“Now, with respect to _the Gothic letter P_, which was so much used on paper, from the middle of the fifteenth to the early part of the sixteenth century, I shall not take upon me to deny Mr. Koning’s assertion, that it is to be considered as _the initial of Philip of Burgundy_; although, as it appears to have been used in other parts, as well as in his dominions, and continued so long after his death (as was the _Y_ also, after that of _Ysabel_, the wife of Philip), the fact may be doubted. As to Mr. Koning’s hypothesis, concerning the _two_ paper-marks with the _arms of Bavaria_, it is certainly ingenious: and, had he proved that the paper so marked, was manufactured in the dominions of _Jacqueline_, or of her mother _Margaret_, at the early period he speaks of, I should have thought it so strong a circumstance, in favour of that edition of the _Speculum_ in which those paper-marks occur, that I should have felt disposed to carry back the three preceding editions of that work (for it certainly is the fourth) to a very remote period indeed, rather than have denied that it was printed at the early date he has assigned to it. But _first_, Mr. Koning has brought no evidence to shew that the paper was made in Brabant; (for the circumstance, supposing it true, that all the paper used in those times, at Haarlem, came from that great commercial depôt, Antwerp, proves nothing, since paper coming from different parts, was doubtless sold there); and, _secondly_, we have no proof that it was made at that early period. Suffice it for me to add, that neither of these paper-marks was to be found among the tracings, made by Mr. Koning from the ancient registers of Haarlem, which, as I have said, he was so good as to lend to me; and that after a diligent search of several months in the extensive collections of original Books of Accounts, from 1352 to about 1470, in the archives at the Hague, I was unable to discover either of them; though at length I chanced to find them both, in a book in sq. fol. obligingly lent to me by Mr. De Jonge, now the principal archivist at the Hague; viz. the _Fasciculus Temporum_ in Dutch, printed at Utrecht, by _Joh. Veldener_, in 1480; though perhaps the paper was not made from the same identical sieves or moulds, as the paper that is found in the _Speculum_.” Thus then, Mr. Ottley, who “shews a determined inclination to favour the claims of Laurent Coster,”[129] also shews, that M. Koning, who obtained the prize from the Dutch Society of Arts and Sciences at Haarlem, for the best dissertation in support of the ancient tradition that the Art of Printing was invented in that city,--is wrong in his assertions in regard to the paper-marks; and that the earliest instances of the occurrence of those to which Koning chiefly refers, the Gothic P, and the arms of Bavaria, are in the years 1445, 1453, and 1480.