Add MS 6041

MORTIMER INVENTORIES: inventories of the muniments of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March (d.1381) and of Philippa his wife (d. bef. 1381), daughter of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, stored in the Earl's treasury at Wigmore Castle; late 14th cent., aft. 1393. French. Origin: England. Imperfect at beginning and end. Davis, Cartularies, no. 1294. The estates of the Mortimer family, the present MS. and its relationship with Harley MS. 1240 are discussed in H. Wood, 'The muniments of Edmund de Mortimer, third Earl of March, concerning his liberty of Trim', Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, xl (1931-1932), pp. 312-355 and G. A. Holmes, The estates of the higher nobility in fourteenth-century England (1957). For earlier fourteenth-cent. muniment lists of the Mortimer family, see Egerton Rolls 8723, 8724. The documents in the Treasury were kept in boxes titled with the appropriate general place-name, eg. 'Clare', the deeds being numbered within the boxes (f. 49). The material in the present MS. is very close to, and may have been copied from prefatory material in two chartularies of the Earl and Countess, now in an imperfect state, that have been combined to form Harley 1240. In these chartularies, the preambles, inventory and index entries were followed by chartulary entries in the same order as the inventory. Most of the material extant in Harley 1240 is from the Earl's chartulary, into which leaves from the Countess's chartulary have been inserted as ff. 81-99. Some material lacking from the present MS. can be supplied by Harley 1240 and vice versa. The chartulary appears to have been compiled around 1379-1380. The latest dated entries are for 1379: (a) 1 Jan. 1379. Harley 1240, f. 113v (Badlesmere xxj). See also f. 30 and Add. 6041,

f. 42v;- (b) 12 Sept. 1379. Harley 1240, f. 61 (Stratfeld xiij). See also f. 14 and Add. 6041, f. 14. A later dated item, 1 Oct. 1393 (Cleobury xxvj) occurs in the inventories. It is an added item in Harley 1240, f. 12v, undated as is usual in this section, but the folio for the chartulary entry is lacking. It occurs in Add. 6041,

f. 12, in the main hand of the text, the date being added in a later hand (see below). This implies a date after 1393 for the present MS. Five items dated 1420 are added at Add. 6041, ff. 94v-95. No marginals or annotations later than the 15th cent. A memorandum (f. 1) in the hand of Henry Ellis, Keeper of Manuscripts 1812-1827, states that when the MS. came to the British Museum it had a damaged board cover bearing a note 'Manuscript found in 1795 in opening a vault in a Ruined Tower in R'. Presented by Thomas Thomson, Deputy Clerk Register of Scotland, 13 May 1809.

Vellum and paper (f. 1); ff. 106. The two inventories bear separate series of contemporary foliation: (a) ix-lvj through ff. 2-48 (xvj lacking); (b) j-lxvj through ff. 49-106 (ix-xvj lacking). 295 x 190mm. Gatherings of 8, i lacks 8, xiv irregular. Originally 17 gatherings, numbered in arabic numerals on the bottom right-hand corner of the first folio of each quire in a medieval hand (ff. 33, 41, 57, 65, 89, 105). Three gatherings are missing; the first, another between ff. 48 and 49, and the third between ff. 56 and 57. Catchwords, ff. 16v, 24v. Single columns. Two main documentary cursive scripts. Has suffered damage from damp.

Contents:

1. ff. 2-48v. The Earl's inventory, in a form similar to that of the Countess. Imperfect at the beginning, starting at the index entry for 'Prescote'.

2. ff. 49-106v. The Countess's inventory, as follows: (a) Preamble describing how the records were stored and numbered. f. 49;- (b) index from main headings to the appropriate folio of the register. ff. 49-49v;- (c) Index referring from the place-name to the box and deed number. ff. 50-60;-

(d) inventory of deeds in order of box and deed number. Imperfect at end, at Connaught 'lij'. ff. 61-106v.