To Judge by the existing records, the City had then received no books for placing in the rooms. Mr. J. C. Tingey, {5a} however, considers it "rather strange that when, in 1608, three rooms were fitted up for the reception of the library at the New Hall there should be no existing books to be placed in the presses, though promises of donations may have been given. As a matter of fact the compilers of the old catalogues mention several works without being able to say by whom they were presented, and as many of these were printed in the 16th century it is not impossible that some of them constituted a primary stock. On the other hand many books whose donors are unknown were issued after the library was inaugurated, so of these it is certain that they were presented later." The number of works whose donors are not stated in the first printed catalogue of 1706 is 51, but in the second printed catalogue of 1732 the donors of 36 of these are stated, so there remain only 15 works in the first printed catalogue of which the donors are unknown. Of these fifteen one was printed after the establishment of the Library, and so the primary stock suggested by Mr. Tingey could not have consisted of more than 14 works. There is a hiatus in the records of the Library proceedings from its establishment to 1656. Possibly the books presented to the Library from 1608 to 1656 were simply allowed to accumulate in the Library rooms, without any regulations in regard to their use and safe-keeping. That the books were sadly neglected is very evident from a codicil to the will dated September 18th, 1655, of John Carter, Rector of St. Laurence's Church, Norwich, giving to the Library "divers books, etc." He revoked his bequest by the following codicil, and "instead thereof gave 5 pounds to each of the three united parishes of St. Laurence, St. Swithin, and St. Margaret, for a stock of coals for ever": "nowe seeinge (to my no small grief) that that library is locked up, ministers shut out of it, and that it is never like to be of publique use againe, but that the books are devoted to the wormes, dust, and rotteness, to the dishonour of God, the damage of the ministry, and the wrong of the benefactors, the dead, and the living, &c." {5b} [Picture: Autographs of early members of the City Library 2] By 1656, the year of Carter's death, the Assembly had evidently realised the necessity for making regulations for the use of the Library, and had drawn them up before the 16th January in that year, when it was "ordered that the Articles moved touching the ordering of the Library be continued."