THE MANUSCRIPT
The source from which the poems in the present volume are taken is a MS. now in the British Museum (Add. 24195), and acquired, as an inserted note indicates, "at the sale of Archbishop Tenison's MSS., 1 July 1861." A second inscription, perhaps in the hand of the Archbishop, reads, "Dec. 15, [16] 89. The Gift of Mr. Wright to T. Tenison for his library." Evidently, therefore, the MS. was preserved in the free library, the first of its kind in London, established in the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields by the Rev. Thomas Tenison, later Archbishop of Canterbury, not far from the time when the book was given. The donor was presumably Abraham Wright (1611-1690), clergyman and antiquary, whose death, it will be seen, occurred in the following year. The only later reference to the collection, so far as the writer is aware, is the following note in Dr. David Irving's Lives of the Scotish Poets (Edinburgh, 1804, Vol. II, p. 259): "Mr. Ritson informs us that in the library of St. Martins parish, Westminster, is a MS. volume, containing 'all the kings short poems that are not printed.'" Ritson died in 1804, but may have communicated with Irving when the latter was at work on his Lives; I have been unable to discover the information among his published writings. Dr. Irving presumably did not gain access to the poems, or he would have spoken of them in his criticism of the King's works.
The MS. itself consists of eighty-five folios, in the original white vellum binding, with ornate cover designs in gold inclosing the motto, "Domine salvum fac regem." Sixty-one of the folios are occupied by the poems, and a part of the remainder by tables of contents at the beginning and the end, specimens of the King's correspondence with
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