the part of a pawnbroker. Anstey says
(p. 77), "The fact is that they (the students) mostly could not afford
to buy books, and had they been able, would not have found the advantage
so considerable as might be supposed, the instruction given being almost
wholly oral. The chief source of supplying books was by purchase from
the university sworn stationers, who had to a great extent a monopoly.
Of such books there were plainly very large numbers constantly changing
hands." Besides the sworn stationers there were many booksellers in
Oxford who were not sworn; for one of the statutes, passed in the year
1373, expressly recites that, in consequence of their presence, "books
of great value are sold and carried away from Oxford, the owners of them
are cheated, and the sworn stationers are deprived of their lawful
business." It was, therefore, enacted that no bookseller except two
sworn stationers or their deputies, should sell any book being either
his own property or that of another, exceeding half a mark in value,
under a pain of imprisonment, or, if the offence was repeated, of
abjuring his trade within the university.

"The trade in bookselling seems," says Hallam, "to have been established
at Paris and Bologna in the 12th century; the lawyers and universities
called it into life. It is very improbable that it existed in what we
properly call the dark ages. Peter of Blois mentions a book which he
had bought of a public dealer (_a quodam publico mangone librorum_); but
we do not find many distinct accounts of them till the next age. These
dealers were denominated _stationarii_, perhaps from the open stalls at
which they carried on their business, though _statio_ is a general word
for a shop in low Latin. They appear, by the old statutes of the
university of Paris, and by those of Bologna, to have sold books upon
commission, and are sometimes, though not uniformly, distinguished from
the _librarii_, a word which, having originally been confined to the
copyists of books, was afterwards applied to those who traded in them.
They sold parchment and other materials of writing, which have retained
the name of stationery, and they naturally exercised the kindred
occupations of binding and decorating. They probably employed
transcribers; we find at least that there was a profession of copyists
in the universities and in large cities."

The modern system of bookselling dates from soon after the introduction
of printing. The earlies