Hard-coded id of currently selected item: . JSON version of its record is available from Blacklight on e.g. ??
Metadata associated with selected item should appear here...
Harley MS 3486
- Record Id:
- 040-002049317
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002049317
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000761.0x0003d2
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 3486
- Title:
-
John Lydgate, The Fall of Princes
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
ff. 2r-177v: John Lydgate, The Fall of Princes. An English translation (with headers in Latin) of Giovanni Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, based on the French translation by Laurent de Premierfait; imperfect (for missing leaves, see Lydgate's Fall of Princes, ed. by Bergen, I (1924), p. xxiii).
The manuscript contains an addition:
f. 1r: List of (?) payments, now largely erased; written in the late 15th or early 16th century.
f. 1v: The opening words of John Lydgate, The Fall of Princes; written in the 15th century (perhaps a leaf cancelled by the scribe who copied ff. 2r-177v).
Decoration:
1 large (more than 14 lines) initial in blue and purple on a gold ground with a partial (3-sided) border with a gold bar and foliate motifs (acanthus leaves) in blue, green, and purple (f. 2r). Large (4- to 10-line) gold initials in frames of blue and purple ('Champ' initials). Rubrics in red. Paraphs in blue or red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002049317", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3486: John Lydgate, The Fall of Princes" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002049317 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 3486 : John Lydgate, The Fall of Princes - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[3487]/040-002049317
- 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:
- 1400
- End Date:
- 1499
- Date Range:
- 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
Please request the physical items you need using the online collection item request form.
Digitised items can be viewed online by clicking the thumbnail image or digitised content link.
Readers who have registered or renewed their pass since 21 March 2024 can request physical items prior to visiting the Library by completing
this request form.
Please enter the Reference (shelfmark) above on the request form.If your Reader Pass was issued before this date, you will need to visit the Library in London or Yorkshire to renew it before you can request items online. All manuscripts and archives must be consulted at the Library in London.
This catalogue record may describe a collection of items which cannot all be requested together. Please use the hierarchy viewer to navigate to individual items. Some items may be in use or restricted for other reasons. If you would like to check the availability, contact our Reference Services team, quoting the Reference (shelfmark) above.
- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 370 x 250 mm (text space: 255 x 180 mm, in 2 columns).
Foliation: ff. 177 (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 2 at the end); f. 1 is a fragmentary parchment leaf that originally served as a flyleaf; water damage throughout the manuscript, especially towards the end; some initials have been excised (e.g., ff. 70v, 167).
Collation: Indicated by catchwords and leaf signatures.
Script: Gothic.
Binding: Post-1600; blind-stamped and gold-tooled brown leather.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
Nathaniel Noel (d. c. 1753), bookseller, employed by Edward Harley for buying books and manuscripts chiefly on the Continent, where his agent was George Suttie (see Diary, ed. by Wright and Wright (1966), II, p. 305 n. 2; Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 253).
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, inscribed as usual by their librarian Humfrey Wanley '13 die Augusti, A.D. 1724' (f. 1r) and '13 August 1724' (f. 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 forms 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), III (1808), p. 32.
Henry Noble McCracken, The Lydgate Canon. Appendix to the Philological Society's Transactions 1907-1909 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner for The Philological Society, 1908), pp. iii-xlvi (p. xiv).
Lydgate's Fall of Princes, ed. by Henry Bergen, 4 vols, Early English Text Society, 121-124 (London: Early English Text Society, 1924-1927), I, p. xxiii; IV, pp. 51-53.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril Ernest Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), II: 1723-1726, p. 305 n. 2.
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. 253-54.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Names:
- Boccaccio, Giovanni, poet and scholar, 1313-1375
Lydgate, John, poet, monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds and Prior of Hatfield Regis Priory, c 1370-1449/50?,
see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000108778237 - Places:
- England