And now to turn to some individual libraries. Some of the most venerable
have practically disappeared--that of Glastonbury, for instance, the
premier abbey of England, the only one which lived through from British
to Saxon times.[C] To it we might reasonably look to trace many an
ancient book belonging to the days of the old British Church. Leland,
who visited the library not long before the Dissolution, represents
himself as overawed by its antiquity. But almost the only record he
quotes is one by "Melkinus," which most modern writers think was a late
forgery. However, there is in the Bodleian one British book from
Glastonbury, written, at least in part, in Cornwall, and preserving
remnants of the learning of the British clergy. It has portions of Ovid
and of Latin grammar, and passages of the Bible in Greek and Latin. The
catalogue, too, shows that there were in fact a good number of old MSS.,
and also that the monks of the fourteenth century did not care much
about them, for they are marked as "Old and useless," "Old and in bad
condition" (_debilis_), and so on. The actual extant books which we can
trace to this foundation are few and for the most part late.
St. Albans, founded by King Offa in the eighth century, has left us, as
I said, no catalogue, but there are many of its books in our libraries.
Two groups of them stand out. First are those procured by Abbot Simon
(1166-1188) and Prior Mathias. These are very finely written. A typical
and very interesting specimen is a Bible at Eton (26) which has three
columns to a page--a rare distinction in the twelfth century, pointing,
perhaps, to its having been copied from a very early and venerable
model. It has a sister book at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, and another--a
New Testament--at Trinity College, Dublin. Then we have a large and
important group of histories. The historiographers of St. Albans form a
series reaching from Roger of Wendover (d. 1236) to Thomas Walsingham
(d. 1422). The greatest of them was Matthew Paris (d. 1259). We have
authentic and even autograph copies of many of these works, and
especially of Paris's (at Corpus Christi, Cambridge (26 and 16), and in
the British Museum, Royal 14, C. vii., Cotton Nero D. 1, etc.). And we
have not only Paris's writing, but many of his drawings, for he was an
accomplished artist. All these books furnish us with material for
judging of the handwriting used at St. Albans in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, and we can speak with fair confidence of St.
Albans books of that period.
As in other cases, I believe that many books were written there for
other monasteries, either as gifts or as a matter of business. Not every
one of the little priories scattered all over the country had its own
scriptorium; it was only natural that they should apply to the big
establishments when they wanted a Bible or service-book or commentary of
really good quality. This practice explains the fact that we quite often
find books which we could make oath are products of St. Albans or of
Canterbury, and which yet have inscriptions, written when they were new
books, showing that they were owned by some small house. Let me here
note two other ways in which books wandered from the great abbeys.
_One_: all the abbey libraries were full of duplicates; read any
catalogue, and you will realize that. When the Orders of Friars were
collecting libraries of their own, and when the colleges in the two
Universities were doing the same, they found that the monks were often
willing to part with one of their eight or nine sets of Gregory's
_Moralia_ or Augustine _On the Trinity_ for a consideration. _Two_: most
of the large abbeys maintained hostels at the Universities, singly or
jointly, in which some of their younger members studied for degrees.
These hostels were equipped with libraries, and the libraries were
furnished from the shelves of the mother-houses. We have at least two
lists of books so used: one of those which Durham sent to what is now
Trinity College, Oxford; the other of those which Christchurch,
Canterbury, deported to Canterbury College, Oxford, which stood on the
site of Canterbury Quad, in Christ Church.
There was some compensation, by the way: the abbeys were not invariably
the losers. A group of books (at Lambeth) was procured to be written by
a Canon of Lanthony when he was studying at Oxford (about 1415), and
given to the library of his priory.
We have digressed from the particular to the general. Returning to
individual libraries, let us glance at the Norwich Cathedral Priory. Of
this, again, we have no catalogue; it is a case in which press-marks and
names of owners are our guides. Norwich has a system of press-marks
consisting of a letter of the alphabet plus a Roman numeral: "N.
lxviii." The press-marks of several other houses consist of just the
same elements, but we can pick out that of Norwich by its size (not
large) and its position (top of the first leaf of text); also there is
usually added to it the name of the monk who procured it for the house,
Henry de Lakenham or W. Catton--someone whose surname is the name of a
Norfolk village. Over a hundred MSS. from Norwich are known to me, but
they are a very small fraction of the library, as is shown by the
numerals attached to the several class letters. Very few of them are as
old as the twelfth century; late twelfth and particularly early
fourteenth make up the bulk. I attribute this to the great fire of 1286,
and I take it that then the greater part of the priory books were
spoiled, and that energetic steps to refill the library were taken in
the years that followed. There are more Norwich books in the University
Library at Cambridge than anywhere else; it has not been proved, but I
do not much doubt, that most of them were given by the chapter to
Cambridge about 1574, at the suggestion of Dr. Andrew Perne, Master of
Peterhouse, who was a member of the cathedral body and an enthusiast for
the University Library.
Not very dissimilar was the action of Exeter Chapter, who in 1602 gave
over eighty of their MSS. to Sir Thomas Bodley's new library in Oxford,
Bodley's brother being then a Canon of Exeter; and not long after the
Canons of Worcester picked out a score of their MSS., for Dean
Williams's new library at Westminster Abbey. These, however, I believe
were never actually sent off. It is just as well, for the Westminster
MSS. were burnt in 1694. Of Bury St. Edmunds I have attempted to write
the history elsewhere, but it is not likely that many readers of this
book will be familiar with my former publication. The only catalogue we
have for this abbey is an early one (eleventh to twelfth century)
written on the fly-leaves of a copy of Genesis (glossed) at Pembroke
College, Cambridge. Thus it contains no fourteenth or fifteenth century
books, nor, indeed, has it many entries of extant books of earlier date
which we are sure belonged to Bury; but it is not to be despised, though
we depend more upon press-marks than upon it for guidance. Bury
press-marks were an introduction of the late fourteenth or early
fifteenth century. Soon after 1400 Abbot Curteys built a library, and it
was under the care of the monk, John Boston, who, I think, is
responsible for the press-marks, as he certainly is for the copious
bibliographical notices which occurred in some of the books. The
press-marks consist of a capital letter and an _arabic_ numeral (A.
130). Here, again, one has to be familiar with the handwriting of the
marks and their position (top of first leaf and fly-leaf) in order to
distinguish them from those of Exeter (often on last fly-leaf and large)
or of the Hereford Franciscans (large, on first fly-leaf). However, in
most cases they are backed up by the older inscription _Liber S. Ædmundi
regis et martiris_. Bury library has, on the whole, fared well; an
Alderman of Ipswich, William Smart, procured over 100 of its MSS., which
he gave to Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1599, and about 150 others
are scattered up and down the country. One Bury book of extreme
interest--not a library book, but a register--was taken across the
Channel in the sixteenth century by a Bury monk to the settlement of
the Benedictine refugees at Douai. Since the Revolution it has been
(_perhaps_ still is) in the town library there. Its importance is that
it contains a list of the benefactors of the abbey, and among other
things records the burial-places of the Abbots, including the famous
Samson. In recent years it has guided excavators to the discovery of his
bones. With it is a Psalter of extraordinary beauty, one of a group of
marvellous books done in East Anglia--some say at Gorleston--soon after
1300. I grieve to hear that it has been severely damaged by damp. It has
in it the name of an Abbot, John, who, I wish to believe, was of Bury,
but doubt is thrown on this.