4 Floors Castle is the home of the Dukes of Roxburghe.

5 The Committee of Privileges eventually decided in favour of Sir James Innes and, just as Mr Lascelles had predicted, the new Duke immediately put the library up for sale.

The auction in the summer of 1812 (while Strange was in the Peninsula) was possibly the most notable bibliographic event since the burning of the library at Alexandria. It lasted for forty-one days and was the cause of at least two duels.

Among the Duke’s books there were found seven magical texts, all of them extraordinary.

Rosa et Fons was a mystical meditation upon magic by an unknown fourteenth-century magician.

Thomas de Dundelle, a hitherto undiscovered poem by Chrétien de Troyes, was a colourful version of the life of Thomas Dundale, the Raven King’s first human servant.

The Book of Loveday Ingham was an account of the day-to-day occupations of a fifteenth-century magician in Cambridge.

Exercitatio Magica Nobilissima was a seventeenth-century attempt to describe all of English magic.

The History of Seven was a very muddled work, partly in English, partly in Latin and partly in an unknown fairy language. Its age could not be guessed at, the author could not be identified and the purpose of the said author in writing the book was entirely obscure. It appeared to be, upon the whole, the history of a city in Faerie, called “Seven”, but the information was presented in a very confusing style and the author would frequently break off from his narrative to accuse some unspecified person of having injured him in some mysterious way. These parts of the text more resembled an indignant letter than any thing else.

The Parliament of Women was an allegorical sixteenth-century description of the wisdom and magic that belongs particularly to women.

But by far the most wonderful was The Mirrour of the Lyf of Ralph Stokesie, which along with a first edition of Boccaccio’s Decameron was put up for auction on the last day. Even Mr Norrell had been entirely ignorant of the existence of this book until that day. It appeared to have been written by two authors, one a fifteenth-century magician called William Thorpe, the other Ralph Stokesey’s fairy servant, Col Tom Blue. For this treasure Mr Norrell paid the quite unheard-of sum of 2,100 guineas.

Such was the general respect for Mr Norrell that not a single gentleman in the room bid against him. But a lady bid against him for every book. In the weeks before the auction Arabella Strange had been very busy. She had written numerous letters to Strange’s relations and paid visits to all her friends in London in attempt to borrow enough money to buy some of the books for her husband, but Norrell outbid her for every one.

Sir Walter Scott, the author, was present and he described the end of the auction. “Such was Mrs Strange’s disappointment at losing The Life of Ralph Stokesey that she sat in tears. At that moment Mr Norrell walked by with the book in his hand. Not a word, not a glance did this man have for his pupil’s wife. I do not know when I last saw behaviour so little to my liking. Several people observed this treatment and I have heard some harsh things said of Norrell. Even Lord Portishead, whose admiration of the magician knows no bounds, admits that he thinks Norrell has behaved remarkably ill towards Mrs Strange.”