Page:Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods.djvu/62

 which were chained in a cupboard very like the armarium of a monastic cloister;

Book-cupboard and desk at Bolton, Lancashire. The former is lettered: "The gift of Mr James Leaver, citison of London 1694."

and at All Saints Church, Hereford, a collection of books bequeathed in 1715 was chained to ordinary shelves set against the walls, as may still be seen. This very obvious way of disposing of books evidently shocked old-fashioned people, for Cole the antiquary, writing in 1703, could still speak of the arrangement of shelves against the walls as à la moderne.

The libraries I have been describing were more or less public, and I should like, before I conclude, to shew you how books were bestowed in the studies of individual scholars—whether royal, monastic, or secular.

I conceive that for many centuries after the beginning of the Christian era the methods of the