rchased by me in the days of my youth, and the particulars are they not
written in the book that is found therewith?' They had been collected
under the Commonwealth, and had afterwards been sent to the binder by
King Charles; but as the bill was never paid they lay in the shop until
the reign of George I., when they were sold to pay expenses, and so came
into the possession of the excellent Solomon da Costa.

The best antiquarian collections were those given to Oxford by Dr.
Rawlinson in the last century, by Richard Gough in 1809, and by Mr. Douce
in 1834. Mr. Macray has enumerated nearly thirty libraries which Richard
Rawlinson had laid under contribution, and his list includes such
headings as the Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, the Thurloe State
Papers, the remains of Thomas Hearne, and documents belonging to Gale and
Michael Maittaire, Sir Joseph Jekyll, and Walter Clavell of the Temple.
He cites a letter written by Rawlinson in 1741, as showing the curious
accidents by which some of these documents were preserved: 'My agent last
week met with some papers of Archbishop Wake at a chandler's shop: this
is unpardonable in his executors, as all his MSS. were left to Christ
Church; but _quaere_ whether these did not fall into some servant's hands,
who was ordered to burn them, and Mr. Martin Folkes ought to have seen
that done.'

Mr. Gough's collection related chiefly to English topography, Anglo-Saxon
and Northern literature, and printed service-books; it is stated to
contain more than 3700 volumes, all given by a generous bequest to form
'an Antiquary's Closet.' Mr. Douce's large library contained a number of
Missals and _Livres d'Heures_. Some of these are described as 'priceless
gems rivalled only by the Bedford Missal,' especially one prayer-book
illuminated for Leonora, Duchess of Urbino, another that belonged to
Marie de Medici, and 'a Psalter on purple vellum, probably of the ninth
century, which came from the old Royal Library of France.' Among the most
important of the earlier benefactions was the gift of the Dodsworth
Papers by Thomas Lord Fairfax. The archives of the Northern monasteries
had been kept for a time in eight chests in St. Mary's Tower at York.
Roger Dodsworth, Sir William Dugdale's colleague in the preparation of
the Monasticon, made copies of many of these documents; and when the
tower was blown up in the siege of 1644 he was one of the zealous
antiquarians who saved the mouldering fragmen