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Harley MS 391

Record Id:

040-002046219

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002046219

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000596.0x000328

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 391

Title:

Cartulary of Waltham Abbey

Scope & Content:

General cartulary of Waltham Abbey, arranged in sections by grantors, with extensive miscellaneous additions.

Gatherings 1–3, 10, 16, and 21–23 were compiled during the reign of Henry III (r. 1216–1272); 4, 9, 8, 24 during that of Edward I (1272–1307), and 13 was not completed until 1523. Arranged in sections by grantors and includes royal, episcopal and papal charters. The plan of waterworks at Wormley for Waltham Abbey (f. 6r) is datable to the 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 13th century, and is one of the earliest surviving English maps.

f. 1*v: Table of contents by Peter Le Neve.

f. 1**r–2*r: 17th-century inscriptions.

ff. 1r–6r: Description of a conduit at Waltham, with diagram, after 1220.

ff. 7r–12r: Charters relating to disputes.

ff. 13r–20v: Charters on the conduit.

ff. 21r–32r: Miscellaneous charters.

ff. 33r–56v: Royal charters, before 1201.

ff. 57r–70v: Charters relating to the Aucher family, 1260–1303.

ff. 71r–75v: Miscellaneous charters, after 1249.

ff. 77r–92v: Lay charters, before 1201.

ff. 93r–96r: Ecclesiastical charters, 1227–1320s.

ff. 97r–112v: Ecclesiastical including episcopal charters, before 1201.

ff. 113r–120v: Ecclesiastical charters, 1226–1300.

ff. 121r–138v: Papal charters, before 1201.

ff. 139r–144v: Lay charters, before 1201 (misbound; should be placed after f. 92).

ff. 145r–152v: Papal charters, before 1201.

ff. 153r–175v: Papal charters, 1250s–1262.

f. 176r: 14th-century table of contents.

ff. 176v–178v: Table of contents by Peter Le Neve.

Decoration:

Diagram of waterworks for the abbey (f. 6r). Chi-ro symbol for Christ in red (f. 33r). Copies of papal rota and bene valete in black and red ink (ff. 123r–159v). Initials with penwork decoration in red or blue (ff. 13r–18r). Large initials with foliate decoration in black. Large initials in red, silver or blue (ff. 167v–171v). Initials, rubrics and paraphs in red. Rubrics occasionally in silver (f. 153r), now mostly showing only its red ground Initials highlighted in red. Occasional cadels in ink.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002046219", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 391: Cartulary of Waltham Abbey" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002046219

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 391 : Cartulary of Waltham Abbey

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[0390]/040-002046219

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1215

End Date:

1523

Date Range:

c 1220-1523

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: parchment.

Dimensions: 230 × 165 mm (written area 170/185 × 110/115 mm).

Foliation: ff. 179 (+ 3 early modern paper flyleaves foliated 1*, 1**, 2*; + single leaves after ff. 7, 50, 54, 105; + 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 4 at the end); wants a few leaves passim.

Collation: i^10–4 (ff. 1–6; 7th–10th cancelled), ii^10–4 (ff. 7, 7*–12; 8th–10th cancelled), iii⁸ (ff. 13–20), iv¹² (ff. 21–32), v–vi⁸ (ff. 33–48), vii⁸⁺² (ff. 49–56; ff. 50*, 54* added), viii⁸ (ff. 57–64), ix–x⁶ (ff. 65–76), xi–xii⁸ (ff. 77–92), xiii^6–2 (ff. 93–96), xiv⁸ (ff. 97–104), xv⁸⁺¹ (ff. 105–112; f. 105* added), xvi⁸ (ff. 113–120), xvii¹⁰ (ff. 121–130), xviii⁸ (ff. 131–138), xix^8–2 (ff. 139–144; 1st, 8th cancelled), xx–xxii⁸ (ff. 145–168), xxiii^one (f. 169), xxiv⁶ (ff. 170–175), xxv–xxviii^one (ff. 176–179). The volume is incorrectly arranged; Ransford (p. lxxx) suggests that it originally began with gatherings 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 15, and 17–20.

Script: Gothic (above top line).

Binding: British Museum, 9 May 1967.

Custodial History:

Origin:

Augustinian abbey of Holy Cross, Waltham, Essex.

Provenance:

Extensive medieval additions, including four single leaves foliated 7*, 50*, 54* and 106*. 17th-century table of contents (ff. 176v–178v).

Sir William Hayward of Tandridge Hall (d. 1704), courtier and antiquary: owned before 1698, according to inscription by Peter Le Neve (f. 2*r).

Peter Le Neve (b. 1661, d. 1729), herald and antiquary: inscription (f. 2*r).

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.

Information About Copies:

Select digital coverage available for this manuscript: see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/.

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, ed. by Robert Nares and others, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808–12), i, 231.

William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. by John Caley, Henry Ellis, and Buckeley Bandinel, 6 in 8 vols (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1817–30), vi, 58(i).

William Winters, ‘Historical Notes on Some of the Ancient Manuscripts Formerly Belonging to the Monastic Library of Waltham Holy Cross’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 (1877), 231–51, https://doi.org/10.2307/3677989.

Montague R. James, 'Manuscripts from Essex Monastic Libraries', Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, 21 (1937), p. 39.

P.D.A. Harvey, 'A 13th-century plan from Waltham Abbey, Essex', Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of Cartography, 22 (1968 [for 1969]), 10-12, https://doi.org/10.1080/03085696808592312.

Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts Preserved in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 185, 219.

P. J. and R. M. Huggins, ‘Excavation of Monastic Forge and Saxo-Norman Enclosure, Waltham Abbey, Essex, 1972-73’, Essex Archaeology and History, 5 (1973) 127-84 (p. 129, n. 9, 14, p. 130, n. 26).

P. D. A. Harvey, The History of Topographical Maps (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), pl. 48.

Peter Barber, ‘The Manuscript Legacy. Maps in the Department of Manuscripts’, The Map Collector, 28 (1984), 18-24 (p. 23 n. 50).

Local maps and plans from medieval England, ed. by Paul D. A. Harvey and Raleigh A. Skelton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), pp. 5, 6, 9, 10, 35, 36, 38, 59-70, pl. 2.

Rosalind Ransford, The Early Charters of the Augustinian Canons of Waltham Abbey (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1989), pp. lxxix–lxxxi.

Margaret Laing, Catalogue of sources for a linguistic atlas of early medieval English (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1993), p. 88.

Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, 'Descriptio Terrarum: Zur Repräsentation von bewohntem Raum im späteren deutschen Mittelalter', in Raumerfassung und Raumbewusstsein im späteren Mittelalter, ed. by Peter Moraw, Vorträge und Forschungen, 49 (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke, 2002), pp. 11-30 (p. 19).

Ely 1109–1197, ed. by Nicholas Karn, English Episcopal Acta, 31 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 166.

Jean A. Givens, Observation and Image-Making in Gothic Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 49-51, 106, 158, 172, pl. 15.

G.R.C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain and Ireland, ed. by Claire Breay, Julian Harrison, and David M. Smith, 2nd edn (London: British Library, 2010), no. 989.

Exhibitions:

Picturing places, (online), 27 April 2017-

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Augustinian abbey of the Holy Cross, Waltham, Essex, 1177-1540
Haward, William, courtier and antiquary, c 1617-1704