Some of them
he had recovered, and he hoped to secure more, but the
process of recovery had been expensive and troublesome,
both to himself and the people he found in possession of
the books. He therefore sternly forbade the brethren to
alienate books, and decrees certain punishments if his
order was disobeyed. Brethren studying at the University
seem to have been not immune from such faults.[1] The
prior of Michelham sold books, papers, horses, and timber
for his own personal profit (1478). A visitation of
Wigmore showed that books were not "studied in the
cloister because the seats were uncomfortable."[2] Bishop
Goldwell's visitation of his diocese of Norwich in 1492
showed that at Norwich Priory no scholars were sent to
study at Oxford, and at Wymondham Abbey the monks
"refused to apply themselves to their books." At Battle
Abbey, in 1530, the one time fine library was in a sad
state of neglect; no doubt books had been parted with.
And as the last years of the monasteries coincided with a
renewed interest among seculars in learning and with a
revival of book-collecting, the monks of all houses must
have been sorely tempted to sell books which laymen
coveted, as the monks of Mount Athos have been
bartering away their libraries ever since the seventeenth
century.
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