[3] Then again Adam
writes asking Grosseteste to send Aristotle's Ethics to the
Grey Friars' convent in London.[4] In getting books the
friars were sometimes unscrupulous. A royal writ was
issued commanding the Warden of the Grey Friars at
Oxford and another friar, Walter de Chatton, to return
two books worth forty shillings which they were keeping
from the rightful owner (1330).[5] More striking testimony
to the book-collecting habits of the friars is the complaint
to the Pope of their buying so many books that the monks
and clergy had difficulty in obtaining them. In every
convent, it was urged, was a grand and noble library, and
every friar of eminence in the University had a fine
collection of books.[6] Archbishop Fitzralph, who made
this statement, detested the friars, and was besides prone
to exaggerate; but he was not wholly wrong in this
instance, as De Bury tells a similar tale. "Whenever it
happened," he says, "that we turned aside to the cities and
places where the mendicants . . . had their convents, we
did not disdain to visit their libraries . . .; there we found
heaped up amid the utmost poverty the utmost riches of
wisdom.
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