A few weeks since some manuscripts were placed in my hands belonging to the Hon. E. M. L. Mostyn, M. P. (removed from the library at Mostyn Hall in Flintshire), in order that I might ascertain the contents; and on looking at them, I discovered a play in the autograph of Anthony Mundy, with his signature at the end, and the date (supplied by another hand) of December, 1595. This play, entitled "A Booke of John a Kent and John a Cumber," seems to have been hitherto unknown to all the writers on the history of the stage; and its plot and dialogue appearing to me sufficiently curious to deserve publication, I lost no time in communicating my discovery to Mr. J. Payne Collier, under whose able editorship I am happy to learn that the work (by permission of Mr. Mostyn) will shortly be printed by the Shakspeare Club. The object I now have in view in making these remarks, is to point out an error relative to MUNDY (as he spells his own name) which, if not corrected, may acquire greater circulation than it possesses even at present. In Warton's History of English Poetry, 4to. vol. iii. p. 292. n. (printed in 1781), at the close of his biographical account of Mundy, he makes the following statement: "He [Mundy] collected the arms of the county of Middlesex, lately transferred from Sir Simeon Stuart's library to the British Museum;" and this paragraph is copied word for word by Chalmers (writing in 1812), and inserted in his Biographical Dictionary under the article MUNDAY (ANTONY). As no record exists in my department of any such transfer, I was desirous to trace the truth of this assertion, which the date of Chalmers could hardly have enabled me to do, had I not fortunately consulted Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. viii. p. 645., where I found a letter from the Rev. Michael Tyson to Gough, dated June 10, 1777, in which he mentions the manuscripts then recently sold at the seat of Sir Simeon Stuart, in Hampshire, and adds—
"A bookseller opposite the Exchange bought an heraldical lot of eighteen volumes, big and little, for which he asks twenty guineas: among them is Hawes's [read Harvey's] original Suffolk Church Notes, and a beautiful Visitation of Cambridge."
With this clue I had little difficulty in ascertaining that the eighteen volumes alluded to were preserved among the Additional Manuscripts in the British Museum, Nos. 4960-4977., and were probably purchased of the bookseller named above. I can trace no copy of the sale catalogue of Sir Simeon Stuart's library; but this library must have belonged to the third baronet of that name, of Hartley-Maudit, co. Hants, who succeeded to the title in 1761. The manuscripts in question all belonged in the reign of Charles II. to Samuel Waker, painter-stainer, in whose handwriting many of them are, among which is No. 4964, thus entitled: "Collections of Descents and Armes of the Gentry of Middlesex, whereof was noe visitation generall of the same County, before that made by Sir Henry St. George, Richmond Herald [in 1634], except 7 descents of these are entered in the old visitation of Hertfordshire made in ao 1572; all the rest are the collections of mee, RICH. MUNDY." It is evident that this is the volume referred to by Warton and Chalmers; and no less certain, that, by a careless blunder, the playwright Anthony Mundy has been confounded with his namesake Richard Mundy, the painter-stainer, whose voluminous heraldic labours are recorded in the Catalogue of the Harleian MSS., Nos. 1529-1534., 1536-1566., 1570. 1571. and 1577. The Add. MS. 4964. is, in reality, only an incomplete copy by Waker of Mundy's original manuscript, preserved in MS. Harl. 1551.
I beg leave to annex the three following Queries.
1. Did any relationship exist between Anthony and Richard Mundy?
2. What is the name of the bookseller who lived "opposite the Exchange" in 1777?
3. Can any copy of the sale catalogue of Sir Simeon Stuart's library be referred to in existence?
F. MADDEN.