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Egerton MS 2849

Record Id:

032-001984908

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

032-001984908

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000057.0x000301

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Egerton MS 2849

Title:

The mortuary roll of Lucy of Hedingham

Scope & Content:

The mortuary roll of Lucy of Hedingham was produced c.1225-1230 to mark the death of the foundress and first prioress of the Benedictine nunnery of Castle Hedingham in Essex. The prioress is only identified as Lucy, and her identity is uncertain; she was probably a noblewoman connected to the de Vere family, as Aubrey de Vere (b. c. 1115, d. 1194), 1st earl of Oxford, founded the nunnery in 1191. The roll is believed to be the oldest intact English illuminated mortuary roll. The roll was sent to 122 religious houses in the southern half of England, each writing an answer to a request for prayers made by Agnes, Prioress of Hedingham, for the soul of her predecessor Lucy. The respondants include the Cambridge Franciscans, established there in 1226, hence the dating of the roll to approximately 1225-1230.

The roll comprises two parts, which are now stored separately: Egerton MS 2849/1 is the first part of the roll, including the heading, illumination and tituli (responsive prayers added by various houses) 1-6, and Egerton MS 2849/2, which is the second part of the roll, including tituli 7-122.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Egerton Manuscripts

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "032-001984908", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Egerton MS 2849: The mortuary roll of Lucy of Hedingham" },{ "id" : "040-003369646", "parent" : "032-001984908", "text" : "Egerton MS 2849/1: The mortuary roll of Lucy of Hedingham, the first part" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} },{ "id" : "040-003369647", "parent" : "032-001984908", "text" : "Egerton MS 2849/2: The mortuary roll of Lucy of Hedingham, the second part" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-001984908

Is part of:

not applicable

Contains:

Egerton MS 2849/1 : The mortuary roll of Lucy of Hedingham, the first part
Egerton MS 2849/2 : The mortuary roll of Lucy of Hedingham, the second part

Click here to View / search full list of parts of Egerton MS 2849

Hierarchy:

032-001984908

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Egerton MS 2849

Record Type (Level):

Fonds

Extent:

2 parchment rolls, kept separately.

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1220

End Date:

1230

Date Range:

c 1225-1230

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.

Physical Characteristics:

Material: Parchment.

Script: Gothic (written below top line).

Custodial History:

Origin: England, S.E. (Essex?).

Provenance:

The Benedictine nunnery of Castle Hedingham, Essex: mortuary roll for the foundress and first prioress, Lucy de Vere: inscription on the image 'abba lucia'; beginning of text 'Agnes ecclesiae sancte crucis et sancte marie de henigeham'; caption at the beginning of the text. The roll was sent to 122 religious houses in the southern half of England, each writing an answer to a request for prayers made by Agnes, Prioress of Hedingham, for the soul of her predecessor Lucy. The respondants include the Cambridge Franciscans, established there in 1126.

The de Vere family, earls of Oxford, in the 17th century: note by Thomas Astle (b. 1735, d. 1803), archivist and collector of books and manuscripts, who states it was owned by the family until 'the end of the last century', presumably until c. 1700; Astle also states that he included it in his Origin and Progress of Writing, p. 211 (attached to the manuscript as the second parchment sheet, signed 'Tho Astle'.).

Bought by the British Museum in 1903, using the Bridgewater fund of £12,000, bequeathed in 1829 by Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (b. 1756, d. 1829).

Administrative Context:

England, S. E. (Essex?)

Information About Copies:

Complete digital coverage available for this manuscript; see Digitised Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/manuscripts/.

Select digital coverage available for this manuscript; see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/.

Publications:

Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1900-1905 (London: British Museum, 1907), p. 390.

E. P. Goldschmidt, 'An Obituary Rotulus from York, 1405', in Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, ed. by Dorothy Miner (Princeton: University Press, 1954), pp. 379-83 (p. 382).

Peter Brieger, English Art 1216-1307, Oxford History of English Art, 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 169.

Meyer Schapiro, 'An Illuminated English Psalter of the Early Thirteenth Century', in Late Antique, Early Christian and Mediaeval Art: Selected Papers (New York: George Braziller, 1979, first publ. 1960), 329-54 (p. 351).

W. H. Monroe, 'A Roll-Manuscript of Peter of Poitier's Compendium', Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum, 65 (1978), 92-107.

Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts: The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Library, 1979), no. 613 [with additional bibliography].

The Benedictines in Britain, British Library Series, 3 (London: British Library, 1980), p. 32, no. 51, pl. 16 [exhibition catalogue].

Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 (London Harvey Miller, 1982-88), I: 1190-1250, no. 56, pl. 202 [with additional bibiliography].

Sally Thompson, Women Religious: The Founding of English Nunneries after the Norman Conquest (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 180-81, 220.

Justin Clegg, The Medieval Church in Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2003), p. 32, pl. 26.

Jean Dufour, Recueil des Rouleaux des Morts (VIIIe siècle-vers 1536), 4 vols (Paris: Diffusion de Boccard, 2005), 2: 1181-1399, no. 178.

Exhibitions:

The Middle Ages, (online), 26 March 2015-

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Related Material:

From the printed Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1900-1905 (1907), p. 390:

'MORTUARY Roll of Lucy [de Vera?], foundress and first prioress of Hengham [Hedingham, co. Essex] ; circ. 1230. The roll begins with three tinted drawings of (1) the Crucifixion and the Virgin and Child, (2) two angels bearing the soul of Lucy to heaven in a sheet, and (3) the body of Lucy in a coffin being censed and asperged. These are followed by a circular letter of Agnes, prioress of Hengham, and her convent, announcing her predecessor's death and asking for prayers for her soul, and by the "tituli " of 122 religious houses, granting the request and asking for prayers in return. The counties traversed were Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Hampshire, Wilts, Dorset, Gloucester., Worcester, Oxford, Berkshire, Buckingham, Bedford, Huntingdon and Cambridge. One of the latest subscriptions is that of the Franciscan house at Cambridge, and as the Franciscans did not come to England until 1224 the date must be subsequent to that year. See the New Palæographical Society's Facsimiles, Part 1, l903, pl. 21 ; and, for the subject of Mortuary Rolls in general, L. Delisle, Rouleaux des Morts, Paris, 1866. Vellum roll, 19 ft.. 2 in. X 8 in. Circ. 1230. In a variety of hands, each entry being made at the house to which it refers; the circular letter is in a large book-hand, the other hands are mostly of charter types. At the top of the roll are some remarks upon it by Thomas Astle (d. 1803).'

Related Archive Descriptions:

Egerton MS 2849/1
Egerton MS 2849/2