[250] A curious, and probably unique, little 'Almanacke for XII yere, after the latytude of Oxenforde,' printed in 48o (measuring two and a-half inches by one and three-quarters), by Wynkyn de Worde, 'in the fletestrete,' in 1508, was presented by David Laing, LL.D., the eminent Librarian to the Writers to the Signet, Edinburgh, in 1842. The Library also possesses two copies of a sheet Almanack, by Simon Heuringius, for 1551, printed by John Turck, at London; and other almanacs for 1564, 1567, and 1569. A volume containing five almanacs for the year 1589 was bought in 1857.
[251] With the same perverse eccentricity he ordered that the recipients of his endowments for the Keepership of the Ashmolean Museum and the Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, should be unmarried (in the former case only M.A. or B.C.L.), not a native of Scotland, Ireland, or the Plantations, nor a son of such native, nor, in the case of the Museum, even educated in Scotland, and not a member of either the Royal Society or the Society of Antiquaries.
[252] Autobiographical memoirs by Foucault, extending to 1719, were published under the editorship of F. Baudry, 4o. Paris, 1862, in the French Government series of Documents inédits sur l'Histoire de France. The editor remarks in the preface (p. xli.), 'On ignore en quelles mains la bibliothèque de Foucault passa après sa mort [1721]. Le P. Le Long nous apprend seulement qu'elle fut vendue, et probablement dispersée.'
[253] A record of his birth and baptism is entered in a family register kept by his father on the fly-leaves of a splendid copy of the folio Prayer-Book of 1662. He was the second son; born in Covent Garden, Apr. 7, 1687; bapt. Apr. 21, by Dr. Patrick, the sponsors being Major-Gen. Werden, Sir Peter Apsley and the Countess of Bath. Prince George of Denmark was one of the sponsors to his elder brother, George. He had also a sister, Martha.
[254] Amongst these is a large collection of MS. news-letters written from various places abroad about the years 1637-1642; one of these, containing particulars of movements of the Swedish and Imperialist armies, is printed, as a specimen, in Letters by Eminent Persons, 1813, vol. i. pp. 15-17.
[255] References to many particulars relative to Thoresby, Bishop Gibson, White Kennett and Hickes (with a few others) are given in J. Nichols' notes to the Letters of Archbp. Nicolson (2 vols. 1809), an interesting and varied biographical miscellany, but which is guilty of the capital crime of omitting an index.
[256] This ought, apparently, to have reached the Library much sooner, through the hands of Dr. Charlett; since it has the following inscription on the fly-leaf: 'Given by the Honble. Sr. Edmund Warcup (being all writ wth his own hand at ye Isle of Wight at ye Treaty) to the Public Library in Oxford, to be placed there when I thought fitting.
'Ar. Charlett.
'Univ. Coll.
Nov. 25, 97.'
A.D. 1756.
Dr. Samuel Johnson presented the account of Zachariah Williams' attempt to ascertain the longitude at sea, which he had published under Williams' name in the preceding year; and, as Warton noted[257], he entered it with his own hand in the Library Catalogue. The entry is still to be seen, with a memorandum of its being in Johnson's hand, in an interleaved, and now disused, copy of the Catalogue of 1738.