* * * * *
Minor Queries Answered.
_Smyth's MSS. relating to Gloucestershire._--In Rudder's _History of
Gloucestershire_, title "Nibley," p. 575., is the following passage:
"John Smyth, of Nibley, ancestor to the present proprietor, was very
eminent for his great assiduity in collecting every kind of information
respecting this county and its inhabitants. He wrote the Genealogical
History of the Berkeley Family, in three folio MSS., which Sir William
Dugdale abridged and published in his _Baronage of England_. In three
other folio MSS. he has registered with great exactness _the names of
the lords of manors in the county in the year 1608_, _the number of men
in each parish able to bear arms, with their names, age, stature,
professions, armour, and weapons_. _The sums each landholder paid to
subsidies granted in a certain year_ are set down in another MS. He
likewise committed to writing a very particular account of the customs
of the several manors in the hundred of Berkeley, and _the pedigrees of
their respective lords_. These and some other MSS., which cost him
forty years in compiling, are now (1779) in the possession of Nicholas
Smyth, Esq., the fifth from him in lineal descent."
I shall feel much obliged to any of your readers who will inform me where
these MSS., or any of them, may now be seen. Those that I particularly want
to inspect are printed in Italics in the above quotation.