Add MS 42724

ALFRED'S 'PASTORAL CARE'. A copy, in the hand of Edmund Gibson, afterwards Bishop of London, of the transcript made by Junius of Cotton MS. Tiberius B. xi, containing Alfred's Anglo-Saxon translation of Gregory's 'Pastoral Care'. Cotton MS. Tiberius B. xi was virtually destroyed in successive fires in 1731 and 1865, and apart from a few charred fragments (all reproduced and transcribed in N. R. Ker, The Pastoral Care, Early English MSS. in Facsimile, vi, Copenhagen. 1956) knowledge of its text rests upon a transcript made by Francis Junius in the third quarter of the 17th cent., now Junius MS. 53 in the Bodleian Library (S.C. 5165). The present MS. is copied from Junius MS. 53, and is thus of no independent value; it probably dates from circ. 1690, cf. Norman Sykes, Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, 1669-1748, 1926, pp. 8-11. Paper; ff. iii+ 1 62. Quarto. Circ. 1690 'Chippendale' armorial bookplate (f. 1) of Christ Church, Oxford (circ. 1740- 1770); cf. Cat. of Franks Collection of Bookplates, iii, nos. 33414-33416. Two watermarks, of which the first (ff. 1- 119) of a shield and horn appears to resemble most closely one in use from 1623 to 1695 (cf. W. A. Churchill, Watermarks in Paper in the XVII and XVIII Centuries, no. 315), and the second (ff. 120-162) is identical with the City of London coat of arms watermark, for which the same author, op. cit., no. 240, quotes the date 1692. Transferred from the Department of Printed Books (by which it was acquired, with Add. MSS. 44879, 50145-50147, on 30 Aug. 1892).