[According to Sanders, the family of Greisbrook was formerly of some note at Shenstone. He says that "Greisbrook, whence the family had their name, is a manor in Yorkshire, which, in the reign of Henry III., was in the great House of Mowbray, of whom the Greisbrooks held their lands. Roger de Greisbrook (temp. Henry II.) is mentioned as holding of the fee of Alice, Countess of Augie, or Ewe, daughter of William de Albiney, Earl of Arundel, by Queen Alice, relict of Henry I." Then follow some particulars of various branches of the family, from the year 1580 to the death of Robert Greisbrook in 1718. Sanders's History is included in vol. ix. of Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica.]
Stillingfleet's Library.—The extensive and valuable library of Edward Stillingfleet, the learned Bishop of Worcester, who died in 1699, is said to be contained in the library of Primate Marsh, St. Patrick's, Dublin. Can any of your correspondents state how it came there? Was it bequeathed by the bishop, or sold by his descendants? He died at Westminster, and was buried in Worcester Cathedral.
J. B. Whitborne.
[Bishop Stillingfleet's library was purchased by Archbishop Marsh for his public library in Dublin. A few years since Robert Travers, Esq., M.D., of Dundrum near Dublin, was engaged in preparing for publication a catalogue of Stillingfleet's printed books, amounting to near 10,000 volumes. The bishop's MSS. were bought by the late Earl of Oxford, and are now in the Harleian Collection. See The Life of Bishop Stillingfleet, 8vo., 1735, p. 135., and Biog. Brit. s. v.]
The whole System of Law.—On December 26, 1651, the Long Parliament, stimulated by Cromwell to various important reforms in civil matters, resolved,—
"That it be referred to persons out of the House to take into consideration what inconveniences there are in the law, and how the mischiefs that grow from the delays, the chargeableness, and the irregularities in the proceedings of the law, may be prevented; and the speediest way to reform the same."
The commission thus appointed consisted twenty-one persons, among whom were Sir Mathew Hale, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and John Rushworth. They seem to have set to work with great vigour, and submitted a variety of important measures to Parliament, many of which were
adopted. They also prepared a document "containing the whole system of the law," which was read to the House on January 20 and 21, 1652; and it was resolved "That three hundred copies of the said book be forthwith printed, to be delivered to members of the Parliament only."
Is anything known of this work at the present day?
A Leguleian.