The contents of the manuscript are as follows:

(i) `Scot`s Apologetical Narration`, the account by William Scott, minister of Cupar, of the affairs of the Church of Scotland from the Reformation to the meeting of parliament after the arrival of King Charles I in Edinburgh in 1633 (folio 1). The account was printed from an earlier, fuller, privately owned copy in ‘An apologetical narration of the state and government of the Kirk of Scotland since the Reformation …’, page 1. This copy is said by Laing (page vii) to have the name `Al: Dunlop` (professor of Greek at Glasgow University) inscribed on a flyleaf, but this cannot be seen on any of the surviving flyleaves, and to have possibly been transcribed from Wod.Qu.XV, with which it closely corresponds. For another, fuller, copy, see MS.3926.

(ii) `Mr James Melvil`s Historie` (folio 121), an account written in 1610 of the affairs of the Church of Scotland from 1596. It is not, as it was once commonly regarded, the continuation of the diary of James Melville, minister of Kilrenny (died 1614): allusions in the text indicate that this work was written in 1637, after the order for the introduction of the service book but before The Covenant of February 1638. It was printed, under the title of `A true narratioune of the declyneing aige of the Kirk of Scotland`, from an earlier copy by Ninian Dunlop in Edinburgh University Library, in ‘The autobiography and diary of Mr James Melvill’, page 503. This manuscript, like Wod.Qu.XIV, folio 1, is a rather careless copy, omitting the original papers transcribed in the Edinburgh University Library copy, and containing a number of other small omissions and differences of vocabulary. For other copies of the work, see Wod.Qu.XXIV(i) and XXVI(vi).

(iii) `The Ryseing and usurpation of our Pretended Bishops` (folio 216), an unidentified account of the progress of episcopacy until about 1616, the latest date quoted in the text (folio 236). A contents list is written at folio i verso in a 17th- or 18th-century hand, and this account is attributed to James Melville in an addition in pencil.