ANTIQUARIAN & ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. TRACT SERIES, No. XI. THE MEMOIRS OF SIR DANIEL FLEMING TRANSCRIBED BY R. E. PORTER AND EDITED BY W. G. COLLINGWOOD. KENDAL TITUS WILSON & SON EDITOR'S PREFACE. Our Society has already printed, in the Tract Series of which this volume is the latest, two short works by Sir Daniel Fleming of Rydal, his Surveys of Cumberland and of Westmorland. These Memoirs were long lost, and his own manuscript, if there was such in any complete form, is still unknown; but an early copy was found and transcribed by Mr. R. E. Porter, and with the leave of Stanley Hughes le Fleming Esq., of Rydal Hall, is now printed. The MS. is on 2 + 58 pages of foolscap paper, watermarked GR under a royal crest, followed by 5 pages and two sheets inset, some of which have as watermark the royal arms quartering France, in a band inscribed 'Honi soit qui mal y pense,' surmounted with a crown. One inset has a watermark of a figure standing on a tomb and holding up a cup or crescent on a long staff, surrounded with an inscription beneath a crown. This last paper is in a rather late eighteenth century hand, but the body of the book is earlier. The whole is half-bound in marbled paper boards, the original pages cropped; the latest entry in the supplementary papers inset refers to 1747. This suggests that the copy was made rather early in the eighteenth century, after King George's accession, but not long after. This copy came to Rydal Hall from Ponsonby. The date of the compilation of the original Memoirs must be after 1681, when Sir Daniel was knighted, but before 1684, while Dr. Thomas Smith was still Dean of Carlisle. A few headings for intended sections or paragraphs suggest that the loose papers were never quite |