NOTES ON KING'S COLLEGE LIBRARY, 1500-1570, IN PARTICULAR FOR THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION

Abstract

1575 a discontented group among the Fellows of King's presented a series of complaints against the Provost, Roger Goad, to Lord Burghley. The charges were unfounded : Goad had little difficulty in refuting them, but they gave him the opportunity to set down his services to the learning of the College in the six years that he had been in office. Among them, he included the re-establishment of the College Library. ťI have caused', he informed the Lord Treasurer, ' a fayer new librarye to be made and furnisshed with bookes, specially of divinitye, both of ould and new wryters: whereas, before my tyme, the librarye was utterly spoiled, and this coaste upon the new librarye without eny charge in the college accompts.'1 It was not quite the act of generosity the statement would suggest. The money for the new books had come, not from Goad's private means, but from the proceeds of the sale of the copes and other 'Popish pelf, which the previous Provost, Philip Baker, a Catholic at heart, had preserved in the hope of a restoration of Catholicism. Yet Goad's election marked an era in the history of the College Library. Not only was he responsible in 1570 for its removal from the Old Court to the chantries in the Chapel, where it remained until Wilkins built the present Library : more important, he brought to an end the neglect and decay which had been the history of the Library during the Reformation. The Provost did not exaggerate when he told Burghley that before his time 'the librarye was utterly spoiled'. Few books survive to-day which were in the library before 1570; and it is only necessary to compare the 1612 catalogue2 with that of 1452З or even with the inventory made for Queen Mary's commissioners in 15574 to realize how much had been lost. There was little to save by 1570: Goad had to start afresh, collecting books again from the beginning, and the present College Library is the expansion of his creation.