Books often brought excessive prices in the middle ages. In 1174, Walter, Prior of St. Swithin's at Winchester, and afterwards abbot of Westminster, purchased of the monks of Dorchester in Oxfordshire Bede's Homilies and St. Austin's Psalter, for twelve measures of barley, and a pall on which was embroidered in silver the history of Birinus converting a Saxon king. About 1400, a copy of John de Meun's Roman de la Rose was sold before the palace-gate at Paris for forty crowns, or 33_l._ 6_s._ 6_d._ In Edward the Third's reign, one hundred marks (equal to 1000_l._) were paid to Isabella de Lancaster, a nun of Ambresbury, for a book of romance, purchased from her for the king's use. Warton mentions a book of the Gospels, in the Cotton Library, as a fine specimen of Saxon calligraphy and decorations. It is written by Eadfrid, Bishop of Durham, in the most exquisite manner. Ethelwold his successor did the illuminations, the capital letters, the picture of the cross, and the Evangelists, with infinite labour and elegance; and Bilfred, the anchorite, covered the book, thus written and adorned, with silver plates and precious stones. It was finished about 720. The encouragement given in the English monasteries for transcribing books was very considerable. In every great abbey there was an apartment called "The Scriptorium;" where many writers were constantly busied in transcribing not only the Service Books for the choir, but books for the Library. The Scriptorium of St. Alban's Abbey was built by Abbot Paulin, a Norman, who ordered many volumes to be written there, about 1080. Archbishop Lanfranc furnished the copies. Estates were often granted for the support of the Scriptorium. That at St. Edmundsbury was endowed with two mills. The tithes of a rectory were appropriated to the Cathedral convent of St. Swithin, at Winchester, _ad libros transcribendos_, in the year 1171. Nigel in the year 1160 gave the monks of Ely two churches, ad libros faciendos. When the library at Croyland Abbey was burnt in 1091, seven hundred volumes were consumed which must have been thus laboriously produced. Fifty-eight volumes were transcribed at Glastonbury during the government of one Abbot, about the year 1300. And in the library of this monastery, the richest in England, there were upwards of four hundred volumes in the year 1248. But whilst there is sufficient cause to admire the penmen of former days, in the mere transcription of books, shall we not marvel at the beauty with which they were invested; the rich and brilliant illuminations, the finely tinted paintings, the magnificent and laborious ornament with which not merely every page, but in many manuscripts almost every line was decorated! They, such as have been preserved, form a valuable proportion of the riches of the principal European libraries: of the Vatican of Rome; the Imperial at Vienna; St. Mark's at Venice; the Escurial in Spain; and the principal public libraries in England.