(1133-1174) granted the tithe of certain churches in the diocese "as a
perpetual alms to the _scriptorium_ of the church of Ely for the purpose
of making and repairing the books of the said church[170]." The books
referred to were probably, in the first instance, service-books; but the
number required of these could hardly have been sufficient to occupy the
whole time of the scribes, and the library would doubtless derive benefit
from their labours. The _scriptorium_ at S. Alban's was also specially
endowed.

We must next consider the answer to the following questions: In what part
of their Houses did the Monastic Orders bestow their books? and what
pieces of furniture did they use? The answer to the first of these
questions is a very curious one, when we consider what our climate is, and
indeed what the climate of the whole of Europe is, during the winter
months. The centre of the monastic life was the cloister. Brethren were
not allowed to congregate in any other part of the conventual buildings,
except when they went into the frater, or dining-hall, for their meals, or
at certain hours in certain seasons into the warming-house
(_calefactorium_). In the cloister accordingly they kept their books; and
there they wrote and studied, or conducted the schooling of the novices
and choir-boys, in winter and in summer alike.

It is obvious that their work must have been at the mercy of the elements
during many months of the year, and some important proofs that such was
the case can be quoted. Cuthbert, Abbat of Wearmouth and Jarrow in the
second half of the eighth century, excuses himself to a correspondent for
not having sent him all the works of Bede which he had asked for, on the
ground that the intense cold of the previous winter had paralysed the
hands of his scribes[171]; Ordericus Vitalis, who wrote in the first half
of the twelfth century, closes the fourth book of his Ecclesiastical
History with a lament that he must lay aside his work for the winter[172];
and a monk of Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire has recorded his
discomforts in a Latin couplet which seems to imply that in a place so
inconvenient as a cloister all seasons were equally destructive of serious
work:

In vento minime pluvia nive sole sedere
Possumus in claustro nec scribere neque studere[173].

As we sit here in tempest in rain snow and sun
Nor writing nor reading in cloister is done.

But, when circumstances were more propitious, plent