x JOURNAL OF JOHN LAUDER

made available to the Scottish History Society by the owners.
The first is in the Library of the University of Edinburgh.
The second is the property of the late Sir William Fraser's
trustees. The third has been lent by Sir Thomas North Dick
Lauder, Fountainhall's descendant and representative.
It was Lord Fountainhall's practice, during his whole life,
to record in notebooks public events, and his observations
upon them, legal decisions, and private memoranda. He
kept several series of notebooks concurrently with great
diligence and method. In all of those which have been
preserved there is more or less matter of value to the student
of history. But àt .his death his library was sold by public
auction. The :~zss. were dispersed, though their existence
and v alue was known to some of his contempomries.1 Some
are lost, in particular the series of Hiatorical Ob~erz~es, 16G0-
1680, which, judging from the sequel, which has been pre-
served and printed by the Bannaty ne Club, would hav e been
of great value. According to tradition the greater part of
what has been recovered was found in a snuff shop by 'L%fr.
Crosby the lawyer, the supposed original of Scott's l)leJdel1,
and purchased at the sale of his books after his death by the
Faculty of Advocates.2

Eight v olumes came into the possession of the Faculty
of Adv ocates, and under their auspices two folio volumes
of legal decisions from 1678 to 1712 were published in
1759 and 1761.~ In 1837 the Bannat3ne Club printed
The Hi~torical Ob~erz·es, 1680-1686, a complete ~IS, in the
Advocates' Library, and in 1848 they printed tw o v olumes
of Historical 11'otices, 1661-1688. These are after 1678
selections from the same atss. from which the folio of 1759

1 Preface to Forbes'sJourrral of the Scssiorr, Edinburgh, 1714,

2 :~tS. Genealogical Roll of the Family of Lauder by the late Sir Thomas Dick
Lauder, in possession of Sir T. N. Dick Lauder.

3 See Dtr. David Laing's Preface to the His~ori~al Noli~cs, p. xx, Bannatyne
Club.