ng, and perhaps a little true piety also, and it would have
been no difficult matter to have discriminated between the good and the
bad. But the careless grants of a licentious monarch conferred a
monastery on a court favorite or political partizan without one thought
for the preservation of its contents. It is true a few years after the
dissolution of these houses, the industrious Leland was appointed to
search and rummage over their libraries and to preserve any relic worthy
of such an honor; but it was too late, less learned hands had rifled
those parchment collections long ago, mutilated their finest volumes by
cutting out with childish pleasure the illuminations with which they were
adorned; tearing off the bindings for the gold claps which protected the
treasures within,[8] and chopping up huge folios as fuel for their
blazing hearths, and immense collections were sold as waste paper. Bale,
a strenuous opponent of the monks, thus deplores the loss of their books:
"Never had we bene offended for the losse of our lybraryes beynge so many
in nombre and in so desolate places for the moste parte, yf the chief
monuments and moste notable workes of our excellent wryters had bene
reserved, yf there had bene in every shyre of Englande but one solemyne
library to the preservacyon of those noble workers, and preferrement of
good learnynges in oure posteryte it had bene yet somewhat. But to
destroye all without consyderacion, is and wyll be unto Englande for ever
a most horryble infamy amonge the grave senyours of other nations. A
grete nombre of them whych purchased those superstycyose mansyons
reserved of those lybrarye bokes, some to serve theyr jakes, some to
scoure theyr candelstyckes, and some to rubbe theyr bootes; some they
solde to the grossers and sope sellers, and some they sent over see to
the bokebynders,[9] not in small nombre, but at tymes _whole shippes
ful_. I know a merchant man, whyche shall at thys tyme be nameless, that
boughte the contents of two noble lybraryes for xl shyllyngs pryce, a
shame is it to be spoken. Thys stuffe hathe he occupyed in the stide of
graye paper for the space of more than these ten years, and yet hath
store ynough for as many years to come. A prodyguose example is this, and
to be abhorred of all men who love theyr natyon as they shoulde do."[10]

However pernicious the Roman religion might have been in its practice, it
argues little to the honor of the reformers to have used such m