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Preface
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some of these books found their way into "Duke Humphrey's Library." Other benefactors were Bishop Kempe and John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester. The library soon lost some of its treasures, however, for there are records that "scholars borrowed books upon petty or insufficient pledges, and so chose to forfeit the latter rather than return the former."
But dire calamity was to come! In 1550 the commissioners appointed by Edward VI in his zeal for reformation visited the library at Oxford, destroying all illuminated manuscripts as "necessarily Popish," and leaving everything exposed to harm and
