e of English people, made by Tyndale and
Coverdale, was the first attempt to put the Bible into English. We
should have had plenty of printed copies of Holy Scripture in the
mother-tongue of English people, had these versions never been made and
circulated to attack and injure Holy Church, without whom the originals
could never have existed.

CHAPTER XIV

Scattering of our old MSS. in Sixteenth Century. Same now in public
libraries. Collections. Exeter Book and Vercelli Book.

Where are all our old manuscripts, our treasures from days of yore, the
work of the cunning scribe, the pages whereon so many of our religious
spent hour after hour, in patient and loving toil? They were scattered
abroad in the sixteenth century by wholesale. Many of them found their
way into private collections, and the collectors often generously gave
them to college libraries. Matthew Parker, the Protestant Archbishop of
Canterbury, was a great book-collector, and gave a good many volumes to
Corpus Christi College at Cambridge. Among these is the oldest copy of
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. John Bale, once a friar, afterwards, alas! a
Protestant Bishop, says that some of the books from the monasteries were
used to scour candlesticks or to rub boots; some were sold to grocers
and soap-vendors; and whole ships-full went abroad.

[Illustrations:
SAXON SHIP
As used by our Forefathers in the time of King Alfred

THE ALFRED JEWEL
[_Page 114_]

Robert Bruce Cotton was another great book-collector. His library was
sold to the nation about seventy years after his death. Many books and
MSS. belonging to it were destroyed or injured by a fire that broke out
where it had been placed; among those injured was the only copy of the
old poem of Beowulf, which I have not talked about because it is
apparently outside our _Catholic_ Heritage in literature. The reduced
library is now at the British Museum. It includes the beautiful
Lindisfarne Gospels, or Durham Book, which once belonged to Durham
Cathedral.

There is another collection which was bought for the British Museum,
made by Harley, Earl of Oxford.

William Laud, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in Charles the First's
time, and, like him, died on the scaffold, was also greatly interested
in collecting books. He gave generously to Oxford University, and his
books are in the Bodleian Library, with many other valuable literary
treasures.

Francis Junius collected Anglo-Saxon literature