By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.d. 345 



the sources of their revenue, perquisites, and duties : all extremely 

 interesting. 



Next comes a very curious old book,commonly called "Liber Rubeus 

 Bathoni«," 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 white 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 L, 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- 

 lum. Another MS. is a curious volume of A.D. 1538 (30 Hen. VIII.), 



