A long narrow ledger-size volume of transcripts of state letters and papers, written from both ends, 156 pages (including blanks), in contemporary limp vellum.
The first 79 pages in a single mixed hand; pp. 1-19 comprising political tracts; pp. 19-79 devoted to material relating to Milton; pp. 150
-144 and 154 containing a few legal notes in Latin and a list of English Phrases derivd from ye Latine tongue. &c:
in another hand, with other notes chiefly at the reverse end in later hands c.1703.
Late 17th century.
Owned by, and with later entries in the hand of, Bernard Gardiner (1668-1726), Warden of All Souls College, Oxford. Later owned and inscribed by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt (1792-1872), book and manuscript collector: Phillipps MS 3993. Sotheby's, 27 June 1919, lot 819, and 1 June 1921, lot 1003.
Cited in IELM, II.ii (1993) as the Columbia MS. This MS used in Columbia (Vols. XIII, XVIII). The anonymous essays of Statues & Antiquities (pp. 3-4) and A breif description of Genoa, as well the legal notes and vocabulary, are edited in Columbia (XVIII, 258-62, 221-7) as doubtfully
by Milton. Iin fact there is no evidence that they have any connection with him unless, perchance, they were among the general state papers to which he had access. The MS also described in LR, IV, 277-9, and, with the text of the legal index, in Yale, I, 954-60.