"Among all the church dignitaries whose wills
are recorded in Bishop Stafford's register at Exeter (1395-
1419), the largest library mentioned is only of fourteen
volumes. The sixty testators include a dean, two archdeacons,
twenty canons or prebendaries, thirteen rectors,
six vicars, and eighteen layfolk, mostly rich people. The
whole sixty apparently possessed only two Bibles between
them, and only one hundred and thirty-eight books
altogether: or, omitting church service-books, only
sixty; i.e. exactly one each on an average. Thirteen of
the beneficed clergy were altogether bookless, though
several of them possessed the baselard or dagger which
church councils had forbidden in vain for centuries past;
four more had only their breviary. Of the laity fifteen
were bookless, while three had service books, one of these
being a knight who simply bequeathed them as part of the
furniture of his private chapel."[3]
[1] Stubbs, Lect. on Med. Hist., 137.
[2] James (M. R.), 148.
[3] Coulton, Chaucer and his England, 99.
A few exceptions there were, as we have said. Not
till the fifteenth century do we find that a few books were
commonly in the possession of well-to-do and cultivated
people; suggesting an advance in culture upon the prevlous
age.
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