Harley MS 3840

Composite Medical Miscellany; 15th cent. Latin and Middle English. Copies. Imperfect. The manuscript comprises a large herbal in Latin (ff. 1-138; item 1) and a Middle English herbal, known as Agnus castus (ff. 139-178v; item 2) with embedded recipes. The previous ownership, and the date and circumstances of the arrival of the MS. in the Harleian collection are unknown. The volume is mentioned in neither C. E. Wright and R. C. Wright, The Diary of Humfrey Wanley (London, 1966), nor C. E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani (London, 1972). Bequeathed with the library of Edward Harley (1689-1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts, to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish Holles (1694-1755), during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (1715-1785), duchess of Portland. Sold with the other Harley manuscripts 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 Harleian manuscripts became part of the collections of the British Library on its establishment in 1973. Harley shelfmarks '121.B.12 / 3840' in ink, and '1/III C' in pencil (f. i). The MS. is described in A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts (London, 1808-1812), iii, p. 86; G. Brodin, Agnus Castus: A Middle English Herbal (Upsala, 1950; Upsala Universitet, Essays and Studies on English Language and Literature, VII), p. 87. The cataloguing of this manuscript was funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Parchment and paper (ff. 139-178); ff. iv (paper)+178+v (paper). Old foliation in ink '9-63' (ff. 1-55, omitting f. 34) suggesting the loss of an eight-leaf gathering at the beginning; modern foliation in pencil '1-178' (followed here; f. 138v blank, f. 162v originally blank). Composite MS. made of three distinct codicological units: ff. 1-138 on parchment, ff. 139-162 and 163-178 on paper. Twenty-one gatherings divided as follows: - a) first unit: [i⁸ missing], ii-xvii⁸, xviii^4-2 (third and fourth excised), with horizontal catchwords and traces of leaf-signatures possibly added after the loss of the first gathering (see ff. 35-36, 51-52); - b) second unit: xix-xx¹²; - c) third unit: xxi¹⁶. Overall measures circa 197 x 158mm. First and third units ruled in pen (bounding lines only), second unit in hard point (bounding lines only). Written in single columns of 26-32 lines in cursive English scripts (littera cursiva media - secretary and Anglicana) by four scribes. First unit with running titles interrupted after f. 55 and spaces intended for coloured initials left blank with guide-letters; second and third units with initials (1-2 lines) and underlining in red. Harleian binding of gilt-lined mottled brown leather with blind-tooled decoration; possibly attributable to T. Elliott as the blind-tooling is identical to Elliott Roll no. 4 illustrated in H. Nixon, 'Harleian Bindings', Studies in the Book Trade in Honour of Graham Pollard (Oxford, 1975; Bibliographical Society Publications, n.s., 18), pl. 14.

Contents as follows:

1. ff. 1-138. Herbal; 15th cent. Latin. Copy. Imperfect. The herbal is acephalus and incomplete at the end. It contains the description of 177 herbs and plants organised alphabetically. Begins 'mirti and est al. declivans ad glaucedinem', with running title 'amonium', whose description begins half way down the same page and is followed by descriptions of asafetida, acetosa, apium, amygdalus; breaking at 'squinantum est herba … et confert renibus et'. This last description is preceded by those of raphanus, rubus, rubea tinctoris and rapa. The running titles stop with 'emblici' on f. 55. Keywords: herbs and herbal medicine.

2. ff. 139-178v. Agnus castus, herbal; 15th cent. Middle English. Copy. Imperfect at the end. The herbal lists circa 225 plants. Inc. 'Agnus castus is an herbe þt men clepyt toutsane oþer / parkleues and þis herbe hath leuys somdele leke to þe / leues', expl. 'Sinaps … and many oþer olde desesis [.]yn a man growyn'. An additional mostly effaced entry on vervena follows. The text was copied by three scribes. Other copies in Add. 4698 (ff. 16v-42) and 4797 (ff. 79-86v), Arundel 272 (ff. 36-72v), Royal 18.A.VI (ff. 64-87v and 89-101v), Sloane 7 (ff. 30-33v; fragment), 120 (ff. 1-61v), 135 (ff. 90-112), 297 (ff. 2-6v, 13-13v; fragment), 962 (ff. 249-251; excerpt), 1315 (ff. 70-88), 2460 (ff. 2-33v), 3160 (ff. 99, 101-101v; fragments) and 3489 (ff. 12-28); a Latin version in Sloane 2948 (ff. 1-33v). The present MS. was used for the edition of the text in G. Brodin, Agnus Castus…, cit. above. Listed in R. H. Robbins, 'Medical Manuscripts in Middle English', Speculum, 45, no. 3 (1970), p. 401 n. 22; L. Thorndike and P. Kibre, Catalogue of Incipits of Medieval Scientific Writings in Latin, rev. ed. (London, 1963; The Mediaeval Academy of America Publication, 29; with supplements in 1965 and 1968), p. 71h: CD-ROM ed. (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000 = eTK), no. 71H; L. E. Voigts and P. D. Kurtz, Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference, CD-ROM, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor, MI, 2006 = eVK2), no. 0776.00; M. Mäkinen, Between Herbals and 'alia': Intertextuality in Medieval English Herbals, Dissertation, University of Helsinki, 2006, pp. 58 n. 50, 246. Keywords: herbs and herbal medicine.

Embedded text:

f. 162v. Four medical recipes; 15th cent. Middle English. Copies. Rubric 'Ffor the dropsy', inc. 'Take bytteyn brome gladun and / dayse of euery leke moche stamppe ham'. Listed in eVK2, no. 5133.00.

Medicine and Surgery: Composite medical miscellany: 15th cent.: Lat. and Enm: Copies. Imperf.

Thomas Elliott, bookbinder: Bindings ENGLISH: Gilt-lined mottled brown calf with blind roll attributable to Thomas Elliott: 18th cent., 1st quarter.

includes:

• ff. 1-138 Medicine and Surgery: Herbal: 15th cent.: Lat: Copy. Imperf.
• ff. 139-178 Medicine and Surgery: Agnus castus, herbal: 15th cent.: Enm: Copy. Imperf.
• f. 162v Recipes: Medical recipes: 15th cent.: Enm: Copies.