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Harley MS 1663
- Record Id:
- 040-002047494
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002047494
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000709.0x0000ab
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 1663
- Title:
- Book of Hours (Use of York)
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
ff. 1r-6v: Calendar.
ff. 7r-46v: The Hours of the Virgin Mary.
ff. 47r-58v: The Seven Penitential Psalms.
ff. 58v-69r: Litany of Saints, followed by several prayers.
ff. 70r-122r: Office of the Dead, featuring musical notation: black neumes on four-line red staves.
ff. 123r-140r: Commendation of the Souls.
ff. 141r-148v: The Psalms of the Passion.
Decoration:
Large blue initials with red pen-flourishing. Smaller plain initials in red or blue. Added prints with tinted colours, now damaged (ff. 69r [The Three Magi kneeling before the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child], 69v [an unidentified scene]). Residual glue from prints that have been removed (ff. 46v, 122r, 122v, 148v).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002047494", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 1663: Book of Hours (Use of York)" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002047494 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 1663 : Book of Hours (Use of York) - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[1665]/040-002047494
- 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:
- 1450
- End Date:
- 1499
- Date Range:
- 2nd half of the 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 135 x 95 mm (text space: 80 x 55 mm).
Foliation: ff. 148 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 4 at the end); 2 unfoliated parchment stubs between f. 76 and f. 77; 1 unfoliated paper pastedown on f. f[150]verso (note of examination).
Collation: Indicated by catchwords; each quire has been mounted separately onto a paper guard.
Script: Gothic.
Binding: British Library in-house: brown leather with the Harleian armorial bookplate gold-stamped on the outside covers; rebound in 1983.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
Northern England.
Provenance:
Henry Worsley (b. 1675, d. 1747), scholar and manuscript collector, envoy at the court of Portugal (1714-21) and governor of Barbados (1721-31); donated by him to Robert Harley together with other manuscripts from Worsley's collection (now Harley MSS 1585-1747, 1811, 1812) before December 1712 (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 361).
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), II (1808), p. 168 (no. 1663).
Henry Littlehales and Edmund Bishop, The Prymer, or, Lay Folks' Prayer Book, 2 vols, Early English Text Society, 105 and 109 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1895-1897), I, p. xl (as 'H').
Christopher Wordsworth, Horae Eboracenses: The Prymer or Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary According to the Use of the Illustrious Church of York with Other Devotions as They Were Used by the Lay-folk in the Northern Province in the XVth and XVIth Centuries, Publications of the Surtees Society, 132 (Durham: Andrews; London: Quaritch, 1919), p. lvii.
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. 361.
John B. Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), p. 245.
Erik Drigsdahl, Book of Hours website [accessed 10 September 2008].
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Places:
- Northern England