ity College, Dublin. Then we have a large and
important group of histories. The historiographers of St. Albans form a
series reaching from Roger of Wendover (d. 1236) to Thomas Walsingham
(d. 1422). The greatest of them was Matthew Paris (d. 1259). We have
authentic and even autograph copies of many of these works, and
especially of Paris's (at Corpus Christi, Cambridge (26 and 16), and in
the British Museum, Royal 14, C. vii., Cotton Nero D. 1, etc.). And we
have not only Paris's writing, but many of his drawings, for he was an
accomplished artist. All these books furnish us with material for
judging of the handwriting used at St. Albans in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, and we can speak with fair confidence of St.
Albans books of that period.

As in other cases, I believe that many books were written there for
other monasteries, either as gifts or as a matter of business. Not every
one of the little priories scattered all over the country had its own
scriptorium; it was only natural that they should apply to the big
establishments when they wanted a Bible or service-book or commentary of
really good quality. This practice explains the fact that we quite often
find books which we could make oath are products of St. Albans or of
Canterbury, and which yet have inscriptions, written when they were new
books, showing that they were owned by some small house. Let me here
note two other ways in which books wandered from the great abbeys.
_One_: all the abbey libraries were full of duplicates; read any
catalogue, and you will realize that. When the Orders of Friars were
collecting libraries of their own, and when the colleges in the two
Universities were doing the same, they found that the monks were often
willing to part with one of their eight or nine sets of Gregory's
_Moralia_ or Augustine _On the Trinity_ for a consideration. _Two_: most
of the large abbeys maintained hostels at the Universities, singly or
jointly, in which some of their younger members studied for degrees.
These hostels were equipped with libraries, and the libraries were
furnished from the shelves of the mother-houses. We have at least two
lists of books so used: one of those which Durham sent to what is now
Trinity College, Oxford; the other of those which Christchurch,
Canterbury, deported to Canterbury College, Oxford, which stood on the
site of Canterbury Quad, in Christ Church.

There was some compensation, by the way: the abbeys were not