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| | §5. Oxford College libraries. XIX. The Foundation of Libraries. Vol. 4. Prose and Poetry: Sir Thomas North to ... |
 | | At Oxford, college libraries had, in most instances, been unscrupulously plundered by the Edwardian commissioners, and little of value or importance remained at the beginning of the seventeenth century. |
 | | At Balliol, the college of that great patron of learning, William Grey, bishop of Ely, the newly-built library possessed, in 1478, two hundred volumes (including a printed copy of Josephus), by virtue of his bequest; but, by Anthony à Woods time, most of the miniatures in the volumes that remained had disappeared. |
 | | Its catalogue of 1474 shows the college to have been, at that time, in possession of 135 manuscripts, arranged in seven presses. |
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