Although neither a monastic nor a collegiate church, Wells was already in the thirteenth century a place with some equipment for educational work. Besides the choristers’ school, a _schola grammaticalis_ of a higher grade was in existence. After 1240 the Chancellor’s duties included lecturing on theology. Not improbably, therefore, a collection of books was formed very early. And indeed the Dean and Chapter in 1291 received from the Dean of Sarum books lent by the Chapter, and some others bequeathed to them. Hugo of St. Victor, _Speculum de Sacramentis_, and Bede, _De Temporibus_, were the books returned from Sarum; among those bequeathed were Augustine’s _Epistles_ and _De Civitate Dei_, Gregory the Great’s _Speculum_, and John Damascenus. We know nothing of the character and size of the library at this time, although it seems to have been preserved in a special room. In 1297, the Chapter ordered the two side doors of the choir screen in the aisles to be shut at night. One door near the library (_versus librarium_) and the Chapter was only to be open from the first stroke of matins until the proper choir door was opened at the third bell. At other times during the day it was always to be closed, so that people could not injure the books in the library, or overhear the conferences of the Chapter (_secreta capituli_). This library was most likely on the north side of the church, with the Chapter House beside it, in the north transept, as shown conjecturally in the plan given in Canon Church’s admirable _Chapters in the Early History of the Church of Wells_.[312] That so early, in a church neither monastic nor collegiate, a school was at work, and a library had been formed, is a specially significant fact in the study of our subject.
[Illustration: PLAN SHOWING PROBABLE SITUATION OF LIBRARY OF WELLS CATHEDRAL IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.]
In this position the library remained until the fifteenth century. Two notices occur of it, one in 1340 and another in 1406, in both cases in connection with an image of the Holy Saviour, “near the library.”
But in the fifteenth century a new library was built
over the eastern cloister. Bishop Nicholas of Bubwith, in his will of 1424, bequeathed one thousand marks to be faithfully applied and disposed for the construction and new building of a certain library to be newly erected upon the eastern space of the cloister, situate between the south door of the church next the chamber of the escheator of the church and the gate which leads directly from the church by the cloister into the palace of the bishop.[313] The work was begun by his executors, but certain signs of break in the building suggest some delay in finishing it. This room is probably the only cathedral library built over a cloister which remains in its original completeness. It is 165 feet by 12 feet; now only about two-thirds of it are devoted to the library. When this room was first fitted up as a library no one knows; but tradition fixes the date at 1472. The present fittings were put in during Bishop Creighton’s time (1670-72).