chained books, 'The Lectures of Hostiensis,' cost five marks. From another source we learn that a Carmelite friar named John Wallden bequeathed to this library as many MSS. as were worth 2,000 pieces of gold. Anthony a Wood refers to the oft-repeated charge of the book-covetousness of the mendicant friars, which, in fact, was carried to such an extreme 'that wise men looked upon it as an injury to laymen, who therefore found a difficulty to get any books.' Of the same period, there is a very curious anecdote in Rymer's 'Foedera' about taking off the duty upon six barrels of books sent by a Roman cardinal to the Prior of the conventual church of St. Trinity, Norwich. These barrels, which lay at the Custom-house, were imported duty free. Neither the book-hunger of the mendicant friars, nor the difficulties which surrounded the importation of books, appears to have militated greatly against the growing passion. We have the name, and only the name, of a very famous book-hunter--John of Boston--of the first decade of the fifteenth century, whose labours, however, have been completely blotted out of existence by the dispersed monasteries. But there were many other collectors whose memories have been handed down to us in a more tangible form, even if their collections of books are almost as abstract and indefinite as that of John of Boston. During the first quarter of the fifteenth century, we have quite a considerable little group of royal book-collectors--Henry IV., Henry V., and his brothers, John, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. The last-named was undoubtedly the most enthusiastic bibliophile of the four, but whilst his extensive gifts of books to the University of Oxford may be said to have formed the foundation of the library there, they were in the following century destroyed by the mob. A few examples of his gifts are now preserved in the British Museum and at Oxford. His books were estimated at a very high figure, the value placed on 120 of them (out of the total of 600) being no less than L1,000. The memory of the Duke of Bedford's library is best perpetuated by the famous Bedford Missal, or Book of Hours, perhaps the most splendid example of fifteenth-century illustration. It is now in the British Museum, where it has been since 1852. The history of this missal, perhaps the most interesting in existence, is too well known to be dealt with here (see p. 109).