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Harley MS 437

Record Id:

040-002046265

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002046265

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000596.0x000396

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 437

Title:

English heraldry

Scope & Content:

Contents:

ff. 1r-4v: Part of an Alphabet of Arms of English families (their names starting with the letter 'B'), blazoned and tricked.

ff. 5r-7r: Arms of English nobility and gentry (their names starting with the letters 'O' and 'P'), tricked.

ff. 8r-11v: Part of an Alphabet of Arms of English families (their names starting with the letter 'B'), blazoned.

ff. 12r-12v: An index of Arms of English families (their names starting with the letter 'S').

ff. 13r-26v: Arms of English nobility and gentry (their names starting with the letters 'R' and 'S'), tricked.

ff. 27r-29v: Part of an Alphabet of Arms of English families (their names starting with the letter 'B'), blazoned.

ff. 30r-33r: Arms of English nobility and gentry (their names starting with the letters 'T'), tricked.

ff. 34v-36r, 37r-42r: Arms of English nobility and gentry, tricked; many without names, possibly from a church; entitled ‘North partus’.

f. 42v: Notes in English, crossed out.

ff. 43r-47r: Arms of English nobility and gentry (their names starting with the letters ‘V’ and ‘W’), tricked.

ff. 48v-52v: Arms of saints, emperors and kings, tricked; including the attributed or imaginary arms of Christ, the Three Magi and Prester John.

ff. 53v-89r: Arms of English saints, kings, earls, dukes, lords and the Knights of the Garter, tricked; including the attributed or imaginary arms of Brutus, Vortigern, Arthur and William the Conqueror.

ff. 89v-91r: A series of panels with drawings of a biblical story in brown ink, with the inscription: ‘[T]obyah was of the trybe and [...] of nephaly which lyeth in the co[n]tre es of galyle above naason the waye tow[a]rde the weste’.

f. 91v: Panels with drawings intersecting sentences of Matthew 25: 35-36, followed by various words (e.g. ‘the angel of god’; ‘lechery’; ‘blood’ ) in blue ink; possibly taken from a church.

f. 93v: A letter of King Henry VIII, proclaiming a league with Emperor Charles V against the French king.

ff. 94v-105r: Arms of English nobility and gentry (without names from f. 103r onwards), tricked.

f. 105v: A full-page drawing of the arms and crest of Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, in colours.

ff. 106v-107r: The arms of the Earl De La Warr in colours, empty shields or with faintly drawn devices, followed by three roundels, containing the arms and crests of three Knights of the Garter, tricked; including James Audley, one of the founders of the order.

ff. 107v-110v: An index of names of families included in this manuscript.

The manuscript contains a later addition:

f. 36v: Medical recipes for the gripe and ague; added in the 16th century.

Decoration:

Coats of arms in brown ink, tricked; some with colours added (ff. 18v-19r, 30v-31r, 44v-46r, 105v). Several drawings were added to the manuscript: an effigy of an old woman in ink and pencil (f. 20v); biblical and religious drawings, perhaps taken from a church (ff. 89v-91v); a full-page drawing of an owl in blue ink (f. 92r).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002046265", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 437: English heraldry" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002046265

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 437 : English heraldry

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[0436]/040-002046265

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

English
French

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1500

End Date:

1524

Date Range:

1st quarter of the 16th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Paper.

Dimensions: 300 x 215 mm.

Foliation: ff. 37* + 110 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 3 at the end); the upper halves of ff. 37-39 have been cut off.

Script: 16th-century script.

Binding: British Museum in-house.

Custodial History:

Origin: England.

Provenance:

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); his hand on f. 109v; probably identifiable with number A.351 in his catalogues.

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:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), I (1808), p. 311.

Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 379.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Places:

England