A.D. 1649
‘The Jews proffer £600,000 for Paul’s, and Oxford Library, and may have them for £200,000 more106.’ They wished to obtain the first for a synagogue, and to do a little commercial business with the second. It is said in Monteith’s History of the Troubles (translated by Ogilvie, 1735, p. 473) that the sum they offered was £500,000, but that the Council of War refused to take less than £800,000: probably they afterwards increased this their original bid to £600,000.
Philip, Earl of Pembroke, the Puritan Chancellor of the University, gave a splendidly bound copy of the Paris Polyglott, printed in 1645 in 10 vols.
Notes
106 London News-letter of April 2; printed in Carte’s Collection of Letters, vol. i. p. 275.