 Along with "The Castle of Perseverance", the Reverend Cox Macro of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk acquired "Mankind" and "Wisdom" in the early 18th century.Macro bound the three manuscripts together somewhat arbitrarily, along with three other manuscripts.Early 19th-century owner Henry Gurney separated "The Castle", "Wisdom", and "Mankind" from the other manuscripts and bound them together as a collection in a separate volume, now known as “the Macro Manuscript”.