Add MS 41201

FORMULARY of legal and manorial documents, compiled after the enactment of the "ordinaciones nouissimas apud Westmonasterium factas," i.e. the Third Statute of Westminster (Quia Emptores), in 1290. Latin. The contents are:-(a) Thirty-six forms of deeds, ending "Explicit modus omnium cartarum, conuencionum, cirografforum, obligaeionum." f. 1;-(b) "Modus computandi sub compendio compositus": form of manorial accounting. f. 3;-

(c) "Testamentarium": instructions for, and an example of, a will. f. 3;-(d) "Atachiamenta": a collection of precedents in court-keeping. f .4;-(e) "Inuentarium plenarie compositum." f. 4. Endorsed in several hands on f.1 are formulae for use in the Courts Christian,. including Letters of Citation before the Official of Rouen, with the ensuing libellus or Plaint, both dated 1301, and a ratification by G[ilbert de Sancto Leof ardo], Bishop of Chichester, of an indulgence of the Bishop of Nicastro, dated 1300. Further indications of date are supplied by the following:-(i) A lease in (a) is said to be granted by the Master of the Knights Templars in England, the members of which Order were arrested in January 1308; (ii ) A lease of a manor, also in (a), runs from the Assumption of the Virgin, 26 Edw. I [15 Aug. 1298]; (iii) The manorial accompt in (b) covers one year from Michaelmas, 27 Edw. I [Sept. 1299-Sept. 1300]. Originally a roll of four vellum membranes, each approximately 9¼ in. wide and respectively 29.7/8 in., 27.7/8 in., 27.3/8 in., 28¼ in. in length, the document was laid down in a volume during the last century. Bound with it are an offprint from The Archaeological Journ., xxii (1865), containing a description of the roll (ff. ii-iv), and a transcript, March 1865, by the Rev. William Dunn Macray, of the Bodleian Library, Oxford (ff. v-lii). The text was edited as a memorial to the late Julius Parnell Gilson, Keeper of Manuscripts and Egerton Librarian in the British Museum 1911-1929, under the title Legal and Manorial Formularies, Oxford, 1933. Vellum and paper; ff. 4 + lii. Large quarto. Circ. A.D. 1300. Initials in red and blue, with penwork. On the dorse of f. 2 is a copy (15th cent.) of the quatrain of leonine hexameters beg. "Sunt tria que vere facunt (sic) sepe dolere." Bought, circ. 1865, by Baker Morrell from - Kirtland, of Oxford. Belonged later to Frederic Parker Morrell (d. 1908), of Black Hall, Oxford (Sotheby's sale-oat., 25 May 1925, lot 216).