Add MS 45896

The following MS. has been missing since 1948 but a facsimile of it is preserved in MS Facsimile 504.

45896. Manorial formulary, Middle English poems, etc. in roll form. The contents are as follows:-

(1) Specimen bailiff's annual accompt for a manor, interspersed with rules for its composition, and a specimen manorial court roll; the latter is placed between the cash and corn sections of the accompt and is preceded by a list of the attachments and suits. The interspersed rules and the order and headings of the paragraphs of the accompt, but not the contents of the paragraphs, are textually related to those of the specimen accompt found in Egerton MS. 2360, and in Public Record Office E 163/24/34 and Wards 2/197/5 (printed from this last in Legal and Manorial Formularies ... in Memory of Julius Parnell Gilson, Oxford, 1933, pp. 25-49) and also to the rules for accounting in St Catherine's College, Cambridge, MS. G. v. 69, ff. 77-81; of these Egerton MS. 2360 and E 163/24/34 include specimen deeds relating to Oxford and its neighbourhood. In the present MS. the heading of the accompt is missing (together with the beginning of the cash charge accompt and, at the foot and on the dorse, the end of the corn and beginning of the livestock accompts), but the memorandum closing the cash accompt is dated Thursday after Trinity Sunday, 22 Edward III (i.e. the Feast of Corpus Christi, 19 June 1348) and the accompt is presumably for the year June 1347-June 1348; the court roll is dated Monday after Michaelmas, 22 Edward III (i.e. 6 Oct. 1348). The occurrence in both documents of the same surnames (e.g. atte Lake, atte Noke) suggests that they relate to the same place, and from references to dominus de Harcourt as lord of the manor, and to Oxford, Bampton, Savernake and the Abbot of Abingdon, A. H. Smith, 'The Middle English Lyrics in Additional MS. 45896', London Medieval Studies, ii, 1951, pp. 35-36, argued that this is Stanton Harcourt, co. Oxon. In fact none of the surnames on the documents corresponds to those of tenants at Stanton Harcourt in 1327 (Public Record Office, E 179/161/9, mem. 7d) and it seems likely that the text of an accompt for a real or imaginary Someresden' (given as the manor's name in the 'Superplusagium' paragraph and wrongly identified by Smith, art. cit., with Somerton, co. Oxon) was adapted, in copying, for use on the Harcourt family estates by substituting dominus de Harcourt for the name of the lord of the manor (or, incorrectly, in the 'Porci' paragraph, as the source of a gift of pigs). The accompt contains other unintelligent mistakes. At the end of the accompt is a colophon concluding 'Explicit Rotulus Nobilissimus secundum vsum Jhonis de Barton'; this, and certain entries in the accompt, may be humorous in intention. There is no further evidence of John de Barton's identity.

(2) Three Middle English poems, viz.:-(a) 'The Papelard Priest', a previously unknown poem, in 9 four-line stanzas with a two-line refrain, beg. 'Of All þe witti men and wise I warne Alle i þe wache', with a colophon 'Explicit zeddyngus de Prust papelard';-(b) 'The Annunciation', 8 four-line stanzas with a two-line refrain, being a version of a poem on the four Evangelists (C. Brown and R. H. Robbins, Index of Middle English Verse, 1943, no. 2021; printed by W. Heuser (see below)), beg. 'Luce In hys lessoun lerede me to synge';-(c) 'Love him wrought', three irregular stanzas with a two-line refrain (34 ll. in all), the first being a version of 'Love me brouthte and love me wrouthte' (Brown and Robbins, op. cit., no. 2012; printed in Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century, ed. C. Brown, 1924, p. 84). All three have refrains beg. 'Wit an on and an I', on which see W. Heuser, 'With an 0 and an I', Anglia, xxvii, 1904, pp. 283-319. They are discussed and printed, with a reproduction from the manuscript, by A. H. Smith, op. cit., pp. 37-49, from which the titles given here are taken; he ascribes them on philological grounds to the West Midlands, probably the northern part of this area. They are written in the same hand as the manorial formulary.

(3) Receipt, in French, undated, from Hugh (?) Bur[ne]ll to Jehan Delues for £8 paid as lessee of property in Chester. Written in a different hand from the rest of the roll. Vellum roll; 5 (originally 6) membranes. Approx. 2.23 m. x 0.19 m. Mid XIV cent. Lacks the top of the first membrane and one entire membrane at the foot. Membranes 2-5 are lettered B-E on the front. Written probably in Oxford or its neighbourhood. Found in 1941 in the office of Landor, Gardner and Landor, solicitors, of Rugeley, co. Staff. (see A. H. Smith, op. cit., pp. 33-34). Presented by Edward Francis Gray, Esq.