Minute-books and Dinner-registers 1 5 



the beginning of the first Minute-book. But from 1747 

 onward the chronicle of the weekly meetings is continuous 

 up to 1855. There is then a gap of some twenty-four years 

 of which no dinner record has survived. The register of the 

 ordinary meetings begins again in November 1879 an d is 

 complete up to the present time. The reports of the Annual 

 General Meetings or Anniversaries, on the other hand, 

 have been preserved for every year from 1749 up to the 

 present day. The history of the Club is thus recorded in 

 two series of volumes the Minute-books and the Dinner- 

 registers. 



I. The Minute-books. These are four volumes in folio and 

 quarto, kept by the successive Treasurers, in which the busi- 

 ness transacted at each Annual General Meeting and at 

 every Special Meeting are duly recorded from the begin- 

 ning up to the present time. The various changes in the 

 rules and arrangements adopted at different times are there 

 narrated, together with the name and date of election of 

 every member of the Club down to the present day. 



II. The Dinner-registers. Those for the period from March 

 24th 1747 (old style) up to July 24th 1788 consist of eight 

 small octavo volumes full bound in crimson leather with 

 gilt edges, gilt tooling on the back and sides, and closed 

 with brass clasps. The style of these dainty books, which 

 is hardly what would have been looked for in the chronicle 

 of a Dining Club, was doubtless set by the taste of the 

 antiquarian, Josiah Colebrooke, the first Treasurer. The 

 first and slightly smallest volume of the series is more 

 especially remarkable as a specimen of the bookbinder's 

 art. It is not only elaborately gilt on the back and sides, 

 but on the centre of each side the leather bears a diamond- 

 shaped device of elaborately interlaced work with winged 

 boys blowing trumpets and two wreathed and winged heads 

 flanking a central space which bears the Christian symbol 

 J.H.S. This volume may be conjectured to have been 

 originally intended for notes, possibly of a religious or ecclesi- 

 astical nature. The rest of the series, though plainer in 

 decoration, have continued the binding in full crimson 



