on, almost entirely rewritten and containing fourteen
centuries, was printed at Basel with the title _Scriptorum illustrium
majoris Britanniae ... Catalogus_ (1557-1559). The chronological catalogue
of British authors and their works was partly founded on the _Collectanea_
and _Commentarii_ of John Leland, but Bale was an indefatigable collector
and worker, and himself examined many of the valuable libraries of the
Augustinian and Carmelite houses before their dissolution. In his notebook
he records as an instance of the wholesale destruction in progress: "I have
bene also at Norwyche, our second citye of name, and there all the library
monuments are turned to the use of their grossers, candelmakers,
sopesellers, and other worldly occupiers ... As much have I saved there and
in certen other places in Northfolke and Southfolke concerning the authors
names and titles of their workes, as I could, and as much wold I have done
through out the whole realm, yf I had been able to have borne the charges,
as I am not." His work is therefore invaluable, in spite of the
inaccuracies and the abuse lavished on Catholic writers, for it contains
much information that would otherwise have been hopelessly lost.

A list of Bale's works is to be found in _Athenae Cantabrigienses_ (vol. i.
pp. 227 et seq.). Beside the reprints already mentioned, _The Examinations
of Lord Cobham, William Thorpe and Anne Askewe, &c._ were edited by the
Rev. H. Christmas for the Parker Society in 1849. Bale's autograph
note-book is preserved in the Selden Collection of the Bodleian Library,
Oxford. It contains the materials he collected for his two published
catalogues arranged alphabetically, with no attempt at ornament of any
kind, and without the personalities which deface his completed work. He
also gives in most cases the sources from which his information was
derived. This book was prepared for publication with notes by Dr R. Lane
Poole, with the help of Miss Mary Bateson, as _Index Britanniae Scriptorum
quos ... collegit Ioannes Baleus_ (Clarendon Press, 1902), forming part ix.
of _Anecdota Oxoniensia_.

John Pits or Pitseus (1560-1616), an English Catholic exile, founded on
Bale's work his _Relationum historicarum de rebus anglicis tomus primus_
(Paris, 1619), better known by its running title of [v.03 p.0249] _De
illustribus Angliae scriptoribus_. This is really the fourth book of a more
extensive work. He omits the Wycliffite and Protestant divines me