THE introduction of printing into this country by Caxton during the latter half of the fifteenth century had very little immediate effect on book-collecting. The operations of the press were slow, its patrons few, and its work controlled by one man. The reproduction of MSS. was essentially a slow process, but when these transcriptions were finished, they rarely failed to find a purchaser. Caxton, like Sweynheim and Pannartz at Subiaco, soon learned the seriousness of over-printing an edition. Collectors were few, and the introduction of printing did not very materially add to their number. London, however, soon became a recognised centre of the trade in books, and Henry VII. patronized, in his curious fashion, the collecting of them. He read, according to Bacon, 'most books that were of any worth in the French tongue,' and one of the most commendable actions of this King was the purchase of the noble series of vellum copies of the works printed at Paris by Antoine Vérard, now in the British Museum—an act by which he may be said to have laid the foundation of our great national library. The value of books at this period is not without interest; but we must confine ourselves to one or two facts relating to Caxton's books. At his death in 1492, a copy of the 'Golden Legend' was valued at 6s. 8d. in the books of the Westminster churchwarden. From a note by Dibdin, it would seem that the price of Caxtons towards the end of the reign of Henry VII. was as follows:
'Godfray of Boulogne' (imperfect), iis.
Virgil's 'Æneid' (perfect), xijd.
'Fait of Arms and Chivalry' (perfect), ijs. viijd.
'Chastising of God's Children,' viijd.
Henry VIII. was undoubtedly a book-lover as well as a book-collector. He established a library at St. James's. But perhaps it is rather as a book-disperser that Henry is entitled to notice in this place. The dissolution of the monasteries is the genesis of book-collecting in London. The first move in this respect is entitled 'An Act that all religious houses under the yearly revenue of £200 shall be dissolved and given to the King and his heirs,' and is dated 1535 (27 Henry VIII., cap. 28, ii. 134). The second is dated 1539. Whatever advantages in a general way the dissolution of the monasteries may have had, its consequences, so far as regards the libraries, which the monks considered as among their most cherished possessions, were disastrous beyond measure. Indeed, we have no conception of our losses. Addressing himself to Edward VI. in 1549, John Bale, afterwards Bishop of Ossory, who had but little love for Popery of any description, writes in this strain: 'Avarice was the other dispatcher which hath made an end both of our libraries and books . . . to the no small decay of the commonwealth. A great number of them who purchased those superstitious mansions [monasteries], reserved of these Library-books, some . . . to scour their candlesticks, and some to rub their boots; some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers, and some they sent over sea to the bookbinders, not in small numbers, but at times whole shipsfull, to the wondering of the foreign nations. Yea, the universities of this realm are not all clear in this detestable fact. But cursed is that belly which seeketh to be fed with so ungodly gains, and so deeply shameth his natural country. I know a merchantman, which shall at this time be nameless, that bought the contents of two noble Libraries for forty shillings price: a shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied in the stead of gray paper by the space of more than these ten years; and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come. . . . Our posterity may well curse this wicked fact of our age, this unreasonable spoil of England's most noble antiquities, unless they be stayed in time.' Fuller, in his 'Church History of Britain,' quotes Bale's lamentation, and adds his own testimony on the same subject: 'As brokers in Long Lane, when they buy an old suit buy the linings together with the outside, so it was considered meet that such as purchased the buildings of monasteries should in the same grant have the Libraries (the stuffing thereof) conveyed unto them. And now these ignorant owners, so long as they might keep a ledger-book or terrier by direction thereof to find such straggling acres as belonged unto them, they cared not to preserve any other monuments. The covers of books, with curious brass bosses and clasps, intended to protect, proved to betray them, being the baits of covetousness. And so many excellent authors, stripped out of their cases, were left naked, to be buried or thrown away. . . . What soul can be so frozen as not to melt into anger thereat? What heart, having the least spark of ingenuity, is not hot at this indignity offered to literature? I deny not but that in this heap of books there was much rubbish; legions of lying legends, good for nothing but fuel . . . volumes full fraught with superstition, which, notwithstanding, might be useful to learned men; except any will deny apothecaries the privilege of keeping poison in their shops, when they can make antidotes of them. But, beside these, what beautiful Bibles, rare Fathers, subtile Schoolmen, useful Historians—ancient, middle, modern; what painful Comments were here amongst them! What monuments of mathematics all massacred together; seeing every book with a cross was condemned for Popish; with circles for conjuring.'
The calamities bewailed in such picturesque language by Bale and Fuller would have been much more serious but for the labours of one of our earliest antiquaries and book-lovers, John Leland. 'The laboryouse Journey and serche of Johan Leylande for Englandes Antiquities geven of hym as a newe yeares gyfte to kynge Henry the viii in the xxxvij yeare of his Reygne,' 1549, is a remarkable publication, of great interest to the book-hunter and the antiquary.
But the fruits of Leland's researches cannot now be fully known, for he was too intent on accumulating material to draw up an adequate inventory. Much that he preserved from destruction is now in the British Museum, and some is in the Bodleian at Oxford. Some of the fragments which he had saved from the general destruction had been placed in the King's own library in Westminster.
The dissolution of the monasteries had among its many effects the creation, so to speak, of a large number of collectors. One of the most famous of the early sixteenth-century collectors, Sir Thomas More, however, died (in 1535) before he could have availed himself of the many treasures scattered to all quarters of the earth.
Dibdin records a bibliomaniacal anecdote which is well worth repeating here, as it shows how More's love of books had infected even those who came to seize upon him to carry him to the Tower, and to endeavour to inveigle him into treasonable expressions: 'While Sir Richard Southwell and Mr. Palmer weare bussie in trussinge upp his bookes, Mr. Riche, pretending,' etc., 'whereupon Mr. Palmer, on his deposition, said, that he was soe bussie abt the trussinge upp Sir Tho. Moore's bookes in a sacke, that he tooke no heed of there talke.'
Henry, Earl of Arundel, was not slow to seize upon the advantages which the dissolution placed before everyone. At Nonsuch, in Surrey, he formed a library, which is described in a biography of him, written shortly after his death, as 'righte worthye of remembrance.' Besides his numerous MSS. and printed books, he acquired a considerable portion of the library of Cranmer, which was dispersed at the death of the Archbishop. His books passed to his son-in-law, Lord Lumley, at whose decease they were purchased by Henry, Prince of Wales, and are now in the British Museum. The Earl of Arundel's books are handsomely bound, and are known by his badge of the white horse and oak branch which generally occurs on the covers.
