[Original]
Benefactions poured in upon the several Colleges, but the greater institution was not forgotten. In the Divinity School, within whose walls Latimer and Ridley defended their opinions, and Charles II.'s Parliament debated, the University possesses, as is fit and proper, the most beautiful room in Oxford and one of the most beautiful in England. The style is Perpendicular and the ceiling is particularly admirable. Together with the fine room above it, in which Duke Humphrey's manuscripts were housed, the Divinity School was completed in 1480.
Those six hundred manuscripts of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, which he bestowed on the University, had a sad history. They were dispersed by Edward VI.'s Commissioners, who judged them to be popish in tendency, and only four of them were ever restored to their old home. Nevertheless, Duke Humphrey's gift was the origin of the Bodleian Library. One does not like to think what the Library was like in the days which followed, when its manuscripts were scattered abroad and its shelves sold; but in the last years of the sixteenth century there arose a man who took pity upon its desolation. This was Sir Thomas Bodley, Fellow of Merton, a man of travel and affairs, who devoted the last years of his life to the creation of what is now one of the most famous libraries in existence. It has ever been the delight of scholars since the days of James I., who wished he might be chained to the Library, as some of the books were.
[Original]
The original chamber did not long suffice to contain the volumes; an east and then a west wing were added, the latter over Archbishop Laud's Convocation House (1640) which superseded Cobham's Chapel. From these the books overflowed into various rooms in the Old Schools Quadrangle, which had been rebuilt in James I.'s reign. Further space was gained in 1860, when the Radcliffe, set free by the removal of its collection of scientific works to the New Museum, was lent to the Bodleian; and again in 1882, on the opening of the New Examination Schools (sketched by Mr. Matthison), when the Old Schools were rendered available for the uses of the Library.