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Harley MS 3775

Record Id:

040-002049607

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002049607

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000807.0x00011c

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 3775

Title:

Benedict of St Alban, Life of Thomas Becket in Anglo-Norman verse; an Anglo-Norman crusade song ‘S’onques nus hom pour dure’; Anglo-Norman romance Guy of Warwick; Chronicle from Incarnation to 1135 with additions up to 1266; Chronicle from AD 1 to 1135; Life of Saint Robert of Knaresborough; A chronicle of London written c. 1429-1430; St Albans's Annals datable to 1428-1431; St Albans's register of burials; Genesis in Anglo-Norman verse; Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria Nova

Scope & Content:

Contents:

ff. 1r-14v: Life of Thomas Becket, in Anglo-Norman verse.

ff. 14r-14v: an Anglo-Norman crusade noted song ‘S’onques nus hom pour dure’.

ff. 15r-26r: Anglo-Norman romance Guy of Warwick.

ff. 34r-73r: Chronicle from AD 1 to 1135 (ff. 34r-61r), with additions up to 1266 (ff. 61v-73r), written probably in Coventry.

ff. 74r-77r: Life of Saint Robert of Knaresborough, prose version attributed to Richard Studley in a ?15th-century hand.

ff. 78r-99r: A chronicle of London written c. 1429-1430.

ff. 100r-120r: St Albans's Annals datable to 1428-1431.

ff. 129r–137r: St Albans's register of burials.

ff. 140r-149v: Genesis in Anglo-Norman verse, fragment, with rubrics and paraphs in red, dated to the 4th quarter of the 13th or 1st quarter of the 14th century.

ff. 150r-178r: Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria nova, with initials in or highlighted in red in a 13th-century hand.

Decoration:

Large initial in blue with pen-work decoration in red (f. 1r). Initials in red and blue. Musical notation on 4-line staves (f. 14r).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002049607", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3775: Benedict of St Alban, Life of Thomas Becket in Anglo-Norman verse; an Anglo-Norman crusade song ‘S’onques nus hom pour dure’;…" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002049607

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 3775 : Benedict of St Alban, Life of Thomas Becket in Anglo-Norman verse; an Anglo-Norman crusade song ‘S’onques nus hom pour…

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[3776]/040-002049607

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

French, Old
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1250

End Date:

1499

Date Range:

2nd half of the 13th century - 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

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Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 250 x 155 mm (written space: 210 x 100 mm).

Foliation: ff. 178 (+ 6 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning + 4 at the end).

Script: Gothic, written below top line (ff. 1r-14r); Protogothic (ff. 34r-73r).

Binding: BM/BL in-house. Rebound in 1964. Covers and spine of 17th-century (?) binding of red leather pasted onto the modern pastedowns and first flyleaf.

Custodial History:

Origin: England.

Provenance:

The chronicle includes many entries relating to Coventry, which suggests it as the possible place of origin of the manuscript. A chronicle, AD 1-1181, sharing a similar source is in Cotton Tiberius E. IV (ff. 1r-27v), from Winchcombe Abbey.

The Benedictine abbey of St Albans (ff. 100-139; see Ker 1964, Wright 1972).

Lord William Howard (b. 1563, d. 1640), antiquary and landowner, of Naworth Castle, Cumberland, the younger son of Thomas Howard (b. 1538, d. 1572), 4th duke of Norfolk: title inscribed in his hand (f. 74r), possibly his manuscript no. 50 (see Bernard 1697).

? Charles Howard (b. 1669, d. 1738), 3rd earl of Carlisle, politician and landowner: possibly his manuscript no. 50 (see Bernard 1697).John Warburton (b. 1682, d. 1759), of Bury, county Lancashire, antiquary and herald, Somerset Herald in 1720: acquired from him by Edward Harley in 1720 (see Wright and Wright 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, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley, ‘16 Julij, 1720’ (f. [vi]recto).

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:

Edward Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae, 3 vols (Oxford: Sheldonian, 1697), II, 15, no. 660.

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 3775.

Gui de Warewic, Roman du XIIIe siecle, ed. by Alfred Ewert, 2 vols (Paris: Edouard Champion, 1932), [an edition of the text of Part 1, ff 15-26].

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. 167.

The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by C. E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I: 1715-1723, p. 59 n. 3.

C. E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 199, 292, 347, 435.

Charles L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913; repr. New York: Franklin, 1972), pp. 76, 80, 83, 150, 292-95.

Tony Hunt, 'Anecdota Anglo-Normannica', The Yearbook of English Studies, 15, Anglo-French Literary Relations Special Number (1985), 1-17 (pp. 1, 2 n. 5).

Edward Donald Kennedy, XII: Chronicles and Other Historical Writing, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, 8, ed. by Albert E. Hartung (New Haven: Archon Books, 1989), p. 2845.

Ruth J. Dean and Maureen B.M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Occasional Publications Series, 3 (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1999), pp. 74 no. 123, 283-84, no. 509.

James G. Clark, 'Thomas Walsingham Reconsidered: Books and Learning at Late-Medieval St. Albans', Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, 77 (2002), 832-60 (p. 850 n. 116).

Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor, ed. by Alison Wiggins and Rosalind Field, Studies in Medieval Romance (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 2, n. 3, 16-17, 25.

Alicia Marchant, 'In Loco Amoenissimo: Fifteenth-Century St Albans and the Role of Place in Thomas Walsingham's Description of Wales', Place: An interdisciplinary e-journal, April, 2008, 1-18 (p. 13 n. 83) [http://www.elsewhereonline.com.au/place], accessed 5 May 2009.

Fiona McAlpine, ‘Authenticity and ‘auteur’: the songs of Hugues de Berzé’ in Plainsong and Medieval Music, 4, pp. 13-32.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)