A.D. 1603
Sir Walter Raleigh appears in this year as a donor of £50. He is sometimes said to have procured for Oxford the library of Hieron. Osorius, which was carried off from Faro in Portugal (of which place Osorius had been bishop), when that town was captured by the English fleet under the Earl of Essex in 1598. Raleigh was a captain in the squadron, and probably influenced the disposal of the books; but no direct mention has been found of his name in relation to them. Sir William Monson, in the account of the expedition given in his Naval Tracts, only says that the library ‘was brought into England by us, and many of the books bestowed upon the new erected library of Oxford.’ Eleven MSS. were given by Sir Rob. Cotton, of which the list in the Register is printed in Sir H. Ellis’ Letters of Eminent Literary Men, issued by the Camden Society in 1843 (p. 103). One of these (Auct. D. II. 14) is the MS. of the Gospels, traditionally believed to be one of those two copies of the old Italic version sent by St. Gregory to St. Augustine in Britain, which were preserved in St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury37; of which the other now exists among Archbp. Parker’s MSS. in Corp. Chr. Coll. Cambr., No. 286. They are both written in quarto, in uncial letters and double columns. Their date may possibly be somewhat later than that which is traditionally assigned; but at any rate they are certainly among what the historian Elmham calls ‘primitiæ librorum totius ecclesiæ Anglicanæ.’ On the last fly-leaf of the Bodley MS. is the following list of English Priests’ libraries. ‘Þas bocas haueð Salomon pr̅st. þ̵is þecodspel t{r}aht. [&] þemarty{r}luia [&] þe (erased) [&] þe æglisce salte{r}e [&] þe c{r}ranc [&] ðe tropere [&] wulf mer cild þeatteleuaui (’Ad Te levavi.’) [&] pistelari [&] þe (erased) [&] ðe imnere. [&] ðe capitelari. (word erased) [&] þe spel boc. [&] Siga{r} pr̅st. þelece boc [&] Blakehad boc. [&] Æilmer ðe grete Sater. [&] ðe litle t{r}opere fo{r}beande. [&] ðe Donatum. xv bocas Ealfric Æilwine. Godric. [&] Bealdewuine ab̶b [&] Freoden [&] hu— (torn) [&] ðuregise.’ Several leaves are wanting at the beginning and one at the end; the book commences at S. Matt. iv. 14, and ends in S. John xxi. 16. It now numbers 172 leaves, besides the fly-leaf, and contains 29 lines in a column; the Cambridge MS. has 25 lines.
Two Russian MSS. were given in this year by John Mericke, English Consul in Russia, and a collection of Italian books by Sir Michael Dormer.
Notes
37 Wanley, p. 172. Elmham’s Hist. Mon. S. Aug. 1858, pp. 97, 8.