I beat you to it CP!

The William Clarke manuscript _was_ in the Lincoln Records Office according to the late Barry Callaghan but it seems to have gone walkies.

With regard to Jack's comment about archives not being responsible guardians of the stuff, it's a difficult one to assess. People die and their precious artifacts end up in a skip. Libraries burn down. There's even a story about a university music librarian having a bonfire and a pile of mss being rescued from the pile of stuff to be burned so not even academic librarians are to be trusted to treat the stuff with respect. There are not many manuscripts from Dorset because apparently, a folklorist went round collecting them between the wars and had a fair old stash in his house, which then suffered a direct hit in the 2nd WW and the lot were lost.

It would be sad if the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library burned down and all that stuff gathered together in one spot were to be lost.

Much better to get it all copied, digitised, transcribed and available and better still, get it back in circulation being played! I think the phrase 'use it or lose it' probably covers it.