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 1921 'HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS' 99 2. An abridged and composite lords' journal for 1597/8. 3. Townshend's diary of the commons' proceedings in 1601. 4. The anonymous member's diary of the commons' proceed- ings in 1592/3. 5. Bowyer's abridgement of the official lords' journals. 1 The authorship of the Historical Collections is now a simple problem on its negative side. D'Ewes' Journals were compiled in 1629-30, 2 at least six years after Townshend's death ; proof enough that Towns hend had no direct concern with the work that bears his name. Indeed, in the body of the first journal in the book, there is a reference — derived, of course, from D'Ewes — to '. . . King James, and our present Soveraign his Son. . .', 3 which could not have been written by a man who died in 1623. I know, however, of no evidence which throws light on the author's real identity. Sir Roger Twysden borrowed D'Ewes' Journals in 1645 and compiled an abridgement from them, 4 but the principle of his selection was so - very different from that followed in the Historical Collections, that his name need not be associated with the work. Then Paul Bowes, who published D'Ewes' Journals in 1682, was writing for the loan of the manu- script originals of the journals in September 1678, 5 that is, very shortly before the publication of the Historical Collections ; and so it is possible, although I think it is improbable, that he was responsible for the book : he is said to have published D'Ewes' Journals in 1682 without permission of their owner, Sir Wil- loughby D'Ewes. 6 There is, however, so little real authorship in the Historical Collections that its secret is probably not worth penetrating. What does matter is that the source's of the book should be known, and especially its relation to D'Ewes' Journals. Owing to the lack of official commons' journals from 1584 to 1601, constitutional historians have been in an unusually large measure dependent upon these two unofficial compilations, so that the need of a critical review of their character may be regarded as fundamental to later Elizabethan parliamentary history. The present note enables us, to concentrate textual criticism upon D'Ewes' volume, realizing that such a stupid blunder as his entry of the quashing of forty-eight bills by Queen Elizabeth in 1597/8 7 is not less likely to be a blunder because it appears also in Historical Collections. J. E. Neale. 1 In all the manuscript copies that T have seen of the 1597/8 lords' journal (source no. 2, above), several days are missing (6, 7, 16, 20 December ; 21, 23, 28 January ; 8 February). Apparently they were missing also in the copy used by the author of Historical Collections, for consistently on each of these days he entered only a single bill. Evidently these entries were taken from Bowyer's abridgement. 2 D'Ewes' Autobiography, i. 409, 436. 3 Historical Collections, p. 5 ; D'Ewes' Journals, p. 422 b 4 Stowe MS. 359, fo. 13. 5 Harleian MS. 374, fo. 302. 6 See Wanley's note in Harleian Catalogue, ii. 312, to MS. 1888. 7 Ante, xxxiv. 586. EC 2