Bound in red goatskin with elaborate gold tooling, gilt edges, George IV's coat of arms as Prince Regent on the front and back boards

 John Hayter was an antiquary and Chaplain in Ordinary to George Prince of Wales (afterwards King George IV).  Some of the Prince of Wales’s less frivolous interests included the classics and antiquities, and in 1800 he offered to finance and take responsibility for the continuing unrolling and deciphering of a library of scrolls first found in 1752 at Herculaneum.  This had been started after their initial discovery under the kings of the Two Sicilies, but there was not the financial ability or interest to continue with the project.  The Prince of Wales appointed Hayter to be his ‘man on the spot’, and Hayter wrote his master two reports on what had already been achieved in 1800, his expectations for the project, and in 1811 his final report of progress after the capture of Sicily by the French.  He managed to rescue ninety-four facsimiles of the manuscripts to bring back to England, which the Prince of Wales presented to Oxford University, along with four original papyri, and received a Doctorate of Civil Law for his patronage of the project.