The College Libraries

Christ's College Library

‘God's House’ was founded in 1437 by William Byngham, a London parish priest, for the training of grammar school masters. In 1448 it moved from its site on land owned by King's College (to make way for the building of the chapel) to its present site.

In 1505 ‘God's House’ was refounded, renamed, endowed and expanded by Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), mother of Henry VII, and it received a royal charter. The College had a library from 1505 and Lady Margaret donated thirty-nine volumes of which twenty-seven still remain in the library. They include some of the best editions of books printed in the fifteenth century and from the early sixteenth century. Her chaplain John Fisher (c. 1469–1535), bishop of Rochester, gave five books, while Sir Walter Mildmay (1520–89), alumnus of Christ's and founder of Emmanuel College, gave eleven. By the end of the seventeenth century eleven medieval manuscripts had been acquired, four of which contain Middle English, including the two Wycliffite manuscripts indexed below. The manuscript of Wycliffite Sunday Epistle and Sunday Gospel Sermon Cycles (MS 7) was given by Thomas Boys, B.A. of the College 1623–24, whose name appears on the recto of the first fly-leaf. The other Wycliffite manuscript, MS 10, is a New Testament. MS 11, a Commentary on the Psalter by Henry of Costessy (d. 1336) containing a fifteenth-century English note, once belonged to the Charterhouse at Coventry. The fourth manuscript containing Middle English is a Book of Hours (MS 8), with compass points in English, and was given by Sir Simon Every in 1718, as noted on f. iii.

Emmanuel College Library

Emmanuel College was founded in 1584 on the site of a former Dominican Priory by Sir Walter Mildmay (1520/21–89), graduate of Christ's and Puritan sympathiser.

Fifteen manuscripts contain Middle English. William Sancroft (1617–93), Master for three years from 1662 and archbishop of Canterbury (1677–90), gave MS 108 (noted on the first fly-leaf), a Wycliffite New Testament. He also gave MS 229, a sixteenth-century copy on a roll of a form of Confession. The principal donor of medieval manuscripts, some twenty volumes, was Thomas Leigh (B.D. 1667 and Fellow of the College).