It remained to construct an upper story where the books belonging to the University might be kept and used. For generous gifts of books (1439-1446) by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, uncle of Henry VI., had greatly increased the University Library. The fashion of large and gorgeous libraries was borrowed by the English from the French princes. The duke had taken his opportunity during his campaigns in France. He seized the valuable collection of books at the Louvre, and many of them had now found their way to Oxford. They were stored at first in the Cobham Library, but more room was needed. Accordingly, in 1444, the University addressed a letter to the duke in which they informed him of their intention to erect a new building suitable to contain his magnificent gift, and on a site far removed from the hum of men. Of this building, with that gratitude which is in part at least a lively sense of favours to come, they asked permission of the very learned and accomplished duke to inscribe his name as founder. The Duke Humphrey Library forms now the central portion of the great Reading Room of the Bodleian Library. It still answers, by virtue of its position and the arrangement of its cubicles, to the description and intention of the promotors--to build a room where scholars might study far removed _a strepitu sæculari_, from the noise of the world. The three wheat-sheaves of the Kempe shield, repeated again and again on the elaborate groined roof of the Divinity School, commemorate the bounty of Thomas Kempe, Bishop of London, who (1478) promised to give 1000 marks for the completion of the school and the library. A grateful University rewarded him with anniversary services; his name is still mentioned in the "bidding prayer" on solemn occasions. Nor was Duke Humphrey forgotten. His name still heads the list of benefactors recited from time to time in S. Mary's. Religious services were instituted also for his benefit. He was more in need of them, perhaps, than the bishop. For the "Good Duke Humphrey" was good only so far as his love of learning and his generosity to scholars may entitle him to be considered so. The patron of Lydgate and Occleve, and the donor of hundreds of rare and polite books to the University was as unscrupulous in his political intrigues as immoral in his private life. But in his case the good he did lived after him. The "Good Duke" was a reader as well as a collector. It was not merely the outsides of books or the title-pages which attracted him. "His courage never doth appal To study in books of antiquity."