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Harley MS 3601
- Record Id:
- 040-002049433
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002049433
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000807.0x00006e
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 3601
- Title:
- Liber memorandorum ecclesie conuentualis de Bernewelle
- Scope & Content:
-
ff. 2*r–7*v: Kalendar.
f. 1r: List of days on which it is not permitted to work; list of episcopal and archepiscopal seats in England and Wales.
ff. 1v–2v: Office in veneration of the Holy Trinity.
f. 2v: Copies of charters in a fourteenth-century hand.
ff. 3r–10r: List of contents.
ff. 11r–25v: Liber memorandorum ecclesie conuentualis de Bernewelle (title from f. 11r), Book 1. A collection of charters and other material relating to the history and organization of the Augustinian priory of St. Giles, Barnwell. The first book relates to the foundation of the canons of St Giles at Cambridge by Pycot, sheriff of Cambridge, and Hugolina, his wife in 1092 (f. 11r). The text explains that she had been seriously ill and had vowed that if she recovered she would found a religious house in honour of St Giles.
ff. 26r–36r: Book 2: affairs of Chesterton; grant of a midsummer fair; benefaction of William de Kilkenny, bishop of Ely, to the University of Cambridge.
ff. 36r–70v: Book 3: legal matters concerning properties owned by the prior and convent.
ff. 71r–94v: Book 4 (contemporary additions, ff. 91v–94v): 13th-century assessments of church property, with tax rates.
ff. 95r–141v: Book 5 (contemporary additions, ff. 139v–141v), extracts from statutes of the realm.
ff. 142r–159v: Book 6 (with a further charter added in a 14th-century hand), memorandum on local dues and rates, 1230.
ff. 160r–183v: Book 7 (additions, 179v–183v): lists of rent, tenants, etc., dated 1295.
ff. 184r–231r: Libellus de obseruanciis regularibus canonicorum regularium (edited in Clark 1897), a customary. Apparently conceived as a separate work; it is a slightly later hand that categorizes it as Book 8 of the Liber memorandorum in the list of contents (f. 10r). Relates to the daily observances of the house and includes details about the library, its books, and their care.
ff. 231r–233v: Added materials in hands from the 13th to 15th centuries, including a money conversion table and royal charters.
Decoration:
One miniature of the Crucifixion in colours (f. 2r). Large puzzle initials with pen-flourished decoration in blue and red (ff. 3r, 11r, 36r, 71r, 95r, 120r, 129r, 142r, 160r, 184v). Initials with penwork decoration in blue and red. Small initials and paraphs in blue or red. Rubrics in red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002049433", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3601: Liber memorandorum ecclesie conuentualis de Bernewelle" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002049433 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 3601 : Liber memorandorum ecclesie conuentualis de Bernewelle - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[3603]/040-002049433
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
Parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- Languages:
- Anglo-Norman
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1290
- End Date:
- 1300
- Date Range:
- c 1295
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Dimensions: 285 × 210 mm (210 × 140–150 mm).
Foliation: ff. 2*–7* + 234 (232–233 are original parchment flyleaves, ff. 1* and 234 early modern paper ones; + one unfoliated early modern and 2 modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and the end). Two leaves numbered 130 (ff. 130/130*). An 18th-century hand foliated the book (1–243, skipping from 179 to 190) and added the numbers to the table of contents.
Collation: i–ii8 (ff. 2*–10), iii–xvi12 (ff. 11–177), xvii6 (ff. 178–183), xviii–xxi12 (ff. 184–231), xxiitwo (ff. 232–233, singletons). Catchwords at the end of most quires
Gatherings mostly of 12, with horizontal catchword in the lower right corner of the last verso of gatherings.
Script: Gothic.
Binding: British Museum, 1882; marbled endleaves. The covers of the 17th-century armorial binding of Sir Richard St George pasted onto the modern pastedowns.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
Augustinian priory of St Giles, Barnwell, Cambridgeshire. Rubric, ‘Prologus in librum memorandorum ecclesie conventualis de Bernewelle’, i.e. ‘Prologue to book of things to be remembered about the conventual church of Barnwell’ (f. 11r). Two principal feasts included in the liturgical calendar relate to the church of Barnwell: the dedication of St Giles's church on 22 April, its octave on the 29 April, and the commemoration of the relics in the church of Barnwell on 15 October (ff. 3*v, 6*v; see Watson 1979). The dates 1295 and 1296 appear in original portions of the text, the latter relating to the imprisonement of John Balliol in the Tower of London on 1 August 1296 (ff. 21v, 90r, 90v, 91r, 160r; see Watson 1979). Additional texts provided by 15th-century hands (ff. 231r–233v and passim).
Provenance:
Sir Richard St George (b. 1554/5, d. 1635), herald: his ownership inscription 'Liber Ricardi S. Georgj Ferro et Norroy Regis armorj spero', datable to between 24 January 1607, when he was created Norroy king of arms, and 28 September 1616, when he was knighted (f. 1*; see Wright 1972); his arms on the covers of the 17th-century binding.
Robert Hagar or Haggard, possibly identifiable with the Fellow Commoner to Queen's College Cambridge in 1688: his ownership inscription 'Robertus Hagar est verus huius libri possessor' (verso of flyleaf before f. 1*; see Wright 1972).
? The Hagar family: names (f. 234r).
John Covel (b. 1638, d. 1722), chaplain of the Levant Company in Constantinople, 1670-1676, and later Master of Christ's College, Cambridge: his notes (f. 1*v and passim; see Wright 1972); sold, together with Covel's other manuscripts, to Edward Harley for £300 on 27 Feb. 1715/6 (Diary 1966; Wright 1972).
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: purchased by Edward Harley in Cambridgeshire on 17 April 1724 and inscribed by him 'Wimpole April 17. 1724' and, at a later stage, 'Oxford B.H.' (f. 2*); inscribed by Harley's librarian, Humfrey Wanley, '1 Junii 1724' (f. 1*; Wright and Wright 1966).
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.
- Information About Copies:
-
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript; see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 3601.
The Observances in Use at the Augustinian Priory of S. Giles and S. Andrew at Barnwell, Cambridgeshire, ed. by John Willis Clark (Cambridge: Macmillan and Bowes, 1897) https://archive.org/details/observancesinuse00stgi.
John Willis Clark, Liber memorandorum ecclesie de Bernewelle (Cambridge: University Press, 1907).
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by Neil R. Ker, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 7.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I: 1715-1723, pp. xxxiv-xxxvi; II: 1723-1726, pp. 211 n. 1, 293 n. 6.
Cyril E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 64, 113-17, 176, 293, 431.
Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts: The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Library, 1979), I: Text, p.138 no. 772; II: Plates, pl. 181.
Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 169 n. 61.
Nicholas Vincent, 'Medieval Cartularies: Additions and Corrections', Monastic Research Bulletin, 3 (1997), 7-38 (p. 10).
Richard Sharpe, ‘The Medieval Librarian’, in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, Vol. 1: To 1640, ed. by Elisabeth Leedham-Green and Teresa Webber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 218–41.
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. 20.
Teresa Webber, 'Reading in the Refectory: Monastic Practice in England, c. 1000-c. 1300', London University Annual John Coffin Memorial Palaeography Lecture, 18 February 2010, (2013), p. 25, http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/files/Publications/Coffin%20lectures/Webber_Teresa_ReadingintheRefectory_Feb2012_RevisedEdition2013_new.pdf.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Names:
- Barnwell Priory, Cambridgeshire
- Related Material:
- Extracts from the 17th century in Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS Lat. 318, ff. 94r–95r.