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Stowe MS 956
- Record Id:
- 040-001953804
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001952775
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000534.0x0001ec
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165174770.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Stowe MS 956
- Title:
- John Croke, Psalms in English verse
- Scope & Content:
-
A girdle-book containing a collection of thirteen Psalms, translated into English verse and apparently written by the legal official John Croke (b. 1489, d. 1554) in his own hand.
Another copy of the text, without the hymn ‘Veni Creator’ but including Psalm 31, is now Add MS 30981, which is also apparently written in Croke's own hand. The work is dedicated by Croke to his wife Prudence, and attributed to Croke by his son.
A volume with a similar binding, containing prose prayers, is described in Marsham, ‘On a Manuscript Book of Prayers’ and was formerly in the possession of Charles Marsham, third Earl of Romney.
Contents:
ff. 2r-5r: Translation of the hymn, ‘Veni Creator’, into English verse.
ff. 6r-67v: Translations of the Seven Penitential Psalms into English verse: Psalms 6 ('Domine ne'), 2 ('Beati quorum'), 38 ('Domine ne in furore'), 51 ('Misere mei Deus'), 102 ('Domine exaudi'), 130 ('De profundis'), and 143 ('Domine exaudi').
f. 68r-68v: Translation of the 'Gloria Patri' into English verse.
ff. 69r-104r: Translations of five additional Psalms into English verse: Psalms 19 ('Coeli enarrant'), 13 ('Usque quo Domine'), 43 ('Judica me Deus'), 91 ('Qui habitat'), 139 ('In te Domini speravi').
ff. 1r, 5v, 5*r-5*v, 11r, 18v, 30v, 41r, 56r, 60v, 68*r-68*v, 77r, 80v, 84r, 92v, and 104v are blank.
Decoration:
1 full-page portrait of Henry VIII, King of England and Ireland (f. 1v).
Decorated initials in gold and silver on blue and red grounds, at the beginning of each Psalm (ff. 6r, 11v, 19r, 31r, 41v (effaced), 56v, 61r, 69r, 77v, 81r, 84v, 93r (effaced)).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Medieval and Renaissance Women
Stowe Collection - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001952775
036-001953794
040-001953804 - Is part of:
- Stowe Ms 1-1085 : Stowe Manuscripts
Stowe MS 947-980 : CLASS XXI.POETRY, AND PROSE DRAMA.
Stowe MS 956 : John Croke, Psalms in English verse - Hierarchy:
- 032-001952775[0021]/036-001953794[0010]/040-001953804
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Stowe Ms 1-1085
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100165174770.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1535
- End Date:
- 1545
- Date Range:
- c. 1540
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
- Restrictions to access apply please consult British Library staff
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 40 x 30 mm (written space: 30 x 20 mm).
Foliation: ff. 104 + 5* + 68* (+ 2 unfoliated parchment flyleaves at the beginning and 1 unfoliated parchment flyleaf at the end).
Script: Gothic cursive. Written apparently in the hand of John Croke.
Binding: Pre-1600. Original gold metalwork covers worked in open leaf tracery, with remains of black enamel, clasp and girdle loops. Stored in a box.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England.
Provenance:
John Croke (b. 1489, d. 1554), legal official: translated by him and apparently written in his own hand. The only other manuscript of the text, also apparently written in Croke's own hand, includes a dedication by Croke to his wife Prudence, and an inscription by Croke's son stating that his father did the translation when he was one of the six clerks in chancery (Add MS 30981, f. 2r).
Robert Triphook (b. 1782, d. 1868), London bookseller, publisher and editor: probably the anonymous editor of George Wyatt's Extracts from the Life of Queen Anne Boleigne (1817), who states that the manuscript is in his possession (see Wyat, Extracts (1817), p. 29); his sales catalogue, June 1818, no. 196.
Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville (b. 1776, d. 1839), 1st duke of Buckingham and Chandos, of Stowe House, near Buckingham: inscribed with the press-mark 'Appendix in vol. 1 ... no. 27' (f. [i] recto), corresponding to his catalogue (O'Conor, Bibliotheca Ms. Stowensis (1818-1819), II, p. 58).
Richard Plantagenet Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville (b. 1797, d. 1861), 2nd duke of Buckingham and Chandos; sold in 1849 to Lord Ashburnham.
Bertram Ashburnham (b. 1797, d. 1878), 4th earl of Ashburnham, of Ashburnham Place, Sussex.
Bertram Ashburnham (b. 1840, d. 1913), 5th earl of Ashburnham: purchased by the British Museum from him together with 1084 other Stowe manuscripts in 1883.
- Information About Copies:
-
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript; see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts.
- Publications:
-
Miscellaneous Antiquities; or, a collection of curious papers: either republished from scarce tracts, or now first printed from original MSS. Number II, ed. by Horace Walpole (Strawberry-Hill: Thomas Kirgate, 1772).
George Wyat, Extracts from the Life of Queen Anne Boleigne: written at the close of the XVIth century, and now first printed (London: [privately printed], 1817), pp. 28-29.
Bibliotheca Ms. Stowensis: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Stowe Library, ed. by Charles O'Conor, 2 vols (Buckingham: Seeley, 1818-1819), II, p. 58.
Thirteen Psalms and the First Chapter of Ecclesiastes, translated into English verse by John Croke, in the reign of Henry VIII, ed. by Alexander Croke (London: Printed for the Percy Society, 1844).
Robert Marsham, ‘On a Manuscript Book of Prayers in a Binding of Gold Enamelled, said to have been given by Queen Anne Boleyn to a lady of the Wyatt Family’, Archæologia, 44 (1873), 259-72.
Catalogue of the Stowe Manuscripts in the British Museum, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1895-1896), vol. 1, no. 956.
Michelle P. Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms (London: British Library, 1994), p. 59.
Janet Backhouse, 'An Elizabethan Girdle Book: An Unnoticed Feature of the Portrait of Lucy Hungerford at Lydiard Tregoze', Friends Of Lydiard Tregoz Report 34 (2001), 3-5 (4-5).
James P. Carley, The Books of King Henry VIII and His Wives, preface by David Starkey (London: British Library, 2004), plate 10.
Margit J. Smith, The Medieval Girdle Book (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2017), pp. 8, 31 n. 11.
- Exhibitions:
- Gold, British Library, London, 20 May 2022 - 2 October 2022
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)