“he that thys Boke rentt or stelle God send hym sekenysse swart (?) of helle.”[253]
All the same, losses were common. About 1290 William of Pershore, once a Benedictine monk, and at the time a Grey Friar, returned to his old order at Westminster, and took with him some books. A big dispute arose over this apostate, and one of the items of the subsequent settlement was that the Westminster monks should return the books.[254]
A similar thing took place in Scotland (1331). A friar of Roxburgh forsook his grey habit for the Cistercian white by entering Kelso Abbey. He made his new associates envious with an account of the goods of the friaries at Roxburgh and Berwick. They persuaded him and two other apostate friars to rob these convents of the “Bibles, chalices, and other sacred books,” and, with the aid of night, the enterprise met with more success than they deserved.[255]
The prior and convent of Ely traced some of their books to Paris. They wrote to Edward III (1332): “Because a robber has taken out of our church four books of great value, viz.--The Decretum, Decretals, the Bible and Concordance, of which the first three are now at Paris, arrested and detained under sequestration by the officer of the Bishop of Paris, whom our proctor has often prayed in form of law to deliver them, but he behaves so strangely that we shall find in him neither right, grace, nor favour:--We ask you to write to the Bishop of Paris to intermeddle favourably and tell his official to do right, so that we may get our things back.”[256] In 1396-7 William, prior of Newstead, and a brother canon, proceeded against John Ravensfield for the return of a book by Richard of Hampole, entitled _Pricke of Conscience_, “and now the parties aforesaid are agreed by the licence of the court, and the said John is in ‘misericordia’; he paid the amercement in the hall.”[257] Another record tells us of two monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, being sent into Cambridgeshire to recover a book.
The risk of loss owing to the practice of lending books was great--how great may be judged from the fact that of the equal portions of the Peterhouse College library of 1418, 199 volumes of the chained portion remain, but only ten of all those assigned to the Fellows are left.[258] In spite of the risk, lending was extensively carried on. In one year (1343), for example, the unimportant priory of Hinton lent no fewer than twenty books to another monastery.[259] Then again, it was thought to be only common charity to lend books to poor students, and in 1212 a council at Paris actually forbade monks to refuse to lend books to the poor, and requested them to divide their libraries into two divisions--one for the use of the brothers, the other for lending.[260] Whether this ever became a practice in England is more than doubtful. But seculars of position or influence appear to have been able to borrow monastic books. For example, in 1320, the prior and convent of Ely acknowledge receiving ten books from the executors of a rector of Balsham, who had borrowed them.[261] Some years later, at an audit of books of Christ Church, Canterbury, seventeen manuscripts--thirteen of them on law--were noted as in the hands of seculars, among whom was Edward II.[262]