibilities. Wealth always imposes fetters, as every rich man, from Seneca downwards, has declared with unctuous lamentation. But

what first strikes the student who compares early English monachism with the later is, that whereas the monks of the first period were most concerned with their monastic duties, their religious observances, and their scribing and illuminating, the monks of the later period, and especially during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were immersed in business, in the management of their wealth, the control of large estates. The possession of wealth led in one direction to excessive display, and to purchasing land and building beyond their means; a course which monks might easily persuade themselves was progressive and exemplary of true religious fervour, but which attracted to them envious eyes. Heavy subsidies to the Crown and the Pope oppressed them. Then again, many houses indulged in unwise and excessive almsgiving, which the monks might well believe to be right, but which brought them only the interested friendship of the needy. And in the management of their estates much litigation obstinately pursued caused internal dissension, was costly, and gained them only bitter enemies. Had the monasteries been allowed to exist, probably these evils would have cured themselves. But, owing to these evils,—to the decline of monastic influence of which they were the cause,—the Dissolution, once decided upon, could be carried out with terrible swiftness and completeness; no influence nor power which the religious could wield was able to delay or avert the blow struck by the king. Within a few years over one thousand houses were closed and their lands and property confiscated.

In the hastiness of the overthrow some conventual books were destroyed, or stolen, or sold off at low prices. In a few places damage was done even before the actual dissolution. At Christ Church, Canterbury, for example, the drunken servants of a royal commission carelessly brought about a fire, almost entirely destroying the library of Prior Selling,[155] which he probably designed to add to the collection of his monastery. But when the houses were suppressed, we are told, “whole libraries were destroyed, or made waste paper of, or consumed for the vilest uses. The splendid and magnificent Abbey of Malmesbury, which possessed some of the finest manuscripts in the kingdom, was ransacked, and its treasures either sold or burnt to serve the commonest purposes of life. An antiquary who travelled through that town, many years after the Dissolution, relates that he saw broken windows patched up with remnants of the most valuable manuscripts on vellum, and that the bakers had not even then consumed the stores they had accumulated, in heating their ovens.”[156] John Bale tells us the loss of the libraries had not mattered so much, “beynge so many in nombre, and in so desolate places for the more parte, yf the chiefe monumentes and most notable workes of our excellent wryters had been reserved. If there had been in every shyre of Englande but one solempne lybrary to the preservacyon of those noble workes, and preferrement of good lernynges in oure posteryte, it had bene yet sumwhat. But to destroye all without consyderacyon, is and wyll be unto Englande for ever, a most horryble infamy amonge the grave senyours of other nacyons. A great nombre of them whych purchased these superstycyouse mansyons reserved of those lybrary bokes, some to serve theyr jakes, some to scoure theyr candlestycks, and some to rubbe theyr bootes. Some they sold to the grossers and sopesellers, and some they sent over see to the bokebynders, not in small nombre, but at tymes whole shyppes full, to the wonderynge of the foren nacyons. Yea, the unyversytees of this realme are not all clere in this detestable fact.... I know a merchant man which shall at thys tyme be namelesse, that boughte the contentes of two noble lybraryes for xl shyllynges pryce, a shame it is to be spoken. Thys stuffe hath he occupyed in the stede of graye paper by the space of more than these x years, and yet he hath store ynough for many yeares to come.”[157] To some extent Bale’s account of the contemptuous treatment of books is confirmed by records of sales: as, for example, the following:—

Item, sold to Robert Doryngton, old boke, and a cofer in the library	ijs.
Item, old bokes in the vestry, sold to the same Robert	viiid.
Item, sold to Robert Whytgreve, a missale	viijd.
Fyrst, sold to Mr. Whytgreve, a masse boke	xijd.
Item, old bokes in the quyer	vjd.
Item, a fryers masse boke, solde to Marke Wyrley	iiijd.	[158]

Bale’s statement is sadly borne out by the fate of the library of the Austin Friars of York. At one time this friary owned between six and seven hundred books. Now but five are known to remain.[159] “It is hardly open to doubt,” writes Dr. James, “that nine-tenths of the books have ceased to exist. To be sure, it is no news to us that thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of manuscripts were destroyed in the first half of the sixteenth century; but the truth comes heavily home when we are confronted with the actual figures of the loss sustained in one small corner of the field. We may fairly reckon that what happened in the case of the Austin Friars at York happened to many another house situated like it, in a populous centre, and thus enjoying good opportunities for acquiring books.”[160]

But the loss may be—and has been—exaggerated. In some instances a good part of a library was preserved. The Prior of Lanthony, a house in the outskirts of Gloucester, saved the books of his little community. From him they passed into the hands of one Theyer; later, possibly through Archbishop Bancroft, they found an ultimate resting-place in Lambeth Palace. During this interval many of them were perhaps lost or sold, but to-day some one hundred and thirty are known certainly to have come from Lanthony, or may be credited to that place on reasonably safe evidence.[161]

Then again Henry’s myrmidons—to use the classic word—would be unlikely to carry their vandalism too far. To do so, in view of the great value of books, would bring them no profit. Knowing their character, may we not reasonably assume that they sold as many books as they could to make illicit gains?[162] Sometimes they fell in love with their finds, as was natural. “Please it you to understand,” writes Thomas Bedyll, one of Henry VIII’s commissioners, “that in the reding of the muniments and charters of the house of Ramesey, I found a charter of King Edgar, writen in a very antiq Romane hand, hard to be red at the first sight, and light inowghe after that a man found out vj or vij words and after compar letter to letter. I am suer ye wold delight to see the same for the straingnes and antiquite thereof.... I have seen also there a chartor of King Edward writen affor the Conquest.”[163]

John Leland was one of those who saved books. Already he had been commissioned to examine the libraries of cathedrals, abbeys, priories, colleges, and other places wherein the records of antiquity were kept, when, observing with dismay the threatened loss of monastic treasures, he asked Cromwell to extend the commission to collecting books for the king’s library. The Germans, he says, perceiving our “desidiousness” and negligence, were daily sending young scholars hither, who spoiled the books, and cut them out of libraries, and returned home and put them abroad as monuments of their own country.[164]

His request was granted in part, and he tells us he sent to London for the royal library the choicest volumes in St. Augustine’s Abbey; but very few of these books now remain.[165] He had, he said, “conservid many good autors, the which otherwise had beene like to have perischid to no smaul incommodite of good letters, of the whiche parte remayne yn the moste magnificent libraries of yowr royal Palacis. Parte also remayne yn my custodye. Wherby I truste right shortely so to describe your most noble reaulme, and to publische the Majeste and the excellent actes of yowr progenitors.”[166]

Robert Talbot, rector of Haversham, Berkshire (d. 1558), collected monastic manuscripts: the choicest of them he left to New College. A portreeve of Ipswich, named William Smart, came into possession of some hundred volumes from Bury Abbey library. In 1599 he gave them to Pembroke College, where they are now.[167] John Twyne, (d. 1581), schoolmaster and mayor of Canterbury, certainly once owned the fifteenth-century catalogue of the St. Augustine’s Abbey library, and seems to have possessed many manuscripts. Both catalogue and manuscripts were transferred to Dr. John Dee, the famous alchemist. The catalogue, with some other books belonging to the doctor, got to the library of Trinity College, Dublin. But the manuscripts passed into the hands of Brian Twyne, John’s grandson, who bequeathed them to Corpus Christi College, Oxford; they are still there.[168] John Stow, whose gatherings form part of the Harleian collection, saved some books which once reposed in claustral aumbries, mainly owing to the protection and help of Archbishop Parker.

Archbishop Parker himself was assiduous in garnering books. “I have within my house, in wages,” he writes to Lord Burleigh, in 1573, “drawers and cutters, painters, limners, writers and bookbinders.” Again, “I toy out my time, partly with copying of books.” He made a strenuous endeavour to recover as many of the monks’ books as possible, using money and influence to this end; and accumulated an unusually large library, quite priceless in character.[169] Most of his choice books were presented to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and twenty-five of them to Cambridge University Library (1574). Dr. Montagu James, the leading authority on the provenance of Western manuscripts, has discovered or made suggestions as to the origin of nearly two hundred out of about three hundred and eighty.[170] Forty-seven are traced to Christ Church, Canterbury; twenty-six to St. Augustine’s Abbey. Later Dr. James extended his work to identifying the manuscripts which were once in the Canterbury abbeys and in the priory of St. Martin at Dover. From the fragmentary Christ Church catalogue of 1170, Dr. James has identified two, and possibly six, manuscripts; from Henry Eastry’s catalogue (14 cent.) of Christ Church books, he has identified either certainly or with much probability about one hundred and eighty; from the catalogue of St. Augustine’s Abbey library (c. 1497) over one hundred and seventy-five; as well as twenty from the Dover catalogue (1389). In addition, Dr. James has identified about one hundred and fifty manuscripts still extant which are certainly or probably attributable to Christ Church monastic library, but which are not in the catalogues handed down to us; and over sixty which are likewise attributable to St. Augustine’s monastery.[171] There are therefore about five hundred and seventy Canterbury manuscripts now remaining to us.

By making a similarly thorough investigation Dr. James has traced about three hundred and twenty-two manuscripts from Bury St. Edmunds.[172] Of the Westminster Abbey manuscripts it is difficult to say how many are extant, as the common medieval press marks are absent from the books of this house. But the presence of eleven manuscripts in the British Museum; two in Lambeth Palace; one at Sion College; three at the Bodleian, and five more in Oxford colleges; two at the Cambridge University Library, and two more in the colleges there; one at the Chetham Library, Manchester; and two at Trinity College, Dublin, well illustrate how the monastic books have been scattered since the Dissolution.[173] To these special examinations Dr. James has gradually added vastly to our knowledge of the provenance of manuscripts by his masterly series of catalogues of the ancient treasures of the Cambridge colleges, and he has proved to us that a considerable number of monastic books still survive.[174] Much more work of the same kind remains to be done; other labourers are needed; but the men of parts who are able and content to labour at a task without remuneration and with small thanks are few and far between; while fewer still are the publishers who can be persuaded to produce the results of these researches.