Egerton MS 3053 A-B

CHARTULARY OF FOUNTAINS ABBEY relating to its grange of Aldburgh in Masham, N.R., co. York. Apparently one of a series of such compilations, all written at much the same date and possessing the same characteristics and format but in three or four different hands, of which others, in some cases embodying leaves from earlier 13th-cent. registers, now constitute Oxford, Bodl. MS. Rawl. B. 449 and Oxford, University College MS.

170. The hand of the present MS. is that of Bodl. MS. Rawl. B. 449, ff. 93- 104 ('Caytona'), ff. 125-139b ('Morker') and ff. 142b-152 ('Dacra'). The ninety deeds, circ. 1140-1261, are arranged according to press-marks running from A. i-M. viii, in which the letters refer to bundles, arranged topographically (see rubrics, ff. 9, 18b and 20) and each containing 5-10 deeds.

Similar press-marks, also beginning from A. i and therefore in parallel series, appear in other members of the series. For the implications of these and for comment upon the 'tecae' or chests in which the deeds were kept (rubrics, ff. 18b, 20), see Brit. Mus. Quart., vii, 1932-1933, pp. 16-18. At ff. 1-2 is a contemporary index. Notes in the form of rubrics, ff. 9-20 passim, throw light on the methods of compilation used and the genealogy of grantors. Names of witnesses are consistently omitted and legal formulae throughout are represented by a series of initial letters. At ff. 20b-21 are added, in a 15th-cent. hand, copies of two 12th-cent. deeds and some genealogical notes relating to Jervaulx. The originals of deeds nos. viii and liii (ff. 4 and 12), both without trace of the press-marks B. iii and H. iii allotted here, are now Add. Ch. 7491 and Bodl. MS. Dodsworth 120, f. 3. Rather earlier transcripts Of 32 Of the deeds in the present register, relating to Aldburgh itself, Bramley and Pot, occur in Bodl. MS. Rawl. B. 449, ff. 20-25 b, a similar register for 'Aldeburg' which is, however, arranged on a different and narrower plan and includes the names of witnesses (see photostat of f. 20 included in the present MS. at f. i). Later transcripts of all except six (nos. xxxi-xxxiii, lxxxiii-lxxxv) (again differently arranged and including the names of witnesses) are placed under Aldburgh, Bramley, Grewelthorpe and Swinton in the surviving volumes of the Abbey's great 15th-cent. register, on which see the description of Add. MS. 40009 in Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts, 1916-1920, and W. T. Lancaster, Chartulary of Fountains Abbey, Leeds, 1915. The six missing deeds from the latter are shown by Add. MS. 18276 (the summary of this register made in 1509) under Ilton, ff. 99b-100, and Pot, ff. 171 b-172, i.e. in sections now lost. Numbers allotted in the later register to the deeds there listed under Aldburgh, and in some cases Swinton, have been entered in the present MS. in a 16th-cent. (?) hand, usually within the initial letters of deeds. G. R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies, 1958, no. 413. Vellum; A, ff. 1 + 21 ; B (cover, etc.), ff. 5. 235 mm x 210 mm. Late XIII cent. Gatherings of 14 and 7 leaves numbered 12-13 in red arabic numerals and xiii, xiv and xxi-xxii in plummet at the foot of the first leaf of each, in the same manner as the gatherings of Rawl. B. 449 and Univ. MS. 170. Red and green initials and rubrics. The cover, now bound separately as Eg. MS. 3053 B, f. 1, is made from a 14th-cent. copy, on vellum, of the testimony of witnesses in a tithe dispute of 1263 (?) between Fountains Abbey and the Chapter of St Wilfred's Church, Ripon, endorsed with the name of a former owner (Charles N. Cronshey ?), now almost illegible. Binding stubs, ff. 2-4, comprise what is apparently a further extract from the same document and an extract from a 13th-cent. rental. The Chartulary itself is annotated throughout in various 16th-17th-cent. hands of which one is apparently that of Richard Gascoigne, cf. Add. MS. 40009, f. 3 b. A note in this hand at f. 21 b reads leaves in this booke are in numbre xxi'. The MS. belonged in 1922 to Lady (Margery Elinor) Lawson-Tancred, formerly Lawson, wife of the 9th Bart., see Yorkshire Archaeological Society (Record Series), lxlii, 1922, pp. vii and 57, n. 2. From the Farnborough Fund.