'I have made a faire way to goe into the Library privately when I please, and there to sitt from 6 of the clocke in the morneing to 5 at night. I have a private place in the Library to lay those bookes and to write out what I list, without being seene by any, or any comeing to me. I have made the second Keeper of the Library [_i.e._ Verneuil] my friend and servant, who promised me his key at all tymes to goe in privately, when as otherwise it is not opened above 4 houres a day, and some days not att all, as on Hollidays, and their eves in the afternoone, yett then by his meanes I shall [have] free accesse and recesse at all tymes. He hath pleasured me so farr as to lett me write in his counting house, or his little private study in the great publick library, where I may very privately write, and locke up all safely when I depart thence; he will write for me when I have not the leisure, or will transcribe any thinge I shall desire him, and if it be French translate it, for that is his mother tonge.' Probably the practice here mentioned of admitting readers by favour into the Library at unstatutable times grew in the course of years to a considerable height, or was found (as might naturally be expected) productive of mischievous consequences, for on Nov. 8, 1722, it was 'ordered by the Curators that no person under any pretence whatsoever be permitted to study in the said Library at any other time than what is prescribed and limited by the Bodleian Statutes.' Verneuil was succeeded in his office in the Library by Francis Yonge, M.A., of Oriel College. Milton's gift of his _Poems_. See under 1620. A.D. 1648. At the end of the Readers' Register for 1647-8, 1648-9, is a list of nine volumes 'olim surrepti,' of which five had been replaced by other copies. Entries are made in the same place of some coins which were given in 1648-50. At this period the Library appears to have been well attended by readers; about twelve or fifteen quarto and octavo volumes being daily entered, those of folio size being accessible (as, in regard to a portion of the Library, is still the case) by the readers themselves, and not registered because at that time chained to their shelves. The register for the next years (as well as those which followed, up to the year 1708) appears to be lost, so that it cannot be ascertained whether this daily average continued during the Usurpation; but thus far it seems that Dr. John Allibond's description of the state of the Library as consequent on the Puritan visitation of the University in 1648, is not borne out by facts. For that loyal humourist, in his _Rustica Academiæ Oxoniensis nuper reformatæ Descriptio_, which is supposed to commemorate the condition of Oxford in Oct. 1648, writes thus of our Library:-- 'Conscendo orbis illud decus Bodleio fundatore: Sed intus erat nullum pecus, Excepto janitore.