By the Hev. Canon Jackson } F.S.A. 



55 



Parliament, Sir Thomas Fairfax, the great Parliamentary leader, did 

 all he could to prevent injury to Literature. He was a gentleman 

 and a scholar, and both at York and Oxford took great pains to save 

 Libraries from being pillaged. He also presented twenty-nine ancient 

 MSS. to the Bodleian, and was to a great extent, the means of 

 saving that Repository. 



It may be very true, that of the abbey MSS. there may have- 

 been many not worth keeping for anything they contained, old 

 superstitious legends, dull dissertations and the like, but when 

 slaughter is indiscriminate much that is valuable perishes with much 

 that is useless. As mere specimens of calligraphy and exquisite 

 manual skill they ought to have been saved v the proof o£ which i& 

 that such volumes now fetch extravagant, almost fabulous prices. 



Leland found very few MSS. at Malmesbury. At the time of hi& 

 visit, the abbey had been surrendered and the contents of the library 

 had been carried — perhaps thrown — away by "the exceeding rich 

 clothier" who bought the whole monastery and church. 



The church itself must have been in a dilapidated state : for the 

 central tower had, he tells us, fallen in, some years before : and 

 that would have brought down probably a large part of the Choir 

 and Eastern part. Upon that tower had stood one of the highest 

 spires in England, whether of stone or wood, we do not know : but 

 in it was the great Bell called St. Aldhelm, which, whenever there 

 was a storm impending, the wise men of Malmesbury used to ring, 

 to drive the thunder and lightning away from the town. The fall 

 of the central spire was probably owing to its having been raised 

 upon a tower that had not been built strong enough to support such 

 a weight. The other tower, a large square one at the West end, was 

 constructed in a still more foolish manner, and being in a feeble- 

 state was brought down by the noise of artillery, firing salvos o£ 

 rejoicing in 1660, on the Restoration of King Charles II. The 

 exceeding rich clothier not being rich enough, had turned all the 

 domestic buildings and offices of the monastery, as well as a small 

 Chapel at the South of the Transept, into a cloth factory and filled 

 them with his looms, which Leland saw : but for the honour of the 

 Town it must be said, that there is not the least evidence of the 



