to Bentham's 'History of Ely,' 1771, writing the lives of the bishops and deans, and the description of the Ely tablet (Athenæ Cantab. B. pt. i. f. 113; Davis, Olio of Biographical Anecdotes; Gent. Mag. lxxxiv. pt. ii. pp. 307, 413). He also contributed largely to Masters's 'History of Corpus Christi College.' Having a large collection of engraved portraits, he was enabled to give valuable assistance to Granger in preparing his 'Biographical History of England.' To Dr. Ducarel he sent a complete list of the chancellors of Ely, and afterwards several hints respecting his 'Tour in Normandy.' To Gough's 'Anecdotes of British Topography' he contributed in 1772 some valuable remarks; as he afterwards did respecting the 'Sepulchral Monuments;' and when the 'Memoirs of the Gentlemen's Society at Spalding' were printed in 1780, he supplied several anecdotes of the early members. He was a frequent writer in the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' and he gave John Nichols biographical hints and corrections relative to 'A Select Collection of Miscellaneous Poems.' In a similar way he improved the same author's 'Anecdotes of Hogarth' and 'History of Hinckley.' He transcribed Browne Willis's 'History of the Hundreds of Newport and Cotslow in Buckinghamshire,' and methodised them in ten folio volumes from the originals in four volumes, which Willis had delivered to him a few weeks before his death with a request that he would prepare them for publication. Cole's transcript is in the British Museum, and Willis's original copy is preserved, with his collections for the whole county, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Nichols, Lit. Anecdotes, i. 667 n.) His notes on Wood's 'Athenæ Oxonienses' are printed in Bliss's edition of that work. Finally he collected all the materials for Horace Walpole's 'Life of Thomas Baker,' the Cambridge antiquary.
Cole's chief literary monument, however, is the magnificent collection of manuscripts, extending to nearly a hundred folio volumes, in his own handwriting, which are deposited in the British Museum. He began to form this vast collection while at college, beginning with fifteen volumes, which he kept in a lock-up case in the university library, where he examined every book likely to yield information suitable to his purpose, besides transcribing many manuscript lists and records. The principal interval from this labour was during his residence at Bletchley (1752-67), but even there, with the aid of his own books and those he could borrow from his neighbours, he proceeded with his great undertaking, and on his frequent journeys he added to his topographical collections, illustrating them with neat copies of armorial bearings and rough but faithful drawings of churches and other buildings. At Waterbeach and Milton, where he was within an easy distance of Cambridge, he resumed his labour of love with renewed ardour, and in addition to dry historical matters, he carefully transcribed all his literary correspondence, and minutely chronicled all the anecdotes he heard respecting his contemporaries at the university. Some idea of his industry as a transcriber may be gathered from this passage in a letter to Walpole (12 Sept. 1777): 'You will be astonished at the rapidity of my pen when you observe that this folio of four hundred pages [Baker's 'History of St. John's'], with above a hundred coats of arms and other silly ornaments, was completed in six weeks; for I was called off for above a week to another manuscript, which I expected would be demanded of me every day; besides some days of visiting and being visited.' Again he remarks in a letter to Allen: 'I am wearing my eyes, fingers, and self out in writing for posterity, of whose gratitude I can have no adequate idea, while I neglect my friends, who I know would be glad to hear from me.' As he freely jotted down his inmost thoughts as to the merits or demerits of his acquaintances, he took care that no one, with the exception of two or three intimate friends, should see his manuscripts, either during his lifetime or within twenty years after his death. On the occasion of his sending the 'History of King's College' to Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, he wrote (2 March 1777) with reference to his manuscripts:' No person except Dr. Lyne and Mr. John Allen of Trinity College ever looked into them. Indeed, you are the only person that I should think a moment about determining to let them go out of my hands: and, in good truth, they are generally of such a nature as makes them not fit to be seen, for through life I have never artfully disguised my opinions, and as my books were my trusty friends, who have engaged never to speak till twenty years after my departure, I always, without guile, entrusted them with my most secret thoughts, both of men and things; so that there is what the world will call an ample collection of scandalous rubbish heaped together.' As an example of his strong prejudices, and his occasionally violent style of expressing them, the subjoined characteristic passage, which he added to his 'History of King's College' only a few months before his death, may be cited: 'Here I left off this work in 1752, and never began it again, quitting college that year for the rectory of Blecheley in Buck-
