136 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
section De Prelatis) in which the writer—in this, as is well known, 
representing the English feeling of the time—strongly takes part with 
Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, in his contest with Pope Innocent IV. 
That the Derry volume containing the Speculum was once the pro- 
perty of a religious house is rendered highly probable by the following 
words written at the head of the verso of folio 10 :— 
‘‘Or, miserere quaesumus, domine, animabus omnium benefacto- 
rum nostrorum defunctorum, et pro beneficiis quae nobis lergiti [ szc | 
sunt in terris, praemia eterna consequantur in celis.” 
The Trinity College copy of the Speculum has the following at the 
end :— 
‘¢ Explicit tractatulus Speculum Laicorum nuncupatus 
Laus tibi Christe ; liber jam explicit iste. 
Burbage Scriptor.”’ 
Burbage was doubtless not the author of the work, but the tran- 
seriber of that copy.° 
[have extracted a number of the tales both from the Speculum and 
from the larger Derry volume (which, for brevity, may be called the 
Exempla), and had intended to read them to-night. But it would be 
impossible for the members of the Academy to follow the Latin— 
sometimes crabbed or peculiar, in which the books are written—when 
thus read ; and, if translated into modern English, the stories would lose 
much of their freshness and quaintness. I purpose therefore, with 
the permission of the Academy, to print in the Proceedings a few 
specimens of the tales, and I think I can promise that they will 
be found curious and entertaining. The Speculum especially, which 
I have studied more closely than the other collection, appears to me 
very interesting. Itis scarcely too much to say that we have in it 
a Popular Moral Encyclopedia of the Fourteenth century. I think 
scholars would welcome an edition of it, and I will conclude by 
recommending it to the attention of any publishing society which 
occupies itself with Latin Medieval Literature. 
5 In the cover of the smaller Derry volume (as in that of the larger) two leaves 
were inserted. These have been preserved. They are filled with matter in a hand- 
writing probably of the thirteenth century. On reading this, I at once conjectured 
that it was a part of the life of Becket by Herbert de Bosham—and I guessed that it 
might be a fragment of the lost portion of that work. I was right in my conjec- 
ture as to the book from which the leaves came, and my further expectations were 
not far from being realized. For some of the matter contained in them has been 
lost out of both the two extant Ms. copies of de Bosham’s work; but this matter 
had been supplied by Dr. Giles in 1841 from an abridged form of the Life, pre- 
served in the Phillipps collection. The passage contained in the leaves is that 
which appears in pp. 253-255 of vol. iii. of Canon Robertson’s Materials for the 
History of Becket, describing the reception and behaviour of the Archbishop at 
the Council of Tours, 
