Add MS 74949

ANONYMOUS COMMONPLACE-BOOK; circa but after 1637. Latin and English. Some five hundred and fifty topics of a miscellaneous nature are listed, under their Latin names and in strictly alphabetical order, in the prefatory index (ff. 1-5), and serially throughout the volume. Sporadic entries, added in a single unidentified contemporary hand, consist of sentences in English taken from printed sources, with page-references to the relevant editions, and are accompanied in the right-hand margin by a brief summary in Latin. Most derive from Antonio de Guevara's Dial of Princes, Josephus's De bello judaico and Sir Edwin Sandys's Relation of the state of religion (1605). Two further topics at the end of the series, though not included retrospectively in the index, are 'Leges' (f. 342), added by the copyist of the headings, and 'Aulicus' (f. 342v) by the compiler. The fact that the index, headings and page-numbering are copied in a single calligraphic hand suggests that the volume was purchased ready made-up from a stationer. For a contemporary exemplar on paper bearing a similar watermark that belonged, circa 1637-1677, to the royalist and antiquary Richard Symonds see Egerton MS 3880. Purchased from J. L. M. and H. G. Gulley, 28 Oct. 2000.

Paper: ff. 342. 358 mm x 222 mm. 17^th-cent. binding of light brown quarter-calf over boards, with spine of five raised bands. Watermark of paper similar to Heawood, no. 580 (from Camden's Britannia, 1637). Text pages numbered in ink from 1 to 672 with red-ruled compartment.