[Sir Robert Howard, playwright and politician.] Two Autograph Signatures (both ‘Ro: Howard’) among extensive manuscript endorsements of Exchequer document regarding ‘Sr Thomas Player in repaymt. of Loane.’

See the two men’s entries in the Oxford DNB and History of Parliament. Howard was Auditor of Receipt from 1673 to his death. The document is damaged, with the lower part torn away, leaving an area 23cm high and the same wide, but with part of one lower corner torn away. The paper is aged, and there are chipping and closed tears to edges. Howard’s two signatures (both ‘Ro: Howard’) are both undamaged, and the item is of some interest. On the front is the printed form, completed in manuscript, with ‘Sr. Thomas Player in repaymt. of Loane./’ in manuscript in right-hand margin. Directing the payment of ‘Two hundred six thousand four hundred sity two pounds seventeen shillings and three pence, arising by vertue of the said Act [for Granting a Supply to His Majesty [...] for Paying off and Disbanding the Forces Raised since the Nine and twentieth of September One thousand six hundred seventy and seven] unto [the rest in manuscript] Sr. Thomas Player knt. Chamblaine of ye Citty of London’. The endorsements on the reverse fill twenty-three close-written lines (nine of them incomplete), with calculations and instructions from Howard to ‘Mr. Downeing’ and ‘Sr. Tho. Vernon’. See image (edges overlap scanner surface)