
By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 345 
the sources of their revenue, perquisites, and duties: all extremely 
interesting. 
Next comes a very curious old book,commonly called “Liber Rubeus 
Bathoniez,” or “The Red Book of Bath.” Why called “ Red” 
is not very intelligible (unless from a few rubrical letters here and 
there in the text), because it is bound in wite pigskin on thick wood, 
with brass bosses on the sides. Inside of the upper cover is a square 
hole or socket let into the wood and nearly the size of the cover 
itself, secured with a door of thin iron plate covered with leather and 
studded with brass nails. In this were tormerly kept the balances 
for weighing gold, as appears by the first entry in the catalogue of 
contents. It is of the year 1428 and once belonged to the monastery 
at Bath, and came into the hands of Dr. Thomas Guidot, who dying 
in 1703 bequeathed it to the first Lord Weymouth. I had always 
expected to find in this old MS. a good deal about the history of 
Bath and its Abbey. But it is quite a different thing. It is a col- 
lection of most miscellaneous articles, about thirty in number. There 
are short treatises about weights and measures, the gospels, calendars 
in rhyme, an essay on phlebotomy, the ringing (or rather beating) 
of bells— pulsatio campanarum’’—showing how far that enlivening 
recreation is founded upon ecclesiastical law and how far upon custom. 
Then come treatises on the office of coroner, a charter of the forest, 
the names of those who came over with William I., an assize of 
bread and beer, measurement of land with the acre-staff, and “‘ The 
Gestes of King Arthur” in rhyme. This is a poem of 642 lines, 
and is so curious that it was printed as the first issue of the publica- 
tions of the Early English Text Society. At intervals of fifty or 
sixty verses the reader is desired by the quaint old poet to pause and 
say a Paternoster and Ave. At the end of the Red Book, in more 
‘modern writing, is an account of the setting up of a pillory in the 
City of Bath, in A.D. 1412, with a drawing of the uncomfortable 
‘instrument. 
In the class of historical works one of the finest MSS. is the 
_ © Wars and Antiquities of the Jews,” by Josephus. This is a large 
~ and noble volume of the fifteenth century, in a clear hand, on pure vel- 
FE lum. Another MS. isa curious volume of A.D. 1538 (30 Hen. VIIL), 
