Egerton MS 3724

REGISTER OF THE MOHUN FAMILY, Lords of Dunster, Lords Mohun and Earls of Somerset; 1350. Latin and Anglo-Norman French. Evidently the work compiled by John Osberne, Constable of Dunster Castle, known to antiquaries including Sir Richard St George, Norroy King of Arms, who in 1610 made extracts and abstracts from it in a volume now in the Egmont Papers in the Department, viz. Add. MS. 47176, ff. 23b-26b (see Sir H. C. Maxwell Lyte, A History of Dunster and of the families of Mohun and Luttrell, 1909, pp. vii, 49, and Devon Notes and Queries, iv, 1906-1907, p. 251). Entries on ff. 25-26b of the St George volume agree with ff. 3-5, 10 of the present MS., and his other notes, which include the indication of authorship, are probably of material now wanting at the beginning of the MS. Listed as no. 1285 in G. R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies, 1958. Supplementary to a fragment of a contemporary French chronicle relating to the Mohun family in the possession of the Carew family of Haccombe, Devon (see extracts and facsimile in Devon Notes and Queries, iv, 1906-1907, pp. 17-22), and also to the Dunster Castle archives now in the Somerset Record Office (see National Register of Archives Report no. 722). The register contains lists of fees, extents, terriers and miscellaneous memoranda, together with copies of royal, episcopal and private charters (some with summaries in French), fines, inquests, etc., relating to Mohun fees in cos. Devon, Dors., Hants, Warw., Wilts, and Som., temp. Henry III-temp. Edward III, partly arranged by counties and manors. Charters, etc., on ff. 7b, 50-51, 65b are printed by Maxwell Lyte, Documents and Extracts illustrating the history of the Honour of Dunster, Somerset Record Soc., xxxiii, 1917-1918. Items noticed by the same author in his History of Dunster are:-(I) Description of Dunster Castle (p. 353). f. 32b;-(2) Agreement between the monks of Dunster Priory and the parishioners relating to the church (pp. 393-396). ff. 61b-62. At ff. 19-20 are instructions, in French, on the supervision of the grange, printed in Walter of Henley and other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting, 1971, pp. 475-478, by D. Oschinsky, who relates them to the anonymous Treatise on Husbandry which she prints on pp. 418-445 (see also Maxwell Lyte, History of Dunster, pp. 321-324). At ff. 39-40b is a French poem in octosyllabic rhyming couplets (360 lines) in the form of practical and moral advice from a father to a son, entitled 'En sa veillesse set li prodhom', which corresponds closely at the beginning and end with part of the introduction (chapters 1-5, 12-16) of the Treatise on Husbandry by Walter of Henley, as printed by Oschinsky, op. cit., pp. 308- 312 (see also pp. 21-22, where the present text is wrongly described as a sermon). Beg.:-

'Faet a sauoir a comensom En sa veillesse siet le prodhom'. Ends:-

'Solom coe qe lai apris De plusours sages en diuers paiis'. Vellum; ff. xxxvii+90. 330 mm.x245 mm. AD. 1350. Gatherings, mostly bifolia and single leaves on modern guards (two quires of 4, ff. 6-9, 55-58). Two leaves have been cut from the beginning with loss of text (stubs, ff. 1, 2), and notes on f. iv (see below) mention five other fragments of leaves, now missing. Some past disturbance in the order is suggested by various irregular signatures, as follows: primus, f. 9b; secundus liber and, in red, iii, f. 12; ii-v in black, ff. 14, 16, 18, 19; i-v in black, ff. 21, 23, 25, 27, 29; secundus, f. 38b; tercius liber and, in red, iiii, f. 39; quartus, f. 41; quintus, f. 44; sextus, f. 52; iii in red, f. 87; septimus, f. 89. Ff. 39-40b are written in double columns of 42-52 lines. A 19th cent. pencil pagination at the foot of the page, 1-174, extends from f. 3-90b, and another 19th cent. foliation duplicates the modern foliation. Written in several 14th cent. hands with some rubrication. Belonged in 1610 to Sir Reginald Mohun, lst Bart., of Boconnoc (see Add. MS. 47176, f. 23b). In 1856 it was owned by George Matcham, LL.D. (d. 1877), who gave it to Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bart. (MS. 16566), see f. iv. Notes and extracts from the MS. by Phillipps, ff. iv-xvb, are followed, ff. xvi-xxxviib, by a short description of the MS. and further extracts by his grandson, Thomas Fitzroy Fenwick. Sotheby's sale-cat., 15-18 June 1908, lot 545, when it was bought in by Fitzroy Fenwick. Subsequently belonged to William H. Robinson, Ltd.