Thanks to Mr G. Williams' Catalogue and Index to the Additional mss. (sometime known as the Baumgartner Papers) in the Camb. Univ. Library, we can easily collect the threads which connected the life of William Reneu with the famous John Strype.

In Nov. 1696, his father, Peter Reneu, wrote from London asking Strype to take the boy Willy, aged 7 years, as his pupil at his parsonage of Low Leyton in Essex (where Strype lived sixty-six years, though never inducted). Terms, £20 and presents offered, £30 accepted, (MS. Add Camb., tom. i. part ii. no. 165).

The boy was kindly treated by his tutor (i. ii. 166), to whom, when he was sent back after holidays (11 Oct. 1698—8 Sept. 1699—23 May, 1700), in his tenth, eleventh, and twelfth years, being found very troublesome at home, requests were forwarded to the effect that Willy should be kept more strictly, whipt now and then, and taught dancing instead of playing with the foot-boy and children in the village (iii. ii. 259, 260 : i. ii. 231).

The history of W. Reneu's Cambridge career must be told by the letters here printed from the originals of the Strype Correspondence in the ‘Baumgartner’ collection.