A NEW 1422-1509 EDITION, FIRST PUB- LISHED IN 1874, CONTAINING LETTERS, ETC., HITHERTO UN- S PREFACE. INCE the publication of the first volume of this work, a few further points relative to the original MSS. of the Paston Letters have come under the Editor's notice, and it seems right that they should be mentioned here. As to the manner in which Blomefield became the owner of some of the Earl of Yarmouth's papers, the conjecture offered in the preface to vol. i. (p. x.) was owing to a misapprehension, which was noticed in an appendix at the end of the introduction. The MSS. sold by the last Earl of Yarmouth to Peter Le Neve constituted only a portion of the family papers. The Earl himself outlived Le Neve, and at his death in 1732, some thirty or forty chests of valuable letters and documents remained at the family seat at Oxnead. These treasures the Rev. Francis Blomefield was allowed to examine three years later, with a view to his county history, and as we know that he afterwards became the owner of a number of letters of the Paston collection, I presume that he purchased a portion, if not the whole, of what remained in the hands of the executors. With regard to the papers sold by the last Earl to Le Neve, I stated, on the authority of Nichols's Literary Anecdotes (i. 415), that on the death of that antiquary they were dispersed, but that a considerable portion of them came into the hands of Thomas Martin of Palgrave, who married Le Neve's widow. This statement, too, I find, requires some correction. Just before his death in 1729, Le Neve made a will,1 by which he bequeathed his MSS. to the erudite Dr. Tanner, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph's, and Thomas Martin of Palgrave; but this bequest was subject to the condition 1 See Appendix after Introduction. |