If we now reconsider the indications preserved at Queens' College, it will, I feel sure, be recognised that the desks at Zutphen explain them, and enable us to realise the aspect of what I conceive to have been the most ancient method of fitting up a collegiate or a monastic library. When such a room first became necessary in a monastery, and furniture suitable for it was debated, a lectern would surely suggest itself, as being used in the numerous daily services, and proving itself singularly convenient for the support of books while they were being read. Another example of such fittings was once to be seen at Pembroke College, Cambridge, in the library above the hall (fig. 48). In Dr Matthew Wren's account of that library already quoted there is a passage which may be translated as follows: I would have you know that in the year 1617 the Library was completely altered and made to assume an entirely new appearance. This alteration was rendered necessary by the serious damage which, to our great sorrow, we found the books had suffered--a damage which was increasing daily--partly from the sloping form of the desks, partly from the inconvenient weight of the chains (_tum ex declivi pluteorum fabrica, tum ex inepta mole catenarum_)[318]. These desks were copied at S. John's College in the same University. A contract dated 20 June, 1516, provides that the contractor shall make all the Desks in the Library wythin the said college of good and substanciall and abyll Tymber of Oke mete and convenient for the same Library, aftir and accordyng to the Library within ... Pembroke Hall[319]. The Library here referred to was on the first floor to the south of the Great Gate of the college. It is now divided into chambers, but its original extent can be readily made out by its range of equidistant windows. The wall-spaces dividing these are 28 1/2 inches wide, practically the same as those at Queens' College. At Peterhouse also a similar arrangement seems to have subsisted when the catalogue of 1418 was made. The very first book, a Bible, is said to stand "in the sixth lectern on the west side (_lectrino 6^o ex parte occidentali_)." The word _lectrinum_ is unusual, but it emphasizes the form of the desk more clearly than any other. [Illustration: Fig. 61 Single desk in the old Library, Lincoln Cathedral.]