Nevertheless, in spite of adverse circumstances, the Royal library had been steadily growing in the course of ages, and had by this time assumed notable proportions. Henry VIII. found himself the possessor of a collection of books at Windsor, comprising 109 volumes in bindings of velvet and leather, with silver and jewelled clasps; of another at Westminster, consisting of Latin primers, some richly ornamented, of a few Greek authors, Latin classics, and English chronicles, "bokes written in tholde Saxon tongue." He had another library at Beaulieu (now New Hall) in Essex, with about 60 volumes of Latin authors, besides works of the Fathers, dictionaries, and histories. At Beddington in Surrey he had many chronicles and romances, and "a greate boke of parchment written and lymned with gold of graver's work—De Confessione Amantis, which may be identified as the MS., now marked 18 C 22, in the Royal library. At Richmond was a small collection made by his father, consisting chiefly of missals and romances. At St. James's Palace were, among others, works described vaguely as "a boke of parchment containing divers patterns; a white boke written on parchment; one boke covered with green velvet contained in a wooden case; a little boke covered with crimson velvet," and so on, a curious method of cataloguing and utterly useless for the purpose of identification after so long an interval. Here and there a distinctive title occurs, such as the Foundation Book of Henry VIIth's Chapel.
All these different small collections together represented the Royal library in the early part of the sixteenth century. Henry VIII. had the greater number of the books removed to Greenwich, where there were already some printed volumes and a few manuscripts. That part which remained at Westminster was enriched with some of the spoils of the monasteries, placed there perhaps by Leland to save them from destruction.* Among these was a Latin Evangelia of the eleventh century (1 D 3), which belonged to the monks of Rochester, and which had been given to them by a certain Countess Goda, according to an inscription in the book itself. From Christ Church, Canterbury, came a fine copy of the gospels (1 A 1 8), presented to that monastery by King Athelstan, and from St. Alban's several choice historical and theological works from the pen of Matthew Paris.
* Edward's Memoirs of Libraries, i., 364 et seq.
It is a question whether the attention bestowed on the Royal library during the reign of Edward VI. was an advantage to it or the reverse. It is true that the energy of Sir John Cheke, and Roger Ascham, King's librarian, secured for it the manuscripts that had belonged to Martin Bucer; but on the other hand, the rabid intolerance of Edward's Council deprived it of many of its valuable contents. On the 25th January 1550, a so-called king's letter, sent from the Council Board, authorised certain commissioners to make a descent upon all public and private libraries, and to "cull out all superstitious books, as missals, legends, and such like, and to deliver the garniture of the books, being either gold or silver, to Sir Anthony Aucher.* The havoc thus wrought was irremediable, and not even the king's own library was spared the terrible perquisitions. But at the same time we cannot but marvel that still so many of the condemned books should have escaped the notice of the commissioners. In the same year the libraries at Oxford were also "purged of a great part of Fathers and Schoolmen," and great heaps of books set on fire in the market-place were watched with delight by the younger members of the university, who named the conflagration "Scotus's funeral."
* Council Book of Edward VI.
The short and troubled reign of Mary afforded no scope for literary activity, and Elizabeth was far too busy outwitting her enemies abroad, and controlling the factious tendencies of her friends at home, to be able to cultivate her taste for books. Nevertheless, although in the course of a hundred years the Royal library had suffered as much as it had gained, it was even then a goodly sight. Paul Hentzner, the German literary tourist, who visited it in 1598, says that it was "well stored with Greek, Latin, and French books, bound in velvet of different colours, although chiefly red, with clasps of gold and silver, the corners of some being otherwise adorned with gold and precious stones."* Perhaps the custodians vouchsafed him but a glance at these outer splendours, for he tells us nothing of the treasures within, of which all this magnificence was only the antechamber.
* P. Hentzner, Itnerarium Germaniae, Angliae, etc., p. 188.
But the golden age of the Royal library was in the reign of James I., and its greatest benefactor a youth who died at the age of eighteen. It were idle to speculate on what might have been the future of Henry, Prince of Wales, had he lived to fulfil the bright promise of his boyhood. To a singularly well-balanced mind, he appears to have joined an amiability of character that endeared him to all save the crotchety doctrinaire who sat upon the throne. He loved hunting and hawking and all healthy open-air pursuits no less than he loved books, and the society of men, who were the history-makers of his day. He would visit Sir Walter Raleigh in his prison in the Tower, and listen to his brilliant projects for the future greatness of England in the development of her colonies, and the annexation of still barbarous lands, the fabulous wealth of which was the life-long dream of the veteran explorer.
But Raleigh was not a mere dreamer, as his History of the World shows—a work which, written during his long years of captivity, became the text-book and standard authority for the next two hundred years. Whatever his faults, and he had perhaps grave ones, it was his misfortune to be in some ways in advance of the age in which he lived, in consequence of which his finer qualities were misunderstood by most of his contemporaries. Prince Henry was not, however, among their number; he lent a fascinated ear to Raleigh's grand, patriotic schemes, and had they both lived, the one to reign, the other to counsel and guide, England might not only have been spared the most disgraceful blot on her escutcheon, but have anticipated by more than two hundred years her subsequent achievements. It was without doubt Sir Walter Raleigh who inspired the young prince to take the Royal library under his protection, and his pupil threw himself heart and soul into the work, so that rightly or wrongly he has been considered its real founder.
On the death of John, Lord Lumley, Prince Henry secured his fine collection of MSS., by which means he more than made up for the loss which the Royal library had sustained by his father's incomprehensible warrant to Sir Thomas Bodley to choose any of the books in any of his houses or libraries.*