English Monastic Libraries. I. A CATALOGUE OF THE LIBRARY OF THE PRIORY OF BRETTON, IN YORKSHIRE. II. NOTICES OF THE LIBRARIES BELONGING TO OTHER RELIGIOUS HOUSES. BY THE REV. JOSEPH HUNTER, F.S.A. "Recogitate nobilissimum vestri temporis magistrum Bedam presbyterum; quale habuit in Ex Epistola Alcuini ad Fratres Wiorensis et Gyrvensis Ecclesiæ. LONDON: PRINTED BY AND FOR J. B. NICHOLS AND SON, 1831. 2590.d. Pretton. /./. ΤΟ HENRY BOWER, ESQ. F.S.A. you DEAR SIR, THE following Catalogue will make part of a large topographical work, now nearly completed, in the preparation of which have cheered and aided my labours. I print it also in this form, that it may be more easily accessible to many to whom our literary history is an object of greater interest than our topographical history. I have added a few notices of other libraries of the same class, to invite the public attention to a much-neglected department of our antiquarian literature. So trifling a matter as this Catalogue will have a value in your eyes, to whom nothing is indifferent which can in any degree illustrate the history or the condition of our ancestors. It will have another value, from its connection with Worsborough, a place which has, for more than two centuries, been benefited, both in piety and good letters, by the liberal foundations of one of your kindred. And I have much satisfaction in the thought that this pamphlet is a small but enduring memorial of that high respect and esteem with which I am Your truly obliged friend, And very faithful Servant, Bath, Nov. 24, 1830. JOSEPH HUNTER. PREFACE. THE Priory of Bretton was founded in the reign of Stephen, or early in the reign of Henry the Second, by Adam the son of Swein, the son of Ailric. This was a Saxon family, one of the very few who were allowed to hold lands of any considerable extent under the Norman chief lords. He placed it in a retired situation, on the banks of the river Dearne. It was remote from any of the great seats of population; and Bretton may have been one of those "desolate places," the remoteness of which from the scenes of human concourse contributed to reconcile Bale to the dispersion of the libraries collected in them. It was a small foundation; and there is nothing remarkable in its history. A struggle for independency, which it long maintained with the house of St. John of Pontefract, on which the founder had made it dependent, is almost the only peculiar circumstance. It had its succession of priors and other monks till the time of the dissolution of all the monastic foundations; but it does not appear that any of them attained celebrity beyond the walls of their own monastery. Immediately on the dissolution of the society who inhabited it, the buildings of the monastery were granted to Wil |