"[2] Another record tells us of two
monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, being sent into
Cambridgeshire to recover a book.
[1] Hist. MSS., 6th Rept. 296b.
[2] Records of the Borough of Nottingham, i. 335.
The risk of loss owing to the practice of lending books
was great--how great may be judged from the fact that
of the equal portions of the Peterhouse College library of
1418, 199 volumes of the chained portion remain, but
only ten of all those assigned to the Fellows are left.[1]
In spite of the risk, lending was extensively carried on.
[1] C. A. S. (N.S.), iii. 397.
In one year (1343), for example, the unimportant priory
of Hinton lent no fewer than twenty books to another
monastery.[1] Then again, it was thought to be only
common charity to lend books to poor students, and in
1212 a council at Paris actually forbade monks to refuse
to lend books to the poor, and requested them to divide
their libraries into two divisions--one for the use of the
brothers, the other for lending.[2] Whether this ever
became a practice in England is more than doubtful.
But seculars of position or influence appear to have been
able to borrow monastic books.
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