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Harley MS 4826
- Record Id:
- 040-002050669
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002050669
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000859.0x000158
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100058663456.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 4826
- Title:
-
John Lydgate, The Lives of SS Edmund and Fremund; John Lydgate and Benedict Burgh, Secrees of Old Philisoffres; Thomas Hoccleve, Regiment of Princes.
- Scope & Content:
-
ff. 4r-50v: John Lydgate, The Lives of SS Edmund and Fremund.
ff. 52r-81r: John Lydgate and Benedict Burgh, Secrees of Old Philisoffres.
ff. 84r-144v: Thomas Hoccleve, Regiment of Princes.
ff. 145rv-146v, and f. 139r (lower margin): Added English lyrics, 16th century.
The manuscript contains several 17th-century additions:
f. 1r and ff. 2r-3v: introduction about John Lydgate with a Latin prayer to St Edmund.
f. 1r*: a paper leaf with a 15th-century parchment image (after 1426) depicting Lydgate with English recipes against cough and toothache on the backside.
ff. 51r: Added 17th-century introduction to John Lydgate's work.
f. 82r and f. 83r: Added 17th-cent. introduction about Thomas Hoccleve and his work.
Decoration:
Three miniatures: John Lydgate with a pilgrim, presenting his The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man to Thomas Montague (d. 1428), 4th Earl of Salisbury in brown ink (f. 1r); The martyrdom of St Edmund with colours (f. 4r); The miracle of St Edmund's head with colours (f. 26v); excised image of Chaucer (f. 139r).
Two historiated initials in blue on a gold background: Lydgate praying to God (f. 52r); Thomas Hoccleve (f. 84r).
Three-sided foliate borders with colours and gold (ff. 1r; 52r; 84r).
Six large initials in red on gold background with foliate pen flourishing (ff. 1r; 6r; 53v; 78r; 106r; 107v).
Smaller initials in red, blue or gold with red pen-work decoration, and some with red pen-work flourishing.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002050669", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 4826: John Lydgate, The Lives of SS Edmund and Fremund; John Lydgate and Benedict Burgh, Secrees of Old Philisoffres; Thomas Hoccleve,…" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002050669 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 4826 : John Lydgate, The Lives of SS Edmund and Fremund; John Lydgate and Benedict Burgh, Secrees of Old Philisoffres; Thomas… - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[4825]/040-002050669
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- Parchment codex.
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100058663456.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1450
- End Date:
- 1460
- Date Range:
- c 1450 – c 1460
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Parchment and paper.
Dimensions: 300 x 210 mm (text space 210 x 100 mm).
Foliation: ff. 1* + 146 (+ 5 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 1 unfoliated paper leaf after f. 51 + 5 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the end + 2 unfoliated paper stubs after f. 1 and f. 81).
Script: Gothic cursive (15th-century scribe: Anglicana; 16th-century scribe: Secretary).
Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house.
- Custodial History:
-
A 16th-century owner: added a Eulogy (f. 81v) on Sir William Drury of Hawstead, Suffolk (b. 1527, d. 1579); a Poem on Chaucer (f. 139r); an illegible inscription (145r); English lyrics (ff. 145v-146v); and Pen-mark trials (ff. 144v-146v).
A 17th-century Catholic owner: added inscriptions ('1632' on f. 1r and f. 51r), comments, corrections and modernizations of spelling, highlighted passages, and identification of sources; added parchment image concerning John Lydgate (f. 1*) described on f. 1v ('Lidgat presenting his booke, called ye pilgrimage, unto ye Earle of Salisbury); added paper leaves with introductions to the works of John Lydgate (ff. 1r-3v; f. 51rv) and Thomas Hoccleve (ff. 82r-83v). He refers to the works of Catholic authors: De Illustribus Angliæ Scriptoribus (1619) by John Pitts (1560–1616), but although citing the epitaph on Lydgate's tomb (f. 2v) from the Illustrium Majoris Britanniae Scriptorium by John Bale (1495–1563), he does not acknowledge the Protestant author. On f. 87r he notes: 'Occliff no wicleffist'; on f. 88r: 'Occ[l]eff a Catholike'; on f. 116r: 'some lollard had razed this worde 'Pope' yett so as some draughtes of y[e] lettirs'.
Folio 51r has a watermark with the name ‘CHASSEUR’ that is close to watermarks produced in London during the second half of the seventeenth century. See Edward Headwood, Watermarks, Mainly of the 17th and 18th Centuries (Hilversum: Paper Publications Society, 1950), pp. 79-80 [descriptions]; pp. 101-06 [plates]. Heawood refers to one watermark with the same name (CHASSEUR) that features in an unspecified manuscript from the collection of Thomas Phillipps dated to 1640.
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:
-
Complete digital coverage available for this manuscript; see Digital Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/manuscripts/.
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. 4826.
Lydgate and Burgh's Secrees of old Philisoffres: A version of the 'Secreta Secretorum', ed. by Robert Steele, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 66 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894), p. xiv.
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 (pp. xxii, xxiv).
Eric G. Millar, English Illuminated Manuscripts of the XIVth and XVth Century (Paris: Van Oest, 1928), p. 92.
Anglo-Flemish Art under the Tudors (London: British Museum, 1954), no. 1 [unpublished exhibition catalogue].
A. S. G. Edwards, 'A Late Medieval Refrain Poem', English Language Notes, 11:2 (1973), 91-92.
Kathleen L. Scott, 'Lydgate's Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund: A Newly-Located Manuscript in Arundel Castle', Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 13 (1982), 335-66 (pp. 336, 342, 343 n. 32, 346, etc., fig. 10).
Kathleen L. Scott, ‘Design, Decoration and Illustration’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 31-64 (p. 56 n. 22).
Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 6, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), I, 29, 32, 34, 42, 71 n. 1, 72 n. 26; II, no. 111, 148, 159, 258, 286-87, 303-04, 308, 314, fig. 391 [with extensive additional bibliography].
Nicholas Perkins, Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes: Counsel and Constraint (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), pp. 157-59, 161 n. 46, 170, 174, 181.
Douglas Gray, ‘Lydgate, John (c.1370-1449/50?)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17238, accessed 10 Nov 2010].
The Life of St Edmund, King & Martyr: John Lydgate’s Illustrated Verse Life Presented to Henry VI: a facsimile of British Library MS Harley 2278, introduction by A. S. G. Edwards (London: British Library, 2004), p. 16.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)