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Harley MS 3862
- Record Id:
- 040-002049698
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002049698
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000807.0x000175
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100161515513.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 3862
- Title:
-
John Lydgate, Life of Our Lady
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
ff. 1r-107r: John Lydgate, Life of Our Lady [see Boffey and Edwards, A New Index (2005), no. 2574; for an edition of the text, see A Critical Edition (1961)]; beginning: 'O Thoughtful hert plonged in gret dystresse / with slombre of slowth thys long wynters nyght'; ending: 'To þe seruantes sheeld and socor be / To kepe and saue hem from all aduerversite [sic] Amen'.
The manuscript contains a few additions:
f. 1r: A note about Edward VI: 'Edwardus Sextus Dei Gratia Anglie Francie et Hibernie Rex Fidei Defensor et in Terra Ecclesie Anglicane et Hibernice Supremum Caput'; added in the 16th century.
f. 1r: A faded or erased inscription in English (partially legible with UV light), beginning: ‘The [?] cravin [?] cooke by kinde [...]’; added in the 16th century.
f. 107v: An inscription in English: 'littelars benten is a knaue'; added in the 16th century.
f. 107v: Inscriptions in Latin and English: [Ver] sapiens ver honestum ver prudens', 'nemo mortalem omnibus sapit', 'Receyved and hade of my my bailis'; added in the 16th or 17th century.
Decoration:
Decorated initial 'O' in blue with a full border of pink, green, and blue acanthus leaves with gold and foliate spray; John de Vere's shield partially covers the top portion of the decorated initial 'O' (f. 1r). 1 half-page miniature of the Tree of Jesse with the Virgin and Child and gold crowns on a pink background (f. 2r). Large initials in blue with red pen-flourishing for new sections. Small initials in red and blue at the beginning of each stanza. Catchwords in scrolls.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002049698", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3862: John Lydgate, Life of Our Lady" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002049698 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 3862 : John Lydgate, Life of Our Lady - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[3854]/040-002049698
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100161515513.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1450
- End Date:
- 1499
- Date Range:
- 2nd half of the 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 270 x 180 mm (text space: 200 x 125 mm).
Foliation: ff. 107 + 1* (+ 1 unfoliated paper flyleaf at the beginning + 1 at the end); 1 unfoliated paper pastedown on f. [i]recto (bibliographical notes); f. 1* is a parchment leaf; part of the outer margin of . 87 is cut away; 1 unfoliated parchment stub after f. 107.
Collation: Mostly in quires of 8.
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: Post-1600 'Harleian' binding of brown mottled calf with gold fillets and blind tooling. Gilt fore-edge.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
John de Vere, 13th earl of Oxford (b. 1442, d. 1513): his arms on f. 1r: quarterly, 1 and 4, quarterly gules and or, in the first quarter a mullet argent; 2 and 4, gules a bend between six cross crosslets fitchy argent (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), pp. 337-38).
? An unknown English owner: erased ownership inscriptions on f. 1*r and f. 107v.
‘Robart Harme’, owned in the 16th or 17th century: his name inscribed on f. 1*r (not in Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972)).
? Various 16th or 17th century English owners: their names inscribed by the same hand on f. 1*r: 'Robert Wigmor, Simon Wilson, Giles Hamton, William Gibonne' (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), pp. 354, 355, 178, 161).
Thomas Hearne (bap. 1678, d. 1735), antiquary and diarist, owned in 1719: inscribed on the inside of the upper cover: 'pervolutavi, mihi accommodante amico egregio Thoma Rawlinsono, armigero. Tho. Hearne, Oct. 21, 1719' (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 185).
Thomas Rawlinson (b. 1681, d. 1725), book collector: according to an inscription by Edward Harley on f. [i]recto, the manuscript was bought in a sale of Rawlinson's books in 1734 as lot 644: 'Bought in mr Rawlinsons sale of MSS 1734. pr. No. 653’ (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), pp. 282-83).
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 Harley, 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 Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.
- Publications:
-
Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: British Library, 2005), no. 2574.
Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), no. 2574.
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-1812), III (1808), p. 88.
George R. Keiser, 'Serving the Needs of Readers: Textual Division in Some Late-Medieval English texts', in New Science out of Old Books, Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. by Richard Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995), pp. 207-26 (pp. 217, 223).
A Critical Edition of John Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady, ed. by Joseph A. Lauritis, Ralph A. Klinefelter, and Vernon F. Gallagher, Duquesne Studies Philological Series, 2 (Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press, 1961), pp. 28-30.
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. xvii).
Kathleen L. Scott, 'Caveat Lector: Ownership and Standardization in the Illustration of Fifteenth-Century English Manuscripts', English Manuscript Studies: 1100-1700, 1 (1989), 19-63 (p. 57 n. 38).
Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 6, 2 vols (London: Miller, 1996), II, p. 148.
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. 161, 178, 282-83, 337, 354, 355.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)