As an influential archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud's name inevitably stands out in almost any survey of Renaissance England, whether political, religious, or academic. Unfortunately for the purposes of examining his value to book collecting, most of the material written on Laud places great weight on his conservative political and religious roles in the turbulent years before the English revolution and much less on his contributions to intellectual advancement through the gathering and donating of manuscripts. Nevertheless, Laud lived in a time when the centers of learning in England were rapidly expanding, and at least in part he seems to have valued his various social positions as opportunities to contribute to that expansion.

By Laud's time, the improvement of the materials stored in university libraries--both their quality and quantity--had become of utmost importance to many scholars and benefactors. Because of the invention of the printing press, manuscripts were...