In the year 1850, Cardinal Wiseman writing to Dr. Russell of Maynooth mentions an ancient crosier which had come into his possession. This is the first record of the shrine known variously as the Kells crosier or the crosier of Cúduilig and Maelfinnén, which now forms one of the most beautiful and most treasured exhibits in the British Museum collection of Irish Early Christian antiquities. In his letter the cardinal describes how he had acquired this ‘most valuable relic’ at the auction of the belongings of a solicitor in London, the crosier evidently having been left in the chambers by a previous occupant, and asks for help in deciphering the inscription. Nothing whatever is known of the earlier history of the crosier or of when it was removed from Ireland. At the request of Dr. Russell, Petrie exhibited the crosier at a meeting of the Royal Irish Academy on 14th February 1851, and read a paper on it. The shrine was at the time deposited on loan in the Academy museum. The next step in the modern history of the Kells crosier was its acquisition by the British Museum in 1859.