We have some account of the style in which Chaucer's royal patron, Edward III., used to have his books bound; as the following extract (also furnished me by Mr. H. Ellis) will testify:----"To Alice Claver, for the making of XVI laces and XVI tasshels for the garnyshing of diuers of the Kings books, ij_s._ viij_d._----And to Robert Boillet for blac paper and nailles for closing and fastenyng of diuers cofyns of ffyrre wherein the Kings boks were conveyed and caried from the Kings grete warderobe in London vnto Eltham aforesaid, v_d._----Piers Bauduyn Stacioner for bynding gilding and dressing of a booke called Titus Liuius, xx_s_: for binding gilding and dressing of a booke called Ffrossard, xvj_s_: or binding gilding and dressing of a booke called the Bible, xvj_s_: for binding gilding and dressing of a booke called le Gouuernement of Kings and Princes, xvj_s._" "For the dressing of ij books whereof oon is called la forteresse de Foy and the other called the booke of Josephus, iij_s._ iiij_d._ And for binding gilding and dressing of a booke called the bible historial, xx_s._" Among the expenses entered in the Wardrobe Accompts 20th Edw. III. I suspect that it was not 'till towards the close of the 15th century, when the sister art of painting directed that of engraving, that books were bound in thick boards, with leather covering upon the same; curiously stamped with arabesque, and other bizarre, ornaments. In the interior of this binding, next to the leaves, there was sometimes an excavation, in which a silver crucifix was safely guarded by a metal door, with clasps. The exterior of the binding had oftentimes large embossed ornaments of silver, and sometimes of precious stones [as a note in the Appendix to the _History of Leicester_, by Mr. Nichols, p. 102, indicates--and as Geyler himself, in his _Ship of Fools_, entitled "_Navicula, sive Speculum Fatuorum_," edit. 1511, 4to., thus expressly declares:--"sunt qui libros inaurunt et serica tegimenta apponunt preciosa et superba," sign. B. v. rev.], as well as the usual ornaments upon the leather; and two massive clasps, with thick metalled corners on each of the outward sides of the binding, seemed to render a book impervious to such depredations of time as could arise from external injury. Meantime, however the worm was secretly engendered within the wood: and his perforating ravages in the precious leaves of the volume gave dreadful proof of the defectiveness of ancient binding, beautiful and bold as it undoubtedly was! The reader is referred to an account of a preciously bound diminutive godly book (once belonging to Q. Elizabeth), in the first volume of my edition of the British _Typographical Antiquities_, p. 83;