. The key to the family deed chest : how to decipher and study old documents : being a guide to the reading of ancient manuscripts. church, for whose souls prayers were inventories of relics are very curious, andthe vestments also are described. There is along list of the books in the abbey libraries ofReading and Leominster. All the books in thislong list disappeared, no one knows where or volumes, a missal and a book of hours, saidonce to have been part of the abbey library, weresold by auction in 1889. Nor was Reading theonly instance of the total disappearance of valuab


. The key to the family deed chest : how to decipher and study old documents : being a guide to the reading of ancient manuscripts. church, for whose souls prayers were inventories of relics are very curious, andthe vestments also are described. There is along list of the books in the abbey libraries ofReading and Leominster. All the books in thislong list disappeared, no one knows where or volumes, a missal and a book of hours, saidonce to have been part of the abbey library, weresold by auction in 1889. Nor was Reading theonly instance of the total disappearance of valuablemonastic manuscripts. Gasquet speaks of the wanton destruction ofmanuscripts at this period, and says that theywere sold for all kinds of uses. Mr. Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesia±Anglicanae, reckons there must have been morethan 250,000 volumes of Church service books inuse, and that they must have been destroyed toprevent men from following the worship of theirforefathers. A most interesting article on AncientPrymers, the service books of the people, appeared. > 8* 94 Monastic Chart. in the Antiquary of March. 1892, written by Mr. Henry Littlehales. The original deeds or grants of land to abbeysare seldom met with among private wording differs little from that of an ordinarygrant, except that the donor gives for the good ofhis soul and the souls of his ancestors. Sometimesvery interesting details may be gathered from thefoundation deeds of chantries, with the appoint-ment of a priest to celebrate Mass and offer upprayers for the dead, receiving in return a salarvderived from lands or else given at once in money. Original grants from the Crown to abbeys areseldom dated the day or year they were written ;except that they conclude with the names of thebishops attesting them and the witnesses whowere present, although sometimes the kingsreign is given, or the episcopal year of thearchbishop or diocesan b:>hop. The witnesses were chosen from the kings c


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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookpublishe, booksubjectwriting