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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: offspring, met with a speedy death, and not until a few years ago,
when a restoration of the Chapter House was effected, was the rat
grave opened again for a scaffold pole, and all their skeletons
and their nest discovered. Their bones and paper fragments
of the nest may now be seen in a glass case in the Chapter House,
some of the fragments being attributed to books from the press
of Caxton. This is not the case, although there are pieces of very
early black-letter books not now to be found in the Abbey library,
including little bits of the famous Queen Elizabeth's Prayer book,
with woodcuts, 1568.
A friend sends me the following incident: "A few years since,
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