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Arundel MS 140

Record Id:

040-002039423

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

032-002039280

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000395.0x00029c

LARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100181357698.0x000001

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Arundel MS 140

Title:

Collection of legendary and devotional texts including The Prick of Conscience, Mandeville's Travels and The Seven Sages of Rome; Geoffrey Chaucer, The Tale of Melibee

Scope & Content:

This manuscript is made up of two distinct structural units joined together.

The first part (ff. 1-165) contains a collection of legendary and devotional works in Middle English, including The Prick of Conscience, The Seven Sages of Rome, and Mandeville's Travels.

The second part (ff. 166-181) contains a copy of 'The Tale of Melibee', one of The Canterbury Tales by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (b. c. 1340s, d. 1400).

Contents:

ff. 1r-5r: 'The Legend of Ipotis', written in Middle English verse, beginning, 'Alle that wolle wysdam her...' (DIMEV 383).

ff. 5v-41v: Mandeville's Travels, the B-Text, written in Middle English prose, beginning, 'For als mykylle als þe lande over þe see...' (IPMEP 233).

ff. 41v-146v: The Prick of Conscience, written in Middle English verse, imperfect, beginning, 'In þe myght of þe fadyr all myghty...' (DIMEV 5399).

ff. 147r-151v: Speculum Gy de Warwyke, written in Middle English verse, imperfect at the end, beginning, 'Herkenyþe all to my speche...' (DIMEV 1782).

ff. 152r-165v: The Seven Sages of Rome, the A-Text, written in Middle English verse, imperfect at the beginning, lacking the first 950 lines, beginning, 'Hys commandement þei dide be lyue...' (DIMEV 4984).

ff. 166r-181v: Geoffrey Chaucer, 'The Tale of Melibee' from The Canterbury Tales, written in Middle English prose, imperfect, beginning, 'A yong man called Melibeus myghty and ryche...' (IPMEP 18).

Decoration:

Part I:

Large initials in red ink, marking major textual divisions; medium initials in red ink.

Marginal notes, place-names, names of saints and other religious figures, and portions of Latin text in red, accompanying Mandeville's Travels (ff. 5v-41v).

Curly brackets in black or red ink, marking rhyming couplets (ff. 1r-5r, 41v-165v),

Rubrics.

Part II:

No decoration.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Arundel Manuscripts

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002039280
040-002039423

Is part of:

Arundel MS 1-550 : Arundel Manuscripts

Arundel MS 140 : Collection of legendary and devotional texts including The Prick of Conscience, Mandeville's Travels and The Seven Sages of…

Hierarchy:

032-002039280[0141]/040-002039423

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Arundel MS 1-550

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100181357698.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)

Thumbnail:

Languages:

English, Middle
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1450

End Date:

1474

Date Range:

3rd quarter of the 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Material: paper (remounted and repaired).

Watermarks: Mountains/Three Hills surmounted by a Cross (ff. 1-20, 23-27, 149-165); a Unicorn's Head in profile (ff. 28-148), similar to Briquet no. 15803, dated 1406-1408; an Anchor (ff. 166-182), similar to Briquet no. 356, dated 1459-1462.

Dimensions: 290 x 215 mm (text space varies: 235 x 130-175 mm) (ff. 1-165); 280 x 205 mm (text space: 230 x 155 mm).

Foliation: ff. 181 + 144^1-2+ 165^1-2 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end); ff. 144¹ and 144² are remounted paper fragments before f. 144; ff. 165¹and 165²are remounted paper fragments before f. 165.

Collation: mounted on modern paper guards.

Catchwords in the first section (ff. 1-165).

Script: Gothic cursive, written by three scribes: Scribe 1 (ff. 1-165r), Scribe 2 (ff. 166r-181r) and Scribe 3 (ff. 170v, 171v, 172r).

Binding: British Museum in-house. Brown half-leather binding, with the Arundel arms gold-stamped on the upper and lower covers. Rebound 27 July 1967.

Custodial History:

Origin:

England.

Provenance:

Inscribed: 'Itm poun[es] Rendite / Elizabethe Mereese', signed by 'Elizabeth Ayeloffe' (f. 78r), and 'Ihon hill' (f. 156r).

Thomas Howard (b. 1585, d. 1646), 2nd earl of Arundel, 4th earl of Surrey, and 1st earl of Norfolk, art collector and politician.

Henry Howard (b. 1628, d. 1684), 6th duke of Norfolk, presented to the Royal Society in 1667.

The Royal Society, London (its ink stamp: 'Soc. Reg. Lond / ex dono HENR. HOWARD / Norfolciensis.', f. 1r; its book-plate (f. [iii] recto).

Purchased by the British Museum from the Royal Society in 1831 together with 549 other Arundel manuscripts.

Publications:

Catalogue of Manuscripts in The British Museum, New Series, 1 vol. in 2 parts (London: British Museum, 1834-1840), I, part 1: The Arundel Manuscripts, p. 38.

'Speculum Gy de Warewyke': an English poem, ed. by Georgiana Lea Morrill, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 75 (London: Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1898) [on the text].

H.L.D. Ward, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), II (1893), pp. 224-27.

Eleanor P. Hammond, Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual (New York: Peter Smith, 1933), p. 292.

Sir William McCormick and Janet E. Heseltine, The Manuscripts of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: A Critical Description of Their Contents (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), p. 536.

The Text of the Canterbury Tales: Studied on the Basis of All Known Manuscripts, ed. by John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, 8 vols (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), I, pp. 52-54.

Michael C. Seymour, 'The English Manuscripts of Mandeville’s Travels', Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions, 4 (1966), 167-210 (pp. 184-85).

Robert E. Lewis and Angus McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide to the Manuscripts of the Prick of Conscience (Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediæval Languages and Literatures, 1982), pp. 57-58.

Charles A. Owen Jr., The Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1991), p. 107.

Michael C. Seymour, A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts. Volume I, Works before The Canterbury Tales (Aldershot and Brookfield: Scolar Press, 1995), p. 137.

Daniel W. Mosser, 'Corrective Notes on the Structures and Paper Stocks of Four MSS Containing Extracts from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales', Studies in Bibliography, 52 (1999), 97-114.

Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and His Followers, ed. by C. Horstmann, with a new preface by Anne Clark Bartlett (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999), p. 24.

The Defective Version of Mandeville's Travels, ed. M.C. Seymour, (Oxford: The Early English Text Society, 2002), p. xx.

Jill Whitelock, The Seven Sages of Rome (Midland Version): Edited from Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd.1.17 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. xxxv-xxxvi.

A. S. G. Edwards, 'The Speculum Guy de Warwick and Lydgate's Guy of Warwick: The Non-Romance Middle English Tradition', in Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor, ed. by Alison Wiggins and Rosalind Field (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 81-93 (pp. 84-85).

Richard Morris's 'Prick of Conscience': A Corrected and Amplified Reading Text, prepared by Ralph Hanna and Sarah Wood, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 342 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 379 [on the text].

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Chaucer, Geoffrey, poet and administrator, c 1340-1400,
see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000375840787
Howard, Henry, 6th Duke of Norfolk, 1628-1684
Howard, Thomas, 2nd earl of Arundel, 4th earl of Surrey, and first earl of Norfolk, art collector and politician, 1585-1646,
see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000020886292

Places:

England

Related Material:

From Catalogue of Manuscripts in The British Museum, New Series, 1 vol. in 2 parts (London: British Museum, 1834-1840), I, part 1: The Arundel Manuscripts, p. 38.

'Paper, in folio, ff. 181, xv. Cent.

1. Ypotys, a religious Legend. fol. 1. It begins, "Alle that wolle wysdam here, Herkenythe me now and ze may here Of a tale of holy writte." It ends, "Thus endith this talkyng; God graunt us alle gode endynge, Amen, amen, say we now alle, That it mot so by falle." The copy in the Cotton Ms. Calig. A. ii. is somewhat different from this.

2. Sir John Mandeville's Travels. fol. 5. b. At the end "Her endys the boke of Johne Maundevile, Knyghte, of wayes to Jerusalem and of merveyles of Ynde and othere contrees."

3. The Prick of Conscience, a poem usually ascribed to Richard Rolle of Hampole. fol. 41. b. At the end, "Here endythe that tretys that is callede the Pryke of conscience, Deo gratias, Amen, qd. R. T." It wants two leaves between ff. 144-145.

4. Gy Earl of Werwyke and Dekene Alquyne; a religious tale in verse. fol. 147. It begins, "Herkeny the alle to my speche, And heel of soul I wylle 30w teche." It ends imperfect, "The bonde nyl nevere loude ne stylle Do nouzt a zeyne his lordes wylle."

5. The seven wise Masters, or the seven Sages. fol. 152. Imperfect; it begins in the third tale with the words, Hys commandement thei dide be lyve, Thane wex theire moche stryve." And ends in the fifteenth tale with the words, Ryzt glade thou schalt be for so the, zef I wylle late the with oute othe." see Ward, Catalogue of Romances II, pp. 224-227.

6. The Story of Melibeus, from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. [imperfect.] fol. 166.'

R. T: apparently writer of part of, in the fifteenth Century.