346 The Literary Treasures of Longleat. 
a list of all the English residents in the town of Calais at that time, 
when it belonged to England; the names of the men, women and 
children, strangers and inhabitants, scattered through the twelve 
wards of His Majesty’s town; with devices for its fortification, 
victualling, wages of workmen, &. Then a MS. copy of a very cele- 
brated book called “Leicester’s Commonwealth,” a virulent attack by 
Parsons the Jesuit (or some one else so called), upon the character 
and life of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. This was secretly 
circulated, but only in manuscript, for many years, Queen Elizabeth 
and the Privy Council having published a protest against it as a 
slanderous story. A greater pack of calumnies against a very eminent 
man was perhaps never whipped up together, and unluckily Scott’s 
novel of Kenilworth, being built upon it (apparently without the 
slightest previous inquiry into the truth or falsehood of its statements) 
is not only full of the grossest historical errors, but has stamped 
Dudley’s name with a most unjust stigma, which may probably 
never be effaced. There are also some volumes of very valuable 
original letters, which came from Sheffield Castle when it was 
dismantled. They are addressed to the Earl and Countess of 
Shrewsbury, to whom the Castle belonged, and are written by the 
great Statesmen and others of Queen Elizabeth’s time, including 
several from Her Majesty herself to the Earl. One begins “ My 
good old man.” In one of these volumes are several letters from the 
unfortunate Lady Arabella Stuart, the first cousin of King James I. 
There is also in four large folio volumes a complete history of the 
Talbot family (Earls of Shrewsbury), compiled entirely out of the 
records at Sheffield Castle, the greater part of which are now deposi- 
ted in the Herald’s College, London. There are volumes of State 
papers, ambassadors’ correspondence, and the like. A great number 
also of fantastic essays on alchemy and leech-craft; strange pres- 
criptions and antidotes ; astronomical tables and astrology; discourses 
on coinage, and on—that secret of secrets—the philosopher’s stone ; 
and of ancient law treatises a very large collection; also many 
records of Star Chamber proceedings, which are scarce and valuable. — 
There are several volumes of very old English and French poetry in 
manuscript, A treatise on chivalry, called “Le Livre des Faiz _ 

