Add MS 43405-43406

Breviary, in two vols., of the Benedictine Abbey of SS Peter and Paul at Muchelney, co. Som.; late 13th cent., with 12th-16th centt. additions. Latin. The additions consist of notes and transcripts of upwards of 180 miscellaneous deeds, etc., and other memoranda, in Latin, French, and English, relating mainly to the Abbey's spiritualities and temporalities, written in a series of more than thirty hands, on sections of added leaves at the beginning and end of each volume and on two blank leaves in the middle of vol. II (43406, ff. 95b, 96). The scope and relevance of these additions (for which see further below), taken in conjunction with the nature of the book itself, suggest that the breviary was written for the use of the Abbots and that the inserted leaves served as their personal memorandum book. Both volumes have marginal and other annotations in the hand of John Sherborne, Abbot 1522-1532 (43405, ff. 14-135b passim; 43406, ff. 1 b-6, 227b, 282; Cf. Sherbome's signature in Royal MS. 7 A. ii, f. 3). The present breviary was collated by J. B. L. Tolhurst for his edition of The Monastic Breviary of Hyde Abbey, 6 vols., Henry Bradshaw Soc., lxix-lxxi, lxxvi, lxxviii, lxxx, 1932-1942, but, apart from the minor variants that he notes from the Hyde Abbey volume (now Oxford, Bodieian MS. Rawlinson liturg. e. 1 *, Gough liturg. 8; circ. A. D. 1300) in cases where the same texts occur in both, there are wide differences of content and arrangement. With two further early Benedictine breviaries of English provenance, now Valenciennes Bibl. municipale MS. 116 [109] (late 12th cent., from Winchcombe: cf. V. Leroquais, Les BréViaires Manuscrits, iv, pp. 283-285) and Harley MS. 4664 (late 13th cent., from Coldingham) the present MS. appears similarly to lack any close liturgical relationship. Of the added deeds and memoranda, twenty-one extracts were printed by T. Hearne in his edition of A. de Domerham, Historia de rebus gestis Glastoniensibus, i, 1727, pp. xxxiv, lxvii-xcvii; most of the remainder were printed by B. Schofield, Muchelney Memoranda, Somerset Record Soc., xlii, 1927. Other copies of eight deeds appear in the early 14th cent. chartulary of the

abbey (G. R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies, 1958, no.685) from which they are printed by E. H. Bates, Two Cartularies ... of Muchelney and Athelney, Somerset Record Soc., xiv, 1899. See also Brit. Mus. Quart., vii, 1932-1933, P. 109; viii, 1933-1934, p. 54; and Friends of the National Libraries, Annual Report, 1932-1933, pp. 20-21 and pl. i (frontispiece). After the Dissolution of the Abbey in 1538, the volumes were removed to Savernake Park, presumably by Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector, where they remained until the late 19th cent. in the hands of the Seymour, Bruce and Bruce-Brudenell families. Notes of ownership by Charles, Lord Bruce, 3rd Earl of Ailesbury and 4th Earl of Elgin 1741, in whose possession they were when used by Hearne, appear in vol. 1, f. ii (A.D. 1741) and in vol. 11, f. i (A.D. 1728). They subsequently belonged to Robert Standish Sievier (d. 1939), brother-in-law of the 4th Marquess of Ailesbury (armorial bookplates in each vol.) and to J. Meade Falkner (Sotheby's sale-cat., 12-14 Dec. 1932, lot 96), in whose memory they were presented, through the Friends of the National Libraries, by Sir John Henry Brunel Noble, ist Bart. Two volumes.