In the monastery of Ely, the Precentor, or Chantor, was the chief librarian, and had within his Office, the Scriptorium, where writers were employed in transcribing books for the library, and missals and other books used in divine service. This officer furnished the vellum, parchment, paper, ink, colours, gums, and other necessaries for limners, used in illuminating their books; and leather, and other implements for binding, and keeping them in repair.
Some of the Roman classics were copied in the English monasteries at a very early period. Henry, a Benedictine monk of Hyde abbey, near Winchester, transcribed in the year 1178, Terence, Boethius, Suetonius, and Claudian. Of these he formed one volume, illuminating the initials, and forming the brazen bosses of the covers with his own hands; but this abbot had more devotion than taste, for he exchanged this manuscript a few years afterwards for four missals, the legend of St. Christopher, and St. Gregory’s Pastoral Care, with the Prior of the neighbouring cathedral convent. Benedict, abbot of Peterborough, author of the latin chronicle of king Henry the second, amongst a great variety of scholastic and theological treatises, transcribed Seneca’s epistles and tragedies, Terence, Martial, and Claudian, to which may be added Gesta Alexandri, about the year 1180.
In a catalogue of the books of the library of Glastonbury, we find Livy, Sallust, Seneca, Tully de Senectute and Amicitia, Virgil, Persius, and Claudian, in the year 1248. Among the royal manuscripts of the British Museum, is one of the twelve books of Statius’s Thebaid, supposed to have been written in the tenth century, which once belonged to the cathedral convent of Rochester. And another of Virgil’s Æneid, written in the thirteenth, which came from the library of St. Austin’s, Canterbury. Wallingford, abbot of St. Alban’s, gave or sold from the library of that monastery to Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham, author of the “Philobiblion,” and a great collector of books, Terence, Virgil, Quintilian, and Jerome against Rufinus, together with thirty-two other volumes, valued at fifty pounds of silver. The scarcity of parchment undoubtedly prevented the transcription of many other books in these societies. About the year 1120, one Master Hugh, being appointed by the convent of St. Edmundsbury in Suffolk, to write and illuminate a grand copy of the bible for their library, could procure no parchment for this purpose in England. It is to this scarcity of parchment that we owe the loss and destruction of many valuable manuscripts of the ancients, which otherwise might have been preserved to us. The venerable fathers who employed themselves in erasing the writing of some of the best works of the most eminent Greek or Latin authors for the purpose of transcribing upon the obliterated parchment or vellum the lives of saints, or legendary tales, possibly mistook these lamentable depredations for works of piety. The ancient fragment of the 91st book of Livy, discovered by Mr. Burns in the Vatican, in 1772, was found to be much defaced in this respect by the pious labours of some well-intentioned monk.
The monks of Durham having begun to build a college for their novices at Oxford, about the year 1290, Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham, not only assisted, but also partly endowed it. At his decease, in 1345, he left to this college, then called Durham, and since Trinity, college, all his books, which were more in number than all the bishops in England then possessed, in order that the students of that college, and of the University, might, under certain conditions make use of them. After the college came into possession of these books, they were, for many years, kept in chests, under the custody of several scholars deputed for that purpose, and a library being built in the reign of king Henry the fourth, these books were put into pews or studies, and chained to them. They continued in this manner till the college was dissolved by king Henry the eighth, when they were conveyed away, some to Duke Humphrey’s library, where they remained till the reign of king Edward the sixth, and others to the library of Baliol college. Some which remained came into the hands of Dr. George Owen, a physician of Godstow, who purchased Trinity college of Edward the sixth.
The bishop of Durham wrote a treatise containing rules for the management of the library above-mentioned, describing how the books were to be preserved, and upon what conditions they were to be lent out to scholars, and appointed five keepers, to whom he granted yearly salaries. This treatise he called “Philobiblion,” from whence he himself came to be called by the same name, “a lover of books,” and this very justly, if, as he says himself in the preface to it, his love of them was so violent that it put him into a kind of rapture, and made him neglect all his other affairs. He finished it at Auckland, the 24th of January, 1345, being then just 63 years of age. It was printed at Spires in 1483; at Paris, by Badius Ascensius, in 1500; by the learned Thomas James, at Oxford, in 1599, in quarto; and at Leipsic, in 1674, at the end of Philologicarum Epistolarum Centuria una, ex Bibliotheca Melch. Hamingfeldii. It appears also in manuscript in the Cottonian library, in the royal library, and in other libraries in Oxford and Cambridge.
The “Philobiblion,” is written in very indifferent Latin, and in a declamatory style. It is divided into twenty chapters. In chapter 1. the author praises wisdom, and books in which it is contained. 2. That books are to be preferred to riches and pleasure. 3. That they ought to be always bought. 4. How much good arises from books, and that they are misused only by ignorant people. 5. That good monks write books, but the bad ones are otherwise employed. 6. The praise of the ancient begging friars, with a reproof of the modern ones. 7. He bewails the loss of books by fire and wars. 8. He shews what fine opportunities he had had of collecting books, whilst he was chancellor and treasurer, as well as during his embassies. 9. That the ancients outdid the moderns in hard studying. 10. That learning is by degrees arrived at perfection, and that he had procured a Greek and Hebrew grammar. 11. That the law and law books are not properly learning. 12. The usefulness and necessity of grammar. 13. An apology for poetry, and the usefulness of it. 14. Who ought to love books. 15. The manifold advantages of learning. 16. Of writing new books and mending the old. 17. Of using books well, and how to place them. 18. An answer to his calumniators. 19. Upon what conditions books are to be lent to strangers. 20. Conclusion.
In the “Philobiblion” the bishop apologizes for admitting the poets into his collection; quare non negleximus Fabulas Poetarum. But he is more complaisant to the prejudices of his age, where he says, that the laity are unworthy to be admitted to any commerce with books: Laici omnium librorum communione sunt indigni. He prefers books of the liberal arts to treatises of the law. He laments that good literature had entirely ceased in the university of Paris. He admits Panfletos exiguos into his library. He employed Stationarios and Librarios, not only in England, but in France, Italy, and Germany. He regrets the total ignorance of the greek language; but adds that he has provided for the students of his library both Greek and Hebrew grammars. He calls Paris the “paradise of the world,” and says that he purchased there a variety of invaluable volumes in all sciences, which yet were neglected and perishing. While he was Chancellor and Treasurer of England, instead of the usual presents and new year’s gifts appendant to his office, he chose to receive those perquisites in books. By the favour of king Edward the third, he gained access to the libraries of the principal monasteries, where he shook off the dust from various volumes preserved in chests and presses, which had not been opened for many ages.
There were several collections of manuscripts in England before the general restoration of science in Europe, which had at different times been brought hither by those who had travelled into foreign countries; these were chiefly preserved in the two Universities, in the cathedral churches, and in religious houses, but in the fifteenth and sixteenth century several valuable libraries were formed in England.
In the reign of king Henry the sixth, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, fourth and youngest son of king Henry the fourth, was a singular promoter of literature, just at the dawning of science and learning. However unqualified this eminent personage was for political intrigue, and to contend with his malicious and powerful enemies, among whom the Cardinal Beaufort was the principal, he was nevertheless the common friend and patron of all the scholars of his time. A sketch of his character and pursuits, as being closely connected with the progress of English literature, cannot fail of proving interesting, more especially as they are peculiarly associated with the subject of the present inquiry.
About the year 1440, the Duke gave to the University of Oxford a library, containing six hundred volumes, one hundred and twenty only of which were valued at more than one thousand pounds of the money of that day. These books, it need not be observed, were all in manuscript, the art of printing not having then been discovered; they are called Novi Tractatus, or New Treatises, in the University Register, and are said to be admirandi apparatus. They were the most splendid and costly copies that could be procured, finely written on vellum, and elegantly embellished with miniatures and illuminations. Among the rest was a translation into French of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Only a single specimen of these valuable volumes was suffered to remain; it is a beautiful manuscript, in folio, of Valerius Maximus, enriched with the most elegant decorations, and written in Duke Humphrey’s age, evidently with a design of being placed in this sumptuous collection. All the rest of the books, which, like this, being highly ornamented, looked like missals, were destroyed or removed by the pious visitors of the University, in the reign of king Edward the sixth, whose zeal was equalled only by their ignorance, or perhaps by their avarice. A great number of classics, in this grand work of reformation, were condemned as anti-christian, and some of the books, in this library, had even been before this, either stolen or mutilated. In the library of Oriel College, at Oxford, we find a manuscript Commentary on Genesis, written by John Capgrave, a monk, belonging to the monastery of St. Austin, at Canterbury, a learned theologist of the fifteenth century. In it is the author’s autograph, and the work is dedicated to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. In the superb initial letter of the dedicatory epistle, is a curious illumination of the author Capgrave, humbly presenting his book to his patron, the Duke, who is seated, and covered with a sort of hat. At the end of the volume is this entry, in the hand-writing of Duke Humphrey “C’est Livre est a moy Humfrey, Duc de Gloucestre, du don de Frere Jehan Capgrave, quy le me fist presenter a mon manoyr de Pensherst le jour ... de l’an MCCCCXXXVIII.” This is one of the books which Humphrey gave to his new library at Oxford, destroyed or dispersed by the active reformers of the young Edward. He also gave to the same library Capgrave Super Exodum et Regum Libros.