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Arthur Jefferies Collins was born on 30 September 1893. He was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA in 1915. After serving with the Royal North Devon Hussars during the First World War he became Assistant Keeper at the British Museum in 1919. From 1944 to 1947 he was Keeper of the Manuscripts at the British Museum. He was lecturer in Palaeography to the School of Librarianship at University College London between 1947 and 1955. In 1947 he returned to the British Museum to become the Keeper of Manuscripts and Egerton Librarian. He remained in this post until 1955.

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The Exchequer was responsible for receiving and dispersing the public revenue. The lower Exchequer, or receipt, closely connected with the permanent Treasury, was an office for the receipt and payment of money. The upper Exchequer was a court sitting twice a year to regulate accounts.
For a reference to Carpenter as messenger in 1577, see Cal.S.P.Dom. 1547-1580, 569.

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Robert Walpole's new position as Prime Minister was strengthened by his handling of a Jacobite conspiracy (known as the Atterbury plot after one of the main protagonists) uncovered in April 1722 and intended to take control of the government.
John Wilkes (1727-1797) was a politician and journalist who bought a seat in parliament in 1757. His outspoken attacks on King George II and his ministers in his journal the North Briton led to his arrest for seditious libel. He eventually served 22 months in prison, and, though repeatedly elected to Parliament from Middlesex, was refused his seat by the King's party. Wilkes was also elected Sheriff (1771) and Mayor (1774) of London.
The Emancipation rebellion of Western Jamaica was the largest rebellion in the British West Indies, involving some 20,000 slaves and led by the Baptist preacher Sam Sharpe whose main plan was a 'General Strike' against slavery. This led to widespread arson and military attacks, which ended with the death of 201 rebels during fighting and the trial and conviction of 750 slaves and 14 free persons.

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The principal royal seal is the great seal, introduced in the 11th century, and used to authenticate official documents. The amount and nature of the business passing through the royal chancery made it increasingly impractical for the writing office to continue within the king's household and the Chancellor, rather than the king himself, held the great seal in his care. The privy seal, taking over as the king's own personal or private seal, evolved within the King's household and eventually this office also moved out with the king's immediate control (to that of the Lord Privy Seal), changing from a mark of personal authentication to an official seal used in minor official matters.

The Privy Council is, historically, the British sovereign's private council. It lost most of its judicial and political functions in the middle of the 17th century, when the sovereign ceased to have responsibility for political decisions. It retained, however, the power to hear appeals to the sovereign, which were dealt with by a General Committee of the Privy Council.

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The Privy Council is descended from the Curia Regis, which was made up of the king's tenants in chief, household officials, and anyone else the king chose. This group performed all the functions of government. About the time of Edward I (reigned 1272-1307), the executive and advising duties of the Curia Regis came to be handled by a select group, the king's secret council, which later came to be called the Privy Council.

Melville was born in Scotland, 1723 and educated at Glasgow and Edinburgh universities. In 1744 he became an ensign in the Edinburgh Regiment where he steadily rose through the ranks and in 1751 obtained his own company in the regiment. In 1760, on the death of his current commander he was appointed Governor of Guadeloupe and from there in 1760 appointed Governor to the Ceded Islands (Grenada, the Grenadines, Dominica. St Vincent and Tobago). His interests as an antiquary motivated him to study numerous locations for historical military purposes and he was also as member of the Society of Arts. When he died, in 1809, he was the oldest General in the British Army.

Thomas Newton was born 21 December 1719. He was educated at the 'Choir of St. Paul's Cathedral' in London. Instead of going into business, Newton was educated by a tutor and subsequently devoted his life to his writings and to the affairs of his friends. His literary works included a novel, James and Julia, Grammar and Literary Criticism and Religious History. On the death of his father in 1757 Thomas Newton moved to Westminster. Having no children or close relatives late in his life, Thomas Newton had decided to bequeath his inheritance to a charitable institution. Originally he had intended to leave his estate to the Marine Society. However, on hearing of the foundation of the Literary Fund (created in 1790, later, the Royal Literary Fund) Newton decided to bequeath his inheritance to them instead. He died on 5 February 1807. The General Committee of the Royal Literary Fund were both the executors and trustees of the Thomas Newton bequest. By about 1830 the duties of the executors had ceased. However, as trustees of the Thomas Newton bequest, the Royal Literary Fund were still dealing with issues generated by Newton's property in the East End of London until 1954.

Edward David Stern was born on 18 July 1854. He received his university education from King's College, London. He was the head of the firm Stern Brothers and also Major in the Berkshire Imperial Yeomanry. In 1904 he became the High Sheriff of Surrey. He also served as President of the Surrey Unionist Association and President of the League of Mercy. Stern was knighted in 1904 and was created a baronet in 1922. He died 17 April 1933.

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A diurnal gives the divine office for the 7 day Hours of the Catholic Church - namely Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline.

Douglas John Foskett was born on 27 June 1918. He was educated at Queen Mary College, London, (BA 1939) and Birkbeck College, London (MA 1954). Foskett held positions at municipal and academic libraries, Ilford Municipal Libraries 1940-1948, Librarian of the University of London Institute of Education 1957-1978 and Director of Central Library Services and Goldsmith's Librarian at the University of London, 1978-1983. He was Chairman of the Library Association in 1962, Vice President, 1966 to 1973 and President in 1976. He also served on many library committees including, Honorary Library Adviser to the Royal National Institute for the Deaf 1965 to 1990; member of the Advance Committee on Science and Technical Information 1969 to 1973; a Committee member for UNISIST/UNESCO and EUDISED/Council of Europe Projects. Foskett was a visiting Professor at the Universities of Michigan, 1964; Ghana, 1967; Ibadan 1967; Brazilian Institute for Bibliography and Documentation, 1971 and the University of Iceland 1974. He has published widely on information services. Publications include Assistance to Readers in Lending Libraries, 1952, Reader in Comparative Librarianship, 1977, as well as contributions to many professional journals.

Thomas Wakley (1795-1862) qualified as a doctor in 1817 and set up a practice in London. He was the founder of the medical journal The Lancet (1823), which he used to campaign for medical reforms such as a united profession of apothecaries, physicians, and surgeons and a new system of medical qualifications to improve standards. He was elected as the Radical MP for Finsbury in 1835 and remained in the House of Commons for the next 17 years, where he was a vigorous advocate of parliamentary reform. Wakley was largely responsible for setting up the Royal College of Surgeons (1843) and the General Council of Medical Education and Registration (1858).

Cyril Ernest Wright was born in 1907 and was educated at George Watson's College, Edinburgh. He received an MA in English Language and Literature with first class Honours in 1929 from Edinburgh University. At Clare College, Cambridge he received first class Honours in Archaeological and Anthropological Tripos in 1931 and in 1936 he was awarded a PhD. for his thesis on The Cultivation of Saga during the Dark Ages. His career was spent in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum where he became assistant keeper in 1933. After being seconded to the Telegraphic Censorship and Home Office during the War, Wright returned to the British Museum to take up the post of Deputy Keeper of manuscripts in 1955. He was Senior Deputy Keeper from 1961 to his retirement in 1972. Wright was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1941 and served on several of the Society's committees including the Croft Lyons Committee from 1957 until his death. He was a member of the British Records Association from 1940 to 1970. He contributed to 30 publications during his career on subjects such as Icelandic, Anglo-Saxon, and Middle English literature, on palaeography and on heraldry; and the history of collectors and libraries, from the dispersal of the monastic libraries to the collections of the eighteenth century. He died in 1980.

Noel Gilroy Annan was born in 1916 and attended Stowe School and King's College, Cambridge. He served during World War Two in the War Office Cabinet Offices and Military Intelligence, 1940-1944, and as GSO1 at the Political Division of the British Control Commission, 1945-1946. He became a Fellow at King's College, Cambridge, in 1947, and remained there as a Lecturer in Politics from 1948 to 1966, during which period he was Provost of the College, 1956-1966. In 1966 he was appointed Provost at University College London, a post which he held until 1978. Annan was Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 1978 to 1981. His other positions included acting as a Governor of Stowe School, 1945-1966, and Queen Mary College, London, 1956-1960; Trustee of Churchill College, Cambridge, 1958-1976, the British Museum, 1963-1980, and the National Gallery, 1978-1985; and the Director of the Royal Opera House, 1967-1978. He sat on numerous committees, most notably the Public Schools Commission, 1966-1970, and the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting, 1974-1977. In addition, Annan published several books, including Our age: portrait of a generation (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1990); Leslie Stephen: his thought and character in relation to his time (MacGibbon and Kee, London, 1951); Leslie Stephen: the godless Victorian (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1984); Changing enemies: the defeat and regeneration of Germany (HarperCollins, London, 1995); and The dons: mentors, eccentrics and geniuses (HarperCollins, London, 1999).Annan was given a life peerage in 1965. He died in 2000.

During the weekend of 10-12th April 1981 serious civil disorder occurred in the Brixton area of south London: 279 policemen were injured, 45 members of the public are known to have been injured and 28 buildings were damaged or destroyed by fire. As a result the Secretary of State for the Home Office appointed Lord Scarman to inquire urgently into the serious disorder in Brixton and to report with the power to make recommendations.

Walter Boyd (1754-1837) worked as a banker in Paris previous to the French Revolution, which led him to flee for his life, leaving the assets of his firm Boyd, Ker and Co to be confiscated in October 1793. He established another banking firm, Boyd, Benfield and Co, in London in the same year, and was for a time very successful. Boyd and his partner Paul Benfield were elected to parliament for Shaftesbury (1795-1802). However, the permanent loss of his Paris properties eventually led to the liquidation of the firm and Boyd's financial ruin. Boyd visited France during the brief interval of peace (March 1802-May 1803), and was detained when war broke out again. He was not released until the fall of Napoleon in 1814. On his return to England Boyd recovered some of his former prosperity, becoming MP for Lymington from 1823-1830. He also wrote several pamphlets on financial subjects.
See also S.R.Cope, Walter Boyd : a merchant banker in the age of Napoleon (1983).

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Excise are inland duties levied on articles at the time of their manufacture, notably, alcoholic drinks, but has also included salt, paper and glass. In 1643 a Board of Excise was established by the Long Parliament, to organize the collection of duties in London and the provinces. Excise duty was settled by statute despite widespread aversion in 1660. A permanent board of Excise for England and Wales was established in 1683 with separate boards for Ireland in 1682 and Scotland in 1707.

Charles Lethbridge Kingsford was born at Ludlow 25 December 1862. He received his education at St John's College, Oxford (1881-1886). After university he worked as a sub-editor for the Dictionary of National Biography for one year. Later, he went on to contribute nearly four hundred biographies for the Dictionary of National Biography. Kingsford also held positions at the Board of Education from 1890 to 1912. From 1912 he devoted all his time to historical research. He published works mainly on London history and topography. During the First World War Kingsford served as a special constable and at the Ministry of Pensions. After the war he was elected a fellow of the British Academy and prepared reports for the Historical Manuscripts Commission. Kingsford died at his home in Kensington on 27 November 1926.

Bibliographer, papyrologist, collector, and historian of Merovingian tapestries. De Ricci was an expert on the provenance of rare books. He created three reference books of manuscripts and rare books: Catalogue raisonné des premières impressions de Mayence, 1445-1467, Guide de l'amateur de livres à gravures du XVIIIe siècle, and Census of Medieval Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. In the field of Egypt papyrology, De Ricci traveled throughout Egypt, North America, and Europe to study works in various collections, publishing a bibliography of Egyptology in Revue Archéologique (1917-1918), and the Receuil Champollion (1922). He compiled specific and detailed information on each collection that he studied, which included the maiolica pottery and signed bookbindings in the Mortimer L. Schiff collection, and the Merovingian tapestries in the Pierpont Morgan collection in New York City. On completion of his Census of Medieval Manuscripts in the United States and Canada in 1934, De Ricci approached the Institute of Historical Research in London with the possibility of conducting a similar survey of manuscript sources in the British Isles. De Ricci was continuing the process of listing and gathering information, begun in 1902, when he died in 1942.

For more information on the 'Bibliotheca Britannica Manuscripta' project, please consult Joan Gibbs, 'Seymour de Ricci's Bibliotheca Britannica Manuscripta' in Calligraphy and Palaeography: Essays presented to Alfred Fairbank on his 70th Birthday (Faber, London, 1965)

Sir John Robert Seeley was born in London on 10 September 1834, He received his education from the City of London School and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1857. From 1857 to 1859 Seeley taught classics at Christ's. In 1859 he left Cambridge to become chief classical assistant at the City of London School and in 1863 he was appointed professor of Latin at University College London. In 1869 Seeley became professor of modern history at Cambridge; a position he held for the rest of his life. Seeley published works on the classics and history. Among his chief works are, Ecce Homo 1865, The First Book of Livy, 1871, The Life and Times of Stein, or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age, 1878 and Lectures on Political Science, 1895.

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A Breviary is a book furnishing the regulations for the celebration of Mass or the canonical Office. It contains the Psalter, the Proper of the Season, Proper of the Saints, the Common, and certain special Offices.

Margaret Alford was a lecturer in Latin at the University of London. In 1890 she graduated from Girton College, Cambridge University, with a degree in Classics. Alford was a visiting lecturer at Girton College, 1891 to 1917 and Westfield College, London, 1894-1919. She was head of the Department of Latin at Bedford College, University of London, between 1904 and 1909.

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John Churchill (1650-1722) was an English general and statesman. His active part in suppressing Monmouth's rebellion led to him being raised to the peerage (1685), and following his support of William of Orange during the Glorious Revolution, he was created Earl of Marlborough in 1688. Mainly due to his wife Sarah's position as Queen Anne's main confidant, Marlborough rose to the height of his powers during the early part of Anne's reign, enjoying military success in the War of the Spanish Succession, and becoming politically powerful in England. Accusations of the mishandling of public funds led to his dismissal in 1711, and though he was returned to favour under George I and was again the chief commander of the Army, he played little part in public life until his death in 1722.

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The term 'customs' applied to customary payments or dues of any kind, regal, episcopal or ecclesiastical until it became restricted to duties payable to the King upon export or import of certain articles of commerce. A Board of Customs for England and Wales was created in 1671.

Born in Ceylon in 1890, Eric John Dingwall was a graduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He joined the staff of the Cambridge University Library in 1915 as a volunteer and went on to become an assistant librarian, leaving in 1918. In his youth he developed an enduring interest in magic and was eventually elected to the Magic Circle. This informed his approach to the investigation of the physical phenomena of mediumship, his major contribution to the Society for Psychical Research which he joined in 1920. In 1921 he spent a year in the United States as Director of the Department of Physical Phenomena at the American Society for Psychical Research. He was then appointed research officer to the British Society in 1922. One facet of Dingwall's complex character was his interest in sexual deviation and peculiar sexual practices, an interest which annoyed some of his colleagues at the Society and led to the termination of his appointment in 1927. His failure to be elected to the Society Council in 1928 led to his excessive criticism of the Society's administration. Released from his responsibilities at the SPR he continued to publish books including "Ghosts and Spirits in the Ancient World" (1930), "The Girdle of Chastity" (1931) and "How to Use a Large Library" (1933). In 1932 he was awarded his DSc from University College London. During the Second World War he worked for the Ministry of Information and in "a department of the Foreign Office". After the war he became Honorary Assistant Keeper at the British Museum Library, later the British Library, where he became a recognised authority on historical erotica, as well as on magic and psychical research. He also continued to publish books including two collections of short biographies of strange characters, "Some Human Oddities" (1947) and "Very Peculiar People" (1950) and contributed to to a four volume treatise "Abnormal Hypnotic Phenomena: A survey of nineteenth century cases" (1967/68). Dingwall was married twice. His first wife Doris left him, his second wife was Dr Margaret Davies who died on Christmas Eve 1976. Dingwall spent his remaining years independently and alone until his death on 7 August 1986.

De Morgan , family

Augustus de Morgan was born at Madura, India in 1806. In February 1823 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1827. In 1828 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at University College London. With a short break from 1831-1836, he retained this post until his retirement in 1861. He was married in 1837 to Sophia Elizabeth Frend. During his lifetime de Morgan wrote thousands of books and articles on mathematics, logic, philosophy and many other subjects, though his outstanding contributions were made in the field of logic. He died in 1877. His son, William Frend de Morgan, was born in London in 1839. He made his name initially in the arts and crafts movement, designing pottery tiles using medieval or art nouveau designs. Later he became a novelist with such success that he eventually abandoned his artistic career. Collections of de Morgan's designs are held in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the William Morris Gallery. He died in 1917.

Ellen Lawless [Nelly] Robinson (nee Ternan) (1839-1914), actress, was born on 3 March 1839 at 11 Upper Clarence Place, Maidstone Road, Rochester, Kent, the third of four children of the actors Thomas Lawless Ternan (1790-1846) and his wife, Frances Eleanor, née Jarman (1802-1873). Ellen had two elder sisters, Frances Eleanor and Maria Susanna, and a younger brother who died in infancy. All three sisters entered the acting profession early. After the early death of their father in 1846 they were obliged to earn their living, touring the north of England, Ireland, and Scotland with their mother. Nelly's first adult engagement was in a burlesque at the Haymarket in 1857, and it was after this that she was engaged by Charles Dickens, with her mother and Maria, to perform with his amateur company in The Frozen Deep in Manchester. It was during this theatrical engagement that Ellen began a relationship with Dickens which was to continue until his death in 1870. Dickens left Nelly £1000 in his will and set up a private trust fund which freed her from the necessity of working again after his death in 1870. She travelled abroad, then on 31 January 1876, in the parish church at Kensington, she married a clergyman twelve years her junior, George Wharton Robinson (1850-1910). She helped her husband to run a boys' school in Margate, and gave birth to a son and a daughter. Her last years were spent at Southsea, where she was reunited with her sisters. She died from cancer at 18 Guion Road, Fulham, London, on 25 April 1914 and was buried in the Highland Road cemetery, Southsea, in her husband's grave. Frances Eleanor Trollope (1835-1913), was born in August 1835 on a paddle-steamer in Delaware Bay during her parents' tour of America. After a successful career on the stage she went to Florence to study opera singing, and became governess to Bice (Beatrice), the daughter of the widowed Thomas Adolphus Trollope (1810-1892). On 29 October 1866 she married her employer. They lived in Italy for many years. She wrote a number of novels, several of which, including 'Aunt Margaret's Trouble' (1866) and 'Mabel's Progress' (1867), were serialized anonymously by Dickens in All the Year Round. After her husband's death in 1892 she wrote the life of her mother-in-law, Frances Trollope (1779-1863). During her last years her sister Ellen lived with her in Southsea, and she died there on 14 August 1913. Maria Susanna Taylor (1837-1904) nee Ternan, sister of Ellen and Frances Eleanor, appeared with her sisters on the stage until her marriage, on 9 June 1863, to William Rowland Taylor, the son of a prosperous Oxford brewer. Shortly after her mother's death she left her husband, and at the age of forty enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art to learn to paint. She made her home in Rome and travelled adventurously in north Africa; and she worked as an artist and journalist, writing for the London Standard for more than twelve years. She returned to England in 1898 and died in Southsea on 12 March 1904.

Verdi was born in Le Roncole, Italy, in 1813. He showed a talent for music as a child and started his career teaching music, undertaking church duties and conducting the town orchestra. He moved to Milan and became famous for his operas, the most well known of which include, Simon Boccanegra (1857), Otello (1886) and Falstaff (1893). He died in 1901.

Arthur Dickens was born in 1910, and educated at Hymers College, Hull and Magdalene College, Oxford, where he gained a degree in history. Following graduation, he became a Fellow and Tutor at Keble College (1933-1949) and an Oxford University Lecturer in sixteenth century English History (1939-1949), with a break for service in the Royal Artillery during World War Two. In 1949, Dickens was appointed Professor of History at the University of Hull, later becoming Deputy Principal and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, 1950-1953, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor, 1959-1962. He took up the post of Professor of History at King's College London in 1962, where he remained until becoming Director of the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) and a Professor of History in the University of London, 1967-1977. Dickens was also active in other bodies, including President of the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1966-1968; a member of the Advisory Council on Public Records, 1968-1976; an advisor to the Council on the Export of Works of Art, 1968-1976; Secretary, Chairman and General Secretary of the British National Committee of Historical Sciences, 1967-1979; Foreign Secretary of the British Academy, 1969-1979; and Vice-President of the British Record Society, 1978-1980; Dickens enjoyed "a deep love affair with Germany" [Partick Collinson, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 77, p21], was a moving force in the establishment of the German Historical Institute in London and was decorated by the German government. His major publications include Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York, 1509-58 (1959); The English Reformation (1964); and The German Nation and Martin Luther (1974). Professor Dickens died in 2001.

Charles Harding Firth was born in Sheffield on 16 March 1857. He received his education from Clifton College, New College, Oxford and Balliol College, Oxford where he graduated with a degree in Modern History in 1878. After lecturing for a period at his uncle's foundation, Firth College, he moved to Oxford in 1883. He was a history lecturer at Pembroke College, from 1883 to 1893, Ford's lecturer 1900-1901, in 1902 he became a research fellow at All Souls and he was Regius Professor of Modern History from 1904 to 1925. He was one of a group of historians who established the English Historical Review in 1886. He served as president of the Royal Historical Society from 1913-1917 and twice as president of the Historical Association, 1906-1910, and 1918-1920.

Firth received honorary degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Durham, Cambridge, Sheffield, Manchester and Oxford. He was given a knighthood in 1922. Firth's areas of historical interest included the military, travel, colonisation and Oliver Cromwell. Firth's works include, the Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, 1886, Oliver Cromwell 1900 and The House of Lords During the Civil War, 1910.

George Herbert Perris was born in Liverpool in 1866. He began a career in journalism in 1883. He held various posts in provincial and national newspapers. During World War One he was war correspondent for the Daily Chronicle in France. He also published many works on foreign policy and military history. He died 23 December 1920.

Godfrey Fox Bradby was born in 1863. He was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford. He was Assistant Master at Rugby from 1888 to 1920 and Housemaster from 1908 to 1920. Bradby published works on history including, The Great Days of Versailles and on literature including, About Shakespeare and his Plays and several novels. He retired in 1920 and died on 20 June 1947.

John Horace Round was born on 22 February 1854. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford where he received an MA in modern history. He was Historical Adviser to the Crown in Peerage cases; Vice President of the Essex Archaeological Society, (President from 1916 to 1921) and Vice President of the English Place Name Society. He published many works of history including Geoffrey de Mandevill, 1892; The Commune of London, 1899; Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, 1899; Studies in Peerage and Family History, 1900; Peerage and Pedigree, 1910; The King's Sergeants, 1911. He also contributed to the Dictionary of National Biography, Victoria County History and to the English Historical Review. Round died on 24 June 1928.

Jones wrote several books on loyalists in the American Revolution, including The Loyalists of New Jersey; their memorials, petitions, claims etc from English Records (1927), The Loyalists of Massachusetts; their memorials, petitions, claims etc (1930) and The Society or Garrison of Fort Williamsburg; the Old Glynllivon Volunteers (1935). He also wrote books about church plate and the plate of other institutions, including The Old Plate of the Cambridge Colleges (1910), The Old Royal Plate in the Tower of London (1908), The Plate of Eton College (1938), Catalogue of the Plate of Merton College, Oxford (1938) and The Church Plate of the Diocese of Bangor (1906).

Logan was born in Liverpool in 1910 and went on to be educated at University College, Oxford. During 1935-1936 he held the Henry fellowship at Harvard and during 1936-1937 was assistant lecturer in Law at the London School of Economics. Logan was called to the bar (Middle Temple) in 1937 and also elected a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. During World War Two Logan worked for the Ministry of Supply before being appointed in 1944 as Clerk of the Court at London University where he became Principal in 1948. In 1959 Logan was knighted and went on to receive honorary fellowships from the London School of Economics (1962), University College Oxford (1973) and University College London (1975) as well as honorary degrees from numerous universities around the world. He died at University College Hospital, London, in 1987.

Roberts was born in Edinburgh in 1796, starting his professional life as a painter and decorator. After studying art in the evenings for some time, Roberts moved to London in 1822 and held an exhibition of his work at the Society of British Artists, becoming president of the society in 1831. He was most famous for sketches of foreign lands. Some of the sketches contained in MS 927 were exhibited at the Barbican Art Gallery during 1967.

Amy Ernestine Buller was born in London on 9 November 1891. She was brought up in South Africa as a Baptist, returning to England in 1911. Soon after, she went to Germany to learn the language, and to complete matriculation for Birkbeck College, London, where she took her degree in 1917 and became an Anglo-Catholic. She joined the Student Christian Movement (SCM) after the First World War and was appointed organising secretary in 1921. Moving from Manchester to become a London secretary in 1922, Buller organised a great many conferences and retreats bringing people of different doctrines and nations together. In 1929, she was appointed with 3 others to lead the SCM. In 1931, however, she left the movement to become warden of a women's residential hall at the University of Liverpool. During the 1930s she organised a number of delegations of prominent British churchmen to Germany in a bid for peace and to understand Nazism: what she saw as a new religion but ultimately condemned. She compiled a series of her conversations with people she had met in Germany and her views on the importance of some kind of religion to young people which were published under the title: Darkness over Germany (Longman Green, 1943).
Buller resigned from the University of Liverpool in 1942 and moved to London. Her time was taken up with plans to set up a new religious college. Initially, this was to be at the vacated precinct of the hospital of St. Katharine's, Regents Park. Her plans for a college at St Katharine's ran into difficulty both in terms of ethos and geographical issues and she had to abandon the location and search for another. After several other failures to a secure a site for her college, Buller was granted the use of Cumberland Lodge at Windsor Park after the death of its previous inhabitant, Lord Fitzalan. Buller wanted to retain the connection with St Katharine's, but the college had to remain separate from the original foundation. She decided to retain the same name, albeit with a different spelling, associated with St. Catharine, the Patron Saint of Philosophers. The name of the college changed in 1966 to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Foundation of St. Catharine's, Cumberland Lodge.
The college was designed as a place where students could discuss important matters of life and society in a pleasant environment, being given intellectual stimulus in areas outside their normal academic studies. It was a Christian foundation, although non-Christian students were admitted, the religious aspect was always fundamental, although the intention was to make it unobtrusive. Amy Buller remained Honorary Warden at the college until 1966. She died in 1974, aged 83.
(Taken largely from Walter James, A short account of Amy Buller and the founding of St. Catharine's Cumberland Lodge, printed privately (1979)).

Sir George Biddell Airy was educated at Cambridge and became Plumain Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Cambridge Observatory in 1828. In 1835 he accepted the post of Astronomer based at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, which he held until 1881. In 1835 Airy was invited to become a member of the University of London Senate. Although he was unable to attend Senate meetings on a regular basis, he discussed the pressing issues of the University at the time with other Senate members, in particular Sir John William Lubbock, 3rd Bt. Airy also served on the University's Sub Committee on Mathematics and Natural Philosophy and the Committee on Certificates of Proficiency. He resigned from the Senate in August 1847.

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Son of the deposed King James II of England, James Edward Francis Stuart made several abortive attempts to regain the English throne. In 1715 John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar, raised a Jacobite rebellion in Scotland, and the Pretender landed at Peterhead, Aberdeen, on 22 Dec 1715. By 10 Feb 1716, the uprising had collapsed and James had returned to France.

Smoldon was born at Forest Gate and trained as a teacher. His training included a period at Trinity College of Music: he was also a pupil of C H Kitson and took the University of London BMus and PhD. He held senior music posts at Stratford Grammar School (1934-47) and Cheshire Training College, Alsager (1948-62). He was an authority on medieval liturgical music drama, and wrote 'The Music of the Medieval Church Dramas' (ed Cynthia Bourgealt, Oxford University Press, 1980) and transcribed various medieval dramas, including 'Daniel' (Faith Press, 1960), 'Herod' (Stainer and Bell, 1960) and 'Peregrinus' (Oxford University Press, 1965). He died on 17 August 1974.