A benefaction from Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, of £60 to the Librarian
and of £10 for the purchase of books, appears for the first time in the
Accounts for this year. These sums (which are still annually paid into
the General Fund) proceed from a bequest of £200 _per ann._ from Crewe
(who died Sept. 24, 1721) to the University. A proposal to give these
same sums to the Library, with other assignments for the remainder, was
brought forward in Convocation on June 5, 1723, but the scheme was then
rejected[213]. And thus nearly thirty years seem to have elapsed from
the time of the bequest before the share for the Library was definitely
fixed and paid.
Charles Gray, M.P. for Colchester, presented a MS. Roll, containing a
Survey of the estates of the Abbey of Glastonbury at the Dissolution,
which is printed by Hearne in his Appendix to Langtoft's _Chronicle_,
vol. ii. pp. 343-388, from a copy made from this original; and an
inscription, in the Phœnician language, upon a white marble stone,
which was brought, with many others, from Citium, in the island of
Cyprus, by Dr. Porter, a physician of Thaxted in Essex. The stone
measures twelve inches in length, by three in breadth, and three in
depth. It has been frequently engraved: first by Pocock (_Travels in the
East_, vol. ii. pl. xxxiii. 2); next by Swinton (_Inscriptiones Citieæ_,
1750, and _Philos. Trans._ 1764); afterwards by Chandler, Barthélemy,
&c; and, lastly, by Gesenius (for whom former copies were collated with
the original, and corrected, by Mr. Reay) in his _Scripturæ Linguæque
Phœniciæ Monumenta_, published in 1837, where the inscription is
described at pp. 126-133, part i., and engraved at pl. xi. part iii. It
appears to be an epitaph by a husband in memory of his wife. The stone
is now kept in one of the Sub-librarians' studies.
Thomas Shaw, the well-known Eastern traveller, bequeathed his collection
of natural curiosities, which was sent to the Ashmolean Museum, and the
MS. of his own travels, with corrections, and other papers. Copies of
Caxton's _Game of the Chesse_ and _Recuyell of Troye_ were given by Mr.
James Bowen, of Shrewsbury, painter[214].
[213] Hearne's _Diary_, xcvii. 12.
[214] A MS. vol. of collections by him relating to the history of
Shropshire, dated 1768, is among Gough's books, Salop MS. 20.