f Anglo-Norman
Charters fetched three hundred and five pounds, and the Letters and
Papers relating to Mary, Queen of Scots, one hundred and ninety-six
pounds.

For upwards of fifty years Lord Ashburnham availed himself of every
opportunity of acquiring the finest and most perfect copies obtainable
of the rarest and choicest books, and he brought together a collection
of printed volumes which was well worthy of being associated with that
of his manuscripts. It was especially rich in Bibles, and in Missals,
Horae and other Service Books, and in the early editions of Dante,
Boccaccio and Chaucer. Among the Bibles and portions of the Scriptures
were a block-book, a copy of the _Biblia Pauperum_, regarded by
Heinecken as the second edition of that work; vellum and paper copies of
the Gutenberg Bible; a vellum copy of the 1462 Latin Bible; a perfect
copy of Tyndale's translation of the Pentateuch, printed at 'Marlborow'
by Hans Loft in 1534; and the Coverdale Bible of 1535. Of foreign
incunabula there was a large number; of Caxtons a very goodly list,[99]
but comparatively few of them perfect; and the rarest productions of the
press of St. Albans, and of those of Machlinia, Lettou, Pynson, Wynkyn
de Worde, Copland, and other early English printers were to be found in
the library. The collection of the editions of the _Book of Hawking,
Hunting_, etc., attributed to Dame Juliana Berners, may be considered to
have been unique, for it included the _Book of St. Albans_, printed in
1486, the extremely rare edition printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496, the
three editions printed by William Copland, those of William Powell and
John Waley, and the only known copy of the first separate edition of
_Fysshynge with an Angle_, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1532. Other
rare English books were the first edition of the first _Reformed
Primer_, printed in 1535; an _Abridgement of the Chronicles of
Englande_, printed by Grafton in 1570, which belonged to Thomas Howard,
Duke of Norfolk, who was beheaded in 1572, with an interesting letter
written by him on the blank space of the reverse of the last leaf,
shortly before his death; _The Principal Navigations, etc., of the
English Nation_, by Richard Hakluyt, printed in 1598-1600, with the very
rare map having the Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, 1577, and that of
Standish, 1587, and the original suppressed pages of the Voyage to
Cadiz; the four Shakespeare folios, and the first five editions of
Walton'