grew more and more hostile to the king as months passed on, till the end came; the arrest and the confession of imposture, and the last dread scene

at Tyburn, where the poor dreamer and her chief accomplices expiated their strange crime on the scaffold.

THE library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is known throughout the world of scholars for its magnificent collection of manuscripts accumulated by archbishop Matthew Parker, and bequeathed by him to the house which he had ruled as master for nine years. These were largely, if not entirely, gathered from the sad relics of the libraries of the monasteries suppressed by king Henry VIII., when these most precious treasures were heedlessly and selfishly plundered and scattered. The books, being in themselves of no intrinsic value, were little heeded, and to a large extent were lost or destroyed. A good example of this utter carelessness in the matter of the monastic books exists in one great folio volume containing, with other MSS., the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. It is numbered S1 in the Corpus Collection, and contains a few lines in the hand of archbishop Parker on the first leaf. In this memorandum he expresses his belief that it once belonged to the great archbishop Theodore (experts, however, believe now the MS. is of much later date). Another memorandum in the hand of Josselyn, Parker's secretary, tells us how a baker in Canterbury picked it out from among some waste paper (inter laceras chartas) remaining from St. Augustine's monastery after the expulsion of the monks, and how the archbishop welcomed it as "a monstrous treasure."

The oldest MS. in the collection (No. 304) is the Historia Evangelica," which is a transcript of the latter part of the sixth century. The most interesting, historically, however, is No. 236, which a reasonable tradition asserts to have been one of the volumes (referred to on page 87 of Vol. I. of this History) which Pope Gregory the Great sent from Rome for the use of St. Augustine of Canterbury. No. 197, a fragment of St. John, was written, apparently, at Lindisfarne at the end of the seventh century.

The Parker library is especially rich in chronicles; two of them, Nos. 16 and 26, are supposed to have been composed, written, and illustrated by Matthew Paris himself in the reign of king Henry III.

No. 322 contains two treatises by St. Anselm, written, there can be no doubt, by the hand of his dear friend and disciple Eadmer. This precious volume is enriched with autograph corrections by the saintly archbishop himself in the days of William Rufus.

There are some exceedingly valuable MSS. of liturgies. No. 270, written in the eleventh century, embodies, in all probability, a direct transcript from the "Sacramentary" which St. Augustine brought with him from Rome to England, and is the only known MS. possessing a well-established claim to exhibit the authentic text of Pope Gregory's final recension of the Roman liturgy. No. 473 is a tropary of rare interest, written at Winchester in the tenth century, probably in the time of St. Dunstan, and containing hymns and the musical notation in the use of the Anglo-Saxon church. The earliest of the Parker MSS. of this class is, however, No. 272. It is a psalter and litany dated A.D. 884, written, apparently, at Rheims in the days of our king Alfred. It contains one of the earliest known copies of the "Quicunque Vult." There are in this class, too, seven ancient MS. psalters, one of which was once the property of archbishop Thomas Becket.

Perhaps the MS. of most general interest, however, is the famous copy of the "Articles" issued in 1562, with autograph signatures of the prelates who were present, and the marginal marks in red chalk, in Parker's own handwriting.

In Anglo-Saxon literature this great library of the Elizabethan archbishop is extraordinarily rich. A very precious copy of Elfric's lives of the saints and of his celebrated "Canons," several times referred to in this History, is among these. The Anglo-Saxon collection includes MSS., of the greatest value and antiquity, of the Gospels, annals of England, glossaries, and homilies, etc. There are some curious volumes of French literature, showing the wide range of the Protestant archbishop's literary knowledge, true pioneer as he was of the Elizabethan renaissance of letters. These include poems, Anglo-Norman fabliaux,

THE COPY OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES IN THE LIBRARY OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, CONTAINING
THE SIGNATURES OF THE BISHOPS (see opposite page). AMONG THEM MAY BE SEEN THOSE OF MATTHEW PARKER,
EDMUND GRINDAL, BISHOP OF LONDON, RICHARD COX OF ELY, EDWIN SANDYS OF WORCESTER, THOMAS YOUNG,
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, AND JOHN JEWEL, BISHOP OF SALISBURY.
(Reproduced by special permission.)

proverbs, romances In one of these, "Le Miroir des Dames" (No. 324), appears the autograph signature of king Charles V. of France.

In the Parker library, too, is included a collection of autograph letters of his contemporaries. Among these are signed letters of king Edward VI., of the hapless queen Anne de Bouillan (sic), letters of Luther and Calvin, Colet and Erasmus, Melancthon and Bullinger, and indeed of almost every notable character of the Reformation age.

In Latin and Greek MSS., No. 480 contains marginal notes in the handwriting of bishop Grosseteste, the famous and admirable bishop of Lincoln referred to in this History in the time of Henry III.

These are only a few specially remarkable specimens of the treasures contained in this noble collection of Elizabeth's great archbishop, who, though worn with sickness and bodily weakness, in the midst of his crushing anxieties and his noble and enduring work of organising the Church of England, yet found time to play the part of the tireless student, the indefatigable book collector, the editor of many works, the writer

himself of some. And, what was perhaps still more important, archbishop Parker, occupying the first place after Elizabeth in the realm, the powerful primate, the queen's trusted friend and adviser, the man to whom so many divergent schools of thought among the Protestants looked for guidance, by his intense love, his burning zeal for letters, set an example which was quickly followed by others who had stronger health, comparative youth, and splendid natural powers to advance the cause of literature, which so long had languished in our island. It is not too much to say that the great Elizabethan archbishop, to whom our church owes so much, was the pioneer, as we have ventured to style him, of that illustrious group of men who, in the words of Macaulay, "have made the Elizabethan age a more glorious and important era in the history of the human mind than the age of Pericles, Augustus, or Leo."

[The above little sketch of the great Parker Collection of books is derived from a private memorandum given to the writer of this History by Dr. E. H. Perowne, the master of Corpus Christ College, Cambridge.]