The best antiquarian collections were those given to Oxford by Dr. Rawlinson in the last century, by Richard Gough in 1809, and by Mr. Douce in 1834. Mr. Macray has enumerated nearly thirty libraries which Richard Rawlinson had laid under contribution, and his list includes such headings as the Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, the Thurloe State Papers, the remains of Thomas Hearne, and documents belonging to Gale and Michael Maittaire, Sir Joseph Jekyll, and Walter Clavell of the Temple. He cites a letter written by Rawlinson in 1741, as showing the curious accidents by which some of these documents were preserved: 'My agent last week met with some papers of Archbishop Wake at a chandler's shop: this is unpardonable in his executors, as all his MSS. were left to Christ Church; but _quaere_ whether these did not fall into some servant's hands, who was ordered to burn them, and Mr. Martin Folkes ought to have seen that done.' Mr. Gough's collection related chiefly to English topography, Anglo-Saxon and Northern literature, and printed service-books; it is stated to contain more than 3700 volumes, all given by a generous bequest to form 'an Antiquary's Closet.' Mr. Douce's large library contained a number of Missals and _Livres d'Heures_. Some of these are described as 'priceless gems rivalled only by the Bedford Missal,' especially one prayer-book illuminated for Leonora, Duchess of Urbino, another that belonged to Marie de Medici, and 'a Psalter on purple vellum, probably of the ninth century, which came from the old Royal Library of France.' Among the most important of the earlier benefactions was the gift of the Dodsworth Papers by Thomas Lord Fairfax. The archives of the Northern monasteries had been kept for a time in eight chests in St. Mary's Tower at York. Roger Dodsworth, Sir William Dugdale's colleague in the preparation of the Monasticon, made copies of many of these documents; and when the tower was blown up in the siege of 1644 he was one of the zealous antiquarians who saved the mouldering fragments on the breach. His whole store of archaeological records became the property of Fairfax at his death. They are of great historical importance, but at one time they were strangely neglected. Wood says that all the papers were nearly spoiled in a damp season, when he obtained leave to dry them on the leads near the schools; but though it cost him a month's labour he undertook it with pleasure 'out of respect to the memory of Mr. Dodsworth.'