his howndes."[3] A commission assembled at Oxford in
1550, and met many times at St. Mary's Church. No
documentary evidence of their treatment of libraries
remains, but it was certainly most drastic. Any illuminated
manuscript, or even a mathematical treatise illustrated with
diagrams, was deemed unfit to survive, and was thrown out
for sale or destruction. Some of the college libraries did
not suffer severely. Most of Grey's books survived in
Balliol, although the miniatures were cut out. Queen's,
All Souls, and Merton came through the ordeal nearly
unscathed. But Lincoln lost the books given by Gascoigne
and the Italian importations of Flemming; Exeter College
was purged. The University library itself was entirely
dispersed. One of the commissioners, "by name Richard
Coxe, Dean of Christ Church, shewed himself so zealous
in purging this place of its rarities . . . that . . . savoured
of superstition, that he left not one of those goodly MSS.
given by the before mentioned benefactors. Of all which
there were none restored in Q. Mary's reign, when then an
inquisition was made after them, but only one of the parts
of Valerius Maximus, illustrated with the Commentaries of
Dionysius de Burgo, an Augustine Fryer, and with the
Tables of John Whethamsteed, Abbat of St. Alban's.
That some of the books so taken out by the Reformers were
burnt, some sold away for Robin Hood's pennyworths,[4]
either to Booksellers, or to Glovers, to press their gloves,
or Taylors to make measures, or to bookbinders to cover
books bound by them, and some also kept by the Reformers
for their own use. That the said library being
thus deprived of its furniture was employed, as the schools