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Harley MS 49

Record Id:

040-002045877

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002045877

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000596.0x0000da

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 49

Title:

Roman de Tristan en prose

Scope & Content:

Roman de Tristan en prose (Prose Tristan), imperfect at the beginning, with an index or table of contents (ff. 149r-154v). Incipit: 'Sadoc vient ce part & regardoit contremont & contreval....' The missing first page has been replaced with a flyleaf that had originally been a pastedown. Between ff. 6v and 7r is visible the fragment of a page bearing the remains of a decorative border, possibly from a larger illumination.

The table is keyed to a system of rubrics and numbers (major sections A-G and Roman numeral chapters) that appear throughout the text. The first rubric in the manuscript corresponds with that labelled as major section A, 'c\m/ vj' in the table, 'Come Sadoc aloit chacier,' the previous chapter having begun imperfectly.

One of 13 known surviving books signed by Richard III: see Sutton and Visser-Fuchs 1997 p. 1.

Folio 1* is a parchment flyleaf, inscribed in a modern hand: 'Historical Romance of the Kings of Ireland'.

Decoration:

Initials in blue with red pen-flourishing, some large, some small. Rubrics in red.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002045877", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 49: Roman de Tristan en prose" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002045877

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 49 : Roman de Tristan en prose

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[0048]/040-002045877

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

French, Old

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1450

End Date:

1499

Date Range:

2nd half of the 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 275 x 190mm (text space: 200 x 130mm).

Foliation: ff. 1* + 155 (+ 6 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves: 3 at the beginning and 3 at the end; f. 1* is a medieval parchment flyleaf, inserted as a repair for the now-absent first leaf of the text)

Script: Gothic cursive.

Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house binding of red leather with the Harley arms.

Custodial History:

Origin:

England

Provenance:

Richard III, King of England (b. 1450, d. 1485): inscribed, as Duke of Gloucester from 1461 to 1483) 'Iste Liber constat Ricardo Duci Gloucestre' (f. 155r).

Elizabeth of York (b. 1466, d. 1503), Daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Wydville, niece of Richard III, wife of King Henry VII from 1486: inscribed in her hand, 'sans remevyr Elyzabeth' (f. 155r).

George Turberville (b. c. 1540, d. c. 1597), poet: inscribed with his name and a distich: 'Turbervile a monster is that loveth not his friend / or stoops to foes, or doth forget good turns and so fend' (f. 148v).

Judith Turberville, daughter of George Turberville: inscribed with her name (f. 154v).

Sir Simonds d'Ewes (b.1602, d. 1650), 1st Baronet, diarist, antiquary, and friend of Sir Robert Cotton (see Wright 1972).

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 (see Watson 1966).

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.

Administrative Context:

England.

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), I (1808), no. 49.

H. L. D. Ward, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), I (1883), p. 358.

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. 131, 144, 285, 332.

Le Roman de Tristan: en prose, ed. by Renée L. Curtius, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1976), [as 'H1'].

Pamela Tudor-Craig, Richard III (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1977), no. 161 [exhibition catalogue].

Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, Richard III’s Books: Ideals and Reality in the Life and Library of a Medieval Prince (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1997), pp. 220, 290, fig. 70.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names: