_Authenticated Instances of Longevity._--Your correspondent A. B. R. (antè, p. 145.) and others argue _their_ question of the old Countess of Desmond very ably;--will any one of them be pleased to argue _my_ question? Is there one word of truth in the story, or any other story that rests, as a preliminary condition, on the assumption that people have lived to one hundred and fifty years of age? Of course the proof is to rest on dates and facts, parish registers--on _clear legal evidence_. It is admitted by actuaries and others, learned in such matters, that the average duration of life is greater now than it was; so, we might fairly assume, would be the exceptional life. Can these gentlemen refer us to a single instance of an insured person who lived to one hundred and fifty? to one hundred and forty, thirty, twenty, ten? aye, to one hundred and ten? There is a nonsensical inscription to this effect on the portrait of a man of the name of Gibson, hung up in Greenwich Hospital, but its untruth has been proved. I also remember another case made out to the entire satisfaction of some benevolent ladies, by, as afterwards appeared, the baptismal register of John the father being made to do duty as the register of John the son. I mention these things as a warning; I protest, too, at starting against flooding "N. & Q." with evidence brought from Russia or America, or any of the back settlements of the world, and against all evidence of people with impossible memories. What I want is _good legal evidence_; the greatest age of the oldest members of the Equitable, Amicable, and other Insurance offices--lives certainly beyond the average; the greatest age of a member of the House of Peers coming within the eye of proof. When these preliminary questions, and reasonable inferences, shall have been determined, it will, I think, be quite time enough to raise questions about the old Countess, old Parr, old Jenkins, and other like ante-register longevities. O. C. D. Minor Queries Answered. _Laud's Letters and Papers._--Can any of your correspondents inform one where any unpublished letters or papers of Archbishop Laud are to be met with, besides those at Lambeth or in the British Museum? Anthony à Wood mentions his speech against Nathanael Fiennes; and Wanley, in his _Catalogue of English and Irish MSS._, states that many of his writings, both political and theological, were extant at that time in private libraries. B. J. [Archbishop Laud's _Works_ are now in the course of publication in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, and from the editor's valuable bibliographical prefaces to vols. i. and ii., we think it probable that some notices of these MSS. will be given in the subsequent volumes. Our correspondent may also consult _Catalogi Librorum Manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ_, Oxon. 1697.]