A.D. 1648
At the end of the Readers’ Register for 1647-8, 1648-9, is a list of nine volumes ‘olim surrepti,’ of which five had been replaced by other copies. Entries are made in the same place of some coins which were given in 1648-50. At this period the Library appears to have been well attended by readers; about twelve or fifteen quarto and octavo volumes being daily entered, those of folio size being accessible (as, in regard to a portion of the Library, is still the case) by the readers themselves, and not registered because at that time chained to their shelves. The register for the next years (as well as those which followed, up to the year 1708) appears to be lost, so that it cannot be ascertained whether this daily average continued during the Usurpation; but thus far it seems that Dr. John Allibond’s description of the state of the Library as consequent on the Puritan visitation of the University in 1648, is not borne out by facts. For that loyal humourist, in his Rustica Academiæ Oxoniensis nuper reformatæ Descriptio, which is supposed to commemorate the condition of Oxford in Oct. 1648, writes thus of our Library:—
‘Conscendo orbis illud decus
Bodleio fundatore:
Sed intus erat nullum pecus,
Excepto janitore.
Neglectos vidi libros multos,
Quod mimime mirandum:
Nam inter bardos tot et stultos
There’s few could understand ‘em.’