The chapters are dedicated to various personages or classes of persons, and some of these lengthy dedications are interesting compositions. The Fourth Book was never set up in type, and of the latter portion of the Third Book the only printed example is in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Other copies end with the first part of Book III., concluding with a valedictory address, explaining how the vast expense entailed and the inadequate return made him “resolve to go no further.” The book was printed at Chester, and is the earliest work printed there, and as such has, of course, a special interest for the city and county. It is rather remarkable that on the site of his house in Bridge Street (engraved by Cuitt as _Lamb Row_, the house having subsequently been converted into a hostelry, “The Lamb”) now stand the printing works of Mr. Griffiths. In his will his son Randle referred to a “Room in his dwelling in the Bridge Street formerly made use of as a Printing House or place.” Dr. Ormerod describes the book as “the strangest jumble on natural history, mineralogy, and surgery, occasionally diversified by palmistry, hunters’ terms, the cockpit laws, an essay on Time, and on Men punished in Hell.” The description is not inaccurate, yet there can be no doubt that in its eleven hundred folio pages are to be found many valuable pieces of information, and that in this respect they form “a storehouse” not only of “Armory and Blazon,” but also of many other subjects, so that the student who has the patience to explore them is sure to learn something. They show, too, what an inquiring mind the author must have had, and how he noted down and kept ready for use the knowledge he obtained. [Illustration: Old Lamb Row.] Randal Holme the Third was also a distinguished Freemason, and probably one of the earliest connected with Chester. He alludes to the fact that he was a “Member of the Society called Free-Masons” in his _Academy of Armory_, and one of his manuscript volumes is entitled _Constitutions of Masonry_, giving certain particulars as to the names of persons made Freemasons, and to the initiation fees paid by them. Evidently there was a lodge of Freemasons at Chester in the seventeenth century, of which Randle Holme (III.) was a member. It has been supposed by some that his father also may have been a Mason, as there are some masonic emblems on the monument put up to his memory in St. Mary’s Church. The Freemasons of the county showed their respect for his memory, and commemorated his connection with the church by rebuilding the north porch in 1892, whilst Mr. Henry Taylor, F.S.A., placed stained-glass windows of a heraldic nature in the same, with a full account of him. The laying of the foundation-stone of this porch by the then Provincial Grand Master, Earl Egerton of Tatton, with full masonic rites, was an interesting ceremony, and was attended by some two hundred Masons in their regalia.