y. In the handwriting there are some
marked characteristics which make it easy to recognize; and in course
of time other Greek manuscripts were discovered written by the same
hand, two Psalters in Cambridge libraries, a Plato and Aristotle in
the cathedral library at Durham, a Psalter and part of the lexicon of
Suidas in Corpus at Oxford. But no clue was forthcoming as to their
origin, until Dr. James found at Leiden a small Greek manuscript in
the same hand, containing some letters of Aeschines and Plato, and a
colophon stating that it had been written by Emmanuel of
Constantinople for George Neville, Archbishop of York, and completed
on 30 Dec. 1468. Where the various manuscripts were written and from
what originals is not plain--the Suidas perhaps from a manuscript
belonging at one time to Grosseteste; but the classical manuscripts
were probably done for Neville in England during the prosperous years
before his deportation to Calais in 1472, the Psalters and Gospels
probably after that date at Cambridge; for the Paston Letters show
that some of his disbanded household made their way to Cambridge, and
Dr. Rendel Harris has ingeniously demonstrated that one Psalter and
the Gospels were in fact at Cambridge with the Franciscans early in
the sixteenth century. The presence of a Greek scribe in England about
1470 is an important fact.

Neville was released from prison through the intervention of Pope
Sixtus IV, who about 1475 sent to England another Greek scribe and
diplomatist, George Hermonymus of Sparta, charged with a letter to
Edward IV. Besides Andronicus Contoblacas at Basle, Hermonymus was at
the time the only Greek in Northern Europe who was prepared to teach
his native tongue; in consequence most of the humanists of the day,
Reuchlin, Erasmus, Budaeus and many others, turned to him for
instruction, though he was indeed a poor teacher. He secured the
Archbishop's release, and therewith a handsome reward to himself; but
lingering on, he found himself compelled to spend about a year in
London--in prison: some Italian merchants having trumped up against
him a charge of espionage, from which he only escaped by paying the
uttermost farthing. That he suffered such a disagreeable experience
perhaps indicates that no one in London was much interested in him or
his language.

Another Greek who was copying manuscripts in England at this time was
John Serbopoulos, also of Constantinople, who between 1489 and 1500
wrote a