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Harley MS 45

Record Id:

040-002045873

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002045873

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000596.0x0000d2

LARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100161516080.0x000001

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 45

Title:

A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen

Scope & Content:

Contents:

ff. 1r–168r: A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen

The manuscript contains a few later additions:

ff. 168r–169r: Antiphons with English translations; including ‘O uirgo uirginum’, as well as a verse from the Te deum, ‘In te domine’; added in in the 2nd half of the 15th century.

f. 170r: Medicinal recipes in English, entitled: 'A medicina for the ache' and 'A medicine for the Colike in the forhede wych Comyth of a grett Hete of the Stomake'.

Decoration:

1 large initial in gold on a red and blue ground with floral sprays (f. 1r). Smaller initials in blue with red pen-flourishing. Plain initials in blue. Paraphs in blue. Rubrics and marginal notes in red.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002045873", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 45: A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002045873

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 45 : A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[0044]/040-002045873

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100161516080.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)

Thumbnail:

Languages:

English, Middle
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1400

End Date:

1449

Date Range:

1st half of the 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 270 × 190 mm (text space: 180 × 100 mm).

Foliation: ff. 1*–2* + 170 (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 3 at the end); ff. 1*–2* are parchment leaves; 1 unfoliated paper pastedown on f. 1*recto (bibliographical notes);

Collation: i–xxi⁸ (ff. 1–168), 22² (ff. 169–170).

Script: Gothic.

Binding: British Museum in-house.

Custodial History:

Origin: England.

Provenance:

Margaret Brent [Brente], owned in the 15th century: inscribed the name 'Brente' (6x) on f. 1*; added her 15th-century ownership inscription and a poem on f. 169r: 'Now Blessid Lord, as I have trust in thee / that everlasting I shall nott confounded be; / And for thi bytter Passyon, that you hast suffirryd, / In thi ryghtwysness, swet Iesu, that I be delyveryd. Amen/ Iste liber constat domina Margareta Brent cum magno honore. Amen' (f. 169); added the same poem, with slight variations in spelling, with an ownership inscription ('Iste liber decet a domina Margareta Brent') to f. 2*recto; inscribed her name on f. 170r: 'Brent Margarytt Dame'; perhaps also added the medicinal recipes and other notes on f. 170r, including: 'Amysbere Amysbere Schaftysbere Schaftysbere' (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 82).

Elizabeth Pickering, owned in the 15th or 16th century [? Elisabeth Pickering (b. c. 1510, d. 1562), English printer]: an ownership inscription with her name on f. 1*verso and f. 1r (legible with UV light): 'Elyzabeth Pickaryng is honor of this boke' (not in Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972)).

An unknown 16th-century English owner: added the date 2 December 1580 to f. 1*verso.

John Stowe, (b. 1524/5, d. 1605), chronicler and antiquary: an inscription on f.1*verso appears to be in his hand: 'promised to J. Harvy for reasonable gayne yf I sell it' (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 319).

Edward Tynes (d. c. 1640), owned in 1627: inscribed on f. 2*recto: 'Disce mori mundo vivere disce Deo' [Learn to die in the world, learn to live in God], with his name and the date 14 September 1627 (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 333).

Sir Simonds d'Ewes (b.1602, d. 1650), 1st baronet, diarist, antiquary, and friend of Sir Robert Cotton (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 131); recorded in his catalogues as A.220 and B.138.

Sir Simonds D’Ewes (d. 1722), 3rd baronet and grandson of the former: inherited and later sold the D’Ewes library to Robert Harley on 4 October 1705 for £450.

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 Cavendish, née 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:

Hope Emily Allen, 'The Speculum Vitae: Addendum', Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 32 (1917), 133-62 (p. 155).

R.H. Bowers, 'A Middle English Mnemonic Poem on Usury', Mediaeval Studies, 17 (1955), 226-32 (pp. 228-30).

Religious Lyrics of the XVth century, ed. by Carleton Brown (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), pp. 90–92

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), I (1808), no. 45.

A. S. G. Edwards, 'A Fifteenth Century Didactic Poem in British Museum Add MS 29729', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen: Bulletin of the Modern Language Society, 4 (1969), 702-06 (p. 703 n. 4).

Laura F. Hodges, 'The Wife of Bath's Costume: Reading the Subtexts', The Chaucer Review, 27 (1993), 359-76 (p. 368 n. 76).

A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen, ed. by Venetia Nelson, Middle English Texts, 14 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1981) [manuscript description at pp. 41–43].

Gerald Robert Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1966), p. 411.

Rossell Hope Robbins, 'Popular Prayers in Middle English Verse', Modern Philology, 36 (1939), 337-50 (p. 340).

John Scattergood, ‘Fashion and Morality in the Late Middle Ages’, in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by David Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987), pp. 255-72 (p. 264, n. 28).

Siegfried Wenzel, The Sin of Sloth: Acedia in Medieval Thought and Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967), p. 75 n. 29.

Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 82, 131, 279, 319, 333, 371.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)