The Bodleian may fairly claim to rank in size about ninth, and in size and importance (together) about eighth. It is the largest and most important University library in the world, and the largest (at any rate in the Old World) which is not aided out of State funds. It claims also to be one of the earliest public libraries of Europe, in the sense that it has always been open to those who bring a sufficient recommendation, practically without distinction of class or nationality. In early days a small charge was made on first admission.
CHAPTER II
SIR THOMAS BODLEY AND HIS FOUNDATION, 1598-1613
The old University Libraries.
The cradle of the University is in the vaulted chamber at the north-east corner of St. Mary’s Church, still called the Old Congregation House. The present building was begun in 1320 on behalf of Thomas de Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, and consisted of a lower chamber for University meetings and an upper chamber for a library. The shell was finished by his death in 1327; but not till a dispute with Oriel College about the possession of Cobham’s books was settled in 1410, was there a library in full establishment. The books were taken from the two chests in which they had lain since 1337 in the lower room, and were chained in the upper room to desks with seats fixed beside them. In 1412 a statute settled the regulations, and ensured that the librarian[1] should also be a chaplain of the University.
In 1345 Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, author of the first book on the love of books (the Philobiblon), bequeathed his library to Durham College (now Trinity College), but it is hardly doubtful that the books never reached Oxford, and that his intended library “free to all scholars” never came into being.
The second University library was built over the Divinity School, chiefly because the gifts of MSS. by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, far exceeded the capacity of the little solar at St. Mary’s to receive them. The School was begun about 1420, and by 1480 both it and the book-room were complete. The latter is now the “Old Reading Room” of Bodley’s foundation. But between 1550 and 1556 the Commissioners appointed by Edward VI for the reformation of the University wantonly destroyed almost the whole of the contents of the library, so much so that on January 25, 1556, the University gave orders that the very fitting of the library should be sold. There were no books left to attract a reader. Of the six hundred or more MSS. in the old room, not more than eleven can be still identified (at Oxford, the British Museum and Paris) and only four are still in their old home (MSS. Hatton 36, Duke Humphrey b. 1 and d. 1, Selden B. 50).
From 1550 till 1598 a dead silence falls on the University library: the bare walls are there, and perhaps the roof also, but no books and “no voice, nor any that answered.” So too the University library at Cambridge (which is first mentioned in 1397) was used as a Theological School from 1547 to 1586 (“quoniam ut nunc nulli est usui” bibliotheca, as the grace says), but the books were on the shelves all the while, to the number of about 180.
Sir Thomas Bodley.
Sir Thomas Bodley, a “worthy of Devon” and a diplomat high in the esteem of Queen Elizabeth, came of an old Devonshire stock which probably originated in Budleigh. When the founder of it left Budleigh at some unrecorded time, he would be at once known as Thomas (or whatever the name may have been) de Budleigh or Bodley. A family of that name was settled for many generations at Dunscombe, a hamlet of Crediton, and John Bodley, the father of Sir Thomas, had left Dunscombe and settled in Exeter, when his son was born there on March 2, 1545. His wife was Joan (née Hone) of Ottery St. Mary. The whole family was worried out of England in Queen Mary’s reign, and the young Thomas was brought up at Geneva till the accession of Queen Elizabeth, when the whole family returned to England, and settled in London. In 1559 the son was entered at Magdalen College, Oxford, his tutor, Laurence Humphrey (who in 1561 was elected President), having shared the exile of John Bodley. After Bodley’s degree in 1563 he became a Fellow of Merton, and successively Greek lecturer, Natural Philosophy lecturer, Proctor (1569-70), and deputy Public Orator. There is evidence also that he studied Hebrew at Oxford as well as in his younger days at Geneva. Lastly, he travelled for nearly four years in Italy, France and Germany.