Equally ill-founded, as far as I can judge, is the historian’s attack upon the “gross uneducated country gentleman,” and his assertion that in Charles the Second’s time a knight of the shire had seldom a library as good as may now be found in a servants’ hall or a tradesman’s back parlour. For the class of which he writes was at least well schooled, and few country houses were without a little collection of books upon the classics, divinity, law, and current politics. Mr. Sitwell had received an excellent education, as is evidenced by a Latin manuscript in his handwriting upon the art of logic, and several Greek and Latin schoolbooks still preserved at Renishaw. In his will, he thought his “printed books” equally worthy of mention with the pictures and maps, the wainscot, ceiling, and glass in his house at Renishaw. From the books still remaining there, and from an old catalogue taken in 1753, it is possible to reconstruct his library, and to form an opinion upon his tastes and the extent and limits of his reading. Upon the shelves in the study cupboards, Homer and Aristotle, and most, if not all, of the greater Latin writers, were represented. For divinity, there were Fox’s _Acts and Monuments_; Usher’s _Chronology_, _Annals_, and _Body of Divinity_; the Works of Tertullian, Polycarp, Eusebius, Ignatius, Chrysostom, Justin Martyr, and St. Augustine; Leigh’s _Critica Sacra_; Corneille’s _Livre de l’imitation de Jesus Christ_; _Meditationes de vita Christi_, by Vincentius Brunus; the _Methoda Theologiæ_ of Andreas Hyperius; Justus’ _Lipsius De Cruce_; Crellius’ _Of one God_; Culverwell _On the Light of Nature_; Hakewell’s _Apology_; Jewel’s _Apologia Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ_; Durell’s _View of the Reformed Church_; _A Defence of the Catholic Faith_, by Grotius; Dr. Fenton’s _Six Sermons against the Church of Rome_; Spencer _On Prodigies_; Hammond’s _Fundamentals_, and his volume on _God’s Grace and Decrees_; a _History of the Inquisition_; Whittaker’s _Controversial Tracts of 1588_; Bilson’s _Anti-Christian Rebellion of 1585_; Wigand’s _Jack of both Sides_, published in 1591; and Fuller’s _History of the Holy War_. Law was represented by Coke’s _Institutes_; Pulton’s _Statutes_, and his works on the _King’s Peace_ and on _Offences and Misdemeanours_; Scobell’s _Acts of Parliament_; Rastell’s _Statutes_; the _Institutes of Justinian_; an _Explicatio Juris inter Gentes_, and the _Civiles Doctrinæ_ of Lipsius; History by Daniel’s _Wars of York and Lancaster_; Rushworth’s _Historical Collections_; Sleidan’s _History of the Four Empires of Antiquity_; and a _Historia Universale_, published at Venice in 1605. Literature by Bacon’s _Essays_ and his _Latin Works_; the _Colloquies_ and _Praise of Folly_ of Erasmus; the _Princeps of Machiavelli_; Milton’s _Defensio Populi Anglicani_; and King Charles’ _Works_. Other books worth mentioning were Boquet’s _Discours execrable des Sorciers_, and his _Histoire de Faust_; a _Life of