ABSTRACT
The Chair of Palaeography at King's is the only endowed Chair of Palaeography in the English-speaking world. None of the great North American palaeographers has held an established Professorship of Palaeography since the retirement of Leonard Boyle in Toronto. In 1988 the Universities' Working Party on Palaeography recommended that a research fellowship in Palaeography or a lectureship be established in London. In 1817 Henri Beyle, whom we know as Stendhal, was aged thirty-four, living in Milan, in exile and in debt. He had just published his Histoire de la Peinture en Italie, an inspiring masterpiece of plagiarism. The palimpsests of Cicero, and of the great Roman lawyer Gaius, had added to the sum of major sources for the study of ancient literature. Palaeography had, of course, been taught by Professors of Palaeography in Paris since 1821, in Vienna since 1854, in Florence since 1880, in Louvain since 1881, in Prague since 1882 and in the Vatican since 1884.
