University of Virginia Library

1. § I

THE cheapening of books has brought many pleasures, but has been the cause of our losing—or almost losing—one pleasant social custom,—the pastime of reciting tales by the fireside or at festivities, which was popular until the end of the manuscript age.

At their games and feasts and over their ale men were wont to hear tales and verses.[9.1] The tale-tellers were usually professional wayfaring entertainers: "japers and `mynstralles' that sell `glee,'" as the scald sang his lays before King Hygelac and roused Beowulf to slay Grendel— Call hither, cries Sir Thopas, minstrels and gestours, "for to tellen tales"— Rhymers and poets had these entertainments in mind when they wrote— cries Chaucer.[9.3] Note also the preliminary request for silence and attention at the beginning of Sir Thopas—

At the beginning of his metrical chronicle of England Robert Mannyng of Brunne begs the "Lordynges that be now here" to listen to the story of England, as he had found it and Englished it for the solace of those "lewed" men who knew not Latin or French. [9.4]

References to these minstrels are common—

The monks of Hyde Abbey or New Minster paid an annuity to a harper (1180). No less a sum than seventy shillings was paid to minstrels hired to sing and play the

harp at the feast of the installation of an abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury (1309). When the bishop of Winchester visited the cathedral priory of St. Swithin or Old Minster, a minstrel was hired to sing the song of Colbrond the Danish giant—a legend connected with Winchester—and the tale of Queen Emma delivered from the ploughshares (1338). Payments to minstrels were commonly made by monks: at Bicester Priory, for example (1431), and at Maxstoke, where mimi, joculatores, jocatores, lusores, and citharistae were hired. A curious provision occurs in the statutes of New College, Oxford (1380). The founder gives his permission to the scholars, for their recreation on festival days in the winter, to light a fire in the hall after dinner and supper, where they could amuse themselves with songs and other entertainments of decent sort, and could recite poems, chronicles of kingdoms, the wonders of the world, and such like compositions, provided they befitted the clerical character. At Winchester College—where minstrels were often employed—and Magdalen College the same practice was followed. Commonly minstrels formed a regular part of the household of rich men.[9.6]

This part of the subject is so interesting that we feel tempted to linger over it, but it is sufficient for our purpose to observe that minstrelsy, before and after the Conquest —indeed, up to nearly the end of the manuscript period— was the chief and almost the only means of circulating literature among seculars. This fact should be borne in mind when any comparison is made between the number of religious and scholastic books in circulation and the number of books of lighter character. Even books of the scholastic class were read aloud to students in class, and often to small audiences of older people; but this method had obvious disadvantages, and the necessity of studying

them personally soon came to be recognised as imperative. Hence such books, and especially those which summarised the subject of study, were greatly multiplied. On the other hand, romances were better heard than read, and only enough copies of them were made to supply wealthy households and the minstrels and jesters whose business it was to learn and recite them. Rarely, therefore, did the ordinary layman of medieval England own many books. The large class to whom romances appealed seldom owned books at all, simply because the people of this class, even if wealthy and of noble rank, could not in ninety cases out of one hundred read at all, or could read so poorly that the pastime was irksome. Among the educated classes, the books needed were those with which a reader had made acquaintance at his university, or which were necessary for his special study and occupation. Yet it is uncommon to find private libraries; and with few exceptions they were ridiculously small. The vast majority of the books were owned in common by monastic or collegiate societies.

Let us bring together the meagre records of three centuries, and some exceptions to the general rule which serve only to show up the general poverty of the land. Henry II, an ardent sportsman, a ruler almost completely immersed in affairs of State, made time for private reading and for working out knotty questions, [9.7] and very probably he had a library to his hand. King John received from the sacristan of Reading a small collection of books of the Bible and severe theology, perhaps as a diplomatic gift, perhaps as a subtle reminder that a little food for the spirit would improve his morals and ameliorate the lot of his subjects. Edward II borrowed at least two books, the Miracles of St. Thomas and the Lives of St. Thomas and St. Anselm, from Christ Church, Canterbury.[9.8] Great Earl

Simon had a Digestum vetus from the same source. Guy de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (d. 1315), had a little hoard of romances, and some other books. Hugh le Despenser the elder enjoyed a "librarie of bookes" (c. 1321), how big or of what character we do not know. Archbishop Meopham (d. 1333) gave some books to Christ Church, Canterbury; and his successor, John Stratford, presented a few to the same house. Lady Elizabeth de Clare, foundress of Clare Hall, bequeathed to her foundation a tiny collection of service books and volumes on canon law (1355). William de Feriby, Archdeacon of Cleveland, left a small theological library (1378). One John Percyhay of Swinton in Rydal (1392), Sir Robert de Roos (1392), John de Clifford, treasurer of York Church (1392), Canon Bragge of York (1396), and Eleanor Bohun, Duchess of Gloucester (1399), all left Bibles; and small collections of books, much alike in character, consisting usually of psalters, books of religious offfices, legends of the saints, Peter of Blois, Nicholas Trivet, the Brut chronicle, books of Decretals, and the Corpus Juris Civilis,—most of it sorry stuff, the last achievements of dogmatism on threadbare subjects. "Among all the church dignitaries whose wills are recorded in Bishop Stafford's register at Exeter (1395-1419), the largest library mentioned is only of fourteen volumes. The sixty testators include a dean, two archdeacons, twenty canons or prebendaries, thirteen rectors, six vicars, and eighteen layfolk, mostly rich people. The whole sixty apparently possessed only two Bibles between them, and only one hundred and thirty-eight books altogether: or, omitting church service-books, only sixty; i.e. exactly one each on an average. Thirteen of the beneficed clergy were altogether bookless, though several of them possessed the baselard or dagger which church councils had forbidden in vain for centuries past; four more had only their breviary. Of the laity fifteen were bookless, while three had service books, one of these being a knight who simply bequeathed them as part of the furniture of his private chapel." [9.9]

A few exceptions there were, as we have said. Not till the fifteenth century do we find that a few books were commonly in the possession of well-to-do and cultivated people; suggesting an advance in culture upon the prevlous age. But before 1400 several book collectors were sharp aberrations from the general rule. Richard de Gravesend, Bishop of London, owned nearly a hundred books, almost all theological, and each worth on an average more than a sovereign a volume, or in all about £1740 of our money. A certain Abbot Thomas of St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, gave to his house over one hundred volumes.[9.10] To the same monastery a certain John of London, probably a pupil of Friar Bacon, left a specialist's library of about eighty books, no fewer than forty-six being on mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. [9.11] Simon Langham, too, bequeathed to Westminister Abbey ninety-one works, some very costly. [9.12] John de Newton, treasurer of York, left a good library, part of which he bequeathed to York Minster and part to Peterhouse (1418). A canon of York, Thomas Greenwood, died worth more than thirty pounds in books alone (1421). And Henry Bowet, Archbishop of York, left a collection of thirty-three volumes, nearly all of great price,—copies de luxe, finely illuminated and embellished, worth on an average a pound a volume (1423).

But Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, is at once the

bibliomaniac's ideal and enigma (1287-1345). All accounts agree in saying he collected a large number of books.

What became of them we do not know. In the Philobiblon, of which he is the reputed author, he expressed his intention of founding a hall at Oxford, and of leaving his books to it. Durham College, however, was not completed until thirty-six years after his death. Among the Durham College documents is a catalogue of the books it owned at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and only the books sent to Oxford in 1315, and as many more are mentioned, so that his large library did not go to the college, but was probably dispersed. [9.13] De Bury, like Cobham, was a heavy debtor, and as he lay dying his servants stole all his moveable goods and left him naked on his bed save for an undershirt which a lackey had thrown over him.[9.14] His executors, as we know, were glad to resell to St. Albans Abbey the books he had bought from the monks there.

De Bury has left us an account of his methods of collecting which throws some light upon the trade in books in his time. "Although from our youth upwards we had always delighted in holding social commune with learned men and lovers of books, yet when we prospered in the world, . . . we obtained ampler facilities for visiting everywhere as we would, and of hunting as it were certain most choice preserves, libraries private as well as public, and of the regular as well as of the secular clergy.... There was afforded to us, in consideration of the royal favour, easy access for the purpose of freely searching the retreats of books. In fact, the fame of our love of them had been soon winged abroad everywhere, and we were reported to burn with such desire for books, and especially old ones,

that it was more easy for any man to gain our favour by means of books than of money. Wherefore, since supported by the goodness of the aforesaid prince of worthy memory, we were able to requite a man well or ill . . . there flowed in, instead of presents and guerdons, and instead of gifts and jewels, soiled tracts and battered codices, gladsome alike to our eye and heart. Then the aumbries of the most famous monasteries were thrown open, cases were unlocked and caskets were undone, and volumes that had slumbered through long ages in their tombs wake up and are astonished, and those that had lain hidden in dark places are bathed in the ray of unwonted light. These long lifeless books, once most dainty, but now become corrupt and loathesome, covered with litters of mice and pierced with the gnawings of the worms, and who were once clothed in purple and fine linen, now Iying in sackcloth and ashes, given up to oblivion, seemed to have become habitations of the moth.... Thus the sacred vessels of learning came into our control and stewardship; some by gift, others by purchase, and some lent to us for a season."[9.15]

If his words are true, monastic and other libraries must have been seriously despoiled to build up his own collection. He was bribed by St. Albans Abbey, and nobody need disbelieve him when he says he got many presents from other houses, for the merit of being open-handed was rewarded with more good mediation and favours than the giver's cause deserved; indeed, De Bury himself seems to have made judicious use of bribes for his own advancement.[9.16] Usually gifts were in jewels or plate, but books were given to men known to love them; as when

Whethamstede presented Humfrey of Gloucester and the Duke of Bedford with books they coveted.

While acting as emissary for his "illustrious prince," de Bury hunts his quarry in the narrow ways of Paris, and captures "inestimable books" by freely opening his purse, the coins of which are, to his mind, "mud and sand" compared with the treasures he gets. He blesses the friars and protects them, and they rout out books from the "universities and high schools of various provinces"; but how, whether rightfully or wrongfully, we do not know. He "does not disdain," he tells us—in truth, he is surely overjoyed—to visit "their libraries and any other repositories of books"; nay, there he finds heaped up amid the utmost poverty the utmost riches of wisdom. He freely employs the booksellers, but the wiles of the collector are as notorious as the wiles of women, and his chief aim is to "captivate the affection of all" who can get him books;—not even forgetting "the rectors of schools and the instructors of rude boys," although we cannot think he gets much from them. If he cannot buy books, he has copies made: about his person are scribes and correctors, illuminators and binders, and generally all who can usefully labour in the service of books; in large numbers—in no small multitude. And by these means he gets together more books than all the other English bishops put together: more than five waggon loads; a veritable hoard, overflowing into the hall of his house, and into his bedroom, where he steps over them to get to his couch. He was a man "of small learning," says Murimuth; "passably literate," writes Chambre; at the best, according to Petrarch, "of ardent temperament, not ignorant of literature, with a natural curiosity for out-of-the-way lore": an antiquarian, not of the lovable kind, but unscrupulous, pedantic, and vain, indulging an inordinate taste for collecting and hoarding books, perhaps to satisfy a

craving for shreds and patches of knowledge, but more likely to earn a reputation as a great clerk.[9.17] For De Bury was something of a humbug; the Philobiblon, if it is his work, reaches the utmost limit of affectation in the love of books.