The diary of Henry Machyn, citizen and merchant-taylor of London, from A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1563 / Edited by John Gough Nichols.

  • Machyn, Henry.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The diary of Henry Machyn, citizen and merchant-taylor of London, from A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1563 / Edited by John Gough Nichols. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    carefully arranged, and inlaid, under the superintendence of Sir Frederick Madden, who recorded the accomplishment of his useful labours by the following memorandum on a fly-leaf: “ The fragments forming the present Volume were formerly kept in a case, without any regard to order, and are thus described by Dr. Smith in his Cata¬ logue : “ Cod. chartac. in fol. constans foliis solutis circiter 150. in pixide asser- vatis, quce rite disponere frustra tentavimus' “ By the aid of Strype, who made use of the MS. when perfect, and who quotes largely from it, the leaves have been restored to their proper order; the chronology marked on each folio, and references given to the pages of Strype, who often supplies the lacunce here visible. The curiosity and value of these fragments seemed a sufficient warrant for the labour and time consumed in arranging them in their present form.—F. M. 1829.” The first page of the MS. is shown to have been the original first page, by its soiled and worn appearance. It bears a memo¬ randum, scarcely legible, connected with the author’s accompts, “ Remem’ yl my lade Masun(’s) byll (for) armes and hers in m.penter in It only remains to be added that the deficiencies, occasioned by the partial loss of the manuscript from fire, have been supplied in the present edition, either from Strype where he had quoted the injured passages, or in some other cases by conjecture from the context, such supplied readings being always distinguished by brackets [ ] and by modern orthography. Parentheses ( ) have sometimes been introduced to complete sentences left grammati¬ cally imperfect by the writer: and most of the obscurities of his spelling are made clear by the marginal notes.