Note 23 — Library of Lambeth Palace.

The copy of this Bible, which successively belonged to Tutet and Bindley, is remarkable as being the identical copy which one Thornton, by an artful counterfeit, sold to the Duke of Lauderdale, for seventeen guineas, pretending that the Epistle to the Romans began with “Paul an Kneawe,” &c. which, as Mr. Wanley has informed us, was effected by the erasure of the true words, “the servaunt”—and the insertion of the false reading, effacing also Matthew’s Preface, and all the dates except one, of which he erased the numerals xvii. at the end of M.DXXXVII. whereby the date stood thus, M.DXX. which is earlier than that of any English Bible. As it does not appear the above false reading was ever printed, it is not of much consequence, though noticed by Lewis, p. 47; Cotton, p. 4; and by Clarke, p. 30. See also the Bibliotheca Harleiana, 1. No. 154.