58 THE RANSOM OF DAVID BRUCE January Item de la triwe a terme de la vie E. de B. en cas qil ne se vorreit uncore accorder et de affermer les autres choses privement. Mais toutes cestes choses dependent si D. de B. puis acomplir ceo qil ad promis. Item de la manere de parler a les counsaillers Monsieur E. de B. et de promesses a eux faire. Item de certifier de ceste busoigne, ou en cas qele ne preist bone fin, de la cause de lempeschement. Item coment les choses demandent haste pur la variance des voluntez et coment Monsieur D. de B. ad il envoie pur la certificacion. Verses on the Exchequer in the Fifteenth Century The following verses on the venality of the officials of the exchequer x were copied by Professor C. H. Haskins from the MS. Bodl. 496 in the Bodleian Library (no. 2159 in the Summary Catalogue), which was written before the middle of the fifteenth century. The volume contains a miscellany of Latin poems, some religious, others well-known specimens of the Goliardic type. The satire upon the proceedings at the exchequer printed below is found on fo. 232 6-34. I have collated the copy with the manuscript. Independently some years ago Mrs. Eric George transcribed the verses from the Lansdowne MS. 168, fo. 336, where the piece is docketed in Sir Julius Caesar's hand An olde written pamphlet or libell touching the accomptants at the Exchequer. 1 Aug. 1606. Privileges of the Exchequer Court, Chamber and men. With this manuscript she compared a copy in a precedent book formerly in the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer's Office (Miscel- laneous Books 118, fo. 284) and now preserved in the Public Record Office. This volume contains a number of transcripts and some originals of papers relating to the procedure of the exchequer, many of them dating from the reign of James I, when the book appears to have been begun. It may be noticed that the Lansdowne copy came into Sir Julius Caesar's hands a few months after he became chancellor and under-treasurer of the exchequer on 7 April 1606. In another transcript which once belonged to Sir Richard St. George, Norroy king of arms (Lansdowne MS. 259, fo. 76), the poem is attributed to John Bell, collector of customs ; of whom later. For the preceding notice of the London manuscripts I am mainly indebted to Mrs. George ; but now that we have a text of the fifteenth century, it has not seemed necessary to collate the modern copies in full. In the 1 [Compare the parliamentary petition against the receiving of gifts in Wylie, Henry IV, iii. 307.]
