A still more noble memorial of Elizabethan times exists in Bodley, as the great library is called after its founder, “whose single work clouds the proud fame of the Egyptian Library and shames the tedious growth o’ the wealthy Vatican.”
Scarcely had the Duke of Gloucester’s library been completed than it began to be depleted of its treasures. Three volumes only out of that splendid collection now remain in the Bodleian; one volume has found its way to Oriel College, another to Corpus Christi; six others may be seen at the British Museum. The rest had by this time been lost through the negligence of one generation or the ignorant fanaticism of another. For scholars borrowed books on insufficient pledges, and preferred to keep the former and sacrifice the latter. The Edwardine commissioners, as we have seen, appointed to reform the University, visited the libraries in the spirit of John Knox. All the books were destroyed or sold. In Convocation (1556) “venerable men” were chosen to sell the empty shelves and stalls, and to make a timber-yard of Duke Humphrey’s treasure-house!
But the room remained; and it was destined, in its very emptiness and desolation, to work upon the imagination of one Thomas Bodley, an accomplished scholar, linguist and diplomatist, who believed with Bury that a “library of wisdom is more precious than all wealth.”
Born at Exeter, he accompanied his father when he fled to Germany from the Papist persecutions. Whilst other Oxonian Protestants were “eating mice at Zurich,” he studied at Geneva, learning Hebrew under Chevalerius, Greek under Constantinus, and Divinity under Calvin. Queen Mary being dead and religion changed, young Bodley was sent to Magdalen. There, he tells us, he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts (1563). In the following year he was admitted fellow of Merton College, where he gave public Greek lectures, without requiring any stipend. He was elected proctor in 1569, and was subsequently University orator and studied sundry Faculties. He next determined to travel, to learn modern languages and to increase his experience in the managing of affairs. He performed several important diplomatic missions with great ability and success. On his return from the Hague Burleigh marked him out for the Secretaryship, but grew jealous of the support he received from Essex. Bodley found himself unsuited for party intrigue and, weary of statecraft and diplomacy, decided to withdraw into private life.
But whilst refusing all subsequent offers of high office, he felt that he was called upon “to do the true part of a profitable member in the State.” All his life, whether immersed in affairs of State at home or lying abroad for the good of his country, he had never forgotten that ruined library at Oxford. That there once had been one, he has to remind the University, was apparent by the room itself remaining.
“Whereupon, examining exactly for the rest of my life what course I might take, and having sought, as I thought, all the ways to the wood, to select the most proper, I concluded at the last to set up my staff at the Library door in Oxford.”
He wrote accordingly, offering (1597-8) to restore the place at his own charge. The offer was gratefully accepted. Bodley had married a rich widow, and his “purse-ability” was such that he was able to bear the expense of repairing the room, collecting books and endowing the library: a work, says Casaubon, rather for a king than a private man. Two years were spent in fitting up the room and erecting its superb heraldic roof. The ceiling is divided into square compartments, on each of which are painted the arms of the University, the open Bible with seven seals (I Rev. v. I) between three ducal crowns, on the open pages of which are the words, so truly fitting for a Christian school: “Dominus Illuminatio mea.”
