20 
series, or beadroll of ancestors, or predecessors, but wealth and estate which set 
a value upon men and places. As for our wealth, it is reduced to a narrow 
scantling ; if we look upon the fabric and materials of the city, we have lost the 
suburbs which were our skirts, our whole body is in weakness and distemper, 
our merchandize and trade, our nerves and sinews, are weakened and become 
very mean and inconsiderable : for the earls, dukes, archbishops, deans, prebends, 
and abbots of York, they are no homogeneal parts of our body, but only our 
garnishments, embroideries, and ornaments, and sometimes pricks and goads ; 
our present misery is, that we can hardly keep together our homogeneal and 
essential members, some of them using us, as Absalom’s mule did him, either 
leaving of us, or refusing to act as magistrates amongst us, when our very 
Government seems to hang by a weak, or upon some slender twig. Now for all 
the monuments of our former state and glory we find no warmth or comfort 
from them ; but it seems to add to our unhappiness that our predecessors were 
so happy. Give us leave for conclusion to tell you that a good purse is more 
useful to us than a long story, which might enable us :—(i) To make our river 
more navigable ; (2) To re-edify the decayed parts of the city ; (3) To raise a 
stock to set up some manufacture in the city ; (4) To relieve our poor, into 
which we may all of us fall if some timely course be not taken by which, through 
God’s blessing, this tottering and wasted city may be upheld.” 
This answer, we confess, with all our sympathy for the good 
Mayor and Citizens, goes beyond the characteristic frankness 
of the people of the North, and seems to revel in its bluntness, 
whilst manifesting little or nothing of the reputed hopefulness 
and optimism of the Northern character. Sir Thomas felt the 
rebuff most keenly, and it is not to be wondered at that he 
prohibited the publication of his collection, though it repre¬ 
sented researches extending over many years. As already 
stated, the original MS. was in the possession of Fairfax of 
Menston in 1695. It was at first the property of Thomas Lord 
Fairfax, the Parliamentary General, 1 brother-in-law to Sir 
Thomas Widdrington. Doubtless it came into the possession 
of the Menston family at the death of Lord Fairfax in 1671. 
At a later date it passed into the hands of a Mr. Richardson, 
an “ apothecary,'’ of London, who was a well-known book 
collector. From his hands it passed, by purchase, into the 
possession of Sir Robert Smith, of Suffolk, 2 and contains on 
one of the end papers the arms of that gentleman. While in 
1 Drake, Eboracum , Preface. See also the notes appended to the other 
copies described farther on. 
2 The baronetcy was created in 1714, and expired in i8n.—Burke, Extinct 
and Dormant Baronetcies. 
