class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="vii" id="pgepubid00010"/> but illustrated by him with most gorgeous colours and wondrous drawing, worthy of the blazonry of a Lancaster Herald. The costumes however are carefully correct, and give us useful hints as to the fashion of the raiment of our ancestors. From the peculiar piety and earnestness (most important elements in the search for the philosopher’s stone), of the small “signs” and prayers appended to these papers, it is, I think, clear, that he was working in all good faith and belief. Possibly the following lines, which seem to have been his favourite motto, may have been inspired by the disappoint­ment and dyspepsia produced by his smoky studies and their ill success,

On the 22nd of April, 1602, he was with great ceremony advanced to the honour of Lancaster Herald. He never surrendered his patent, and as his successor entered on that post in November, 1608, he is supposed to have died about that date, though some postpone his death till 1611. He married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas de la Rivers of Bransbe, but left no issue.

There are many points of interest to be picked out of the following honest and straight­forward bit of criticism, if we examine it closely: and, firstly, as to its author? Is there not something very character­istic in its general tone, something dimly sketching a shadowy outline of a kindly, fussy, busy, querulous old man, much given to tiny minutiæ, a careful copier with a clean pen, indefa­tiguable in collecting “contributions” to minor history; one jealous of all appearance of slight to his office, even to being moved to wrath with Master Speight for printing “Harolds” instead of “Harlotts,” and letting him know how mightily a “Harold” like himself would be offended at being holden of the condition of so base a thing as False Semblance? Perhaps the more so from a half-consciousness that the glory of the office was declining, and that if the smallest opening were given, a ribald wit might create terrible havock amongst his darling idols. How delicately he snubs Master Speight for not calling on him at Clerkenwell Green (How would Speight have travelled the distance in 1598? It was a long uphill walk for an antiquarian, and the fields by no means safe from long-staff sixpenny strikers); and how modestly he hints that he would have derived no “disparagement” from so doing; showing all the devotion to little matters of etiquette of an amiable but irritable old gentleman of our own day.

But mark this old gentleman’s description of his father’s collection of Chaucer’s MS.! Had ever a Bibliophile a more delightful commission than that one of William Thynne’s, empowering him to rout and to rummage amongst all the monasteries and libraries of England in search of the precious fragments? And had ever a Bibliophile a greater reward for his pleasant toils? “Fully furnished with a multitude of books, emongst which one coppye of some part of his works subscribed in various places ‘Examinatur Chaucer’!” Where is this invaluable MS. now? It is worth the tracing, if it be possible, even to its intermediate history. Was it one of those stolen from Francis Thynne’s house at Poplar by that biblio­maniacal burglar? or was it one of those which in a fit of generosity, worthy of those heroic times, he gave to Stephen Batemann, that most fortunate parson of Newington? Is this commission to be regarded as some slight proof that the spoliation of the monasteries was not carried on with the reckless Vandalism usually attributed to the reformers?

We learn from this