"I know a merchant man," wrote Bale, Bishop of Ossory as quoted by Leland, "which at this time shall be nameless, that bought the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings apiece. A shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied, instead of grey paper, by the space of more than these ten years, and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come. A prodigious example is this, and to be abhorred of all men which love their nation as they should do. Yea, what may bring our realm to more shame and rebuke than to have it noised abroad that we are despisers of learning? I judge this to be true, and utter it with heaviness, that neither the Britons under the Romans, nor yet the English people under the Danes and Normans had ever such damage of their learned monuments as we have seen in our time. Our posterity may well curse this wicked fact of our age, this unreasonable spoil of England's most noble antiquities."
Centuries had been spent in collecting that which a few short months had sufficed to scatter abroad, and Bishop Tanner also mentions with sorrow the loss of a great number of excellent books, to the unspeakable detriment of the learned world.
For a time, this havoc of the monastic libraries went on unchecked, but during the reign of Elizabeth a reaction set in, and there arose a little knot of men who had the good sense to recognise the value of these memorials of the past, and to treasure up what still remained; and the next generation produced such men as Thomas Bodley, and Robert Cotton. These were followed by others of kindred tastes, to whom more golden opportunities of acquiring valuable treasure-trove were afforded.
We shall confine ourselves here to the most illustrious of these collectors, Sir Robert Cotton, whose library now forms the basis of the national collection in the British Museum.
The era of English libraries began with Matthew Parker's gift to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, a collection of books which has preserved from destruction more materials relating to the civil and ecclesiastical history of this country than had ever before been gathered into one library. Fuller styled this munificent bequest "the Sun of English antiquity, before it was eclipsed by that of Sir Robert Cotton."
Sir Thomas Bodley was one of the first men in Europe to conceive the notion of a great public library, and the rich collection of books which he made at Oxford on the ruins of Duke Humphrey's library, and which he bequeathed to the University, is not merely of European, but of world-wide celebrity. Living as he did at Oxford in a learned atmosphere, he naturally turned his chief attention to Latin manuscripts, while Cotton made English history his special study, and was ever on the alert for material to throw fresh light upon its annals. Hence the numerous Anglo-Saxon MSS. in his library, and the splendid collection of State papers, relating to England, Scotland, and France, contained in the dress marked Caligula, and in many other places.
Cotton and Bodley were good friends, and not only shared the same tastes, but sympathised actively with each other's work. In 1595 Bodley wrote to Cotton, asking him whether he held to his "old intention for helping to furnish the Universitie librarie," and in 1601 he acknowledges having received from Cotton a contribution of manuscripts for that purpose. These manuscripts were eleven in number, the titles of which may be seen in Smith's manuscript notes to his catalogue in the Bodleian library.
Bodley on his part was no less generous. A folio volume on vellum, containing the four Gospels, the four Dialogues of St. Gregory, and some other articles, the whole in Saxon, and consisting of 290 leaves, was a part of his contribution to the Cottonian collection.* The contents of this volume, as described by Wanley, show it to have been of exceeding great value, but since his time twenty-five folios have been lost. When Planta compiled his catalogue he affixed a note to the effect that the manuscript was so burnt and contracted as to render the binding of it impracticable, and that it was preserved in a case. Later on it passed through the restoring hands of Sir Frederick Madden.
* Otho, C. i. The notes furnished by Smith also prove the identity of the Cotton MS. Otho, C. ix. with Bodley's gift.
Cotton was neither a great scholar, nor did he produce any original work of special value, but he seems to have possessed the tact and the taste to divine, and also encourage talents superior to his own, thereby deserving no less well of his country than those who served her with higher gifts. His friend Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, once called him an "engrosser of antiquities." If we add that he did not merely "engross," but that he liberally shared his acquisitions with others, we shall perhaps best describe his special place and work in the world of letters. To judge by his correspondence it would seem that all the learned men in the kingdom applied to him for the loan of some rare manuscript or other, and that hardly a scientific, political, historical, or heraldic work was produced in the early part of the seventeenth century, but owed something to his labours as an antiquary.