[Sidenote: New Accessions.] At last, in 1629, began the flow of Collections towards the Library, soon after Laud had become Bishop of London. In that year arrived “that famous library of Giacomo Barocci” (as Ussher calls it), consisting of 242 Greek MSS. The donor was the Chancellor of the University, the Earl of Pembroke, and twenty-four MSS. which were omitted came in 1654 through Oliver Cromwell. Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador to Turkey, also sent twenty-eight Greek MSS. The original manuscript of Leland’s _Itinerary_ and _Collectanea_ came in 1632 from William Burton, the historian of Leicestershire. They contain topographical and literary notes of the earliest survey of England (with the partial exception of William of Worcester, whose journeyings were chiefly in Somerset, including Bristol, and Norfolk), and with some later transcripts form the whole of the sources of the text. In 1634 came 238 MSS. forming the Digby collection, which is of special value for the early history of science in England, containing for instance the earliest meteorological observations known, by William de Merle, Fellow of Merton, taken from 1337 to 1344. Thirty-six more (Oriental) MSS. came from Sir Kenelm Digby among the Laudian MSS. in 1639. [Sidenote: Laud’s Gifts.] But the great name of Archbishop Laud overshadows all the rest of this period. By great good-fortune the Western extension of the Old Reading Room (now called the Selden End, which balances the Eastern extension or Arts End, see frontispiece) was begun in 1634 and finished in 1640, and into the new room there poured the manuscript treasures acquired by the Archbishop to the number of 1242 volumes. It is a miscellaneous collection in at least twenty languages, Western and Oriental, partly acquired from Germany, especially Würzburg. The two outstanding volumes are Codex E of the Acts, an uncial Greek-Latin text of the seventh century, once owned by the Venerable Bede (S.C. 1119), and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written at Peterborough and continued to 1154, three-quarters of a century later than any other copy of the famous Chronicle (S.C. 1003); others are mentioned in Chapter V. The bequest of Robert Burton’s books in 1640 was especially valuable, because the author of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ read so discursively, and collected not only the graver works which Bodley loved, but especially the lighter literature of the day: it is satisfactory to note that all these were accepted by Rouse, as indeed they would have been by James. [Sidenote: The Civil War.]