" Underneath, another
hand has written: "I, John, bishop of Exeter, do not know
where the said house is: I did not steal this book, but got
it lawfully."[3] In a beautiful manuscript of Chaucer's
Troilus, not perhaps a conventual book, occurs the
following:--
"he that thys Boke rents or stelle
God send hym sekenysse swart (?) of helle."[4]
[1] B. M. MS. Reg. 12 G. ii.; Warton, i. 182.
[2] Harl. MS. 2798.
[3] See anathema in Trim Coll. Camb. MS. B. S. 17.
[4] James 17, 126.
All the same, losses were common. About 1290 William
of Pershore, once a Benedictine monk, and at the time
a Grey Friar, returned to his old order at Westminster,
and took with him some books. A big dispute arose over
this apostate, and one of the items of the subsequent settlement
was that the Westminster monks should return the
books.[1]
[1] Mon. Fr., ii. 41.
A similar thing took place in Scotland (1331). A
friar of Roxburgh forsook his grey habit for the Cistercian
white by entering Kelso Abbey. He made his new associates
envious with an account of the goods of the friaries at
Roxburgh and Berwick.
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