Series 1 > Journals of Sir John Lauder, Lord Fountainhall, with his observations on public affairs and other memoranda, 1665-1676

JOURNAL OF JOHN LAUDER
.i-? "■
made available to the Scottish History Society by the owners.
The first is in the Library of the University of Edinburgh.
r^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 at his death his library was sold by public
auction. The mss. were dispersed, though their existence
and value was known to some of his contemporaries.1 Some
are lost, in particular the series of Historical Observes, 1660-
1680, which, judging from the sequel, which has been pre¬
served and printed by the Rannatyne Club, would have been
of great value. According to tradition the greater part of
what has been recovered was found in a snuff-shop by Mr.
Crosby the lawyer, the supposed original of Scott’s Pleydell,
and purchased at the sale of his books after his death by the
Faculty of Advocates.2
Eight volumes came into the possession of the Faculty
of Advocates, and under their auspices two folio volumes
of legal decisions from 1678 to 1712 were published in
1759 and 1761.3 In 1837 the Bannatyne Club printed
The Historical Observes, 1680-1686, a complete ms. in the
Advocates’ Library, and in 1848 they printed two volumes
of Historical Notices, 1661-1688. These are after 1678
selections from the same mss. from which the folio of 1759
1 Preface to Forbes’s Journal of the Session, Edinburgh, 1714.
2 MS. Genealogical Roll of the Family of Lauder by the late Sir Thomas Dick
Lauder, in possession of Sir T. N. Dick Lauder.
3 See Mr. David Laing’s Preface to the Historical Notices, p. xx, Bannatyne
Club.