The Civil War was an anxious time for the Library, from the difficulty of safeguarding it from irruption and violence. The care with which the Library has always guarded its contents from the risk of loss by lending out is well exemplified by Rouse’s action when the King, on December 30, 1645, demanded the _Histoire Universelle_ of Aubignè. Rouse went to him and read out the Statute against lending, and the King with a very good grace gave way.[9] The original order, countersigned by the Vice-Chancellor (“His Majestyes use is in command to us. S. Fell, Vice Can.”) is still preserved in the Library. The second siege of the city was followed by its capitulation on June 20, 1646, and “the first thing Generall Fairfax did was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve the Bodleian Library.... Had he not taken this special care, that noble library had been utterly destroyed.” The register of books given out to readers shows a fair number of students, but Dr. John Allibond (_Rustica Academiæ descriptio_, 1648) records a different condition: “Conscendo orbis illud Decus Bodleio fundatore, Sed intus erat nullum pecus Excepto Janitore. Neglectos vidi libros multos, Quod minime mirandum, Nam Bardos inter tot et stultos, There’s few could understand ’em.” Rouse was tactful enough to entertain Fairfax and Cromwell with a complimentary speech when the University gave them a banquet in the Library on May 19, 1649, and on the whole the Cromwellian visitation left the place alone, even when the learned Dr. Thomas Barlow[10] succeeded to Rouse’s place in April, 1652. [Sidenote: Various Gifts.] In 1659 the library of the “Learned Selden” arrived by bequest, after five years’ delay, and comprised about 360 MSS. with about eight thousand printed volumes, chiefly classics, theology and history; but among them are several unique early printed English tales and romances, such as _Dan Hew of Leicestre_, the _Battayle of Egyngecourt_, the _Mylner of Abyngton_. The Latin MSS. not sent perished in a fire at the Temple, in London, in 1680. The arrangement of the new acquisition in what is now called the Selden End fell to Thomas Lockey,[11] who succeeded Barlow in September, 1660, but resigned in 1665, when Thomas Hyde[12] succeeded. In the next year came the first Sanskrit MS. (in “Gentoo,” now S.C. 2862), presented by an East India merchant.