[171] Rawlinson MS. C. 876. p. 44. A.D. 1709. In this year the first Copyright Act was passed, which required the depositing of copies of all works entered at Stationers' Hall at nine libraries in England and Scotland. This number was increased upon the Union with Ireland to eleven, but finally reduced to five (British Museum; Oxford; Cambridge; Advocates' Library, Edinburgh; and Trinity College, Dublin) by 5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 110. A.D. 1710. Dr. Richard Middleton Massey, formerly of Brasenose College, gave (with a few other books) a very curious and valuable series of Registers of the Parliamentary Committee for augmentation of poor vicarages, from 1645 to 1652, in eight folio volumes, with one earlier volume containing a list of livings in the diocese of Norwich, with their values and incumbents. To local antiquaries these proceedings are full of interest, while their historical and biographical value is equally great. They are now numbered Bodl. MSS. 322-330. Of the printed books given by Dr. Massey, most of those in octavo were placed at the end of Bishop Barlow's books, in the shelves marked _D. Linc._ Three thousand pounds were offered by the University for the library of Isaac Vossius, but refused. But the books were shortly afterwards sold to the University of Leyden for the same sum[172]. [172] _Reliquiæ Hearn._ i. 205, 6. A.D. 1711. A watch which had belonged to Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is said to have been presented by Mr. Ralph Howland, of Maidenhead. Grabe's _Adversaria_. See 1724. A.D. 1712. 'July 19, Died Mr. Joseph Crabb, Under-keeper of the Bodleian Library, having kept in ever since this day sennight. He died of a rheumatism, occasion'd by a careless sort of life. He was, however, an honest harmless man. He was buried on Monday night following (between 7 and 8 o'cl.) in Haly-well Churchyard, very privately. Upon his coffin was put, _I. C. ag. 38. 1712_; but I heard him say some time since he was 39 years old[173].' He is described in the following caustic terms by Zach. Conr. Uffenbach, in a letter written in 1713, and printed in his _Commercium Epistolicum_[174]:-- 'Alteri [præfecto Bibliothecæ], nomine Crab, caput vacuum cerebro est, lepidum alias, dignusque homo quem ridiculo illo encomio, quo tamen multi serio egregios viros onerarunt, ornetur, vociteturque Helluo, non librorum tamen sed præmiorum, quæ ab exteris Bibliothecam hanc invisentibus avide excipit, statimque cauponibus reddit pro liquore, ad guttur colluendum purgandumque a pulvisculo, qui librorum tractationem velut umbra aut nebula comitari solet. Quamvis non ejus, sed tertii infimique Bibliothecarii, hoc sit muneris, ut libros in loculos reponat, quævis in ordinem redigat atque emundet.'