Westminster Abbey N/A

At the Reformation Westminster Abbey was refounded as an Anglican collegiate church, and the old conventual library was dispersed. A first attempt was made at refounding the library in 1574 by Dean Gabriel Goodman. It was not, however, until the time of Dean John Williams in 1625 that the library took on its present form. He completely reorganized it, opened it as a general public library, and bought the library of a Mr Baker of Highgate to supply it with books. To this he seems to have added a large library of manuscripts from his own collection. The manuscripts were burnt in a fire, at the end of 1694, which also touched the school which was housed in the next room, but the printed books were largely undamaged. The armorial stamp seems to date from the time of John Williams. It is almost certainly the work of the same stamp cutter as that of John Bill, a London bookseller who gave about 160 books to the library in 1624.