ooks had infected even those who
came to seize upon him to carry him to the Tower, and to endeavour to
inveigle him into treasonable expressions: 'While Sir Richard Southwell
and Mr. Palmer weare bussie in trussinge upp his bookes, Mr. Riche,
pretending,' etc., 'whereupon Mr. Palmer, on his deposition, said, that
he was soe bussie ab{t} the trussinge upp Sir Tho. Moore's bookes in a
sacke, that he tooke no heed of there talke.'

Henry, Earl of Arundel, was not slow to seize upon the advantages which
the dissolution placed before everyone. At Nonsuch, in Surrey, he formed
a library, which is described in a biography of him, written shortly
after his death, as 'righte worthye of remembrance.' Besides his
numerous MSS. and printed books, he acquired a considerable portion of
the library of Cranmer, which was dispersed at the death of the
Archbishop. His books passed to his son-in-law, Lord Lumley, at whose
decease they were purchased by Henry, Prince of Wales, and are now in
the British Museum. The Earl of Arundel's books are handsomely bound,
and are known by his badge of the white horse and oak branch which
generally occurs on the covers.

[Illustration: _Earl of Arundel's Badge._]

In Jeremy Collier's 'Ecclesiastical History' (vol. ii. 307) we get a
glimpse of book-matters in London in the middle of the sixteenth
century. At the end of February, 1550, we learn that the Council book
mentions the King's sending a letter for the purging of the library at
Westminster. The persons are not named, but the business was to cull out
all superstitious books, as missals, legends, and such-like, and to
deliver the garniture of the books, either gold or silver, to Sir
Anthony Archer. These books were many of them plated with gold and
silver and curiously embossed. This, as far as we can collect, was the
superstition that destroyed them. 'Here avarice had a very thin
disguise, and the courtiers discovered of what spirit they were to a
remarkable degree.' Here is another picture of an almost contemporaneous
event, equally vivid in its suggestiveness: 'John Tyndale, the
translator's brother, and Thomas Patmore, merchants, were condemned to
do penance by riding with their faces to their horses' tails, with their
books fastened thick about them, pinned, or tacked, to their gowns or
clokes, to the Standard in Cheap; and there with their own hands to
fling them into the fire, kindled on purpose to burn them.'

As a book-collecting perio