The first manuscript in this series, Add. 43, appears in the original list of 337 Additional Manuscripts in the fifth volume of A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, 5 vols plus index (Cambridge, 1856–67), where it is briefly reported on page 185 as ‘The History of the Three Kings Melchior, Balthazar and Jaspar’, and is described as forming part of the Baumgartner Papers, presented in 1859 and 1861. It is perhaps appropriate that this catalogue, which begins with the Journey of the Magi, should end, on the brink of the Second World War, with Add. 6981, a collection of German theology, whose first text was originally printed in Cologne, the gift of Sir Ellis Minns.

The three hundred and more manuscripts here described reflect primarily the taste and interests of the four distinguished Scholar-Librarians of the University, Henry Bradshaw (University Librarian 1867–86), William Robertson Smith (1886–89), Francis John Henry Jenkinson (1889–1923) and Alwyn Faber Scholfield (1923–49). In the limited time available to them from more general Library duties, we see them leafing through booksellers’ and auction catalogues, occasionally buying or bidding, entertaining callers who might have a book to present, and occasionally receiving munificent benefactions. These might sometimes come from old friends: some of them living, like Sir Stephen Gaselee, whose interest in renaissance humanism contributed uniquely to the collection; some of them long deceased, such as Tobias Rustat, Yeoman of the Robes to Charles II who, while no scholar himself, gave £1000 in 1666 to provide a fund of £50 per annum for the purchase of the best and most useful books for the Library, thereby providing a small but steady source of income which could be drawn upon for occasional manuscript purchases. The Rustat Benefaction's only competitor in the period covered by this catalogue was the bequest of the solicitor and antiquary Arthur Bromby Wilson- Barkworth of Jesus College, who in 1929 bequeathed his residuary estate to the University for the purchase of original manuscripts or other material bearing upon the local history of England and more especially of the East Riding of Yorkshire. This benefaction was to be used to fund a number of distinguished purchases in 1936, notably Add. 6858, Erasmus's translation of Plutarch's De Discrimine Adulatoris et Amici, intended for presentation to Henry VIII.