The furious party-spirit which at this time divided the country into hostile camps, the leaders of which were at any moment ready to fly at each other’s throats, was eminently unfavourable both to the guardianship and to the growth of the new institution; as it was, indeed, to all matters of learning or of mental culture. Hardly seven years had passed before it was found necessary to pass ‘_An Act for the better securing of Her Majesty’s purchase of Cotton House in Westminster_.’ This Act recites that since the preceding enactment of 1700 ‘very little had been done in pursuance thereof to make the said Library useful to the Public, except what had been lately done at Her Majesty’s charge;’ and that the place wherein the Library then was, being ‘a narrow little damp room, was improper for preserving the books and papers.’ The Act then proceeds to declare that an agreement had been made for the purchase of Cotton House for £4,500, ‘to the intent that it might be in Her Majesty’s power to make this most valuable collection useful to her own subjects, and to all learned strangers.’ Within five years, however, this unfortunate Library had to be removed from Cotton House to Essex House, in the Strand (1712); and thence again, in 1730, to Ashburnham House, at Westminster (already containing the Royal collection), where it had not long been lodged, when the fire occurred by which it was so seriously injured. [Sidenote: THE FIRE AT ASHBURNHAM HOUSE.] The account which the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry gave to the Public, shortly after the occurrence of this calamity, runs thus: ‘On Saturday morning, October 23, 1731, a great smoke was perceived by Dr. BENTLEY, and the rest of the family at Ashburnham House, which soon after broke out into a flame. It began from a wooden mantel-tree taking fire which lay across a stove-chimney that was under the room where the MSS. of the Royal and Cottonian Libraries were lodged, and was communicated to that room by the wainscoat and by pieces of timber, that stood perpendicularly upon each end of the mantel-tree.’