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Harley MS 645
- Record Id:
- 040-002046474
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002046474
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000652.0x000097
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 645
- Title:
- ‘Kempe’ register of Bury St Edmunds Abbey
- Scope & Content:
-
ff. 4r–7v: Alphabetical index.
ff. 8r–10v: Charters, mostly relating to the Hospital of St Nicholas.
ff. 11r–12r: Partial alphabetical indexes.
ff. 12v–13r: Rents relating to St Nicholas’ Hospital; a letter of Abbot Richard (1324).
ff. 14r–14v: Various rents. ‘Registrum Kempe’ heading (f. 14r, in the same hand as f. 3r).
ff. 15r–23v: Taxation of churches in Norwich archdeaconry by Bishop Walter Suffield of Norwich (1254); edited by Lunt (1926, p. 182).
ff. 24r–27v: Accounts of collectors for some of the taxation, lists of knights’ fees, taxations, etc.
ff. 28r–49v: Pleas, royal and abbatial letters relating to the dispute between the abbey and burgesses (1283–1304).
ff. 50r–51v: Accounts for distribution of wax to various officials by the sacrist.
ff. 52r–53v: Ready-reckoning tables.
f. 54r: List of those owing cartage at Whitsun, etc.
f. 54v: Two royal letters.
ff. 58r–81r: Royal charters and pleas relating to the dispute between the abbey and town, and to abbey manors; Statute of Labourers (ff. 58v–60r); Assize of Bread (ff. 60v–62r). Most from the time of Edward III (latest 1372).
ff. 81v–89v: Abbot’s charters and commissions to the sacrist (1357–1434).
ff. 90r–101r: Rental of the sacrist’s lands, arranged by hundreds, with later additions.
ff. 101r–108v: Charters, pleas, and memoranda, from the time of Edward III to the 15th century.
ff. 109r–115v: Rental of lands (perhaps those belonging to the sacrist), arranged by hundreds, beginning imperfectly due to loss of a quire.
ff. 116r–266v: Extracts from royal and abbatial records, mostly pleas from the time of Edward III; charters, rents, taxations, sacristy accounts, and memoranda; historical notes in Henry of Kirkestede’s(?) hand (f. 133v); list of English kings to Edward II (f. 192v, with a leaf lost after this); election-documents of Abbot Simon (ff. 203r–204r).
Contents revised from Thomson (1980: 127–128).
The manuscript is composed of several booklets, with ff. 1–10 dating to the early 15th century; and ff. 11–266 mostly from the second half of the 14th century, consisting of several booklets and bound together close to the time of their creation.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002046474", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 645: ‘Kempe’ register of Bury St Edmunds Abbey" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002046474 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 645 : ‘Kempe’ register of Bury St Edmunds Abbey - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[0645]/040-002046474
- 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:
- 1300
- End Date:
- 1499
- Date Range:
- 14th century-15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: parchment.
Dimensions: 315 × 225 mm (written area 245 × 155 mm).
Foliation: ff. 272 (omits ff. 55, 56, 182, 184, 220; f. 51* added; + 2 unfoliated flyleaves at the end + 5 modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 3 at the end). Late 14th-century foliation, 1 (modern 14)–234 (265), omitting original f. 61.
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: British Museum in-house, rebound 1 August 1969.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
Benedictine abbey of St Edmund, King and Martyr, Bury St Edmunds: indicated by localized nature of contents.
Provenance:
Title ‘Registrum Kempe’ (f. 3r) added in a 16th- or 17th-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. A149 (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. His title page (ff. 1v–2r).
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, 396.
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. A149.
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. 1282.
William E. Lunt, The Valuation of Norwich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), p. 182.
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. 124
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)