Just below, but on the right of the above, there is written in a clear hand as follows:
"Ex Libris domus Abbatialis S. Antonij Viennensis, Catalogo Inscript an. 1740. No. 11."
That the question which I shall ask at the end of this Note may be the more easily answered, it will perhaps be necessary for me to state, that in the year 1777, Rohan, the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, succeeded in annexing the property belonging to the Order of St. Antonio de Vienna to that of Malta. In accepting of these estates, which were situated in France and Savoy, Rohan bound himself to pay the many mortgages and debts with which they were encumbered; and so large an amount had to be thus defrayed, that for a hundred years the convent would not be reimbursed for its advances, and receive the 120,000 livres, at which sum their annual rental would then be valued. Of the foundation of this Order a recent writer (Thornton) thus remarks:
"In 1095 some nobles of Dauphiny united for the relief of sufferers from a kind of leprosy called St. Anthony's fire, which society, in 1218, was erected into a religious body of Hospitallers, having a grand master for chief. This order, after many changes in its constitution, having been left the option between extinction and secularisation, or union with another order, accepted the latter alternative, and selected that of St. John of Jerusalem."
Among the moveable effects which came to the Knights of Malta by this arrangement, was a small and well-selected library, and in it this edition of Walton's Bible.
Without, therefore, writing more at length on this subject, which might take up too much space in "N. & Q.," I would simply add, that my attention was called to this work by the Rev. Mr. Howe, chaplain of H.B.M. ship "Britannia," and for the purpose of asking, At what time, by whom, and in what manner, were these volumes removed from St. John's College at Oxford, and transferred to the library of the Order of St. Antonio de Vienna in France?
W. W.
La Valetta, Malta.