<g>Cowls.</g>--With respect to the habit, it is recorded that many noblemen, and others of high rank, gave directions that, after their decease, they should be dressed in monk’s gear, and be thus consigned to the grave. This was a very common practice in Wales; for as it was written, that “all were monks who shall gain heaven, or rather that there were none there but monks,”[167] it became necessary to assume the garb at least, as a safe though surreptitious passport to those happy seats. It was usual in some cases to wear the garb during sickness only, and lay it aside on the return of health; in others, to keep it in reserve for their death. Lewis, Landgrave of Hesse, said to his attendants--“As soon as I am dead, put on me the hood of the Cistercian order; but take very diligent care not to do so while I am living.”[168] <g>MSS., Books.</g>--In addition to what has been already quoted on this subject, it was long a proverbial saying, that a convent without a library, was like a castle without an armoury. When the monastery of Croydon was burnt in 1091, its library, according to Ingulphus, consisted of nine hundred volumes, of which three hundred were very large. “In every great abbey,” says Warton, “many writers were constantly busied in transcribing, not only the service-books for the choir, but books for the library.”[169] The <g>Scriptorium</g> of St. Alban’s Abbey was built by Abbot Paulin, a Norman, who ordered many volumes to be written there about the year 1080. Archbishop Lanfranc furnished the copies. Estates were often granted for the support of the Scriptorium. We find some of the classics written in the English monasteries very early. Henry, a Benedictine monk of Hyde Abbey, near Winchester, transcribed, in the year 1178, Terence, Boethius, Suetonius, and Claudian. Of these he formed one book, illuminating the initials, and forming the brazen bosses of the covers with his own hands. Other instances of the same kind are added. The monks were much accustomed both to illuminate and to bind books, as well as to transcribe them. “The scarcity of parchment,” it is afterwards observed, “undoubtedly prevented the transcription of many other books in these societies. About the year 1120, one Master Heugh, being appointed by the monastery of St. Edmondsbury, in Suffolk, to write and illuminate a grand copy of the Bible for their library, could procure no parchment for this purpose in England.” Paper made of cotton, however, was certainly in common use in the twelfth century; though no evidence exists that the improved kind, manufactured from linen rags, was known till about the middle of the thirteenth.[170]