THE MUNIMENTS OF THE ABBEY OF WESTMINSTER. 1 t9 the king, or we might be surprised to fiii<I tlic custody of the Abbot preferred to that of the officers of the adjoining Koyai Treasury. In the reign of Henry VI. we also find an entry showing a somewhat similar transaction. The subject of the relics belonging to the Abbey has been so fully dealt with in the " ^leniorials " that I need not allude to the documents bearing upon them. Under the comprehensive title " State and Ilistor}'-, King's Revenue, King's Works," we have many documents that fall into series of the National collection, and are in no way connected with the Abbey. It would occupy too much space even to name these in detail, and the task is less needed on account of Her ^lajesty's Commissioners upon Historical ^ISS. having obtained permission to print the miscellaneous portion of the catalogue of the muniments in a forthcoming report. The documents found under the peculiar circum- stances detailed by Sir G, G. Scott, and which were and still are in the little turned wooden boxes of the fourteenth century called " skippets," of which examples have been shown at one of the meetings of the Institute,* might also be fairly con- sidered to have been at one time a portion of the collection in the Royal Treasury. The " Books" of the Abbatial collection are very few. There are three Cartularies relating to Westminster ; the "Niger Qua- ternus," and two others lately entered in the calendar, and others are known of; and one relating to Luffield, in North- amptonshire.^ If the monastery had a library, there are now but few remains of its contents. The later series of " Register Books" begin in the first 3'ear of Henry VII., and continue to the present time. None of the historical works of tho monk-writers of Westminster are now among the archives of the Abbey. These chiefly found their way into the hands of the great collector of the seventeenth century, Sir Robert Cotton, to whom our historical literature is so deeply in- debted, and are now in the British Museum. Those writers were Sulcardus, who lived in the time of William the Con- queror ; John de Reding, in the fourteenth century ; John
- See Arch. Joitrn. vol. xxviii. p. 133. numerous, and the few of those which
- The Muniments themselves seem to may have belonged to the Abbey cnllec-
have suflered very little by spoliation. tion were doubtless severed from it at Among the Public Records the docu- the period of the Dissolution. mcnts relating to W'cdtminster arc not
