Note d — Chapter IX · [a] (continued 4)

Warton, vol. i. Dissert. II. Fifty-eight books were transcribed in this abbey under one abbot, about the year 1300. Every considerable monastery had a room, called Scriptorium, where this work was performed. More than eighty were transcribed at St. Albans under Whethamstede, in the time of Henry VI. ibid. See also Du Cange, V Scriptores. Nevertheless we must remember, first, that the far greater part of these books were mere monastic trash, or at least useless in our modern apprehension; secondly, that it depended upon the character of the abbot, whether the scriptorium should be occupied or not. Every head of a monastery was not a Whethamstede. Ignorance and jollity, such as we find in Bolton Abbey, were their more usual characteristics. By the account books of this rich monastery, about the beginning of the fourteenth century, three books only appear to have been purchased in forty years. One of those was the Liber Sententiarum of Peter Lombard, which cost thirty shillings, equivalent to near forty pounds at present. Whitaker's Hist. of Craven, p. 330.