Add MS 65194

Contents:

The abridgement of the Book of Assizes, an anonymous alphabetical abridgement of material from the year books of the Court of Assizes, compiled in the mid fifteenth century, and distinct from the fourteenth-century Liber Assisarum. This abridgement was first published in 1509 by Richard Pynson.

Parchment leaves containing mid fifteenth-century copies of entries on plea rolls have been used as fly-leaves and pastedowns (ff. i-vii). Similar leaves have also apparently been used to stiffen the binding. On ff. v verso-vi is a copy of an entry on the King's Bench roll for Hilary 34 Henry VI (1456).

Description of the binding:

This manuscript was bound by the 'Scales Binder', who worked in London, probably near or in the Inns of Court, in the second half of the fifteenth century and used a technique of cut-leather decoration, otherwise unknown in England, though popular in German-speaking countries during the fifteenth century. Twenty bindings by this binder have been identified, with the tools used to decorate them falling into two groups. The first consists of twelve bindings, all covering manuscripts, none of which is demonstrably later than 1465, and includes the present manuscript. The second group of seven bindings cover two undated manuscripts and five printed books dated between 1466 and 1481.

The manuscript is sewn with thin cord on four split alum-tawed thongs, and the inner fold of each quire has been strengthened with a thin strip of paper. The backs of the quires have been lined with parchment between the thongs and there are remnants of leather headbands, tied down with sewing thread in the centre of each quire. The boards are made up of vellum leaves, plain and manuscript, pasted together and covered with brown leather. There are remnants of leather ties. The covers are tooled in blind to a panel design, with fleur-de-lys, foliate and zoomorphic decoration. A rectangular border surrounds a central panel on the upper cover, filled with patterns in rows, while on the lower cover the central compartment has been decorated with a knife, showing on a cross-hatched ground the large initial ,'b'.

Foot, 'Scales Binder' (1990) suggests that quire numbers in roman numerals in darker ink following the scribal catchwords (e.g., f. 67v) were added by the this binder, who signed the quires of a number of books he bound: see Nicolas Barker, in 'Writs and the Scales Binder' (1972).