but this is not the case, as the following letter, which is kept with the volume, and which I have Lord Rosebery's leave to print, makes clear :

Private.

:

16 ONSLOW Crescent, BROMPTON, June 5th, 1856.

MY DEAR LORD DUKE,-Thirty years since I accidentally met at a sale at the auction mart where I purchased a large quantity of old theology, a volume of exceeding interest, being a 4to edition of the Book of Common Prayer with alterations and additions on the autograph of King Charles I.

The history of the controversies relating to the Book of Common Prayer is one of the deepest interest, and the introduction of it into Scotland has always excited the attention of the historian and the divine. Charles I. manifested an interest equal to that of his predecessor, James, for an uniform worship, and promoted the revival of an Act authorizing certain Bishops in Scotland to prepare a Book of Common Prayer. The Scottish Bishops carefully examined and revised the Liturgy, taking as their model the First Book of Common Prayer of Edward VI. Many points of difference, however, are admitted; and the copy I possess will shew that they, in a great degree, emanated 1 from the King himself. The interest felt by the Sovereign is displayed by a most rigid attention even to typographical errors of the volume, and the colour of the ink in which the names of the Saints or the months of the year are to be printed. I hold this volume to be eminently precious, as it is the instrument which led to the abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland, to the establishment of the Solemn League and Covenant, and the invasion of England by the Scotch army. The attempt of Charles in 1633 to introduce the Liturgy into Scotland failed: it was renewed in 1636, and proved productive of consequences which tended to overthrow the Constitution in Church and State, and ultimately led to the death of Charles.

The folio edition of 1637, known as the Scotch Book of

1 Mr Pettigrew's word is too strong: "had, every one of them, the deliberate approval of the King" would have been more exact.

d

C. Prayer, shews that the additions and alterations herein made in the autograph of the King and by his own command have been accurately attended to. There is scarcely a variation.

Many years since I shewed this book to Mr Pickering, the bookseller of Piccadilly, who published facsimiles of different editions of the C. Prayer, and he offered me £100 for it. I think I understood that he wished it for Lord Ashburnham's collection. I did not then desire to part with it, and I promised him that, should I dispose of it, he should have the refusal. He is dead, and I am under no promise or obligation to Lord A. It has occurred to me as an exceedingly interesting book for your Grace's valuable collection, and I venture therefore to propose it to your Grace before I offer it to Lord A. or any one else, as I do not wish to retain it longer. Ever your Grace's most faithful and obliged Servt. T. J. PETTIGREW.1

To His Grace

The DUKE OF HAMILTON AND BRANDON

T. J. Pettigrew.

&c., &c., &c.

A slip in Mr Pettigrew's handwriting has the note: "Scotch tumults, &c., upon the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer.-See 'Varney Papers,' p. 202. Published by the Camden Society."

The most likely theory as to the history of the volume before Mr Pettigrew picked it up is that it was the final copy sent by the King to John Spottiswood, Archbishop of S. Andrews and Primate of Scotland, on whom lay the chief responsibility of introducing the Liturgy in Scotland. Apart from the King's deep interest in the matter from a religious point of view, there were political reasons for Spottiswood receiving these directions from the King himself. Already there may have been audible some of the murmurs, soon to rise into a roar, that Laud had taken it upon him to make more, and other, alterations than the

1 A notice of "Thomas Joseph Pettigrew (1791-1865), surgeon and antiquary," is in the Dictionary of National Biography.

1

King desired: these had to be quelled, in the interests of the Liturgy itself. Besides, Spottiswood had on previous occasions shown himself jealous of the independence on the Church of England of the Scottish Church; "that stubborn Kirk," moreover, would be at all events less likely to refuse the changes to which Charles had agreed if they came to her in the handwriting, not of an English prelate already sufficiently unpopular, or of a mere secretary, but of their own native-born Sovereign — the visible token alike of their authenticity and of his earnest wish.

It is thus a reasonable conjecture that the volume was sent to Spottiswood: that it should have found its way to England is also easily accounted for. Spottiswood himself, in 1638, fled thither; for the enthusiasm wherewith the Covenant was being signed made him feel that his life was not safe in Scotland. His usefulness there was also

at an end. As he himself expressed it, "all that we have been doing these thirty years past is thrown down at once." He was at Newcastle when (4th December 1638) he was deposed by the Glasgow Assembly: in the following autumn he went on to London, and, dying there on the 26th November, was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. There was every reason why, if he had this volume, he should take it with him, as it would be evidence that he had been acting according to the King's instructions, and had not "falsified" these, as the Glasgow Assembly charged him with "changing the Acts of the Assembly of 1616 with his awne hand on the margin."2 That at his death his books were dispersed, is likely enough, and "a large quantity of old theology" has

1 At the funeral of King James VI. Spottiswood had refused, on the ground of the higher dignity in Scotland of his own see, to allow the Archbishop of York to take precedence of him; and declined to wear "his whites" because they were no part of the dress of a Scottish bishop: at his consecration in 1610 he had expressed a fear lest his receiving it at the hands of English bishops might subject the Church of Scotland to the Church of England, till King James assured him that he had guarded against that danger by providing that neither of the English metropolitans should assist in the rite.- Grub, ii. 296.

2 Peterkin, Records of the Kirk o Scotland, p. 153.

frequently counted an unsuspected treasure amid its unprofitable bulk.

Whatever doubt, however, may envelop the history of the quarto after it had received the royal attestations, it is clear that, prior to the King's requisition of it, it had belonged to some one about the Court who had been studying the Offices in the various "Uses" accepted in the Church of England before the Reformation, and had already written into it a few notes as the result of his researches. The handwriting of these entries is totally different from that of the King: it bears some resemblance (at any rate) to that of Laud (as shown in a photograph which I procured of a portion of his Diary), nor is it unlikely that it was the Archbishop's; but this is not certain.

The table of "Contents" (on p. 2 of the book), though it differs in the order of the services, and sometimes in the terms by which they are described, bears no royal (or other) emendation.

The first alteration is in the Kalendar for January (p. 3), where the word Februarii, printed in black letter, like the names of the "Black-Letter Saints," is underlined in the King's handwriting, and has on the margin the note, also in Charles's autograph, "Here Februarii would be printed in a different letter least it be mistaken by the ignorant for the name of some St., and it would be so done with the names of the other months throughout." This direction was attended to. In the same month he marks Jan. 25, Conversion of S. Paul (which is printed "Cō. of Paul," and is in black letter), with an asterisk, and the note"Print this in red letters." In the Kalendar for March 25 (Annunciation) he deletes the Lessons in the English Book (which were from the Apocrypha, Ecclus. ii. and iii), and substitutes Eccles. ii. and iii. At 25 April there is a misprint in the volume, giving as the First Lesson for that day in the Church of England Eccles. iv. and v. instead of Ecclus. iv. and v. The King notes on the margin that, in the Scottish Kalendar, the Lessons shall be Eccles. iv. and v. At 11 June he finds "S. Barnab Ap.";

he bids, "Print this in red letters." The Scottish Book as printed has "Barnaby Ap." At 26 Aug. he deletes the English First Lesson at Morning Prayer, Dan. xiii. (the Apocryphal story of Susannah), and inserts Isa. lvii.

On the Table and Calendar expressing the Order of the Psalms and Lessons the King shortens and makes clearer some long and cumbrous sentences, an improvement adopted in the Scottish Book (see p. 11); which does not, however, insert a note appended by him in regard to Psalm cxix. :- "And at the end of every part of such Psalm shall be repeated, Gloria Patri." Charles's suggestion has been accepted, since, by both Churches-the Church of England adopting it in 1661, and the Church of Scotland doing so in her Prose Psalter.

Proper Lessons.-The King corrects "Mattens" into "Matins." This form has been adopted in this edition in pursuance of our rule to modernise the spelling; but the Edinburgh printer (1637) left it "Mattens." For the First Lesson at Morning Prayer for Epiphany he substitutes for Isa. xl. the much more appropriate Isa. Ix.—another point in which he was followed by the Revisers of 1661.

Tables and Rules.-The King deletes (as inapplicable to Scotland) "A rule to know when the Terme" [Easter, Trinity, Michaelmas, and Hilary] "beginneth and endeth." Under "These to be observed for Holy days" Charles adds, "Of the Conversion of St. Paul," "Monday and Tuesday in Easter & Whitsun week," and "of St. Barnabas."

At the foot of the page containing "The Order where Morning and Evening Prayer shall be used and said "1 the King has written

"I

"CHARLES R.

Autograph R.

gave the Archbp. of Canterbury comand to make the

1 Two changes on this Order, found in the Scottish Book, King Charles has not marked. (1) The English Book has "where," the Scottish "where and how." (2) The English Book had "such ornaments as were in use by authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth, according to the Act of Parliament in case made and provided"; the Scottish, "shall use such ornaments in the Church, as are prescribed, or shall be, by His Majesty, or His Successors, according to the Act of Parliament provided in that behalf" (see p. 36).