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Preface
pillage. Traditions have been handed from one generation to another of the vandalism that went on. Some of the books were burned, some sold to bookbinders, tailors and shoemakers, who found vellum and parchment procured thus cheaply most useful in their trades. The rest disappeared mysteriously, but so completely that, six years later, the university itself, having no books, sold the very shelves and benches, and the room was left desolate. And so young Thomas Bodley found it when he was entered at Magdalen College four years after the final ruin had been wrought. He must have been deeply touched
