After I had been many years collecting these MSS playes,through my own carelessness and the ignorance of my servant in whosehands I had lodged them, they was unluckely burnd or put under pyebottoms...
Of the total collection only three plays and a fragment ofa fourth were saved from an ignominious fate at Betsy's hands andJohn Warburton has gone down in history as "the pie-eating herald".Although many of the lost manuscripts were probably of little interest,it has been conjectured that they may have included works by ThomasDekker,
John Ford,
Philip Massinger, Cyril Tourneur, and
William Shakespeare.
