A mediaeval roll of immense interest, one of the greatest treasures of this collection, consists of a series of beautiful outline drawings, known as the Guthlac Roll, representing scenes from the life of St. Guthlac.  These drawings, which are of the twelfth century, are contained in eighteen rondeaux, intended, perhaps, as a design for a stained-glass window in honour of the saint at Croyland.  They quaintly describe, in exquisite delicacy of form and colour, how the young Guthlac, after taking leave of his parents, renounces the profession of arms, and receives the tonsure at the hands of Bishop Hedda.  Then, sailing away in a boat to Croyland, he builds an oratory with the help of two companions, Becelin and Tatwin, and an angel converses with him.  No sooner is he launched on his new career of prayer, good works, and bodily mortification, than demons assail him, carry him to the roof of his oratory, and scourge him with knotted cords.  But he scares them away with the white scourge given to him by St. Bartholomew.  He is then ordained priest, instructs Ethelbald in the Christian religion, and prophecies that he will be king.  The last six rondeaux show forth the death of Guthlac, the burial of his body by his sister Pega, his appearing to Ethelbald and his attendants who are weeping round his tomb, and his blissful state in heaven among the benefactors of Croyland Abbey.

Reference has already been made to Wanley’s Diary,* a chronicle of the purchases made by Lord Oxford during the greater part of Wanley’s custodianship, and of the principal events which happened in the library.  It begins on the 2nd March 1714, when Wanley had been librarian for about six years.  Many of the entries are exceedingly curious, as demonstrating the energy with which old manuscripts were traced, discovered, and purchased, and the tact and discretion employed, in order to induce their owners to part with them.  A fine manuscript of part of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History in Saxon, and two other valuable Saxon MSS. —­ King Alfred’s translation of Ossian and a copy of Aelfrick’s Grammar—­were discovered in private hands, besides the Psalterium Gallicanum of St. Jerome “with the * and ./., written about the time of the last King Ethelred, with the Litany and some prayers, being one of the most beautiful books that can be seen.”

* Lansdowne MSS., 771, 772.

There was, moreover, a constant movement in the library itself.  All those who had any kind of manuscript for sale came to Wanley, and he notifies in his diary the arrival of books in Chinese, Armenian, Samaritan, Hebrew, Chaldee, Aethiopic and Arabic (both in Asiatic and African letters), in Persian, Turkish, Russian, Greek (ancient and modern), Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Provencal, High German, Low German, Flemish, Anglo-Saxon, English, Welsh, and Irish, in all about 940 manuscripts,