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XIV. 



EOBEET DOWNING'S HISTOEY OF LOUTH. 

 By E. a. S. MACALISTEE, Litt.D., r.S.A. 



Read November 13, 1916. Tublislied March 21, 1917. 



The document printed below was contained in the Phillipps Library 

 (numbered 6685), and on the dispersal of that collection was acquired by 

 Mr. Harding, bookseller, of London, from whom I bought it a short time 

 ago. 



It is written on five leaves, with two other leaves blank, measuring 

 13 ins. by 8 ins., in a fairly legible late seventeenth-century hand. It has 

 evidently been folded in four for a considerable time ; but a bookbinder has 

 flattened out the leaves, and with a liberal expenditure of blank paper has 

 swollen it out into a volume of very presentable size. One of the two blank 

 leaves, now mutilated (evidently the original outer wrapper), bears the 

 endorsement, twice repeated, " County of Lowth by Eobert Downing."' 

 There are three different handwritings in these endorsements : one of them 

 is in one hand, the first three words of the second endorsement are in a 

 second hand, and the rest of it in a third hand : all these differ from the 

 hand in which the text is written. 



The only clue to the history of the MS. is a pencilled note on one of the 

 bookbinder's blank leaves, " Petty MSS ". I cannot, however, identify the 

 handwriting with that of any of the Down Survey documents in the Eecord 

 Office, in searching which I have to acknowledge the help of Mr. Herbert 

 Wood. Nor can I find anything as to who Eobert Downing may have been. 

 The name " Eobert Downing, Gent." occurs in a deed, a copy of which is pre- 

 served in the Patent Eoll, III James 1 1 : but no address is given, and there 

 is no evidence connecting him with the author of the MS. Prom the absence 

 of any honorific prefix or suffix to the name in the endorsement of the MS., I 

 suspect its writer to have been a person comparatively unimportant — possibly 

 a clerk, writing for so much a page. 



The people referred to in the text as living at the time, so far as they can 

 be identified, date the document to about 1670-1680 : the general appearance 



' In the second copy of the endorsement " County " is spelt " Countie ", " Lowth " is 

 spelt " Louth ", and " Robert " is abbreviated to " Rob'". 



