So decided was Scott on this matter of anonymity that the legal form, dated 1818, conveying to Messrs. Constable & Co. the existing copyrights, contained a clause by which they were bound, under a penalty of £2000, never to divulge the author’s name during his lifetime; and a similar clause appeared in another legal instrument in 1821. There was no necessity for the manuscripts being re-written by James Ballantyne and others, unless it were to prevent the “Great Unknown” from being identified. The handwriting of Scott was eminently readable and easily followed, and so was that of his various amanuenses; and this for the compositor was a great boon.[30] Subsequent to transcription and publication, the “Waverley” manuscripts were either sent back to Scott himself or placed in charge of his intimate friend, William Erskine (Lord Kinnedder). After the latter’s death the manuscripts and correspondence were carefully sealed up and returned by Erskine’s trustees to Sir Walter, and these, along with others, were afterwards widely dispersed by private arrangement or at public sales. In 1823, four years prior to the public acknowledgment of the authorship of the Waverley Novels, Scott presented a number of his manuscripts to Constable. This gift was made on the morning after the first Bannatyne Club dinner, when the publisher received a letter from Scott begging his “acceptance of a parcel of MSS., which I know your partialities will give more value to than they deserve; and only annex the condition that they shall be scrupulously concealed during the author’s life.” Among those sent were manuscripts which had been in Lord Kinnedder’s possession, and also a few more from Abbotsford; but, before this, Constable had already in his possession the manuscripts of several of Sir Walter’s poems,—of “Rokeby,” “Marmion,” “Don Roderick,” “Waterloo,” “Lord of the Isles”; and also of the “Life of Swift.” That of the “Lay” was unfortunately not preserved, as it had not been thought important, till after the publication of “Marmion,” that such should be kept; but John Ballantyne long possessed the manuscript of “The Lady of the Lake,” and it was to him that Constable was indebted for “Rokeby.” The poet Hogg, referring to the manuscript of “Marmion,” says it was “a great curiosity, being all written off-hand on post-letters from Ashestiel, Mainsforth, Rokeby and London.”