. . . It is clear that . . . their influence was
not inconsiderable in encouraging literary tastes and studious habits
among their clergy. Pitts, in his list of distinguished Englishmen of
letters who flourished during the latter half of the fifteenth century,
mentions no less than twenty-four Norfolk men who were recognised as
prominent scholars, controversialists, historians, or students of
science." {1} Coincident with the decline of monastic learning in Europe
were the revival of secular learning and the invention of printing, which
gave a great impetus to the collection of books, especially on the
continent. The sixteenth century was a dark age in the history of
British libraries, the iconoclasts of the Reformation ruthlessly
destroying innumerable priceless treasures both of books and bindings.
John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, who was educated at a Carmelite Convent in
Norwich, and became vicar of Swaffham, Norfolk, in 1551, wrote scathingly
of the literary condition of England in the middle of the sixteenth
century, and referred specifically to Norwich: "O cyties of Englande,
whose glory standeth more in bellye chere, than in the serch of wysdome
godlye.
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