Sir Matthew Hale, who died in 1676, directed in his will that certain manuscripts should be given to the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn: "My desire," he said, "is that they be kept safe and also in remembrance of me. They were fit to be bound in leather and chained and kept in archives[484]." In the will of Matthew Scrivener, Rector of Haslingfield in Cambridgeshire, dated 4 March, 1687, the following passage occurs: "I give fifty pounds in trust for the use of the public Library [at Cambridge], either by buying chains for the securing the books at present therein contained, or for the increase of the number of them[485]." At the church of S. Gatien at Tours it is recorded in 1718 that the library which occupied one alley of the cloister was well stocked with manuscripts, chained on desks, which stood both against the wall and in the middle of the room[486]. Lastly, in 1815, John Fells, mariner, gave £30 to found a theological library in the church of S. Peter, Liverpool. "The books were originally fastened to open shelves in the vestry with rods and chains[487]."
Towards the end of the eighteenth century the practice was finally abandoned. At Eton College in 1719 it was "Order'd to take ye Chains off ye Books in ye Library, except ye Founder's Manuscripts[488]"; at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the removal of them began in 1757[489]; at King's College, Cambridge, the books were unchained in 1777[490]; at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1780[491]; and at Merton College in 1792[492].
In France the custom was evidently abandoned at a much earlier date, for the authors of the Voyage Littéraire, who visited more than eight hundred monasteries at the beginning of the eighteenth century, with the special intention of examining their records and their libraries, rarely allude to chaining, and when they do mention it, they use language which implies that it was a curious old fashion, the maintenance of which surprised them[493].
FOOTNOTES:
[443] The laboryouse Journey and Serche of Johan Leylande for Englandes Antiquitees.... by Johan Bale. London, 1549.
[444] History and Antiquities of University of Oxford, Ed. Gutch, 410. 1796, Vol. ii. p. 106. Wood (b. 1632, d. 1695) gives these facts as "credibly reported from antient men and they while young from scholars of great standing."
[445] Ibid. Vol. ii. Pt. 2, p. 918.
[446] This number is given on the authority of Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, Ed. ii. p. 6.
[447] Macray, ut supra, p. 13.
[448] These words were used by Professor Willis, Arch. Hist. Vol. iii. p. 451.