It was a timely and excellent opportunity for Cotton, Bodley, and Archbishop Parker. Sir Robert formed his library in one of the best rooms of his London residence called “Cotton House,” near the House of Parliament. He permitted persons to consult and copy the manuscripts. It was in that library John Selden obtained his wonderful stock of ancient lore, which made his name immortal. Sir Henry Spelman drank deeply from the same fountain. Other antiquarians were equally indebted to Sir Robert Cotton. As I have already stated, he had many manuscripts bound up in separate volumes, and others he arranged in small parcels. Each volume and parcel contained several parts which were written at different times. He had a list on the first page of the headings of the manuscripts bound up in each volume. It is very important to note that fact, because in the present volume Nero, A. 1, there is the original list made in Sir Robert’s time, in which ten headings of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts appear, but _none of Church Mund and Church Grith laws_, because they were not bound up in that volume, and I shall presently prove that these manuscripts were not in the library during the lives of Sir Robert and his son, but were put there towards the end of his grandson’s life. Therefore Selden and Spelman, and other antiquarians who consulted Sir Robert’s library, did not and _could not_ see the Church Mund and Church Grith laws of King Ethelred II. in the Worcester volume, as it is called, and where they are now bound up. Were they in any other parcel or volume in the library? They were not. Here is the proof. In 1629 the Privy Council ordered the library to be locked up, and a catalogue to be taken of the whole contents of the library in order to find out whether any of the King’s books were in it. In 1631 Sir Robert died; and in 1632 an engrossed official catalogue was made out by order of the Privy Council. That catalogue is now in the Cottonian Library, in the British Museum, marked “Add. MSS. 8926.” I have carefully examined the roll; it has three seals attached to it; the titles of the manuscripts and books are arranged under thirty-five headings, beginning with “Libri Historici.” But there are no press marks such as Nero, A. 1, Claudius, B. 3. Another heading is, “Libri Saxonici,” under which every Anglo Saxon manuscript in the library in 1632 was placed; but the Church Mund and Church Grith manuscripts do not appear under this heading. Then when were they placed in the library and in this volume Nero, A. 1? Sir Robert’s son and grandson added considerably to the library. Sir John, the grandson, had given permission to Dr. Thomas Smith to make a catalogue of the contents of the fourteen presses. In 1696 Dr. Smith published the first printed catalogue in which the Worcester volume, Nero, A. 1, contains only the same ten Anglo-Saxon headings which appear in the list of 1632. I conclude that the Church Mund and Church Grith laws were not in the