nate recusants of Essex had dwindled from a numerous and powerful party to a mere handful of scattered individuals. It having been the practice of successive Clerks of the Peace to put Examinations, Petitions, loose memoranda and miscellaneous papers on the same file with indictments and presentments, the Sessional bundles, throughout the first hundred years of the period covered by the records, yield an unusual proportion of letters by Lords of the Council, the more active magistrates of the county, and other official personages. The series of seventeenth-century Commissions of the Peace is the more interesting and noteworthy, because some of the Commissions pertain to the period of the great gap in the Patent Roll. Persons interested in the history of place-names will find much to engage their attention in the various spellings of the names of many of the Essex parishes, such as Chicknall Trenchefoyle, alias Chicknall Smeley, alias Trenchefoyle, alias Chignal Smealey; EythroppRoodinge, alias Roding Aythorpe; Kelloweden, alias Kelvedon; and Gynge Margarett, alias Gyngmargarett, alias Margaretting.

Wells Cathedral.-For the purpose of his report upon the Wells Cathedral MSS. Mr. Bennett examined first the three well-known volumes described by Mr. Riley in the first report of Your Commissioners, viz. :-Liber Albus, marked I.; Liber Ruber, marked II.; Liber Albus, marked III., and made a note longer or shorter of every entry, except in the latter part of Liber Ruber, which had been already examined by Mr. H, E. Reynolds.

Liber Albus I. contains 299 vellum folios, and about 1,300 separate entries.

Liber Ruber II., 77 vellum folios, with about 136 entries, and 146 folios on paper.

Liber Albus III. contains 456 folios on vellum, and about 860 different entries.

These volumes form both a cartulary and register of Chapter Acts from a very early date.

They contain many Saxon charters which are printed in Codex Diplomaticus, but there are sundry points of difference between the MSS. and the printed edition. In three instances where this is most marked the original has been extracted at full length, as is the case also with a charter of Eadric, about Swinford, called Burheline's boc, and in that of a very curious document, a letter of William I. to Wm. de Courcelle in Saxon, about Peter's Pence, both of which are believed to be unknown in print.

Also given at length is a will of Bishop Hugh (II.) of Lincoln, not his last will.

These volumes also contain copies of Magna Charta, Charta de Forestis, the Statutes of Merton, Kenilworth, Marlborough, Westminster; the Perambulations of the Somersetshire Forests and Windsor; the original MS. of the Canonicus Wellensis printed in the Anglia Sacra, and numberless references to

matters of great value for the history of the church and kingdom generally.

The latter half of Liber Ruber contains a distinct register of Chapter Acts from A.D. 1487-A.D. 1513, without any admixture of charters, &c.

From this latter date until circ. A.D. 1693, it has been supposed for the last 150 years that the Chapter Acts were lost, but Mr. Bennett had the good fortune to find another volume which fills in the gap between circ. 1560-1593. Much that was wanting in Henry VIII.'s reign has been supplied from several large volumes of indentures, &c., which had not apparently been examined before. Amongst other things may be mentioned two letters from the King to the Chapter, one thanking them for their loyal choice of his faithful servant Thomas Cromwell to be their Dean, and another calling for men for a French war.

These volumes also supply many evidences of the unscrupulous dealings of Edward VI.'s reign, such as the appropriation to himself by the Duke of Somerset of the Bishop's palace and properties, and transference of the Deanery to the Bishop in lieu thereof, together with some cash. Belonging to the seventeenth century are letters from Charles I. and Laud. After the Restoration the examination has been carried into James II.'s reign, and ends with an account of the mischief done by the Duke of Monmouth's men in the cathedral, and a thanksgiving for their defeat at Sedgmoor a day or so later.

In addition to all these MS. books the Chapter have some 1,100 original charters, &c. many of them of very great interest and value. Several have been printed in facsimile by the Ordnance Survey Department. These have been carefully arranged and catalogued by Mr. de Gray Birch. Little more has been done with them than to give a list of them copied from his report. An examination has also been made of some 50 Communar Rolls between the years 1327-1539; 36 Escheators' Rolls, between the years 1372-1560; eight Fabric Rolls, between 1390-1565, and extracts have been taken (sometimes very full) so as to show the items of receipt and expenditure, and to indicate the many points of historical and architectural interest upon which they throw light.

The latest document noticed is a modern copy of some very curious customs of the Manor of North Curry, which seem to be lineally descended from King John, from whom and from King Richard I. the Chapter obtained their first grant.

Besides completing reports on the above-described collections of manuscripts in England, Your Commissioners have made considerable progress with the second part of the Calendar of the Marquis of Salisbury's papers at Hatfield, and with a further report on the manuscripts of the House of Lords. The large collections of family papers belonging to the Duke of Rutland, the Marquis Townshend, and the Earl of Dartmouth have been examined and partly calendared; and preliminary inspections

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have been made of the archives of Lord Dormer, Lord Hothfield, Mr. Augustus W. Savile, of Rufford, and others. Reports upon the Corporation records of King's Lynn and Reading are also in preparation. One of the most important and complete collections of historical documents hitherto made accessible to Your Commissioners is preserved at Melbourne Hall, Derbyshire; it consists of the entire correspondence of Sir John Coke, Secretary of State in the time of Charles I., and of his descendants down to Queen Anne's reign, besides some Elizabethan papers, and by the courtesy of its owner, Earl Cowper, a full account of its contents will be made known. Mr. William D. Fane, who resides at Melbourne Hall, has for some time been engaged, as a labour of love, on a calendar of these papers, and has very generously, with the assent of Lord Cowper, placed the result of his work at the service of Your Commissioners. It is expected that the first portion of Mr. Fane's Calendar will be ready for presentation to Your Majesty in the course of next year.

Of the work done in Scotland since the presentation to Your Majesty of your Commissioners' last Report, the following summary may be given

The Earl of Eglinton and Winton.-The muniments of the Earl of Eglinton and Winton at Eglinton Castle in the county of Ayr, reported on by Dr. Fraser, are selected from a large and miscellaneous collection. Unhappily the Charters now extant are not so ancient as might be expected in the Charter chest of a family whose earliest ancestor in Scotland settled there about the middle of the 12th century. This was Robert of Montgomerie, who, according to Dr. Fraser, was a descendant of the famous Roger of Montgomerie, Earl of Shrewsbury, the kinsman and companion of William the Conqueror. Robert Montgomerie received from Walter Fitz-Alan, Steward of Scotland, about the year 1157 the lands of Eagleshame, in the county of Renfrew, which continued to be one of the principal estates of the family for nearly 700 years, when it was sold by the late Earl of Eglinton. From that Robert Montgomerie is lineally descended the present Earl of Eglinton. The family of Montgomerie in Scotland contracted alliances with other families in the neighbourhood also of ancient lineage; the Eglintons of Eglinton and Ardrossans of Ardrossan, and the Charters of these houses might have been expected to yield a rich harvest to the antiquary and historian. Unhappily this is not so, as Eglinton Castle was in 1528 burned and destroyed during one of those terrible and long continued feuds which so often in Scotland raged between neighbouring baronial families. The early writs of the family of Montgomerie were then destroyed with the Castle, and this fact deprives the present collection of much of the value that would have attached to it but for the loss of the earlier portions; enough remains, however, to be of interest and to throw light on passing events and on the manners and customs during the period embraced by the papers now reported on. Numerous

names of persons in all ranks of life have been preserved in the Charters, which are fully recorded in Dr. Fraser's report, and may be found useful in tracing the history of families in the ancient barony of Renfrew, the heritage of the royal Stewart race, and in Ayrshire and in the west of Scotland generally.

The earlier Charters make frequent mention of a Sir Hugh Eglinton whose daughter married Sir John Montgomerie ninth of Eagleshame. Sir Hugh has according to some writers special claims to notice as one of the earliest of Scottish poets. He is commemorated by William Dunbar in his lament for the Makars or poets, and his works were highly esteemed by the Scottish historian Wyntown, if, as has been alleged, he is identical with "Hucheon of the Awle Ryall."

Sir Hugh Eglinton married the sister of Robert High Steward of Scotland, afterwards King Robert the Second, and received from his royal brother-in-law many grants of land. The terms of his marriage contract are not recorded, but from the conditions in several of such writs noted by Dr. Fraser, the father of a bride in the fifteenth century was often laid under contribution to support not only his daughter but his son-in-law for a term of years. Such a provision, to choose a particular instance, was made in 1425 between Sir John Montgomerie of Ardrossan, and Sir Robert Cunningham of Kilmaurs, who married Sir John's daughter. The daughter and son-in-law in this case were to be maintained for two years, and in another case for five years. Other examples will be found in these papers. It is probable that out of the marriage contract with Sir Robert Cunningham arose in later years the feud between the Cunninghams and Montgomeries of which a sketch is given in Dr. Fraser's preface. The grant of the office of the bailiary of the district of Cunningham then made to Sir Robert, for his life only, was the foundation of the claim afterwards made by his descendants with such disastrous results.

The Castle of Eglinton was burned by the Cunninghams in 1528, but previous to that date, in 1523, a long list of mutual raids on the part both of Montgomeries and Cunninghams is recorded. Very few bonds of manrent are preserved among these papers, but it was probably on account of these feuds that the Master of Eglinton enlisted the services of the Macfarlanes, a Dumbartonshire clan. They bind themselves to serve the Master and are to be supported either by pay or by being allowed to take their "sustentatioun on his (the Master's) inymies in the Lawland," a provision of considerable significance. The son of the Master of Eglinton became third Earl of Eglinton, and married Lady Jean Hamilton daughter of the Earl of Arran, then Governor of Scotland. They were divorced in 1562 on the ground of consanguinity, and the proofs adduced in evidence reveal an interesting fact regarding one of the daughters of King James the First of Scotland. From the evidence adduced in the divorce suit, it appears that the King's

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third daughter Joanna, who in 1458 married James Douglas Earl of Morton, was dumb. She was known as the dumb or silent Lady of Dalkeith. This “muta domina was the ancestress of both the third Earl of Eglinton and his wife, who were thus within the forbidden degrees.

Among the papers now reported on is one which is of interest to the masonic craft, being the statutes, &c. to be observed by the master masons throughout Scotland, drawn up in 1599 by the King's master of works. These statutes provide for honest dealing among the masons, and regulate somewhat minutely their relations to each other, their "prentices" and the public. Non-unionism is forbidden, and strife among masters or prentices is to be cured by enforced idleness until they "submitt thameselffis to reasoun." A special provision is directed to secure the safety of workmen and others, and masters negligent as to their scaffolding and footways were liable to degradation. Money penalties were to be devoted to "pious uses."

We have a glimpse of a court lady's wardrobe in one document, dated in 1603. King James the Sixth had just set out from his northern, to take possession of his southern kingdom, arriving in London on the 6th of May in that year. This account begins with an entry dated 9th June at Newcastle. No name appears on the document, but as it is found in the Eglinton chest, it probably refers to the expenses of Lady Anna Livingstone, eldest daughter of Alexander first Earl of Linlithgow, one of the maids of honour to Queen Anne of Denmark, and afterwards Countess of Alexander sixth Earl of Eglinton. She was still maid of honour in December 1605 when King James wrote to her father commending her conduct at court and promising to pay her dower should a fit marriage arise for her. The lady enumerates various articles of female dress, head dresses, French and English "rouffs" and their materials, quhallbon" bodies, "vardingells," &c. Among other items is a payment for "ane vyer to my haed with nyne pykis, xs.; "item for ane perewyk of har to couer the vyer, vs." For ane treming to my gown with gret hornis of goulld and sillk "and federis, the hornis my auen xs." (all sterling money). She pays on an average 28. 6d. for a pair of gloves and the same sum for a pair of shoes; for a pair of night gloves 9d.; for a beaver hat with feather and string 528.; for two fans, one of paper and the other of parchment, 58., &c. She pays, in Coombe, for two necklaces of black jet 38. For the washing of her own and her page's clothes from June to Martinmas, she pays only 208.; among miscellaneous items are a Bible 128.; a French book 18.; a French New Testament with a French book 68. with various other entries of interest to be found in the account itself. It is well known that King James the Sixth, following what he himself described as a "salmond-like instincte," paid a visit to his "native soyle" in the year 1617. During his sojourn in Scotland the King was for part of the time the guest of the