The ancient libraries of Canterbury and Dover : the catalogues of the libraries of Christ Church priory and St. Augustine's abbey at Canterbury and of St. Martin's priory at Dover / now first collected and published with an introduction and identifications of the extant remains, by Montague Rhodes James.

  • James, M. R. (Montague Rhodes), 1862-1936.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ancient libraries of Canterbury and Dover : the catalogues of the libraries of Christ Church priory and St. Augustine's abbey at Canterbury and of St. Martin's priory at Dover / now first collected and published with an introduction and identifications of the extant remains, by Montague Rhodes James. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    through each book-case, shelf by shelf, and records on which side of the library each stood. This particularity makes his survey a most valuable authority for the topography of the building. It is not less valuable for the study of the contents of the library. Ample means are given for the identification of the volumes by the quotations of the opening words of the second leaf; and the number of volumes thus described is satisfactorily large, reaching a total of 300. What proportion the books that needed repair bore to the rest of the collection we cannot tell, so that Ingram gives us no help towards estimating its growth since Prior Eastry’s days. Perhaps, having raised this question, I had better say what has to be said about it before examining Ingram’s records in detail. Mr Clark puts the matter very shortly and clearly1. Having established the number of book-cases as sixteen he assigns to them conjecturally eight feet in length and two in depth. Each had two shelves on each side or 32 feet of shelving in all; in the 16 cases together there would be 512 feet. Prior Eastry’s Catalogue enumerates 1850 volumes. “If we allow 2\ feet for every ten of these, we shall require 462J feet: or in other words, we can arrange the whole collection in 14 stalls, leaving two over for the additions which must have been made in the interval between the middle of the 14th century and the date of Brother Ingram’s researches.” Two cases contain 64 feet of shelving, which would accommodate rather over 250 books. Say that out of the 1850 books some¬ thing like 150 were sent to Oxford, and that another 100 were lost. That would give space for 500 volumes. We know of two donations (Eastry’s and Chillenden’s) which together amounted to over 100 volumes, and we have seen that there are records of smaller gifts. It is clear that there cannot have been much room to spare in the library in 1508, and my conjecture that lack of space prevented Prior Sellinge’s books from being bestowed there appears to be well-grounded. If the collection had increased at the same rate between 1330 and 1500 as it did between 1170 and 1330, there would 1 Care of Books, p. 193.