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Harley MS 433

Record Id:

040-002046261

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002046261

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000596.0x000392

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 433

Title:

A collection of papers from the Signet Office, containing registers of grants, diplomatic correspondence and financial records related to the Crown, from the reigns of Edward V and Richard III

Scope & Content:

This manuscript contains registers with abstracts of grants that passed the Signet Office, the king’s personal seal, during the reigns of Edward V and Richard III, and related materials. The latter include a list of office holders at the death of Edward IV, a list of the fees due to officers on the royal estate, and a glossary of legal terms used in royal letters. The manuscript also contains diplomatic letters received by the king, and financial records and accounts concerning chamber finance, commissions for loans, household assignments, and the administration of the Crown lands.

Although the majority of the manuscript dates from the period c 1463-c 1485, it also contains some unrelated additional materials from the reign of Henry VIII. These include a description of the reception of the papal legate and a list of a French embassy and its English counterparts.

The description of this manuscript is based on the summary record in Horrox and Hammond, Harleian Manuscript 433 (1979), I, pp. xxxvii-xxxxix. A more detailed list, recording 2,378 items, can be found in the Catalogue of Harleian Manuscripts (1808), I, pp. 256-311 (no. 433), which was made by Humfrey Wanley (b. 1672, d. 1726), Keeper of the Harleian Library.

Contents:

f. 1v: Plate received from Henry Horne; bonds (deleted); a cure for the stone.

f. 2r: The knighting of Geoffrey de Sasiola.

f. 2v: Letter to the duchess of York.

f. 3r: Letter of presentation temp. Edward V; letter of the prince of Wales.

f. 4r: A list of horses at grass.

f. 5r: Rewards to sheriffs.

ff. 6r-19v: First register of Edward V.

f. 20r: Letters for benefices.

ff. 21r-21v: Letters and ecclesiastical precedents.

ff. 22r-105v: Register of Richard III’s grants.

ff. 107r-219r: Second register of Richard III.

ff. 221r-232r: Second register of Edward V.

f. 233r: Early Richard III signet material.

ff. 233v-234r: Lord Dynham to the chancellor.

ff. 235r-255r: Diplomatic correspondence.

ff. 255v-261v: Primacy of York over Scotland.

ff. 261v-264r: Diplomatic correspondence.

ff. 264v-265r: Council of the North.

ff. 265v-268v: Letters concerning Ireland.

ff. 269r-270r: Household in the North.

ff. 270r-271r: Instructions to Marmaduke Constable.

ff. 271r-272r: Instructions for hasty levy of revenues.

ff. 272r-27v: Berkeley inheritance.

ff. 272v-273r: Letter concerning order of St John.

f. 273r: Letter to Salisbury chapter.

ff. 273v-275r: Richard III’s proclamation against Henry Tudor.

ff. 275v-277v: Commissions for loans.

ff. 278r-281r: Settlement of Plumpton and Eltoft disputes.

f. 281v: Letter concerning amendment of morality.

ff. 282r-289v: Lists of land grants.

ff. 290r-292v: Household assignments.

ff. 293r-294r: Reception of the papal legate temp. Henry VIII.

ff. 294v-295r: French ambassadors and their counterparts temp. Henry VIII.

f. 296r: Indenture concerning St Bartholomew’s hospital, c. 1463.

ff. 297r-297v: Hugh ap John to be denizen.

f. 298r: Incomplete pardon for ‘R. C.’, knight.

ff. 299v-300r: Trade with Brabant.

f. 300r: Liberties of Pembroke.

ff. 301r-305v: Oaths of royal officials.

ff. 306r-306v: A Salisbury land grant, 1435.

ff. 307r-308r: Incomplete lease to Robert Harding, 1470.

f. 308v: Proclamation concerning Elizabeth Woodville.

f. 309v: William, Earl of Nottingham, to John Kendale.

ff. 310r-316r: Fees granted by Edward IV from the crown lands.

ff. 317r-321r: Fees from the duchy of Lancaster.

ff. 322r-322v: Fees from foreign lands.

f. 323r: Signet letters of the duke of Gloucester temp. Edward V.

ff. 324r-327v: Valuation of the archbishopric of York, 22 Edward IV.

ff. 328r-329r: Receipt of the receiver of the former Stafford lands, c. 1482/3.

ff. 330r-332v: Gentry lists.

ff. 333r-333v: Glossary of legal terms.

f. 334r: Appointment of soldiers in Calais.

ff. 335r-336r: Corrodies in the king’s gift.

ff. 336r-339v: Fees of the royal officials (Copy of Henry VI list).

f. 340r: A memorandum concerning the ‘Rape of Penvesey’.

f. 340v: Letter concerning Thomas Lynom.

The manuscript contains a few additional inscriptions:

f. 1r: Various inscriptions, including: ‘Homo natus est de mullyre’; ‘No pardon for Thomas Hyot’; and the names of ‘Gaudfridus de sasiolo’ and ‘Wylliam Thompson’; added in the 15th or 16th century.

f. 106v: A copy of ‘A lettre patentee for Anthony Spynelle of Suthamptone’; added in the 15th or 16th century.

f. 219v: ‘ffor asmoche as the moost famouse prince of noble memory whose saul god assoyle at a parliament’; added in the 15th or 16th century.

f. 340v: Various inscriptions, including a proverb: ‘Gallus gallinis ter quincque sufficit unus / Sed ter quinque viri non sufficiunt mulieri]’; and ‘Ryn / Rygh / Rygh’; added in the 15th or 16th century.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002046261", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 433: A collection of papers from the Signet Office, containing registers of grants, diplomatic correspondence and financial records related…" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002046261

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 433 : A collection of papers from the Signet Office, containing registers of grants, diplomatic correspondence and financial records…

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[0432]/040-002046261

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

English
English, Middle
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1458

End Date:

1552

Date Range:

c 1463-c 1547

Era:

Access:

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Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Paper.

Dimensions: 310 x 215 mm.

Foliation: ff. 340 (+ 3 unfoliated blank paper flyleaves at the beginning + 4 at the end); 2 unfoliated paper pastedowns on f. [i]recto and 2 on f. [iii]recto (bibliographical notes).

Collation: All leaves have been mounted onto paper guards, either separately or as part of quires.

Script: Gothic cursive.

Binding: British Museum in-house. Brown half leather binding with the Harleian armorial bookplate gold-stamped on the outside covers; re-bound on 19 September 1964.

Custodial History:

Origin:

London (Westminster).

Provenance:

The Signet Office, Westminster: the manuscript contains papers that were written and signed by its clerks.

? William Cecil (b. 1520, d. 1598), Baron Burghley: according to Humfrey Wanley, Keeper of the Harleian Library, in the Catalogue of Harleian Manuscripts (1808), I, p. 256 (see also Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 99).

John Strype (b. 1643, d. 1737), historian and biographer, owned until (?) 1711: purchased from him by Humfrey Wanley for the Harleian Library (see Catalogue of Harleian Manuscripts (1808), I, p. 256; Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 321).

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:

Horace Walpole, Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third, 6 vols (1798-1818), II, pp. 39, 118-19, 132, 174-75.

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), I, pp. 256-311 (no. 433).

Caroline A. Halsted, Richard III: As Duke of Gloucester and King of England (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844).

John Gough Nichols, Grants, etc., from the Crown during the Reign of Edward the Fifth, from the Original Docket-book MS. Harl. 433. and Two Speeches for Opening Parliament, Camden Society, Original Series, 60 (London: Printed for the Camden Society, 1854).

Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. by J. Gairdner, 2 vols (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1861-63).

James Gairdner, History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third: To Which is Added the Story of Perkin Warbeck, rev. edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898).

Rachel Robertson Reid, The King's Council in the North (London: Longmans, Green, 1921), pp. 504-05 [Appendix V].

V. J. B. Torr, 'Campeggio's Progress through Kent in 1518', Archaeologia Cantiana, 43 (1931), 255-66.

J. Otway-Ruthven, The King’s Secretary and the Signet Office in the XV Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), pp. 2, 117-18.

Paul Murray Kendall, King Richard III (London: Allen and Unwin, 1955).

S. B. Chrimes and Alfred Lawson Brown, Select Documents of English Constitutional History, 1307-1485 (London: Black, 1961).

G. R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 200-01 (no. 97).

English Historical Documents, ed. by David C. Douglas, 12 vols (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1955-1977), IV: 1327–1485, ed. by Alec R. Meyers (1969), passim.

Bertram Percy Wolffe, Crown Lands, 1461-1536: An Aspect of Yorkist and Early Tudor Government, Historical Problems: Studies and Documents, 10 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970), pp. 59-65, 120-139.

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. 99, 321.

British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, ed. by Rosemary Horrox and P. W. Hammond, 4 vols (Gloucester: Sutton, 1979-1983).

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Places:

London, England
Westminster, England