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The adventure through which it found itself in the Harleian library together with the precious No. 1775, may be thus briefly related: Jean Aymon was a renegade French priest who had retired to the Hague, married, and become a Lutheran pastor.
But although fortunately the Harleian MSS. have been preserved from the fate of so many choice volumes in the Cottonian library, they have suffered to some extent from the carelessness or dishonesty of borrowers. The second Lord Oxford was generous to a fault in lending, with the inevitable result.
There was an older chapel in a ruinous condition, which there is reason to believe had been that of the Bishops, as it was dedicated to St. Richard of Chichester. Mr. Spilsbury quotes one of the Harleian manuscripts, written in or about 1700, in which Inigo is named as the architect, and Vertue's engraving of 1751 also mentions him.
"Many idle toyes, but the old play that Adam and Eve acted in bare action under the figge tree draws most of the gentlemen." An Account of the Proclamation of the Mystery plays, acted in "Ye Citye on ye Dee," may prove of interest, and the copy of which I subjoin is taken from the Harleian M.S. No. 2013. "The proclamation for Whitsone playes made by Wm. Newell, Clarke of the Pendice, 24 Hen. 8.
An eye-witness of the great fire of London, in an account preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, and recently published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, relates another instance of the credulity of the Londoners.
The age of a manuscript may sometimes be determined among other characteristics by the fineness and whiteness of the vellum, and sometimes by its purple colour. The MSS. numbered 2788, 2820, and 2821 in the Harleian library are described by Astle as purple-stained, whereas they are only thus painted in places intended to receive the golden letters.
He gave evidence late in life of his love for literature by forming the collection of manuscripts known as the Harleian, and we know from Swift that he was deeply impressed with the importance of having allies in the Press. He entered upon office in May, 1704, and one of his first acts was to convey to Defoe the message, "Pray, ask that gentleman what I can do for him."
This law therefore of blood, whatever other objects it might have in view, enjoined that, while men were engaged in the distresing task of taking away the life of an animal, they should respect its feelings, by abstaining from torture, or all unnecessary pain. Bruce, whose travels into Abyssynia are gaining in credit, asserts that such customs obtained there. And the Harleian Miscellany, vol. 6.
Hay's expedition was not entirely successful. Some of the manuscripts mentioned in the above letter, which Wanley insisted "must be bought," are clearly not in the Harleian collection, and notably the Greek and Latin MSS. written in letters of gold upon purple parchment.
The arrangement of Pilate's superscription "Hic est Nazaren IHC rex judaeor" is unusual but not without precedent. The Harleian library contains no fewer than 300 MSS. of the Bible or parts of the Bible, written and illuminated between the seventh and the fourteenth centuries.
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