Add MS 48030

TWO TREATISES ON DIVORCE; 16th cent. Noticed, with extracts, in L. Dibdin and C. E. H. Chadwyck-Healey, English Church Law and Divorce, 1912, pp. 41-43.

1. ff. 1-21b. Beg. 'There hathe bene and yet is no smalle doubte amonge the lerned'. Ends 'where atte the disease seamethe incurable'. Temp. Henry VIII or Edward VI (references to the King). Argues for divorce for adultery with power to remarry. The orthography is corrected and marks inserted, perhaps for printing.

2. ff. 27-39b. Beg. 'I note this booke [i.e., the preceding treatise] to conteine two partes not severed or disuncte'. Ends 'as might not if it were lawfull withoute an entrie to moche inconvenyence, take effect'. Would allow separation a mensa et thoro for adultery, but not remarriage.

Paper; ff. ii + 66. A 17th-cent. foliation, 1-85, lacks 45-63, indicating the loss of 19 leaves, presumably blanks. Folio. XVI cent. Written in two 16th-cent. hands; art. 1 corrected in a third. The MS. lacks any indication of provenance, but probably belonged to Beale: his opinion was sought on the validity of the marriage (1560) between Lord Hertford and Katherine Grey, the repudiated wife of Lord Herbert, see Cambridge Univ. Libr. MS. I i 5, 3, art. 4; further, he wrote a treatise on the validity of the marriage (1515) of the Duke of Suffolk with Mary Tudor, see Cambridge Univ. Libr. MS. D d 3, 85, art. 3, and Add. 48066, art. 2(b). Vellum binding, numbered '34', and titled on the spine. Coloured label 'N' on the front cover.

Law CANON: Two treatises on divorce: 16th cent.

Elizabeth I of England: Papers of R. Beale, Clerk of the Council: 16th cent.

Robert Beale, Clerk to the Privy Council: Correspondence and papers.