Cambridge was a desolate fen, and Oxford a tangled forest
in a wide waste of waters. They remind us that English
power and English religion have, as from the very first, so
ever since, gone along with knowledge, with learning, and
especially with that learning and that knowledge which
those old manuscripts give--the knowledge and learning
of the Gospel."[3] Few books would be treasured more
carefully and treated with greater reverence by English
churchmen and book lovers than these "first books of the
English church," if any of them could be found. They are
referred to as existing when William Thorne wrote his
chronicle (c. 1397),[4] and Leland tells us he saw and
admired them; but after his time nearly all trace of them
is lost.[5]

[1] Hist. mon. S. Augustini, Cant., 96-99, "Et haec sunt
primitiae librorum totius ecclesiae Anglicanae," 99.

[2] H. E., i. 29.

[3] Stanley, Hist. Mem. of C. (1868), 42.

[4] Hist. mon. S. Aug., xxv.

[5] B. M. Reg. I. E vi. may be a part of the Gregorian Bible, or
the second
copy of the Gospels mentioned above, if this second copy is not
Corpus Christi,
Camb. 286. Corpus C. 286 is a seventh century book, certainly
from St. Augustine's;