The loss of the famed Staunton or Warwickshire collection was even worse than that of the Shakespearean, rich and rare as that was, for it included the results of more than two centuries’ patient work, from the days of Sir William Dugdale down to the beginning of the present century.  The manuscript collections of Sir Simon Archer, fellow-labourer of Dugdale, the records of the Berkeley, Digby, and Ferrers families, the valued and patient gatherings of Thomas Sharpe, the Coventry antiquarian, of William Hamper, the Birmingham collector, and of William Staunton himself, were all here, forming the most wonderful county collection ever yet formed, and which a hundred years’ work will never replace.  The books, many rare or unique, and of extraordinary value, comprised over 2000 volumes; there were hundreds of sketches and water-colour drawings of buildings long since destroyed, and more than 1,500 engravings of various places in the county, among them being some 300 relating to Birmingham, 200 to Coventry, 200 to Warwick Castle, 200 to Kenilworth Castle, and more than 100 to Stratford-on-Avon.  The thousand portraits of Warwickshire Worthies, more rare and valuable still, included no less than 267 distinct portraits of Shakespeare, every one from a different block or plate.  There was, in fact, everything about Warwickshire which successive generations of learned and generous collectors could secure.  Among other treasures were hundreds of Acts of Parliament, all pedigrees, pamphlets, &c., about the Earls of Warwick and the town of Warwick; the original vellum volume with the installation of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, to the Order of St. Michael, with his own autograph; volumes of rare, curious autographs of county interest; county poll books, newspapers and magazines; all the rare Civil War pamphlets relating to the Warwickshire incidents; ancient deeds, indulgences, charters, seals, rubbings of brasses long lost or worn away, medals, coins, hundreds in number; and rare and invaluable volumes, like the Duc de Nortombria’s “Arcano de Mare,” and two fine copies of Dugdale’s Warwickshire; besides hundreds of books, engravings, caricatures, pamphlets and tracts.  The catalogue of this precious collection had only recently been completed, but even that was burnt, so that there is nothing left to show the full extent of the loss sustained.  The only salvage consisted of three books, though most providentially one of the three was the splendid Cartulary of the Priory of St. Anne, at Knowle, a noble vellum folio, richly illuminated by some patient scribe four centuries ago, and preserving not only the names of the benefactors of the Priory, and details of its possessions, but also the service books of the Church, with the ancient music and illuminated initials, as fresh and perfect as when first written.  Of almost inestimable value, it has now an acquired interest in the fact of its being, so to speak, all that remains of all the great Staunton collection.