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Harley MS 1666
- Record Id:
- 040-002047497
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002047497
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000709.0x0000ae
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 1666
- Title:
- The General Prologue (Later Version) to the Wycliffite Bible
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
ff. 1r-111v: The General Prologue (Later Version) to the Wycliffite Bible.
The manuscript contains a later addition:
f. iii recto: A note in pencil by Sir Frederic Madden (b. 1801, d. 1873), Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum: 'This MS is stated to have belonged to Matthew Parker archbishop of Canterbury'.
Decoration:
1 large initial in blue with red pen-flourishing (f. 1r). 2 smaller initials in blue with red pen-flourishing (ff. 35r, 50v). Red initials (ff. 67r, 89r, 77r). Rubrics and marginal headers in red. Paraphs and marginal annotations in red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002047497", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 1666: The General Prologue (Later Version) to the Wycliffite Bible" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002047497 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 1666 : The General Prologue (Later Version) to the Wycliffite Bible - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[1668]/040-002047497
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- Languages:
- English, Middle
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1400
- End Date:
- 1424
- Date Range:
- 1st quarter of the 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 130 x 100 mm (text space: 90 x 65 mm).
Foliation: ff. i-iii + 111 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 5 unfoliated flyleaves at the end); ff. i-iii are modern paper leaves; 1 unfoliated paper pastedown between f. [113] and f. [114] (note of examination); each quire has been mounted onto a paper guard.
Collation: Indicated by catchwords; all quires have been mounted separately on paper guards.
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: Post-1600. Brown leather binding with the Harleian armorial bookplate gold-stamped on the outsides of the upper and lower covers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
'William Smytte[…]', ? 16th century: his name inscribed on f. 88v, erased but still partially legible.
Matthew Parker (b. 1504, d. 1575), archbishop of Canterbury in 1559, collector of manuscripts, which he bequeathed to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: see the Harleian Catalogue and a pencil note by Frederick Madden on f. [iii]recto (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 268).
‘Mr Agarde of London’: added extracts, 17th century (see Forshall and Madden, The Holy Bible (1850), I, xli).
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 MSSS 1585-1747, 1811, 1812) before December 1712 (see Diary, ed. by Wright and Wright (1966), I, pp. xix-xx.; Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), pp. 361-362).
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), pp. 168-69.
The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers, ed. by Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1850), I, p. xli.
Sven L. Fristedt, The Wycliffe Bible, 2 vols (Stockhom: Almquist & Wiksell, 1953-1969), I: The Principal Problems Connected with Forshall and Madden's Edition, Stockholm Studies in English, 4, p. 17.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril Ernest Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I: 1715-1723, pp. xix-xx.
Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 268, 361-362, 399.
Mary Dove, The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 67, 74, 134.
Henry Ansgar Kelly, The Middle English Bible: A Reassessment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), pp. 14, 20, 122, 235 n. 34.
Elizabeth Solopova, 'Index of Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible', in The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. by Elizabeth Solopova (Leiden: Brill, 2016), p. 487.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Places:
- England