How the manuscript got to Fulham nobody knows. Whether it was carried
over by Governor Hutchinson in 1774; whether it was taken as spoil from
the tower of the Old South Church in 1775; whether, with other
manuscripts, it was sent to Fulham at the time of the attempts of the
Episcopal churches in America, just before the revolution, to establish
an episcopate here,--nobody knows. It would seem that Hutchinson would
have sent it to the colonial office; that an officer would naturally
have sent it to the war office; and a private would have sent it to the
war office, unless he had carried it off as mere private booty and
plunder,--in which case it would have been unlikely that it would have
reached a public place of custody. But we find it in the possession of
the church and of the church official having, until independence was
declared, special jurisdiction over Episcopal interests in Massachusetts
and Plymouth. This may seem to point to a transfer for some
ecclesiastical purpose.

The bishop's chancellor conjectures that it was sent to Fulham because
of the record annexed to it of the early births, marriages and deaths,
such records being in England always in ecclesiastical custody. But this
is merely conjecture.

I know of no incident like this in history, unless it be the discovery
in a chest in the castle of Edinburgh, where they had been lost for one
hundred and eleven years, of the ancient regalia of Scotland,--the crown
of Bruce, the sceptre and sword of state. The lovers of Walter Scott,
who was one of the commissioners who made the search, remember his
intense emotion, as described by his daughter, when the lid was removed.
Her feelings were worked up to such a pitch that she nearly fainted, and
drew back from the circle.

As she was retiring she was startled by his voice exclaiming, in a tone
of the deepest emotion, "something between anger and despair," as she
expressed it: "By God, no!" One of the commissioners, not quite entering
into the solemnity with which Scott regarded this business, had, it
seems, made a sort of motion as if he meant to put the crown on the head
of one of the young ladies near him, but the voice and the aspect of
the poet were more than sufficient to make this worthy gentleman
understand his error; and, respecting the enthusiasm with which he had
not been taught to sympathize, he laid down the ancient diadem with an
air of painful embarrassment. Scott whispered, "Pray forgive me," and