About the year 1440, the Duke gave to the University of Oxford a library, containing six hundred volumes, one hundred and twenty only of which were valued at more than one thousand pounds of the money of that day. These books, it need not be observed, were all in manuscript, the art of printing not having then been discovered; they are called _Novi Tractatus_, or New Treatises, in the University Register, and are said to be _admirandi apparatus_. They were the most splendid and costly copies that could be procured, finely written on vellum, and elegantly embellished with miniatures and illuminations. Among the rest was a translation into French of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Only a single specimen of these valuable volumes was suffered to remain; it is a beautiful manuscript, in folio, of Valerius Maximus, enriched with the most elegant decorations, and written in Duke Humphrey’s age, evidently with a design of being placed in this sumptuous collection. All the rest of the books, which, like this, being highly ornamented, looked like missals, were destroyed or removed by the pious visitors of the University, in the reign of king Edward the sixth, whose zeal was equalled only by their ignorance, or perhaps by their avarice. A great number of classics, in this grand work of reformation, were condemned as anti-christian, and some of the books, in this library, had even been before this, either stolen or mutilated. In the library of Oriel College, at Oxford, we find a manuscript _Commentary on Genesis_, written by John Capgrave, a monk, belonging to the monastery of St. Austin, at Canterbury, a learned theologist of the fifteenth century. In it is the author’s autograph, and the work is dedicated to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. In the superb initial letter of the dedicatory epistle, is a curious illumination of the author Capgrave, humbly presenting his book to his patron, the Duke, who is seated, and covered with a sort of hat. At the end of the volume is this entry, in the hand-writing of Duke Humphrey “C’est Livre est a moy Humfrey, Duc de Gloucestre, du don de Frere Jehan Capgrave, quy le me fist presenter a mon manoyr de Pensherst le jour ... de l’an MCCCCXXXVIII.” This is one of the books which Humphrey gave to his new library at Oxford, destroyed or dispersed by the active reformers of the young Edward. He also gave to the same library Capgrave _Super Exodum et Regum Libros_.