At Old Sarum Church, Bishop Osmund (1078-99) collected, wrote, and bound books.[299] In his time, too, the chancellor used to superintend the schools and correct books: either books used in the school or service books.[300] The income from a virgate of land was assigned to correcting books towards the end of the twelfth century (1175-80).[301] The new Salisbury Cathedral was erected in the thirteenth century; but apparently a special library room was not used until shortly after 1444, when it was put up to cover the whole eastern cloister. This room was altered and reduced in size in 1758. About the time the room was completed one of the canons gave some books, on the inside covers of two of which is a note in a fifteenth century hand bidding they should be chained in the new library.[302] Nearly two hundred manuscripts, of various date from the ninth to the fourteenth century, are now in the library. Among them several notable volumes are to be found: a Psalter with curious illuminations; another Psalter, with the Gallican and Hebrew of Jerome’s translation in parallel columns, also illuminated; Chaucer’s translation of Boëthius; Geoffrey of Monmouth’s _History of the Kings of Britain_ of the twelfth century; a thirteenth century Lectionary, with golden and coloured initials; a Tonale according to Sarum use, bound with a fourteenth century Ordinal; and a fifteenth century Processional containing some notes on local customs.
Books were given to Lincoln Cathedral about 1150 by Hugh of Leicester; one of them bears the inscription, _Ex dono Hugonis Archidiaconi Leycestriae_. They may still be seen at Lincoln. Forty-two volumes and a map came into the charge of Hamo when he became chancellor in 1150.[303] During his chancellorship thirty-one volumes were added by gift, so making the total seventy-three volumes: Bishops Alexander and Chesney were among the benefactors. But here, as at
Salisbury, not until the fifteenth century was a separate library room built. Two gifts “to the new library” by Bishop Repyngton--who also befriended Oxford University Library--and Chancellor Duffield in 1419 and 1426, fix the date. It was put up over the north half of the eastern cloisters, relatively the same position as at Salisbury and Wells. Originally it had five bays, but in 1789 the two southernmost bays were pulled down: In this room the fine fifteenth century oaken roof, with its carved ornaments, has been preserved, but at Salisbury the roof is modern, with a plaster ceiling. Lincoln’s new library, designed by Wren and erected in 1674, is next to this old room. According to a 1450 catalogue now preserved at Lincoln the library contained one hundred and seven works, more than seventy of which now remain. Among the most important manuscripts are a mid-fifteenth century copy of old English romances of great literary value, collected by Robert de Thornton, archdeacon of Bedford (_c._ 1430); and a contemporary copy of Magna Carta.