At the end, on a fly-leaf is some scribbling in what is described as “a Merovingian hand.” (2) The Greek Ms. of the ninth or tenth century, imperfect in the beginning, and in several other places, described by Wanley as the Codex Prusensis.  The initial letters, some of which are ornamented, are generally red. (3) A volume numbered 5694 in the catalogue, and containing a part of Lucian’s works, on 134 leaves of fine vellum of the tenth century.  On the second fly-leaf are these words in an Italian fifteenth-century hand:  “Libro de Jo.  Chalceopylus, Constantinopolitanus,” and at the bottom of the page, “Antonii Seripandi ex Henrici Casolle amici optimi munere.”  Wanley says that this Ms. was supposed to have been carried from the old imperial library at Constantinople to the monastery of Bobi near Naples.  He considered it “the finest old Greek classical Ms. now in England.”  The library of Seripandus was preserved in the Augustinian monastery of St. John of Carbonara at Naples, but a part of it was sold to Jan de Witt, who took it to Holland, and this manuscript was among the number, and was included in the sale catalogue of De Witt’s library in 1701.  It was bought by Jan van der Mark of Utrecht, and on this account it is described in the Amsterdam edition of the work as the Codex Marcianus.  Later on it came into the possession of John Bridges of Northamptonshire, who sold it to the second Lord Oxford.

The earliest Latin Ms. in the Harleian library is a copy of the four Gospels of the sixth or seventh century—­No. 1775.  It was bought by the founder of the library from Jean Aymon, who stole it, together with eight other manuscripts, from the Bibliothique Royale in Paris, in 1707.  It still bears on folio 2 its original press-mark.  Another Ms. in Lord Oxford’s possession having been identified as one of these, was restored to its rightful owners in 1729.  This relic of early Christian times consists of 35 leaves of the Epistles of St. Paul, the canonical Epistle, and the Apocalypse, written in gold letters on vellum.  The adventure through which it found itself in the Harleian library together with the precious No. 1775, may be thus briefly related: 

Jean Aymon was a renegade French priest who had retired to the Hague, married, and become a Lutheran pastor.  He enjoyed a considerable reputation for learning and piety among the Dutch; but wearying of his monotonous, uneventful life, he resolved on returning to France under pretext of offering to Monsieur Clement, the king’s sub-librarian, a certain book which he had discovered.  He accordingly wrote to Clement asking him to procure him a passport, in order that he might present the book in question, and reveal some important matters to the king.  Clement obtained the passport, and Aymon returned to France, where, in order to ingratiate himself with the librarian, he declared that he wished to be restored in religion.  He was advised to retire for a time to the seminary