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 offices, 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, cere monies, and proceedings used in their courts; and extraordinary trials before them.

Original charters of our ancient kings, as Edward the Elder, Edgar, Hardicanute, and Edward the Confessor. The famous Charter of King Edgar, wherein he is styled Marium Brit. Dominus: which Dr. Hickes 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, Pomps, and Solemnities; as the coronations 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 departures, and accounts of the presents made to them on those occasions. Tilts, journeys, 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. XII. In regard to Wales, here are topographies, descriptions, 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 pedigrees 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.

XIII. 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 Scotochronicon, 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.

Achievements, 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 con-. troversial 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. XIV. 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, eccelsiastical 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 Cœlestia, 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, ou that solemn occasion, acted as sole Brehon, or judge, with the sentence passed thereon in the year 420. 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.

XV. Many ancient copies of the Greek and Latin classics and historians.

XVI. Lexicons, Glossaries, and Dictionaries of the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Welsh, Chinese, Persic, Arabic, German, Courlandic, Saxon, English, Spanish, and Turkish languages, particularly the Arabic Dictionary of Abu Nasr Ismael, filius Hamad al Farabi, Al-Turki, with the supplement

of Sherfo'ddin, Al-Hasan filius Mohamedis, surnamed Alsagani, written in the beginning of the 13th century.

XVII. Chorographies, Antiquities, Histories, Chronicles, &c. of France, and other countries. Elaborate genealogies of their kings, princes, and illustrious houses; and a multitude of tracts and authentic papers, explanatory of their laws, customs, revenues, polity, and government; amongst which are,

Gesta Francorum in Bello Sacro, written in the 11th cen tury. A chronicle from Adam, of the 9th century.

Liubrandi Ticiensis Chronicon, written in the 10th century.

Also a beautiful transcript of the 4th and last volumes of Froissart's chronicle, elegantly illuminated, and having the subject of each chapter represented in an historical miniature painting, highly finished, and placed at the head of it. The other volumes of this curious work are preserved in the French King's library, and are esteemed among its principal

ornaments.

XVIII. Histories of Popes, and the transactions of the See of Rome; particularly three remarkable volumes, the original registers of the Roman chancery, secretly brought from Rome upon the death of Pope Innocent XII. by Mons. Aymone, who was Apostolic Prothonotory of that court. They contain the rules to be observed by the clerks, and obedientiaries of the Roman chancery, in expediting papal bulls, briefs, mandates, dispensations and grants; a list of fines payable by ecclesiastics to the Roman See, in all countries under its subjection, on their being admitted to Patriarchal, Metropolitan, Cathedral, or Conventual Churches fees and fines payable for indulgences, licences, and plenary absolutions, as well in criminal as civil cases; and a variety of other interesting matters, demonstrating the im-. positions practised to fill the pope's coffers.

XIX. A great number of Poems, Essays, Ditties, Ancient Ballads, Plays, and other poetical pieces in almost every modern language; many of them unpublished, and others extremely useful to such as shall undertake to give new and correct editions of the works of such poets, particularly those of our own country as have been already printed. Amongst them are,

A very ancient and fair transcript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and a copy of his history of Troilus and Cressida, the Knight's Tale, the Man of Law's Prologue and Tale, the Wife of Bath's Tale, and the clerk of Oxenforde's Tale, neither of which MSS. seem to have been used by the

editors of Chaucer; the text in both differing in many places from all other MSS. of that author, as well as from the printed copies of his poems.

A large volume, being a collection of ancient and valuable poems on curious subjects, by Chaucer, Lydgate, and other English poets; amongst these is a poem of Chaucer's addressed to his empty purse, and consisting of twenty stanzas, though no more than the three first have been published. This poem is the more curious, as it informs us of some circumstances of Chaucer's life little known.

A fair transcript or translation of Lydgate's paraphrase into English verse, of Boccace's treatise De Occasu Principum, illuminated and embellished with historical miniature paintings; being the author's present-book to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, by whose command he undertook the work.

Lydgate's lives of St. Edmund and St. Fræmund, with divers of his other poems, illustrated with 120 very elegant historical pictures of different sizes; besides other embellishments of illuminated letters, &c. so as to render it the finest manuscript in the English language, written in the time of King Henry VI. whose book this was, being presented to him by its author.

A large and beautifully illuminated copy of the Confessio Amantis of John Gower, containing a collection of the principal pieces of Chaucer and Gower, finely written and ornamented.

An historical, political, and moral poem, consisting of 320 stanzas; the subject is the unfortunate reign of King Edward II. whose ghost is introduced as relating his transactions and disasters. The author, who is supposed to be Mr. Edmund Spenser, addresses this poem to Queen Elizabeth. Also the same poem revised and corrected by many alterations, and fitted up for the perusal of King James I.

A very fair and beautiful transcript of the celebrated poem entitled, Le Roman de la Rose, begun in French verse, by William de Lorris, continued and finished by John Clopinel, alias John Moone, of Mewen upon the river Loyer. This manuscript is richly ornamented with a multitude of miniature paintings, executed in the most masterly manner. It is probably the copy which was presented to Henry IV. the blazon of his arms being introduced in. the illuminations, with which the first page of this work is embellished.

Many original poems, by John Lydgate, Gower, Trevisa, &c.