first year (inclusive) of King Edw. VI. to the 8th day of March, 1701. A numerous collection of privileges and orders of parliament, and sundry papers relative to parliamentary affairs, Proclamations, original letters, journals, and other books. of the privy council,

Books of aids, subsidies, reliefs, taxes, granted to sundry particular kings of England; and accompt books of the product and disposal of the ancient demesne lands of the

crown.

Letters, papers, books of docquets, &c. relative to the offices of the privy seal, signet, ordnance, admiralty, navy, victualling, customs, and excise. Three volumes of very interesting original papers and letters, which belonged to John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, as Lord Privy Seal to Queen Anne; giving a better insight into the transactions of those times, and the immense sums issued on account of the forces employed under the Duke of Marlborough, than can easily be met with elsewhere.

Accounts of the public revenue, and national expences. Books and papers of the household, and treasurer of the chamber. Inventories and indentures of the jewel office and wardrobe. Orders, proceedings, and accounts of the office of works. Laws and ordinances for management of the mint.

IV. Several large collections of letters and speeches of our kings, their chief ministers, and other persons of eminence; particularly four volumes, containing original letters by the royal family of England, from Henry VIII. to the end of King Charles I. Eighteen volumes of original letters of divers considerable persons, relating to public affairs, from the year 1307 to 1716. And two volumes, containing letters written to Henry, prince of Wales; together with original draughts of his own letters. The above volumes afford interesting anecdotes, particularly relative to Queen Elizabeth, James I. Charles I. and Charles II. unnoticed by the most elaborate writers of the English history; and may be justly deemed inestimable remains of the times to which they relate.

V. Histories of the first planting and propagating of Christianity in Britain, and its growth and increase under the British and Saxon prelates.

The lives and successions of English archbishops and bishops; particularly a most noble illuminated copy of the lives of the seven first archbishops of Canterbury, by Gotselinus de Sancto Bertino, monk of St. Augustine's at Canterbury, in the time of St. Anselm; and of which the first

part only, containing the life of St. Augustine, is published by Mr. Wharton.

Saxon and English councils, and the canons promulgated by them. Provincial and diocesan canons and constitutions. The forms and manner of election, and consecration of archbishops and bishops; their jurisdictions, privileges, and courts. Surveys, terriers, and rentals of their possessions; taxations of their spirituals and temporals, and inquisitions relative to the state of their respective dioceses.

Lives and canonizations of sundry British, Saxon, and English saints.

VI. Authentic papers and memorials relating to the dissolution of religious houses; and the establishment of the reformation; particularly draughts of acts of parliament for their dissolution, some in the hand-writing of King Henry VIII. Inventories of plate, jewels, and other valuables belonging to them. Inquisitions, with the state of several episcopal dioceses, and the returns made thereto by the bishops. Accounts of the erection and proceedings of the court of augmentation; with four original and very valuable volumes belonging to that court.

Historical accounts of the successions, rights, forms, and instruments of elections of abbots, priors, and other superiors, and their officers. Chartularies, registers, and ledger books of sundry monasteries. The most accurate and valuable register of Dunstable, begun by Richard de Morins, the prior of that house, and carried on from the foundation of the priory by King Henry I. to the reforma

tion."

VII. Statutes of the two universities, and of their several colleges and halls, and a vast mass of other materials relating to their histories and antiquities; with a transcript of the proceedings of the convocation upon the divorce of Anne of Cleves, authenticated under the hands of public notaries..

VIII. Papers relating to the laws, polity, and civil govern ment of England; divers copies of the laws of several of the Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Norman kings. Transcripts of divers of the Magna Charta of King Henry III, and an inspeximus and copy of his confirmation, both of the great charter, and of the similar one, sealed by Pr. Edward, at London, the 10th day of March, 1264. Transcripts of ancient statutes, never printed. Readings of them; and extracts of all the private acts of parliament remaining in the Rolls Chapel.

Historical accounts of, and memorandums relating to, baronies, serjeancies, knight fees, and other tenures. Copies of escheat, rolls, inquisitions post mortem, pleas of the crown, &c. and abundance of other law books.

Many treatises on the institution, establishment, and jurisdiction of the Exchequer, King's Bench, Common Bench, Courts of Wards and Liveries, Star Chamber, and Chancery; as also of the Courts Leet, Baron, Pye-Powder, and other inferior courts, the forms and methods of proceedings in them respectively, and accounts of their several officers, registers, and records.

Discourses on the antiquity, jurisdiction, and authority of the ancient great officers of the kingdom; to wit, the Marshal, Steward, Constable, and Admiral. The forms, ceremonies, and proceedings used in their courts; and extraordinary trials before them.

Ŏriginal charters of our ancient kings, as Edward the Elder, Edgar, Hardicanute, and Edward the Confessor. The famous Charter of King Edgar, wherein he is stiled Marium Brit. Dominus; which Dr. Hicks hath demonstrated to have been forged after the Norman conquest. A curious book, covered with crimson velvet, and adorned with bosses and hasps of silver gilt and enamelled; the cover and all the leaves indented at the top; containing four original Indentures of Covenant, illuminated and embellished with historical miniatures, dated the 16th of July, in the 19th year of King Henry VII. and made between that king and the Abbot and Convent of St. Peter's, Westminster, for certain masses to be for ever after said in the chapel of the Virgin Mary, then determined to be built at the east end of that church, as a place of reception of the bodies of the king, queen, and royal family; and for other purposes. To this indenture book, five broad seals of King Henry VII. preserved in silver boxes, and ornamented with his badges of the portcullis and rose sprigs, are appendant by strings of silk, and gold and silver thread.

IX. Heraldical and armorial books, particularly forms of appointing and crowning kings at arms, and of the establishment of their subordinate officers, tricks of arms, and ensigns armorial. Tracts on the order of the garter, pedigrees of most of the nobility and gentry of England, with notes, monumental and fenestral inscriptions illustrating their family histories,

X. Register-books, chartularies, and other evidences of the estates of our ancient nobility.

XI. Ceremonials, Pomis, and Solemnities; as the coro

nations of most of our kings and queens from the time of the Anglo Saxons, to that of King George II. Public entries, introductions, receptions, and feastings of royal and princely visitors, foreign ambassadors, &c. with the forms of their de partures, and accounts of the presents made to them on those occasions. Tilts, journies, justs, royal masks, and other public entertainments, public processions and cavalcades. Funerals of kings, queens, princes, and great personages allied to the royal family, and also of persons of quality and distinction.

XIII. In regard to Wales, here are topographies, descrip tions, and general histories of the principality.

Natural and civil histories of several of its counties, surveys of commotes, and extent of lands.

Statutes touching the Lords Marchers, and orders for the observance of the council of Wales.

Transcripts of the laws of Howel Dha; collections of particular laws and customs prevailing in different parts of the principality; accounts of the revenue arising from the principality; lists of fee-farm rents; and pleas of Quo Warranto upon liberties claimed.

The histories of Welsh heroes, by Threes, and many pe digrees and genealogies of families, with three volumes of useful materials, extracted by Mr. Hugh Thomas from a multitude of public records, and private evidences, in order to his compiling a genealogical history of the nobility and gentry of Wales, and the several families descended from them, now living in England.

XIV. Materials relative to the civil and ecclesiastical history of Scotland.

Descriptions, histories, chronicles, and state of the king

dom.

A remarkable transcript of John Fordun's Schotochronicon, and Baston's verses on the battle of Bannocks Bourne, written in the year 1484, for the use of William Schevez, Archbishop of St. Andrews, by his domestic chaplain Magnus Maculloch, a priest of the diocese of Ross, supposed to be either the famous Black Book of Schone, or the St. Andrew's Copy, or perhaps the original of both.

The chronicle of Andrew Wintone in verse. Ker's, Lindsey's, and other chronicles.

A fine copy of the chronicle of Mailros.

The life of King David I. written by Alred, Abbot of Rievaulk.

Transcripts of public instruments concerning the vas

salage of Scotland, and the sovereignty of England over it, which are omitted by Rymer and Harding.

Atchievements, arms, pedigrees, &c. of the nobility and principal gentry of Scotland.

The journal of the treaty of union; and a multitude of valuable and interesting papers of state, particularly, a transcript of public instruments concerning the marriage of Mary queen of Scots, to the Dauphin of France, letters on sundry occasions from Mary Queen of Scots, Lord Burleigh, Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Thomas Smith, the Earl of Murray, Queen Elizabeth, &c. and other pieces unnoticed by all writers, but extremely useful in settling many controversial points of the history of that unfortunate princess, and conducive to the disclosing and clearing up the mysterious intrigues carried on during her troubles in France, Scotland, and England.

Historical accounts of the state of the church of Scotland. XV. Materials for the history and antiquities of Ireland. As, chorographies of the kingdom, and topographical descriptions of its provinces.

Ancient and other histories, chronicles and annals, ecclesiastical and civil, particularly,

A copy of the history and prophecies of that country, written in the 10th century, and in the old Irish language.

Many curious pedigrees, with the arms and histories of the principal nobility.

A very ancient transcript of two remarkable pieces of the old municipal laws of Ireland, with commentaries and glosses thereon. The text in this manuscript is so very ancient, as to be coeval with the times the pieces relate to. The one being seemingly part of the Bretanime, or Judicia Coelestia, with the trial of Euna, brother to Legarius, chief king of Ireland, for the murder of Orane, chariot driver to St. Patrick, before Dubhthac, the chief Filadha, or King's Bard; who, on that solemn occasion, acted as sole Brehon, or judge, with the sentence passed thereon in the year 430. The other, the great sanction or constitution of Nine, made in favour of Christianity in Ireland, Anno 439, by three kings, three bishops, and three sages.

XVI. Many ancient copies of the Greek and Latin classics

and historians.

XVII. Lexicons, Glossaries, and Dictionaries of the He. brew, Greek, Latin, Welch, Chinese, Persic, Arabic, German, Courlandic, Saxon, English, Spanish, and Turkish, languages, particularly the Arabic Dictionary of Abu Nasr Ismael, filius Hamad ål Farabi, Al-Turki, with the supple