Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/459

 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 451 In France the splendid collection of Charles V was appropriated by the duke of Bedford and only parts of it were recovered in later times. Then, though Charles VIII began the formation of a library, it may be said that the real nucleus of the French royal library consists in the collection of the dukes of Orleans at Blois, which was inherited by Louis XII. Louis enriched it by many books which he acquired from the duke of Milan's library at Pavia. But the collection was still kept at Blois until it was removed by Francis I to Fontainebleau and by Charles IX to Paris. The English royal library starts a little earlier than the existing French collec- tion. There are indications that it perhaps goes back to Eichard II or even to Edward II : l it certainly has had a continuous history since the time when Edward IV purchased a goodly number of large handsome volumes in the Netherlands. This library is first found at Sheen, now Richmond in Surrey; it remained there at least until 1535. But soon it became necessary to find a place for the great store of manuscripts which the king obtained from the plunder of the religious houses ; and Wolsey's palace at Westminster, afterwards called Whitehall, was chosen for the purpose. John Leland, in a well-known passage, tells us that as early as 1533-4 he received a commission from Henry VIII ' to peruse and diligently to search all the libraries of monasteries and colleges of this your noble realm, to the intent that the monuments of the ancient writers as well of other nations as of this your own province might be brought out of deadly darkness to lively light '. It was a result of Leland's survey that the books ' within the king's upper library ' were increased by 1542 to the number of 910 ; of these not fewer than 250 were manuscripts, and it is satisfactory to be assured that about 240 of them are still in the collection. The books were acquired from about fifty religious houses, but they seem to have been obtained without any principle of selection. A hundred volumes, for instance, came from Rochester, and only one from Christ Church, Canterbury. Under Edward VI there was a ' purgation ' of superstitious books which involved, as it seems, the destruction of a good many missals and similar volumes. The next large accession came with the Lumley library under James I. This also was built up out of the spoils of the monasteries. A considerable share of the library of Archbishop Cranmer had been obtained by Henry Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, himself a sedulous collector; and Arundel's daughter married John, Lord Lumley, to whom the books next passed. He continued the tradition, and his library at his death in 1609 included manu- scripts from at least thirty religious houses. This was purchased by the king for the use of Henry, prince of Wales, and was housed in St. James's Palace, whither some part of the royal library seems already to have been transferred. Not long before his death Charles I ordered that all his collections at Whitehall should be removed to St. James's. It was during his reign in 1628 that the library received its most precious possession, the Codex Alexandrinus ; but this was a private gift to the king and stands on a different footing from the series of collections acquired in course of time. During the interregnum the library stood in danger of being dispersed with the coins, pictures, and other works of art : 1 See the Catalogue, i, intr., p. xi, n. 3. Gg2