not merely to Rymer himself, but also to Robert Sanderson, who is described in the warrant as a person employed by Rymer as his assistant. This warrant, however, did not constitute Sanderson a principal in the undertaking, as has been erroneously supposed in the introduction to the new edition of the Foedera; Rymer alone was the responsible Editor of the work up to the 14th December, 1713, the period of his death. Fourteen volumes were published in Rymer's lifetime, the fifteenth and sixteenth volumes were left ready for the press, through which they were passed by Sanderson, and published, together with a seventeenth volume, compiled by Sanderson himself, and which finished the first edition of the work. Sanderson afterwards published three supplementary volumes, which, with the preceding, made up the number of twenty volumes, in which the work is usually found. These volumes bear date from 1704 to 1735. The first edition soon became scarce, and a corrected reprint was consequently published by Tonson, under the editorship of Mr. George Holmes, Deputy Keeper of the Tower Records, who collated such documents as had been published from originals in the Tower, with the originals themselves, and by that means corrected many mistakes, a list of which was published separately (Lond. 1730, fol.), for the use of the purchasers of the first edition. Holmes's edition was comprised in twenty volumes, which bear date from 1717 to 1735. Shortly after the completion of Holmes's edition, a third was undertaken at the Hague, and published in ten closely printed folio volumes. The reprint of the London edition of the Foedera occupies but nine of those volumes, the tenth containing the French original of the Abridgment, or Abstract, of the Fœdera, known under the title of the Acta Regia ;' a General Index, which is not to be found in either of the London editions; and some additional documents. The Hague edition is not so elegant a work as the editions which preceded it, but is generally allowed to be the most convenient and desirable. No preparations were made for any new edition until the subject was taken up by the Record Committee of the Commons in 1800, who reported in the following words:

"The State Papers, published together in Rymer's Fœdera, form a most valuable collection. They commence from the Reign of Henry I., anno 1134; but they do not come lower in date than the first six years of Charles II., during the usurpation; and it appears to your Committee, that it may be very desirable to have this work completed by a Supplementary selection of such other important papers as were omitted by the original compilers, and also to have it continued to the Revolution, or even to the Accession of the House of Hanover."

Shortly after the appointment of the Record Commissioners, they called upon the Keepers of the Record Offices to consider and report to them of a proper selection of Records, to form a Supplement to the Foedera, and caused their intention to carry the recommendation of the Commons' Committee into effect to be made known. For a long time, however, they were entirely unsuccessful. The Record Officers, with the exception of the Keeper of the Rolls' Chapel, declined to give themselves any trouble about the matter, and no antiquary of any name would undertake the task of editorship. At length, after Mr. Lysons and several others had declined, Dr. Adam Clarke proffered his services; and, having submitted to the Board a scheme for the projected Supplement and Continuation,' was appointed a sub-Commissioner on the 25th March, 1808, and directed to proceed in the collection of the necessary documents. It would have been well for the literary reputation of this excellent man if he had not thus stepped forward. Various as were his attainments, and many the excellent qualities he possessed, he certainly had not that profound acquaintance with English Historical and Antiquarian Literature, nor that painstaking and minute accuracy, which were indispensible in an editor of the Fœdera.

After labouring in his collections for more than twelve months, Dr. Clarke reported

his progress to the Record Board, and submitted to them the propriety of altering the • Supplement and Continuation,' recommended by the Committee, into a new edition of the whole work, under a more scientific and methodical arrangement. The reasons suggested for this change are principally the importance of the Foedera; the scarceness and value of copies of it;—the circumstance of many of the originals being either lost or rendered useless by an injudicious application of a solution of galls;— and the consequence of having the whole body of its contents corrected, methodized, and arranged in conjunction with the new materials. At the end of twelve months Dr. Clarke again pressed the subject upon the attention of the Commissioners, recommending a new edition as the only course likely fully to meet their wishes, and be ultimately creditable to the undertaking. In an evil hour the Commissioners consented, in the hope that the work could thus be made more perfect, accurate, and useful,' than it ever was before. Without entering into the question of whether the Commissioners had really any authority to direct the reprinting of Records previously published, either by the diligence of individuals, or at the expense of the State, upon which point however we entertain a very clear opinion, it will surely be conceded that the determination to reprint twenty folio volumes, whilst whole classes of important records remained unpublished, was a proceeding of very doubtful propriety. If it be further considered that this determination was in opposition to the recommendation of the Commons' Committee, and proceeded upon such slight grounds as those alleged by Dr. Clarke, our doubts will probably be changed into a conviction of its impropriety. That the Foedera is an important collection is conceded by every one; -its scarceness was greater during the war, when Dr. Clarke first engaged upon it, than it is at present; but it is not a book which is ever likely to become very common or very cheap, nor is it particularly desirable that it should be so. But, alleged Dr. Clarke, many of the original documents are lost, and many are destroyed by galls,— be it so, how does that prove the necessity of a new edition? Copies of documents lost or destroyed are no longer subject to correction by examination, and the press has already conferred upon these documents all the publicity and permanency within its power. The only argument that remains is, that resulting from the convenience of having the supplementary documents inserted in a chronological series with those previously printed, a convenience which cannot be disputed, but which it was possible to purchase too dearly. We shall not make any remarks upon the opportunity for corrections afforded by a new edition. The Foedera cannot claim any peculiar accuracy; but certainly the editors of the new edition have no right to quarrel with it upon that score. Perfect accuracy is unfortunately scarcely to be attained in works of this description: Dr. Clarke himself, notwithstanding his deep acquaintance with eastern literature, permitted the only Arabic words which occur in the Fœdera, to contain an uncorrected mistake of the press.

Three volumes of the new edition had been published at an expense of more than £30,000, when the present Record Commission was issued. In the meantime, however, some very serious imputations of inaccuracy had been brought against the work, and the Commissioners therefore suspended the publication in order to afford time for inquiry. The result appeared in the almost immediate abandonment of the work. The three volumes, contained in six large parts, bring down the series of documents to the end of the reign of Edward III., and 147 pages of vol. iv, which had been printed before the work was stopped, have been since bound up by order of the Commissioners, and continue the series to the 6th year of Richard II. We learn from a pamphlet printed at Paris, under the superintendence of M. Paul Royer-Collard, but written by Mr. Cooper, the present Secretary to the Record Board, and circulated throughout France with the view of bringing to light unknown documents

relative to the history of this country; that it is now proposed by the Commissioners to publish a Supplement to the volumes already printed, and to continue the work upon an improved plan, and in a better form. This pamphlet also states, that The Commissioners have it in view to insert in the new edition the whole of the most important documents relating to the foreign transactions of England, and a short abridgment of those which are less worthy of attention, so as to form a complete corpus diplomaticum. In the new continuation it is also intended to add des notes sur les historiens et les chroniques; enfin d'y ajouter les documens propres à jeter de la lumière sur l'histoire des affaires étrangères de l'Angleterre. Ainsi depuis la conquête jusqu'au regne de Jacques 1er, la Commission voudrait se procurer des listes completes de tous les documens inédits concernant l'Angleterre, l'Ecosse, l'Irlande, le pays de Galles, et les autres domaines et dépendances de l'Angleterre, qui pourraient se trouver dans les dépôts publics de France.'*

The errors charged against the new edition of the Foedera, are those both of omission and commission. Of the omissa the number in the first volume is astonishing. The documents omitted in one year, the 6th of John, have been printed, and fill nine folio pages. Many of these relate to Ireland, and it would seem that in the early part of the work the majority of entries relating to that country were omitted. Holmes, the editor of the second edition of the Foedera, having professed to have examined, with the originals, such documents as were printed from Records in the Tower, little further trouble seems to have been taken about the matter; and Holmes's text was reprinted without collation, or inquiry as to whether the documents in the printed collection were all that ought to have been inserted. The consequences of this non-collation, which was unfortunately permitted to extend even beyond the Tower Records, have been exceedingly lamentable. In one instance, an error of no less than 116 years in the date of an instrument, passed unobserved; in another, mistakes of so gross a character as to render the authenticity of the instrument a matter of question, were permitted to stand uncorrected, although the original (one of the most important documents in British history) was at hand fo. examination. Under the head of "Errors of Commission," may be classed the insertion of many new documents which had been already, and very lately, printed by the Lords' Committees on the Dignity of a Peer of the Realm, or by the Commissioners of Records, either in the Rotuli Scotia, or some of their other publications. The same carelessness, or want of sufficient knowledge of the subject, from which these mistakes proceeded, occasioned many misplacings of Charters, and other errors very likely to confuse inquirers, and scarcely pardonable in a work produced with such a lavish expenditure, and under circumstances which so imperiously demanded the most minute and careful accuracy. But it is useless to pursue the subject farther. The new edition of the Foedera was a failure, a glaring and a total failure, and afforded, not merely another instance of the incompetency of the Commissioners as Directors of the Publications meditated by the House of Commons and the Crown, but another proof also that in their hands the public purse was held so loosely, that it was equally assailable by the self-interested and by the incompetent, by the mere jobber who piled Index upon Index, and by the 'good easy man,' who over-rated his own abilities, and did not find in the Commissioners persons competent to discover their actual calibre.

(We are sorry to be obliged to defer to our next number the conclusion of this Paper, being a notice of Sir F. Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs).

*La Commission des Archives d'Angleterre aux Savans et Antiquaires Francais. Paris, 8vo. 1834. p. 18.

* For a pedigree of this ancient family, deduced from Ralph Verney, living in the 7th of John, see Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire, Part I. p. 178.

+ Dr. Lipscomb, (History and Antiquities of Buckingham, Part I.) has endeavoured to shew that he was the son of his father's second wife (Awdrey, daughter of William Gardiner, Esq., of Fulmer, who died in July, 1588, and relict of Sir Peter Carew, Knight), for the sole purpose, I imagine, of submitting to the idle tradition, "That he was neither born or buried" -a tradition grounded, he tells us, on the belief that he was brought into the world by the Cæsarian operation, his mother dying durante partu; and from the circumstance of his body never having been found. But this conjecture is any thing but fortunate, as on an inquisition held after his father's death, at Missenden, 15 May, 42 Eliz., and cited by the learned Doctor, he was found to be ten years old and upwards, which age agrees with the date above.