Yet every Cathedral and Church and Chapel, every Abbey and religious House must have been amply supplied to say nothing of the many copies which private families possessed. Some few of these latter have come down to us, enriched with almost superfluity of ornament, proving the unwearied patience and skill of the limner as well as the piety of those for whom they were executed.11

Now this extreme rarity and so many injuries are not to be hastily attributed to the common accidents and the mere lapse of years. Other books of that age which originally were, beyond all comparison, less numerous, frequently occur; we must inquire therefore after another cause, and it will not be difficult to find. That terrible storm which for a time swept with daily increasing violence from one end of our land to the other, which spared, in intent at least, little that had been handed down to us from our fathers; which overwhelmed tower and church and cloister in one common ruin,'

12

"Particularly that which is well known as the Bedford Missal, which however is not a Missal, but the Hours. Writers who are fond of declaiming against the ignorance of the dark ages appeal to the high prices which some books are known to have been sold for in those days; and would conclude that none were to be obtained except at such prices. Mr. Maitland, in his very clever essays, has completely refuted this. Such MSS. however as are alluded to in the text, must always have been of great value: and must originally have cost sums which none would be apt to spend upon them, unless they sought not so much to gratify their vanity, as to shew their reverence for Him in whose service they were to be used.

12 Willis, in his Mitred Abbies, gives the following account sent to Cromwell of the destruction of the magnificent church of Lewes in Sussex, taken from a book in the Cottonian library.

"Sussex. March 24. 1538.

"My Lord, I humbly commend to your Lordship. The last I wrote to your Lordship was the 20th day of this present month, by the

destroyed, if we may select one object rather than another, especially the Books which had been used in the public services of the Church, or in the private devo

hands of Mr. Williamson: by the which I advertised your Lordship of the length and greatness of this church, and sale: we had begun to pull the whole down to the ground, and what manner and fashion they used in pulling it down. I told your Lordship of a vault on the right side of the high Altar that was borne with four pillars, having about it five Chapels. All this is down, Thursday and Friday last. Now we are plucking down an higher vault, borne up by four thick and gross pillars. This shall down for our second work. We brought from London seventeen persons, 3 Carpenters, 2 Smiths, 2 Plummers, and one that keepeth Furnace: every one of these attendeth to his own office: ten of them heweth the walls about, among the which are the three Carpenters. These made props to underset where the other cut away. The other break and cut the walls. These are men exercised much better than other men that we find here in the country. (May we not hope that the country people refused to be partakers of their sin?) Wherefore we must both have more men and other things also that we have need of. By month a Tuesday, they begun to cart the lead, and it shall be done with such diligence and saving as may be. So that our trust is, that your Lordship shall be much satisfied with what we do. Your Lordship's servant, John Portmarus." Vol. ii. Appendix, p. 26.

Surely the pious brethren of the monasteries in those unhappy times must have remembered, and sorrowfully repeated in the ears of the most High, the prophetic words, "Thine adversaries roar in the midst of thy congregations: and set up their banners for tokens. He that hewed timber afore out of the thick trees: was known to bring it to an excellent work. But now they break down all the carved work thereof: with axes and hammers. They have set fire upon thy holy places and have defiled the dwelling-place of thy Name, even unto the ground. Yea, they said in their hearts, Let us make havoc of them altogether. O God, how long shall the adversary do this dishonour: how long shall the enemy blaspheme thy Name?"

Ps. lxxiv.

I cannot help adding, from an author not much inclined to sympathize with any but Roman and Druidical Antiquity, and who speaks of himself moreover as no encourager of superstitious foppery," the following passage. He is writing of the Abbey of Glastonbury about the year 1720, "Within a lustrum of years, a presbyterian tenant

has made more barbarous havoc there than has been since the disso

tions of the people. Edicts and Injunctions and Royal Proclamations followed rapidly each other, commanding that all such books, even if in private possession, should be produced before certain commissioners who should burn or at any rate so deface them, as to make them no longer worth preserving.

To begin with, in 1542, the Archbishop notified to the Convocation in their nineteenth session," that he had it in command from the King to acquaint them, that all mass books, antiphoners and portuisses in the Church of England should be newly examined, reformed, and castigated from all manner of mention of the Bishop of Rome's name, from all apocryphas, feigned legends, superstitious orations, collects, versicles, and responses; that the names and memories of all saints which be not mentioned in the Scripture, or authentical doctors,13

lution, for every week a pillar, a buttress, a window jamb, or an angle of fine hewn stone is sold to the best bidder. Whilst I was there they were excoriating St. Joseph's chappel for that purpose, and the squared stones were lay'd up by lots in the abbot's kitchen, the rest goes to paving yards and stalls for cattle, or to the highway. I observed frequent instances of the townsmen being generally afraid to make such purchase, as thinking an unlucky fate attends the family where these materials are used, and they told me many storys and particular instances of it. Others that are but half religious will venture to build stables and outhouses with it, but by no means any part of the dwelling-house." In the next page we are told, "that the towns people bought the stone of the vaults underneath the great hall to build a sorry mercat house: what they durst not have done singly, they perpetrated as a body, hoping vengeance would slip between so many," Stukeley. Itinerarium Cur. Iter. VI. How well would it be for us to remember upon such and all occasions, that God regards numbers no more than persons, and "though hand join in hand, yet the wicked shall not go unpunished."

13 What judge was to decide who were to be considered "authentical doctors," and who were not?

should be abolished and put out of the same books and calendars." 14 To the execution of this order we are to attribute the greatest part of the mutilations which the old service books that have come down to us have suffered such as the loss of leaves, erasures of whole pages, and obliterations in what is commonly called inquisition ink.15

About seven years after, however, came another Royal Proclamation, which aimed at nothing less than total destruction. This declares that a book of common prayer had been agreed upon and commanded to be used of all persons within the realm: but that "dyvers unquyette and evile disposed persons had noysed and bruted abrode, that they sholde have agayne theire olde Lattene service:" we therefore, it proceeds, by the advice of our privy council "have thought goode, and neverthelesse straightly to commaunde & charge you (the bishops) that immediately upon the receipt hereof, you do commaunde the deane and prebendaries of the cathedrall churche, the parson, vicar or curatte and churche warden of everie parishe, within youre diocesse, to bring and deliver unto you or youre deputie, at soche convenient place as you shall appoynt, all antiphoners,

14 Wilkins. Concilia Magn. Brit. vol. iii. p. 863. But even obliterated books are of very rare occurrence: and the cause of this must be traced to the Act of Queen Mary, (cited by Burn. Ecc. Law. Art. Public Worship.) which called in and destroyed all the rased books of King Henry VIII. and required parishes to furnish themselves with new complete books.

15 To name no other Saint: the Office for the day of S. Thomas of Canterbury and his name in the Calendar are very frequently erased : and in two editions of the Golden Legend, in the Editor's possession, one by Julian Notary, 1503, the other by Wynkyn de Worde, 1527, the History of this Saint has been crossed throughout; not sufficiently to obliterate, but to shew the anxious dislike of the inquisitors.

missales, grayles, processionalles, manuelles, legendes, pies, portasies, jornalles and ordinalles, and all other bokes of service, and that you take the same bokes into your handes, and then so deface and abolyshe that they never after may serve to anie soche use, as they were provided for." 16 These orders were most strictly obeyed as the monasteries were one after another suppressed, their libraries were destroyed, and then churches and private houses were ransacked. The number of the books produced must have been very great: ships were laden with

16 Wilkins, iv. 37. See also Statutes at Large, 3rd and 4th Edw. VI. Cap. x. wherein it is further enacted, that " if any person or persons shall willingly retain in his or their custody any such book after the last day of June, they shall forfeit for the first offence xxs: for the second, iv. li: and for the third shall suffer imprisonment at the King's will." The books which were delivered are by this statute ordered to be burnt or otherwise destroyed: and if any Mayor, Bishop, &c. or other Commissary neglected to destroy them, they were to forfeit xl. li. The 5th sec. allows any person to use, keep, and retain any Primers in the English or Latin tongue, set forth by Henry 8th, so that the sentences of Invocation or Prayer to Saints in the same Primers be blotted or clearly put out of the same."

Some few years afterwards, it is but just to add, a like proceeding was adopted by Queen Mary's Council: and an order issued enjoining the destruction of "certain heretical books," among which particularly were "the Schismatical Communion Book," and "the English Ordinal." In a rare little book, called " A godlye treatise of the blessed sacrament of the Aulter," published about 1553 or early in 1554, the author says (sign: A. 5.) "Wherefore good christian reader, thou mayst perceyve that it was the very devyse and dryft of the deuyl, & the subtilty of great sathan hym selfe, so presumpteously and perniciously to abolish the moste holy sacrifice of the masse, placyng suche scysmaticall rytes, and plantynge suche detestable bokes of communion thorough the pestilente preachynge and ragyng wythout al reason of a sorte of sottes (nay of scismaticall and blasphemous heretykes) to spoyle and rob almyghtye God of so greate honour, in thys hys churche of England." We must confess that there was little moderation of language upon either side, in the heat of those times, which scarcely ruder customs or a less polished style can

excuse.