disappeared, and for a long while the tailors and shoemakers and
bookbinders of Oxford were well supplied with vellum, which they found
useful in their respective callings. It was a hard fate for so
splendid a collection. True it is that for the most part the contents
of the library had been rescued from miserable ill-usage in the
monasteries and chapter-houses where they had their first habitations,
but at last they had found shelter over the Divinity School of a great
University. There at least they might hope to slumber. But our
Reformers thought otherwise. The books and manuscripts being thus
dispersed or destroyed, a prudent if unromantic Convocation exposed
for sale the wooden shelves, desks, and seats of the old library, and
so made a complete end of the whole concern, thus making room for
Thomas Bodley.

On February 23, 1597/8, Thomas Bodley sat himself down in his London
house and addressed to the Vice-Chancellor of his University a certain
famous letter:

'SIR,
'Altho' you know me not as I suppose, yet for the farthering of an
offer of evident utilitie to your whole University I will not be
too scrupulous in craving your assistance. I have been alwaies of
a mind that if God of his goodness should make me able to do
anything for the benefit of posteritie, I would shew some token of
affiction that I have ever more borne to the studies of good
learning. I know my portion is too slender to perform for the
present any answerable act to my willing disposition, but yet to
notify some part of my desire in that behalf I have resolved thus
to deal. Where there hath been heretofore a public library in
Oxford which you know is apparent by the room itself remaining and