At the end of the seventeenth century, looking back on the achievements of Sir Robert Cotton several decades earlier, the biographer and antiquary Thomas Smith characterized Cotton as a man of consummate learning, a pious defender of the English church, a model of gentlemanly virtue, and a skilled parliamentarian who advised the crown on historical precedents of state matters. According to Smith, however, the main reason for Cotton's renown was without question his extraordinary collection of ancient and medieval manuscripts, "a library whose fame has travelled not only through all England but through the Christian world wherever literary studies flourish." Visitors to the Cotton library, Smith wrote, "will find literary treasures beyond price exceeding all their hopes and expectations, and as they consult and make use of the manuscripts, convinced by experience of the solid learning of these volumes, they will never cease to praise and applaud the...