So everyone here about the big hand has passed the top, so I shall begin.
On Tuesday, I argued that the notion of domestic tourism has coloured our general thinking too far,
that in the absence of very strong evidence such as we have from Anglo-norman Canterbury,
it should be reinterpreted in terms of hired scribes who may have been lay artisans and libraries.
And the production of books for libraries should be seen as part of a much larger book economy and not separated from it.
The rule of donors has always been in evidence against the notion of planned collection
development and the fact that we know of gifts of books from the 10th and 11th centuries,
as well as having a mass of evidence from the 13th to 15 centuries,
invites us to think of secular book production as possible right across the period, and that we can shed the monastic dominance.
The argument runs not against the notion that a campaign of copying might be organised for a short period of time,
but against the notion that those writing are assumed to be monks or canons.
Today's lecture will highlight some of the evidence against what I think of as another widespread assumption,
namely that library books continue in monastic and other libraries from their date
of accession until the dissolution of religious houses between 1532 and 1540.
They just stay there. Although books in private hands must find a new keeper and protector in every generation to survive.
Library books have the chance of remaining unnoticed in the cupboards of a large library for centuries.
The example I showed on Tuesday of a book formed by binding together 25 booklets,
many of them personal copies of very diverse material, is an example.
This was probably never much used after the time of the owners of the original booklets, but it was burned and it got a press mark around 1500.
It would not have been missed. But there was very likely no second hand market for it either.
That there was a second hand market in books goes without saying.
Parchment books were usually durable, and in the absence of very serious wear and tear,
they could certainly serve the needs of more than one generation.
Owners and users of books often pass them on by bequest to successors with similar needs, and countless other books were sold and bought.
We know all too little about this trade in the Middle Ages.
In 1262, the sheriff of Oxford was ordered to produce one Roger, a stationer of Oxford,
to answer a claim in court from a Clerk of the Exchequer about a book worth 20 shillings.
Which was due and the book was due to the clock, but was held back by Roger.
By the mid 14th century, we often find Cantonese books used as surety for loans of money,
and a defaulters book could be sold by auction to whoever offered the best price.
So although the first catalogue of books printed for an auction that we have in England is 1676.
The auctioning of books in Oxford is certainly attested before 1350.
Such arrangements appear in Oxford University Statutes.
But we have little sense of who was bidding for the books being disposed of.
Was it other students or was it dealers?
It is a fact that libraries, too, participated in the second hand trade.
But we have very little sense of the circumstances. The easier way in is to look at libraries buying second hand books.
How readily available they were is not apparent. I said in the first lecture that we have.
I should have put that up sooner so you could be reading it.
I said in the first lecture that we have very little understanding of how a reader met his want for
particular works outside the very limited context of approved texts in the university setting.
The text on screen, which you have not had time to read, was first excerpted by ANDELMAN B in his article on the Library of King's College, Cambridge.
It was printed in full for the first time by James Willoughby in the head notes to Eton in his outstanding two
volume work on the libraries of the late medieval secular colleges published in the Corpus a few years ago.
What you have here is a begging letter to King Henry, the sixth from the province of his two foundations,
Eton and Kings, who find themselves in want of books, vestments and ornaments.
I am not the right person to open a discussion of the secondary market for vestments, but there surely was one valuable commodities,
very valuable commodities, often for which a need continued from generation to generation.
This petition to the King was submitted in March 1447, less than a month after the death of our great benefactor, Duke Humphrey.
And it mentions access to the books and valuables of the late Duke.
I didn't do Gloucester is the last phrase underlined here.
The request is for the right of privileged access to sellers, setting out a mechanism for agreeing a fair price.
And the implication is that the commodities wanted by the two colleges were hard to find.
I wonder how true that is. Was this simply a pretext for asking for the King's help?
One result of the petition was perhaps the gift to kings of what is now King's College manuscript 27,
an English made dedication copy of Antonio Arias Latin translation of Athanasius or alternates Beck Aria was Latin secretary to Duke Humphry,
and the book had certainly reached kings by 1453 when it was listed in the first library catalogue of the college library.
Henry Bradshaw described it as the sole relic of the original library of the college.
But it is a very exotic text and there is a second volume now in the Royal Library.
I wonder, perhaps Henry the Sixth intervened with Becker or with Duke Humphrey's executors to help out King's with this book.
But what of Mr. Pye? John Pye in red.
He is to us a well-known London stationer with a long career, largely thanks to the work of Paul Christiansen,
whose Directory of London stationers and book artisans 1300 1500 has gathered four pages of facts about him.
Among the data or half a dozen surviving books with inscriptions that indicate they were
bought by individuals from John Pye and they were all new books at the time of purchase.
But a look at the early library of Eton College tells a different story.
From 1465, we have an inventory of the valuables of the college, which includes an impressive array of choir books and 42 books in the library.
My inventories usually do. It gives only a few words about the text and it gives the second folio.
But we are fortunate that eight of them remain in Eton College Library.
There a late 13th century Galen made in France with no known provenance and rather more interestingly, a copy of the twenties on the Pauline Epistles.
A book written for St Albans Abbey at the behest of Abbot Witham, stood before 1440, who paid 50 shillings for it.
It appears in a list of books given by him to the Abbey.
And it has the amp is actually Bruce and anathema. And despite the anathema it was given to Eton before 1465, almost certainly before 1461,
while Wheat, Hampstead and Henry the sixth was still alive and in office.
But there are other monastic books here.
There's a lake 12th century volume of notes on the Bible with both 13th and 14th century Exlibris of Beaver Priory.
That Beaver Priory is a cell of St Albans.
So it was possibly another gift coming in on the outskirts of the town, says, but it was possibly something bought in a second hand market.
There's a three volume collection of commentaries on the Old Testament attributed in the book list to Peter the Chanter.
They were written in England at the beginning of the 13th century and they belonged to the Cistercians of Cor AP in the Isle of Wight.
When the cistercians deaccessioned these volumes does not appear.
Two other surviving books cross matched with entries in the 1465 list date from the late 12th and the late 13th century,
and each has evidence of institutional ownership. Sadly, not yet interpreted.
So each and 15 has a 14th century press.
Mark Prima part second day grabbed you ET in Sinestro.
I have a problem with some of the agreement that. And Ms. 19 apparently p trick into Roman numerals 30.
Neither of the recognised.
Now if seven out of eight survivors from the 42 were already old books, and if six of them show evidence of previous institutional ownership,
then the buyer was buying among Exlibris Books, and the 34 books that don't survive may have been from a similar source.
Another library that was buying in the early 15th century is that of the London commu Thomas Netter prior
provincial in the 14 teens and twenties invested money in increasing the library of the Carmelites in London,
seemingly as a central resource for the order in England.
We have no book list, but we can tell from the press box of surviving books that it was no small collection.
Surviving books have Mocs in each letter.
Class a1c 24 F 18 I 79 and 57 and s nine.
We can predict nearly 200 books from that.
And if we allow ourselves to guess at, say, 50 books under each letter from eight to S, then we should predict 900 books in the collection.
We have still 17 books from the library, all but one bearing an early 15th century press mock of the set.
Earliest is a one given by the leading Carmelite, John Bacon's Thorp in 1248 of the foundation of the London comet.
Now boldly in manuscript Lord let 87.
Several 14th century books were received from members of the order, usually named.
Three were given as new books by Robert Ivory Prior Provincial before 1392.
And John Bell, who knew the London Carmel well in the early 16th century, tells us that Ivory wonderfully enlarged the library of his convent.
There may therefore have been many more books bought or commissioned by Ivory in, say, the 1380s.
But my concern is with three books acquired by Thomas Netter in the early 15th century.
Two of the books he acquired were written in the 12th century, so they were well past 200 years old when bought.
One of them is now bodily. 730.
It's a good monastic text, John Carson's Colossians and it has the liberties of build roads and be a Cistercian house in Shropshire,
as well as that of the Carmel and the Carmelite press.
Mark 66. No a 13th century gloss psalter also from build was turns up in Baylor College by gift of Robert Sweets, who died in 1458.
This is manuscript 35 A which carries an inscription to show that it had been bequeathed to build was Abbey in 1277 by a secular master.
No inscription reveals when it left build was, which is 150 miles from London and 100 miles from Oxford.
Five Further Build Walls. Books are now recognisable in value and this 40 is inferred to be from the since it was judged by
miners to be from the same script aureole as manuscript 150 which has the X Library build was.
M's 173b no longer carries the X Liberals, but it was there in the 17th century when it was copied by Gerard Lang Bain.
And Mass 2 to 9 also has the build was ex libraries and traces of an Oxford Couto from 1421.
It was in Oxford to be annotated by Thomas Gascoigne.
He doesn't tell us where he saw it, but it was perhaps already in the possession of his friend William Grey, who gave these five books to Balliol.
Thalia was not buying books in the second hand market, but its benefactors evidently were.
And chief among those benefactors was this William Grey, bishop of Ely.
Among his other gifts, we find a Paris made copy of Aquinas, Christina's disputed city,
which was certainly the property of ilie cathedral priory in the first half of the 15th century.
Now William Grey was feeling. So this no doubt found itself picked up among Bishop Grey's personal property at some time,
between his being enthroned sometime after his being enthroned at Ely in 1459.
And it was not necessarily decommissioned. And Deaccessioned is what I've written that my eyes are not focusing.
Among the books given by Bishop Greater Balliol. Then there is a 12th century book once owned by Lincoln Cathedral.
Grey's uncle had been Bishop of Lincoln, and he himself had held a Canon read there before 1431.
So this too was perhaps simply picked up in his luggage.
There's a 12th century volume with the Library of Humberston, a small Benedictine house in North Lincolnshire, from where no other book is known.
There's a 12th century copy of Florence's compilation of Augustine on the Psalms from Reuben Abbey,
the only manuscript known from that Cistercian House.
Though I mentioned in the second lecture that 248 titles from here appeared in Ridley Stream Anglia.
There's a 12th century book from Bury St Edmunds with its 14th century actually libraries and its 14th century letter Mark b283.
And we don't generally think of Bury as a place that was doing much deaccessioning.
Hardly less surprising is a copy of the sermons of Master Lawrence,
an interesting figure who worked as a secular at Durham before becoming a monk at St Albans, who was elected Abbot of Westminster.
Only one copy of his 12th Century sermon compilation is known.
It was seen at Westminster by Henry Cook stood in the 14th century.
And it was a value in the 15th century, though, with no known donor.
And again, we don't think of Westminster as somewhere that was flogging off its books.
There are two books from St Andrew's Clinic Priory in Northampton, one of them 12th Century.
The other of the 13th century was given by Grey.
Three other books from here are now in Oriel. But there's no evidence when or how they got there.
But I wonder whether they left Northampton at the same time as those that fell into Grey's hands.
There's a 13th century book from Chester Abbey, which was still at Chester in the 14th century, but is now Balliol 57.
It has an inscription from Chester in the same hand as marked many other books in the Abbey, another of them now broadly,
373 would also leave Chester and turn up in the 15th century library of St George's Chapel, Windsor.
It looks as though Chester had a bout of deaccessioning.
Grey also gave a 13th century book that had belonged to the Austin Canons of Newark in Surrey.
Three other books from there on now in boldly with no evidence of how they left Newark.
That was a 13th century manuscript from Ossett Priory in Essex.
My first learnt to call that tosay Priory in Essex and another from some bottles in Colchester.
Both small houses of Austen canons. There were two books belonging to the Franciscan Convent in Cambridge,
a late 13th century copy of Henry of Ghent called Liberta and an early 14th century copy of Bonaventure,
which still carries the name of a Franciscan from the Mid-15th Century.
Again, both given by Bishop Grey. And another copy of Henry of Kent from the Cistercian Abbey of Swayne said came through Bishop Grey.
No college in Oxford came to own so many X library books from religious houses during the middle years of the 15th century in Cambridge.
The only rival is Peterhouse, though not on such a large or diverse scale.
Of course, Peterhouse is one of the best documented of Cambridge libraries with a splendid and continuing 15th century catalogue.
Picking these examples out in MGB is not entirely straightforward.
In the indexed MGB two, there are long lists of monastic provenance is under many colleges and nothing to tell the user which entered their present
locations only long after the dissolution and two books in Balliol from Westminster Abbey and from Hereford Cathedral,
for example, arrived in 1697 and 1766.
You can't tell that from the index. Colleges such as Corpus Christi and Trinity in Cambridge have spectacular collections of sex
monastic books given by well-connected benefactors from Canterbury in the late 16th century.
But Keres index offers no differentiation. As I said in my first lecture, referring to Cardinal Easton's copy of the Polish critics,
which passed from Norwich Cathedral priory into Greys hands in the 15th century.
Those that were in university colleges in the Middle Ages and stayed there are
entirely invisible in care until our database is augmented later this year.
I cross my fingers. So how do books such as these come to leave their institutional homes and make their ways
into the hands of grey or other 15th century collectors and benefactors of colleges?
In one case, we can say there is an easy explanation.
Bail 240 is from the small alien priory, a charming tomb of monks Kirby in Warwickshire, which was suppressed in 1415.
The books may simply have gone onto the market. This one came to bail you from Richard Bull, if that's how he pronounced it.
Bull. Archdeacon of Ely. Who was Grace Secretary?
And he gave a dozen books to. So if whatever books were at Monk's Kerb,
he came into the second ten trade in 1415 bulls picking picking up this copy did not happen until perhaps 30 years later.
I may say books from Alien Prior is dissolved at this date are singularly rare.
I can think of one from I in Suffolk that has a note saying that it's not to be sold.
I can't read the whole inscription, but it ends. M.A. Vignale SC.
It appears from this breathless tally that I've given you, monastic houses of all sorts,
nunnery excepted, were parting with books that were still desirable to a collector such as Grey.
This is not the disposal of worn out books or books whose contents appeared useless.
If the books were worth Grey's, while they might have been worth keeping in their religious homes.
I shall deal more briefly with what is perhaps the longest such tally.
St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle was founded by Edward, the third in the middle of the 14th century.
Its late medieval library is now best approached through the 82 surviving books,
of which the great majority are preserved here in the Bodleian by gift of the Dean and canons in 1612.
The chronology of these books relationship with the chapel.
It's difficult to establish. James,
wouldn't it be in his treatment of the subject in his volumes on collegiate churches already plugged
once and no plugged twice printed extracts from the presenter's accounts and other dated records.
Among them, there's a list of books, vestments, altar plates and other valuables from 1318.
But it's difficult to match anything in this list with surviving books.
A copy of Petrus Rikers Aurora may be sent no Bodley 8 to 2 written in the early 13th century, which has no earlier provenance.
I look on this is insecure and no other from among the surviving books can be given any dated context from the documentary record.
Will it be? In his long head note draws the inference that a considerable expansion of the library must have taken place after 1389.
In MGB one care cautiously noted.
It is not certain that all the books in the list belonged to Windsor before 1540.
And in MLG, too, he added. Many of them belong to monastic houses before they came to Windsor.
For details, see the index pages 374 280.
Well, the detail here is no more than the appearance of one or more Peruvians in addition to Windsor next to the modern shelf.
Marx and I may say that they're arranged alphabetically so that for places of the Windsor in the alphabet,
the direction of travel appears to be, for example, from Windsor to Worcester.
Further, no distinction is made between books with consecutive provenance like this and modern
volumes that represent the binding together of items with independent preferences.
There's another double entry that's even more impossible to handle.
The library's inscriptions and surviving books from Windsor represent the Charterhouse of,
I think it's pronounced Wisdom Augustinian abbeys at Osney nearby and Hexham far away.
And the Priory Mussenden in Buckinghamshire, from where two survivors reached boldly from Windsor and Shelford in Nottinghamshire,
whose library is otherwise entirely on the tested Benedictine houses that include Ely Cathedral.
Priory, Rochester Cathedral. Priory, Worcester Cathedral.
Priory Chester Abbey already mentioned in connection with Eton and Antrim Abbey.
And the Cistercian houses of Roberts Bridge and built was.
The book from Roberts Bridge had left early in the 14th century,
a period when it was deposited as a couto, and it passed into the hands of Bishop Grandison of Exeter.
One ought to suppose that it was at Exeter Cathedral, therefore before being obtained by the Canons of Windsor.
But there was a gap in its history. The second hand market, no doubt Builth Wells has come up before.
The obvious and difficult question is what are so many books from religious houses doing at Windsor in the 15th century?
The case of build was maybe the most instructive for we've seen books from Build was at the London Carmel.
Certainly before 1430 and perhaps 20 years before and at Eton, not before its foundation in 1440,
but before our list from 1465 and at Windsor from an uncertain date.
Care, as I've quoted, was reluctant to decide whether the Windsor books were to be compared with the large number of ex monastic books
that were sequestered by the crown and taken to the Royal Library at Windsor at Westminster between 1528 and 1533,
catalogued in 1542.
There is no good evidence to associate the presence of these books at Windsor with Henry V Yates, who put his mark on many of his books.
And there is a good case for saying that the House bindings of the Windsor Books imitative
of much older bindings date from the late 15th century and are not post dissolution.
Will it be argued from the availability of build was books on the market in the early 15th century
that Windsor's acquisitions like those of Eaton were picked up in the medieval second hand trade?
If we patiently work through the evidence, including the books in the university colleges,
we can find a good number of ex monastic books migrating in the 15th century from houses.
We wouldn't expect to be losing books. But we cannot contextualise that migration.
We find another example, and it may add another religious house that lost or sold a book,
but it's proved impossible to gather a meaningful cluster better than the case of Build was to say that there was here a substantial deaccessioning.
And that leaves us in a poor way when it comes to explaining the old homes.
And that's why I said the easier way was to look at the new homes.
Here we are much better placed with evidence and we find different patterns.
Netter was picking up books as opportunity allowed to augment the holdings of the London Carmel, which was already a substantial library by the 1390s.
We have no idea how much Nutter bought. And Hudson's judgement on the evidence of NATO's doctrine.
All, if you classify an immense work of scholarship was that it's also had access to an enormous library.
Most of it presumably at the London White Friars.
And I'm sure she's right. Sadly, as with almost everything to do with mendicant libraries, we lack the evidence we want.
Now, by contrast with the cold lights, Eton was a new library claiming to find difficulty in buying books and apparently
building a library in the first instance through the second hand trade.
This clearly included former monastic books. The Canons of Windsor appeared to have approached their own collection development in the
same way obtaining books from a very diverse range of institutions around the country.
The canons of Windsor were not short of money.
They could afford whatever it cost with neither Abbey books nor Benetton care to help them find what they might want.
We may perhaps presume that there was some centralisation in the trade.
The books from different parts of the country might come to London to be read, marketed by men such as John Pye, the Stationer.
I think that's infinitely more likely than that. These buyers are looking at the markets in towns up and down the country.
But there were also new libraries established in the 15th century.
I mentioned Psion as an example on Tuesday.
Founded in 1417, where the Brethren built a considerable library within 30 to 40 years, largely through gift by men who became brethren.
From the Library of Zion, which had grown very large by the early 16th century, we appear to have more than 100 survivors.
But Vincent Gillespie warns us that not all of these come from the Brethren Library.
Some not mentioned at all in the existing catalogue must have reached us from the Sisters Library, which made no attempt to separate out.
Among the 100 and more survivors, fewer than ten date from earlier than the 15th century,
and the great majority were current books at the time of acquisition.
Over the course of the 15th and into the early 16th century.
It is no surprise when we consider how active was the production of manuscripts in the 15th century.
Thus, an appropriate library could be built up without evident difficulty from new books.
All Souls College was founded after Scion and before Eton.
And here we see some former monastic books.
For example, Manuscript 12 belong to one of those Cistercian houses named Stoneleigh or Stoneleigh or Stanley.
There are three in different parts of the country, but it was already in Archbishop Critchley's possession in 1400.
So the escape of monastic books into the second hand trade must be pushed earlier than the 15th century manuscript.
82 is a 12th century, Virgil.
It was at Siren Sister Abbey in the late 13th century that came to All Souls from Henry PENWORTHAM Critchley's treasurer,
who died while the college was first building. Mars 49,
a 13th century copy of the first part of the digest was at Bury St Edmunds in the
14th century when it received the letter Mark L four legs and the number 289.
Its front leaves bear marks of chaining, but its late 15th century binding does not.
My guess, therefore, is that it was chained in Abbott Curtis's library at Bury around 1420,
but later in the century it was judged surplus to requirements, lost its chains and headed for Oxford.
Very possibly via London. So that's Berry coming up twice.
Not a place I would have expected to be selling redundant books.
We could systematically go through libraries first established in the 15th century and first decide
whether they were built on modern purchases or on the acquisition of old books or a mixture of the two.
And second, consider whether or not the old books betray evidence of institutional use.
As I said earlier, there must always have been a second hand trade to help individuals acquire books from an earlier generation.
And library books could easily be absorbed into that trade.
Now we could, for example, go through the several large collections of books formed by Bishop William Reid of Chichester in the late 14th century,
who gave books in substantial numbers to several colleges.
Can we see whether he was buying up all the books as well as paying for the writing of new ones?
Well, the evidence is now rather scattered. I haven't done it yet. But finding library books in the second hand trade looks like a late phenomenon,
and I'm not seeking yet to push back much before the late 14th century.
The unanswered question remains why deaccession?
In what circumstances? There is earlier evidence of books that migrated from one library to another.
But it's difficult to track down. Some of it involves very old books,
ninth or 10th century books that have been handed around and get a an identifiable institutional mark in the 12th or 13th century.
Accidents of exchange could happen.
Bury St Edmunds ended up in possession of a rather interesting set of notes on Bible late the 13th century Bible lectures from Paris,
which had been deposited with them by Robert GROSS Test when he borrowed another book and never returned it.
So they kept his Paris notes. On the whole, institutions were not.
It seems to me careless, though one does occasionally find complaints about improper loans outside a community.
In 1337 at Canterbury Cathedral Priory.
Lists were drawn up of some 93 books not in place.
From the two demonstrative owners in the slight buy now the main bookstore between the chapter House and the South Transept.
13 were missing from the first demonstrative six from the second, but the low notes existed and members of the community were to answer for the books.
A further 19 books entered in Parviz tablets were also to be answered for.
There was another 38 books signed out in the names of deceased monks harder to recover.
And 17 books were on loan to borrowers outside the community.
First among them, the life of Saint Thomas signed out to King Edward, the second,
who'd been dead for nine years and lost a work attributed to Saint John Chrysostom on loan by
the King's Command struck me as a rather surprising thing for the King to be taking an interest.
This rare information is not evidence of casual losses, and records of loss are actually very infrequent.
Deaccession records as such simply do not exist.
Apart from the remarkable and I think we can say unintentional case of Syon Abbey,
where the entries for 282 books were deleted from the catalogue and the shelf marks assigned to other books, most of them newer books, but not all.
Some of the old books coming in as recent gifts.
But the alteration of the catalogue is after 1520, when there was a large flow of printed books into the library.
Deaccessioning of Manuscripts. At that period, as we shall see in my sixth lecture,
was likely that likely to go into not the second hand book trade, but the trade in scrap parchment.
It's often said that university students were a drain on the books of religious houses away from Abbey, Priory or Friary.
Though ostensibly tied to an associated community here in Oxford or in Cambridge,
they spent too much money and ended up pledging books that were never recovered.
Abbeys did not worry too much about this when it's led to believe.
I am not so sure. It may explain some very obscure moves.
For example, really AP outside the west gate of Oxford and close to only MP was a Cistercian house.
That makes very little impact on our university sources.
The only book known from there is no Trinity College manuscript 59 a copy of Augustine's City of God, written plus or -1300,
which we meet in Brother John Whitfield's detailed catalogue of the library at Dover Priory in 1389.
And one cannot miss a match with Dover Priory List.
In the book, an inscription sees that in 1504 it belongs to Rooney and was worth three and sixpence.
That's a small sum for a book as big as the City of Gold.
The new catalogue of the library read of the manuscripts in the library reinterprets
what can be seen of the inscription to move the book from really to cook it.
A Cistercian house in Lincolnshire. I'm not persuaded by the reading itself, which hinges on what castle is a capital or games and sees a capital K.
And the rest is no unreadable work.
Look, it's still there. And I'm not persuaded by the new reading.
And I think it impossible to explain a migration from Dover to Cook State, but a drift to Oxford with some student from Dover Long of Canterbury.
Washing up in the end and really happy which by 50 No.
Four did not admit students at the university is on the other hand just possible.
I haven't spoken about college libraries in this context other than as recipients.
But I do think that college libraries in themselves experienced a considerable turnover in their books, losing and acquiring books over time.
But the books going out and coming in were often the same texts.
Fellows of colleges were often reading the same texts.
Colleges needed multiple copies. The curriculum was the same for all of these people.
And provided that the turnover did not leave too much need unmet.
It was not a grave problem when the volume of the corpus that deals with university and college libraries of Oxford was going through my editing.
I felt sure that making a list of the hundreds of manuscripts reported at Merton
by Second Folio that would allow us to differentiate copies of this work.
If I made such a catalogue, I think I would have been able to see that copies of the text being matched up were actually
different copies and one had been lost and another had come in and taking its place.
Making a list by second folios is tedious,
and you have to investigate whether there might have been two clusters of words in the same book that a different cataloguer might have recorded.
And there's a limit to how far the general editor should take over engagement in the research of the book.
I didn't do it. It's a task for someone on a weekend.
Between our documentary sources and our proven books, it is very difficult to maintain a picture of books over time.
If they are moving. If we simply allow the assumption that once in the library, always in the library, it reduces the difficulty.
But it is a fact that books left libraries sometimes for other libraries,
sometimes for private ownership, perhaps followed by a return to another library.
The continuing usefulness of 12th, 13th and 14th century books in the 15th century is not in itself surprising.
But it does seem to me quite surprising that a late 15th century librarian such as William Charity,
Canon of Leicester, should have been buying, for example, a late 12th century copy of Alfred.
They were talking about 1480, 1490 here.
He could have got a more reasonable he could have got a decent printed what?
But he acquired an old one.
If old books lost their relevance in one context.
Some at least found new relevance in a different context.
Now, before concluding today's lecture. I want to fill out something I mentioned briefly yesterday about college libraries.
For the most part, college libraries, well attested by surviving books and documents, were there to meet well-defined needs.
And we do not expect to find books in them that have nothing whatsoever to do
with the curriculum or with the careers envisaged by fellows of the college,
whether fellows looking forwards or former fellows looking back and giving their books.
In the 15th century. However, we do find readers with more exotic interests, such as Thomas Gascoigne,
who showed a great interest in obsolete books and read many leaving us a trail in his notes.
He died in 1458. In the next generation or two.
We find men such as, I will say, John Geiger, but I don't know how he pronounced his name.
And who appear to have been interested in collecting old books.
He was a foundation fellow of All Souls in 1437, but in 1438 he moved to the greater comforts of Merton, where he remained 15 years and became warden.
And he died 50 years later, at a great age, on the foundation of Lord Treasurer Cromwell's collegiate church.
Tattersall in 1504. He gave books to both Merton and Tattersall, and among those given to Merton was an early 12th century copy of Bede on Proverbs.
Jerome and various other authors of commentaries on the recipient of theologies.
The scribes of this book include three identified elsewhere as writing books for use by William of Malmesbury.
The catalogue refers to the describes as malmesbury monks as well as a dozen or so other hands not so identified,
but clearly writing together something like 15 hens in both manuscript 181a binding leaf.
Is in the formal hand of William of Malmesbury himself.
It's a discarded leaf from a copy of Refine This.
The book has the 14th Century Press mark of Malmesbury MP.
But in the middle of the 15th century, it was valued at 30 shillings by an Oxford stationer, John Godson.
And soon after that it was in the hands of John Geiger, who in 1486 gave it to Merton.
This was hardly a useful book in the university context,
and it seems to have been deaccessioned from malmesbury employing no longer of use, minimalistic context and sent to Oxford before 1458.
I don't think Geiger could have recognised the connection with William of Malmesbury, which indeed need not have held any interest for him.
But he gave it to the college where in the immediate future it could hardly expect readers.
Another of his books was a four volume set of the pencil, the gossipy Shrew of Cornwall,
written by professional scribes in London in 1189 for the author.
This was indeed the presentation set for the difficulty of the first part.
Ralph de Altieri. Paul Archdeacon of Colchester.
It's my belief that Peter had a copy for himself made and for copies for the detectives, at least.
And the book is something like 900,000 words for scribes worked on part one of the volume, the first volume in Merton, Merton 191.
And if we multiply up,
that suggests 100 and suggest 96 scribes copying a minimum number of copies of the fancy holy goose for Peter of Cornwall in London.
It's unlikely that anyone in Oxford had heard of Peter Cornwall, but this date is an extremely unlikely that anyone will take an interest.
Now. We have no idea where these four volumes had been since Ralph left them in England and went off on the Third Crusade, never to return.
But they survived, and almost 300 years later, Geiger gave them to Merton as a safe home for what I can only think of as antiquarian books in his day.
I cannot even imagine whether he thought they would be accessible to the curious like himself.
Which would presumably not have been the case if they'd gone to a monastic library.
Unless these volumes had been kept safe, undetectable in some library, perhaps somewhere in London where Peter was based.
They must have changed hands many times and yet survived.
Thank goodness they did. They bear very important witness to the London craft in the late 12th century, which is something I should develop next week.