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Harley MS 6398

Record Id:

040-001654816

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-001654816

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000195.0x000016

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 6398

Title:

Boke of Marchalsi

Scope & Content:

Contains the Boke of Marchalsi, a treatise on horse breeding and veterinary medicine.

Decoration:

Numerous large initials in blue with red pen-flourishing and small initials in plain blue. Line fillers and paraph marks in blue.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection
Harley Science Project

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-001654816", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 6398: Boke of Marchalsi" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-001654816

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 6398 : Boke of Marchalsi

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[6403]/040-001654816

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_6398 (digital images currently unavailable)

Thumbnail:

Languages:

English, Middle

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1430

End Date:

1470

Date Range:

Mid 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Material: Parchment codex.

Dimensions: 165 x 95 mm (text space: 110 x 65 mm).

Foliation: ff. xi + 1*+ 2* + 59 (1 flyleaf at the beginning and 1 at the end are parchment, ff. 1*-2* are parchment flyleaves). Three leaves of missing between ff. 26-27 (see Odenstedt, p. viii). Quire signatures and catchwords.

Script: Gothic cursive.

Binding: Post-1600 binding of brown mottled calf skin with gold fillets and blind tooling with marbled endpapers.

Custodial History:

Origin:

England.

Provenance:

Inscibed, 15th century, 'Clemens ybernat, Petri cathedratio vernat. Estuat Vrbanus, autumpnat Simphoranus (sic) (f. 1*r).

Inscribed, 15th century, 'God that deyd fore vs all' (ff. 1*v, 59v).

Inscribed 'IMS' on verso of first flyleaf. This may stand for John Murray of Sacombe. The same initials written on other Harley manuscripts (see Wright 1972, p. 291).

The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts.

Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library.

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 6398.

Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 470.

Sir Frederick Smith, The Early History of Veterinary Literature and its British Development (London: Balliere, Tindall and Cox, 1919), pp. 110-13.

The Boke of Marchalsi: A 15th Century Treatise on Horse-Breeding and Veterinary Medicine : Edited from MS. Harley 6398, ed. Bengt Odenstedt, (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 1973), pp. viii-xii.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)