A RARE printed declaration made by William of Orange to the people of Scotland is among almost 3,000 items listed as missing from the country’s National Library.

The document, written by the then newly installed monarch in 1689, has been listed as “lost or misplaced” by the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.

It is one of just a handful of original surviving copies of the declaration, in which William of Orange justifies why he invaded from the Netherlands to depose the Catholic James II in the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688.

In the declaration, the new monarch reassures Scots that he will restore “the laws and liberties” of the country following complaints from Presbyterians that they were being persecuted under James II.

The document was printed in Edinburgh just months after William had been declared joint monarch of England, Scotland and Ireland with his wife, Mary II.

It is one of 2,872 items currently “presumed lost or misplaced” by the National Library of Scotland, and one of 314 to have gone missing between 2014 and 2015.

Other items listed as missing over this period included a pamphlet penned in 1939 by Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels, a 1937 edition of “Puss in Boots” and a volume of “great Scottish witchcraft cases”.

The oldest item listed as missing is a 414-year-old volume of poetry written by William Alexander of Menstrie.

King William III’s declaration – bound in a volume with an armorial bookplate – was listed as missing from the Special Collections Reading Room at Edinburgh’s George IV Bridge in December 2014.

In the declaration, William of Orange states: “It is both evident to all men, that the public peace and happiness of any state or kingdom cannot be preserved where the laws, liberties and customs established, by the lawful authority in it, are openly transgressed and annulled.”

He goes on to promise that Scots will “neither be deprived of their religion, nor of their civil rights”.

In total, the National Library of Scotland holds seven million books, 14 million printed items and over two million maps.

The collection includes copies of the Gutenberg Bible, the letter that Charles Darwin submitted with the manuscript of Origin of Species, the First Folio of Shakespeare and numerous journals and publications. It has the largest collection of Scottish Gaelic material of any library.

Originally, Scotland’s national deposit library was the Advocates Library belonging to the Faculty of Advocates.

It was opened in 1689 and gained national library status in the 1710 Copyright Act, giving it the legal right to a copy of every book published in Great Britain.

Since 1999, the library has been funded by the Scottish Parliament. It remains one of only six legal deposit libraries in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and is governed by a board of trustees.

National Library of Scotland officials say the items listed as missing account for just a tiny fraction of the 2.5 million items held in its collections and in only two cases has theft been suspected.

A spokesman said: “This data has been gathered as the product of an on-going collection audit, which we began in 2013.”