om Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel
(d. 1580). This collection had again been largely recruited from that of
Archbishop Cranmer: the combination T(homae) C(ranmeri)
C(antuar)--Arundel--Lumley, is often found written on the lower margin
of the first leaf of the MSS. concerned. These Arundel MSS., by the way,
must not be confounded with the Arundel collection in the British
Museum, nor with that remnant of the same collection which is owned by
the College of Arms. The Arundel MSS., so-called, were collected largely
by Lord William Howard (Belted Will) of Naworth, passed on to Thomas,
Earl of Arundel (d. 1644), and devised by Henry Howard to the Royal
Society, 1681; they were eventually transferred by the Society to the
British Museum in 1831. The Arundel-Lumley books had a different
destiny. Most of them also came to the Museum, but by another path. They
were bought after Lumley's death by or for Prince Henry, eldest son of
James I., and added to the Royal Library, and that became national
property by the gift of George II. in 1757. We have a catalogue, made
about 1609, of the whole library, which is among the Gale MSS. at
Trinity College, Cambridge. It bears no name of owner, but is easily
seen to be Lumley's. Not all the MSS. that we find bearing Lumley's name
are in it, and not all the MSS. in it are in the old Royal Library. To
the second class belong the English Bible at Wolfenbuettel, the Bible of
Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester (a fine but plain book which is at
Cheltenham in the Phillipps collection), and the Bosworth Psalter bought
not long ago from a private owner by the British Museum. The first class
is more numerous; about twenty MSS. at Lambeth alone have Lumley's name,
but are not in his catalogue. I conjecture that they were presented by
Lumley (who was a generous giver of printed books to the Universities)
to Archbishop Bancroft when he was forming his collection.

So one might go on through Ussher, Laud, Selden, Rawlinson, Harley,
Askew, Drury, Heber, etc., to Sir Thomas Phillipps, whose 30,000 MSS.,
good and bad, must be the largest mass of such things ever owned by a
single collector. But I think I have said enough of the public and
private accumulations of this country to give an adequate idea of the
kind of results that attend research, and of the ways in which large
blocks of MSS. have been handed on to us. The epoch of the sale-room I
have not really touched; it demands special tools and a special
hist