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Harley MS 559

Record Id:

040-002046388

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002046388

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000652.0x000041

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 559

Title:

Collection of political prophecies

Scope & Content:

Contents:

f. 1r: Three prophecies in Latin verse (Prophetia) written on 12 April 1554, for the years 1550, 1553 and 1554.

f. 2r A prophecy (Prophetia) written on 12 April 1554, Lilium regnans (Middle English).

f. 2v: An explanation of allegories in Lilium regnans (Explanatio prophetie Ante descripta).

ff. 2v-4r: A prophecy about the ‘Serpent which shall rise owt of the north’ (Altera prophetia).

f. 4r: An explanation of places names in the ‘Serpent’ prophecy (Declaratio prophetie).

ff. 4v-5v: The names of the saints and prophets who have prophesised a king who 'shall wynne the holye word', ending: ‘The Copie herof was ffounde in an old / auncient house a Plymowthe sumtyme / an Mr Creswelles howse, of the same towne / and hit was not unwritten this hinderd yeres as apperithe bye the copye’.

ff. 6r-7r: An English prophecy (Prophetia) for the years 1552-1554 (Middle English verse).

f. 7r: Prophetia, beginning ‘There shall come an egle uppon an horse of woodde’.

f. 7v: Prophetia, beginning ‘The Rose female shall dolefullye dye’ (Middle English verse)

ff. 8r-10r: Prophecia, beginning ‘The serpent shall rise owte of the northe’.

f. 10r: When Rome is Removed, beginning 'When Rome is Removyd into Ingland' (Middle English verse).

f. 10v: Prophetia, beginning ‘Who by [...] is alwayes In Just Lawes’ (Middle English verse).

ff. 11r-11v: Prophetia, beginning ‘When father blythe the begger canne saye ij Credes’ (Middle English verse); ending ‘This prophetye was was [sic] wrytten bye one brydlington and Datyd in the yeare of owre Lord [? 906] and found in an old Nunnes sell at Syon’.

ff. 11v-12v: Prophetia, beginning ‘Banister of great brytayne’; ending ‘Per Johannem Bridlington Anno 1009 ffound in sion In an old selle’.

f. 13r: Prophetia, ‘Much miserere shalbe wrought’ (Middle English verse).

ff. 14r-30r: History of the kings of Judah (Latin).

ff. 26v-30r: Collection of excerpts about Anglo-Saxon history (Latin).

ff. 31r-32r: Prophesia, beginning ‘Oute of ye weste shall come 8 persones’ (Middle English verse).

ff. 32v-33r: As I me went this ender day / Fast in my way, Thomas of Erceldoune’s Prophecy, here entitled Prophecia (Middle English verse).

ff. 33v-34r: Propheciae, beginning ‘Peace shall passe and warre begynne’ (Middle English verse).

f. 34r: When Sunday goeth by D and C; a policital prophecy according to the throw of a dice (Middle English verse).

f. 34v: Prophetia dated to April 1554, beginning ‘When ffather blithe the begger can saye ij Credes’ (Middle English verse).

f. 34v: An untitled prophecy dated to 1554, beginning ‘Before the braunchis beginne to budde’ (Middle English verse).

f. 35r: Prophetia dated to 12 April 1554 and signed by ‘L. Crowe’, beginning ‘There shall come a sword over the Stars’.

ff. 36r-38r: A Latin tract about Judas Maccabeus and the Maccabean Revolt.

f. 38v: A Latin tract on Æthelheard of Wessex.

ff. 39r-39v: Ever is six the best chance of the dice combined with The black shall bleed and the blue shall fare and feed, here entitled Prophetia (Middle English verse); ending with a diagram of the trivium and quadrivium.

f. 40r: A prophecy (Prophetia) in Latin verse.

f. 40v: A prophecy (Prophetia) in Latin verse.

f. 41r: An untitled Latin prophecy, allegedly found in the ‘antiquis codicibus beati vincentij vierbij’.

ff. 41v-42v: A prophecy based on ‘bedes bok’ (Middle English verse).

f. 42v: Two short prophecies in Latin verse for the years 1450 and 1570.

f. 43r: Prophetia Bede (Latin).

ff. 43v-44v: When the cock in the north hath built his nest (Middle English verse).

ff. 45r-57v: Harkeneth speeches of many kind things (The Prophecy of the Six Kings), here entitled Prophecia Johannis Heremite (Middle English verse).

f. 48r: Two short prophecies in Latin verse, the second one for the year 1490.

ff. 48v-55v: A chronicle of England in Latin from Alfred the Great until Richard II.

f. 53r: Verba Thomas Wiet milits in hora mortis sue, dated 1559 (Middle English).

f. 56r: A Latin prophecy about England, signed 'Lewkors samot and ‘Leworc Smaot’.

f. 54r: A note in Latin about John of Gaunt (b. 1340, d. 1399), 1st Duke of Lancaster and this tomb in St Paul’s Cathedral.

ff. 54v-57r: A chronicle of England from Egbert, king of Wessex, to Aethelred of Wessex (Latin).

ff. 58v-61r: Latin excerpts from the Book of Joshua (Latin).

ff. 62v-63r: De Rege Egipti Tholomeo Lagi filio (Prophecy of Daniel).

f. 64v: Short entries in Latin about the history of Anglo-Saxon, entitled Chronica.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002046388", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 559: Collection of political prophecies" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002046388

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 559 : Collection of political prophecies

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[0559]/040-002046388

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

English, Middle
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1500

End Date:

1559

Date Range:

c 1500-c 1554

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Paper.

Dimensions: 215 x 155 mm.

Foliation: ff. 67 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + at the end); each leaf has been mounted onto a paper guard.

Script: Gothic cursive.

Binding: Post-1600. British Museum in-house.

Custodial History:

Origin:

England.

Provenance:

An English scribe, wrote political prophecies in 1554: various items throughout the manuscript have been dated, for example on f. 11v: ‘Finis Scriptum anno 1554 primo Marie Regine matre’. Other parts of the manuscript appear to have been written in the early 16th century.

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): inscribed with D’Ewes’s number ‘109’ on f. 2r; the manuscript is recorded in his catalogues as A.871 and B.231; according to A.871 the manuscript was ‘found in Sion in an old Cell’.

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. 350.

Harry Leigh Douglas Ward and John Alexander Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), I (1883), pp. 326-27.

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. 383.

Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: The British Library, 2005), nos 365/10, 734.8/4, 1112/3, 4008/18, 4018/3, 4029/5.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Places:

England