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Harley MS 3739

Record Id:

040-002049571

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002049571

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000807.0x0000f8

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 3739

Title:

Cartulary of Waltham Abbey

Scope & Content:

ff. 1r–187r: Cartulary of documents relating to the abbey’s rights and privileges in churches, manors and forests. Contains numerous royal and episcopal charters, 11th century onwards, but no papal charters. Similar in date, scope and execution to Add. MS 37665, the material being substantially but not completely identical, with some differences of arrangement.

ff. 187v–214v: Additions made in a later stage of production, many concerning the abbey’s dealings with King Henry VIII before the Dissolution (some in English).

ff. 215r–219r: Late 16th-century table of contents (printed in Winters, pp. 257–62).

Decoration:

Calligraphic initials with interlace decoration and zoo- and anthropomorphic motifs.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002049571", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3739: Cartulary of Waltham Abbey" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002049571

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 3739 : Cartulary of Waltham Abbey

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[3740]/040-002049571

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

Paper codex

Digitised Content:

Languages:

English
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1526

End Date:

1540

Date Range:

1526-1540

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript

Physical Characteristics:

Dimensions: 330 × 230 mm (written area 205 × 125 mm).

Foliation: ff. 219 (+ 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 5 at the end). 16th-century pagination, ‘1–436’.

Script: Gothic cursive.

Binding: British Library, rebound 1974.

Custodial History:

Origin: The Augustinian abbey of Holy Cross, Waltham, Essex. Written by Robert Fuller, last abbot of Waltham abbey 1526–40, who also copied Add. MS 37665 (cf. Davis, Ransford), as indicated by inscriptions ‘domnus Robertus fuller abbas’, ‘DRFA’, etc.

Provenance:

William Hamby (16th–17th century): inscribed, ‘Williami Hamby sum liber’ (f. 1r).

James Hay (d. 1660), 2nd earl of Carlisle: owned in 1655, according to Tanner (presumably on the information of Thomas Fuller; cf. Winters, pp. 256–57).

Browne Willis (b. 1682, d. 1760), antiquary: owned in 1719, according to Tanner.

Note, 18th-century, ‘in all 5 Tomes. Tom. 1’ (f. 1r): it is unclear what this refers to.

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.

Information About Copies:

Select digital coverage available for this manuscript: see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/.

Publications:

Thomas Tanner, Notitia Monastica: or an account of all the abbies, priories and houses of friars, heretofore in England and Wales and also of all the colleges and hospitals founded before A.D. 1540 (London: William Bowyer, 1744), p. 119.

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, ed. by Robert Nares and others, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808–12), iii, 57.

William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. by John Caley, Henry Ellis, and Buckeley Bandinel, 6 in 8 vols (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1817–30), vi, 59(a) [abbreviated version of 16th century table].

William Winters, ‘Historical Notes on Some of the Ancient Manuscripts Formerly Belonging to the Monastic Library of Waltham Holy Cross’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 (1877), 203–266 (pp. 256–63), https://doi.org/10.2307/3677989.

M.R. James, 'Manuscripts from Essex Monastic Libraries', Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, 21 (1937), 39.

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. 341, 434.

Rosalind Ransford, The Early Charters of the Augustinian Canons of Waltham Abbey, Essex: 1062–1230, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 2 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989), p. lxxxv.

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. 992.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Augustinian abbey of the Holy Cross, Waltham, Essex, 1177-1540