When the king went from London to Eltham his books went with him, and some were put into “divers cofyns of fyrre,” and others into his carriage.  They were bound in “figured cramoisie velvet, with rich laces and tassels, with buttons of silk and gold, and with clasps bearing the king’s arms.”  The only reference to books in the will of Edward iv. is in regard to such as appertained “to oure chapell,” which he bequeathed to his queen, such only being excepted “as we shall hereafter dispose to goo to oure saide Collage of Wyndesore."*

* Add.  Ms., Transcript by Rymer, No. 4615.

Henry vii. stands between the Middle Ages and modern times, but his additions to the Royal library consisted chiefly of Renaissance literature.  Notwithstanding his parsimony in most matters, his Privy Purse Expenses contain a remarkable series of entries of payments for books, for copying manuscripts, and for binding them.  On one occasion the sum of 23 pounds was spent on a single book, and there is an item of 2 pounds paid to a clerk for copying The Amity of Flanders.  He bought a great number of romances in French as well as the grand series of volumes printed on vellum by the famous Antoine Verard.  Bacon describes Henry vii. as “a prince, sad, serious, and full of thoughts and secret observations, and full of notes and memorials of his own hand . . . rather studious than learned, reading most books that were of any worth, in the French tongue.  Yet he understood the Latin."*

* Life and Rein of Henry vii, i., 637.

He had also a taste for finely illuminated books of devotion, and presented a beautiful Missal to his daughter Margaret, Queen of Scots, in which he inscribed his own name in enormous letters several times.  This book is now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire.  In the Royal collection is another Missal which belonged to the same king, written in a late Gothic hand.

Henry vii. was careful to have his children well instructed, and his second son, being intended for the Church, received an education fitting him for an ecclesiastical career.  In his youth Henry VIII. displayed considerable literary talent, posed as a patron of scholars, and smiled benignly on such geniuses as Erasmus, More, Linacre, and Grocyn; but in after years he was more keen to destroy other peoples’ libraries than to build up his own.  The accounts of his Privy Purse Expenses contain few entries of disbursements for books, and to take one short period as a specimen, we find that the whole sum spent on his library between 1530 and 1532, including not merely all moneys paid for binding, but also an indefinite amount “to the taylour and skynner for certeyn stuff, and workmanship for my lady Anne,” was only 124 pounds, 16s. 3d.  These figures become still more insignificant if we compare them with those representing the money spent during the same period for jewels alone, exclusive of plate, which amounted to the prodigious sum of 10,800 pounds.