Twenty MSS. were given by Sir Thos. Herbert, Bart. of York.
An East India merchant of London, one John Ken, gave (with other MSS.)
the first Gentoo [i.e. Sanscrit.] book which the Library possessed. It
is noticeable what a real, although somewhat indiscriminating, interest
the London merchants appear to have taken in the Library. Continual
mention occurs not merely of books but of curiosities of all kinds,
natural and artificial, which persons engaged in commerce, chiefly with
the East Indies, sent as for a general repository. Most of these
curiosities are now to be found, it is believed, in the Ashmolean
Museum.
At some period between 1660 and 1667, _i.e._ during Clarendon's
Chancellorship of the University, two volumes of MSS. notes and
observations upon Josephus, by Sam. Petit, the Professor of Greek at
Nismes (who died in 1643), are said by Moreri to have been purchased by
Clarendon, for 150 louis d'or, and given to the University. But in
Bernard's Catalogue the volumes are said to have been bought by the
University 'ære suo.' Dr. T. Smith remarks, in his life of Bernard, that
when the latter was preparing to edit Josephus, he used 'Sam. Petiti
largis commentariis, longe antea in bibliothecæ Bodleianæ gazophylacium
ex Gallia transvectis,' but found that they were filled only with notes
from Rabbinical writers. They are now numbered Auct. F. infra, I. 1, 2.
One other MS. was certainly given by Clarendon, during his
Chancellorship. It is a Greek _Evangelistarium_ of the fourteenth
century, formerly the property of a monastery described as 'της παναγιας
της αχειροποιητου,' which was given by Parthenius, Patriarch of
Constantinople, to Heneage Finch, Earl of Winchelsea, when in Turkey, in
1661, as Ambassador from England, and subsequently given by Clarendon to
the University. On the cover is a silver crucifix, of Byzantine work. It
is now numbered Auct. D. infra II. 12.