eans as
this to effect its cure; had they merely destroyed those productions
connected with the controversies of the day, we might perhaps have
excused it, on the score of party feeling; but those who were
commissioned to visit the public libraries of the kingdom were often men
of prejudiced intellects and shortsighted wisdom, and it frequently
happened that an ignorant and excited mob became the executioners of
whole collections.[11] It would be impossible now to estimate the loss.
Manuscripts of ancient and classic date would in their hands receive no
more respect than some dry husky folio on ecclesiastical policy; indeed,
they often destroyed the works of their own party through sheer
ignorance. In a letter sent by Dr. Cox to William Paget, Secretary, he
writes that the proclamation for burning books had been the occasion of
much hurt. "For New Testaments and Bibles (not condemned by proclamation)
have been burned, and that, out of parish churches and good men's houses.
They have burned innumerable of the king's majesties books concerning our
religion lately set forth."[12] The ignorant thus delighted to destroy
that which they did not understand, and the factional spirit of the more
enlightened would not allow them to make one effort for the preservation
of those valuable relics of early English literature, which crowded the
shelves of the monastic libraries; the sign of the cross, the use of red
letters on the title page, the illuminations representing saints, or the
diagrams and circles of a mathematical nature, were at all times deemed
sufficient evidence of their popish origin and fitness for the
flames.[13]

When we consider the immense number of MSS. thus destroyed, we cannot
help suspecting that, if they had been carefully preserved and examined,
many valuable and original records would have been discovered. The
catalogues of old monastic establishments, although containing a great
proportion of works on divine and ecclesiastical learning, testify that
the monks did not confine their studies exclusively to legendary tales or
superstitious missals, but that they also cultivated a taste for
classical and general learning. Doubtless, in the ruin of the sixteenth
century, many original works of monkish authors perished, and the
splendor of the transcript rendered it still more liable to destruction;
but I confess, as old Fuller quaintly says, that "there were many volumes
full fraught with superstition which, not