The question about the former owners of this fine manuscript is an interesting one. As to the devices on the first page, the first shield (within the initial O) is sable and gules per pale, a swan argent, the second (in the lower margin) sable, three ostrich feathers (argent?) set in three scrolls or, while in the right margin there is a crest of a lion, collared with label of three points, standing on a chapeau, and below is suspended a shield quartered az. and gules, with no device. The crest is evidently meant for that of John of Gaunt, though it is not quite correct, and the three ostrich feathers (properly ermine) were used by him as a recognisance (see Sandford’s _Genealogical Hist._ p. 249), while the swan is the well-known badge of Henry his son, to be seen suspended from Gower’s own collar of SS on his tomb and in the miniature of the Fairfax MS. It seems probable then that the book was prepared for presentation to a member of the house of Lancaster, probably either John of Gaunt or Henry. If it be the fact that the swan badge was not adopted by Henry until 1397, this would not be the actual copy sent on the occasion of the dedication to him in 1392-93. On the other hand the absence of all royal emblems indicates that the book was prepared before Henry’s accession to the throne. In the sixteenth cent. (Queen Elizabeth’s reign) the book belonged to one William Downes, whose name is written more than once on f. 170. The ornamental letters W. D. on f. 21 are probably his initials, and on f. 76 we have Phillipp Downes in a fifteenth-cent. hand. On f. 171 v^o there is a note about ‘the parsonages of Gwend ... and Stythians in the county of Cornewell, percell of the possessions of the late monastary of Rewley,’ and also about the ‘personage of Croppreadin in the county of Oxforde,’ granted for xxi years by Edward VI and paying lvi pounds a year. ‘T. P. Goodwyn’ is another name (seventeenth cent.). When Todd saw the MS. at the beginning of this century, it belonged to the Marquess of Stafford.