22 - Libraries of the ‘common sort’

Summary

Libraries built up by professionals – theologians, lawyers, doctors, heralds – for the purposes of their work could be, and of ten were, as we have seen, both large and valuable. The libraries for leisure built up by gentlemen and by literary figures and their patrons were likewise costly and extravagant. Where money has been expended, and where collecting has been notable, there are likely to be records, maybe in the shape of account-books or even booklists. The history of the libraries of notable men, and sometimes women, is traceable by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If we turn to the possible collections of cheaper and much less beautiful print turned out for lower groups in society, but also read by their social superiors, we immediately run into difficulties.

There is a general rule which lays down that, paradoxically, the cheaper, commoner and more ephemeral an object is, the rarer are its survivals. In the wills of the ‘common sort of people’, on whom we are now focusing, books are mentioned if they were prestigious or of value. Copies of the Bible in a good binding, or of Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’, might well be bequeathed in a will. Anything cheap was not likely to be found there. Similarly, the probate inventory, the list of movable goods made after a death, was highly unlikely to bother to include very inexpensive items. There was a catch-all phrase at the end of an inventory. It did not have the pejorative ring it has to us now, but an entry ‘Item, other trash’ or ‘item, other lumber’, or simply ‘for things forgot’ with a small value attached, was very often there.