history, had been dead nearly thirty years. It is, however, and too much stress cannot be laid on this fact, the oldest document in which mention is made of Coster as a printer. There are valid reasons for the belief that Coster's merit as an inventor had never been recognized in any way before the record was made on this pedigree. When we consider the order of the dates, it is obvious that it was from this much suspected document that Coornhert derived the information he published in 1561. "The old, dignified and grey heads" described by Van Zuren in 1561, "the aged and respectable citizens" of Guicciardini (1566) and Junius (1568), were Gerrit Thomaszoon and his friends, among whom we may properly include Gallius and Talesius. And it may be added that the more circumstantial story of Junius was first published when Gallius and Talesius were dead, and when there was no man living who could controvert or modify any part of his story.
There can be no doubt that the legend began with this pedigree. It is not at all probable that the vain old man Gerrit Thomaszoon, who was proud of the ancestor in whose house he lived, kept his friends in ignorance of it. It was not unknown to Junius. There is a similarity of uncertainty between an ambiguous date (1440 or 1446) on this pedigree and the mysterious circumlocution of Junius in his use of the words "about one hundred and twenty-eight years ago," or 1440, which is enough to show that Junius had not only seen the pedigree, but that he took it as an authority for this date. Whether Scriverius saw it cannot be confidently maintained; he does not mention it. Gerard Meerman knew of its existence, but he did not reprint it. He made use of it, however, in the construction of a new genealogy of the Coster family, in which he added and altered items in the most unwarrantable manner. Koning studied it with diligence: he frequently alluded to it as a document of the highest importance, but he did not reprint it, nor even describe it in general terms.
The withholding of this pedigree from public examination, and the evasion of its description by the authors who had
