The large increase of treasures which these benefactions brought to the University probably caused the first institution of a formal Visitation. On Nov. 29, 1449, we find that Visitors were appointed by Congregation for the purpose of receiving from the Chaplain an account of the books contained in the Library[11].
Duke Humphrey was followed in the good work of the Divinity School and Library by another whose name still retains its place in the formal list of benefactors, Bishop Thomas Kempe, of London, who, besides contributing very largely in money towards the completion of the former, sent some books to the latter in 1487, some seven years after the new room had been finally completed and opened for use. But Antony Wood (in whose pages records of other benefactors may be found) tells us that very few years passed before the Library began to lose some of its newly-acquired treasures; for Scholars borrowed books upon petty and insufficient pledges, and so chose to forfeit the latter rather than return the former[12], while tradition reported that Polydore Virgil, the historian, being at length refused any further opportunities of abstraction, obtained a special licence from Henry VIII for the taking out any MS. for his use! From this traditionary report Sir H. Ellis, in his introduction to a translation of Virgil's history, printed for the Camden Society in 1844, endeavours to vindicate his author's reputation, but more by conjecture than evidence. In 1513 a Chaplain and Librarian was elected, named Adam Kirkebote[13]. The new Librarian, soon after, supplicated Congregation that on Festival Days he should not be bound to open the Library before twelve o'clock; a practice which, commencing at that day, does still unto this (the Library on Holy Days during Term being now not opened until the conclusion of the University sermon, at eleven o'clock) witness to the religious spirit which pervades all the old institutions of Oxford. In 1527, when one Flecher was Chaplain, it is recorded[14] that 'Magister' Claymond (doubtless the President of Corpus Christi College, of that name) was permitted by vote of Congregation to take Pliny's Natural History out of the Library. In 1543 Humphrey Burnford was elected Chaplain on Oct. 31, in the room of—Whytt, deceased[15]. It was probably during his tenure of office that the Library was destroyed. For in 1550 the Commissioners deputed by Edward VI for reformation of the University visited the Libraries in the spirit of John Knox, destroying, without examination, all MSS. ornamented by illuminations or rubricated initials as being eminently Popish, and leaving the rest exposed to any chance of injury and robbery. The traditions which Wood has recorded as having been learned at the mouths of aged men who had in their turn received them from those who were contemporaneous with the Visitation, are abundantly confirmed by the well-known descriptions of Leland and Bale of what went on in other places, and therefore, although no direct documentary evidence of the proceedings of the spoilers is known to exist, we may believe that Wood's account of pillage and waste, of MSS. burned, and sold to tailors for their measures, to bookbinders for covers, and the like, until not one remained in situ, is not a whit exaggerated. One solitary entry there is, however, in the University Register (I. fol. 157a), which, while it records the completion of the catastrophe, sufficiently thereby corroborates the story of all that preceded, viz. the entry which tells that in Convocation on Jan. 25, 1555–6, 'electi sunt hii venerabiles viri, Vice-cancellarius et Procuratores, Magister Morwent, præses Corporis Christi, et Magister Wright, ad vendenda subsellia librorum in publica Academiæ bibliotheca, ipsius Universitatis nomine.' The books of the 'public' library had all disappeared; what need then to retain the shelves and stalls, when no one thought of replacing their contents, and when the University could turn an honest penny by their sale? and so the venerabiles viri made a timber-yard of Duke Humphrey's treasure-house.
But four years after the final despoiling of the Library there was an undergraduate entered at Magdalen College, who, by the good Providence which always out of evil brings somewhat to counterpoise and correct, was to be moved by the sight of the ruin and desolation to restore what his seniors had destroyed, and to reconstruct the old Plantagenet's Library on such a basis, and with such means for carrying on its re-edification, that the glory of the latter house should soon eclipse that of the former. All around him he doubtless found traces of the recent destruction; his stationer may have sold him books bound in fragments of those MSS. for which the University but a century before had consecrated the memory of the donors in her solemn prayers; the tailor who measured him for his sad-coloured doublet, may have done it with a strip of parchment brilliant with gold, that had consequently been condemned as Popish, or covered with strange symbols of an old heathen Greek's devising, that probably passed for magical and unlawful incantations. And the soul of the young student must have burned with shame and indignation at the apathy which had not merely tolerated this destruction by strangers, but had contentedly assisted in carrying it out to its thorough completion. Himself a successful student, he became