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Royal MS 17 A I
- Record Id:
- 040-002107232
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000338.0x000179
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165176447.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 17 A I
- Title:
- Poem on the craft of masonry ('The Regius Manuscript')
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
ff. 1-32: A Middle English poem on the craft of masonry, beginning 'Whoso wol boþe wel rede and loke'; ending 'Say we so alle . pur charyte'; with rubrics in Latin.
The latter half of the poem is devoted to conduct when at church and in company, including:
a) an account of the Four Crowned Martyrs;
b) a description of the Tower of Babel;
c) an account of the Seven Liberal Arts;
d) extracts from John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests (voiced in 2nd person plural and directly addressing masons to be faithful members of the Church);
e) Urbanitatis (a poem on social etiquette).
On the flyleaf (f. 33r), in two 15th-century cursive hands, are a charm against bleeding and transcripts of Psalms 8.I and 18. I.
The contents of this manuscript are related to a second 15th-century manuscript on the craft of masonry, Additional MS 23198 ('The Cooke Manuscript').
Decoration:
Penwork initials in red. Rubrics and paraphs in red. Letters highlighted in red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Royal Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002107232 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 17 A I : Poem on the craft of masonry ('The Regius Manuscript') - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[1395]/040-002107232
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
Parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100165176447.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1400
- End Date:
- 1449
- Date Range:
- 1st 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: 125 x 85 mm (text space: 80 x 65/75 mm).
Foliation: ff. 33 (+ 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 5 at the end; f. 33 is a medieval parchment flyleaf)
Script: Gothic hybrid.
Binding: Post-1600. Brown leather gold-tooled Royal Library binding with the arms of George II and the date of 1757.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England, W. (Shropshire?).
Provenance:
John Theyer (bap. 1598, d. 1673), antiquary: his monogram (ff. 1r, 32v) and included in the catalogue of his library left to his grandson Charles Theyer (b. 1651); see Edward Bernard's catalogue of the Theyer library in Harley MS 695, no. 146 (Knoop, Jones and Hamer, The Two Earliest Masonic MSS. (1938), pp. 51-52).
Robert Scott (b. c. 1632, d. 1709/10), London bookseller: included in the catalogue of John Theyer’s manuscripts in his possession, appraised in 1678 by William Beveridge and William Jane, Royal MS Appendix 70, no. 284.
Charles II (b. 1630, d.1685), king of England, Scotland, and Ireland: purchased from Scott together with other 311 manuscripts from Theyer's library.
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal 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:
-
J. O. Halliwell, The Early History of Freemasonry in England, 2nd edn (London: Greenwich, 1844), pp. 12-40 [an edition of the text].
Constituciones Artis Gemetriæ secundum Euclydem: A facsimile of the early poem on Freemasonry from the original MS. Presented by King George II to the English Nation in 1757, now in the British Museum, [Bibl. Reg. 17, A I], ed. by H. J. Whymper (London: Spencer & Co., 1889), [facsimile edition with introduction and transcription].
George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), II, p. 213.
The Two Earliest Masonic MSS., ed. by Douglas Knoop, G. P. Jones and Douglas Hamer (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1938) [an edition of the text with introduction].N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), no. 6516.
Andrew Prescott, 'Some literary contexts of the Regius and Cooke manuscripts', in Freemasonry in Music and Literature: Transactions of the Fifth International Conference, 1 and 2 November 2003, ed. by Trevor Stewart, The Canonbury Papers, 2 (London: Canonbury Masonic Research Centre, 2005), pp. 43-77.Michael Wood, '"Stand strong against the monsters": Kingship and Learning in the Empire of King Aethelstan', in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. by Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 192-217 (p. 213, n. 75).
- Exhibitions:
- Freemasonry, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, 12 April 2016 - 24 July 2016
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)