13 DECEMBER 1957, Page 7

THE DIVORCE CONTROVERSY may or may not be illuminated by

an item in the excellent exhibition of books and manuscripts from the Old Royal Library got up for the bicentenary of the gift of the collection to the British Museum by George II. Among some very beautiful bindings and illu- minations (why, incidentally, was it necessary for a single monarch to order so many copies of the Bible?) is a fifteenth-century copy of a tract by Augustinus de Ancona on the Power of the Church. It is open at a passage which declares that polygamy was not contrary to nature among the patriarchs and has been annotated by Henry VIII in a clear, firm hand--W ec ergo in nohis.'

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