Among the many individual exhibits mention only can be made of the earliest example of English printing (1476), a signature of Shakes-peace, the ¢onfession of Guy Fawkes to the Gunpowder Plot—believed to have been wrung from him under torture—the Log of the Victory for the battle of Trafalgar, the "Scrap Paper" guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium in 1839, and the pencilled scrawl which made Foch the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in 1918, Of special interest to American visitors is a letter of George Washington to his "great and good friend" George III, dated August 25, 1795, In another case may be seen the Rush-Bagot Agreement (1817) which was destined to result in the disarmament of the whole Canadian frontier.
Most fascinating of all, perhaps, is the selection of letters and other documents relating to many of the] most famous figures of English literature. Here, for instance, is a Bill in the hand of Geoffrey Chaucer, written in his official capacity as Clerk of the King's Works; a letter from Edmund Spenser, the poet, relating to a dispute over lands; ai ion of John Milton for the se-ques tration of Royalist estates; an application by John yan for a preaching licence.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.