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Harley MS 638

Record Id:

040-002046467

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002046467

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000652.0x000090

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 638

Title:

‘Werketone’ register of Bury St Edmunds Abbey

Scope & Content:

ff. 1v–2v: Modern additions, with Harley’s titles.

ff. 3r–12v: Alphabetical index with numbers of folios. The hand responsible for these pages has also lettered the documents in the register in the margins.

ff. 13r–14r: Survey of Risby manor.

ff. 14v–21v: Cellarer’s rents and customs in Bury.

ff. 22r–45v. Miscellaneous documents, mostly from the time of Edward III. Includes pleas and documents relating to the abbey’s moneyer, 1325–26 (ff. 22r–24v); Edward II’s confirmation of the abbey’s charter of liberties (ff. 25r–29r); ‘Narracio quedam de processu contra fratres minores, qualiter expulsi erant de villa Sancti Edmundi’ (ff. 29r–30r, printed in Arnold 1892, pp. 263–285); royal charters (ff. 30v–40r). A grant to the abbot and convent from the time of Abbot Richard is found on f. 39v, which is inserted between two folios of another charter. On f. 28, an inserted slip, three charters of Henry III written in a hand also found in Harley MS 1005 (hand 1 in Thomson 1980, no. 1293, p. 144).

ff. 46r–115v: Pleas relating to a dispute between the abbey and town, 1304–1328.

ff. 116r–118v: Documents relating to dispute between the abbey and townspeople, 1326–1331.

ff. 119r–138v: Inventory of charters, copied from Harley MS 1005, ff. 223r–272v.

ff. 139r–150v: Charters and pleas; Expulsio fratrum (ff. 144v–145v).

ff. 151r–164r: Pleas, mostly relating to the dispute between the town and convent, 1327. Three folios lacking between ff. 159 and 160.

ff. 164v–169v: Documents from the time of Edward III.

ff. 170r–183r: Charters of Edward III, running up to 1358–59, with additions from 1369–70.

ff. 184r–191v: Charters of Edward III and Richard II (latest 1392–93).

ff. 192r–202v: Pleas and charters, from the time of Edward I to Edward III (latest 1358–9).

ff. 203r–210v: Extent of cellarer’s lands in Hessett (1343–44).

ff. 211r–216v: Various charters, many of them inserted slips.

ff. 217r–222r: Pleas relating to the dispute between town and abbey (latest 1360).

ff. 222r–222v: Various additions (latest 1371–72).

ff. 223r–227v: Taxation of abbey lands (1200); miscellaneous charters (latest 1386–7).

ff. 228r–271v: Charters, some undated taxations and pleas, many from the time of Richard II. Charter of 1396, ff. 262–264, was formerly part of ff. 139–150; following folios appear to have been added in the 14th century (latest 1453, but many from c.1413).

Contents revised from Thomson (1980, pp. 126–27).

The volume is composed of several booklets that have been bound together: ff. 3–12 are from the early 15th-cent; ff. 13–118, ff. 139–150, ff. 151–183, ff. 192–216, and ff. 228r–271r are of a similar date, from after the 1330s; ff. 119–138, late 13th-century; ff. 184–191, early 15th-century. Thomson (1980, p. 127) notes that the volume must have been bound into something resembling its current form by the time of Abbot Curteys (r. 1429–46); many inserts are annotated by John Gosford (d. 1407).

Decoration:

In ff. 3r–12v, new sections open with a 3-line Lombardic capital in blue with red penwork decoration.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002046467", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 638: ‘Werketone’ register of Bury St Edmunds Abbey" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002046467

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 638 : ‘Werketone’ register of Bury St Edmunds Abbey

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[0638]/040-002046467

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:

1260

End Date:

1499

Date Range:

Late 13th century-15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: parchment.

Dimensions: 310 × 235 mm.

Foliation: ff. 271 (+ 1 parchment flyleaf + 3 paper flyleaves at the beginning and 2 at the end). Early 15th-century foliation: 1 (now 13)–269 (271); original ff. 32–34, 158–160 missing; 185–186, 212 missing or omitted; 80–89 omitted; two folios originally labelled ff. 76; original f. 117 misplaced after original f. 125.

Script: Gothic cursive. The hand responsible for ff. 3r–12v can also be identified in Add. MS 31970, Add. MS 40063, Lansdowne MS 416, and Cotton MS Claudius A XII (see Thomson 1980, p. 127), with a similar decorative scheme.

Binding: British Museum, rebound 29 November 1966.

Custodial History:

Origin:

Benedictine abbey of St Edmund, King and Martyr, Bury St Edmunds: indicated by localized nature of contents.

Provenance:

Title ‘Registrum Werketone’ (f. 3r) added in a 16th-century hand.

(?) John Mallowes (d. 1637), town clerk of Bury St Edmunds.

Sir Simonds D’Ewes (b.1602, d. 1650), 1st baronet, diarist, antiquary, and friend of Sir Robert Cotton (see Wright 1972): the manuscript is recorded in his catalogue as no. A158 (see Watson 1966).

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 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, ed. by Robert Nares and others, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808–1812), i, 393–94.

M.R. James, On the Abbey of S. Edmund at Bury (Cambridge: Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1895) https://archive.org/details/abbeyofsedmundat00jame, p. 96

M.R. James, ‘Bury St. Edmunds Manuscripts’, The English Historical Review, 41.162 (1926), 251–60 https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/XLI.CLXII.251, p. 259.

Andrew G. Watson, The Library of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (London: British Museum, 1966), no. A158.

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. 131, 232.

Rodney M. Thomson, The Archives of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk Records Society, 21 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1980), no. 1281.

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. 106.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Benedictine abbey of St Edmund, King and Martyr, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, 1020-1539