Deposited by the executors of Mr. H.R.Davies, D.L., LL.D. (d. November 1940). Mr Davies was one of the greatest friends and benefactors of this College for 35 years, and a particularly good friend of the Library : it was he who gave a blank cheque to Mr Shankland to secure the Goodwin Collection of Welsh ballads; it was he who paid Mr. J.E.Griffith of Bryndinas for a long run of the earliest issues of the North Wales Gazette and the North Wales Chronicle; it was he also who paid for the cataloguing of the 50,000 MSS. of the Porth-yr-Aur Collection.
He was a skilled researcher himself, his particular study being the history of the ferries from Abermenai to Tal-y-cafn : the overt proof of this was his illuminating article in the Inventory of Anglesey Ancient Monuments (1937, App. xi, pp. clxxii-clxxxiii) and the complete MS. left behind him in which that article had developed into a particularly massive and interesting book. Collateral with this concentrated study of the ancient ferries were his researches into the history of the communications between London, Wales, Ireland - he had assembled at Glynaethwy a truly formidable collection of transcripts, Parliamentary Papers, maps and prints, bearing upon the variegated aspects of these two main interests of his later years.
He was not satisfied with a merely superficial conspectus. He went deep into the records of the Middle Ages, insisted on full details of Ministers Accounts, brought to light obscure references in the Patent and Close Rolls, secured access to the records of the Office of Works and the treasury. He had, from time to time, a small army of the best professional copuists at work in the Public Record Office; their respective letters to him - being those of eminently expert people not only in the intricacies of paleography but in suggesting new lines of approach for the solution of refractory problems - are deserving of careful study by researchers; his letters to them are the best proof how wide was his range of interest, and how precise and exact his knowledge.
These MSS. contain both the actual transcripts and the note-books in which he analysed and tabulated the evidence in preparation for his article and his book,