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Royal MS 17 D VI
- Record Id:
- 040-002107384
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000338.0x00020f
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 17 D VI
- Title:
- Thomas Hoccleve, The Regement of Princes, with other poems
- Scope & Content:
-
The manuscript includes five works by Thomas Hoccleve (b. c. 1367, d. 1426):
1. The Regement of Princes, incipit: 'Musyng up on the restles besynesse The which this troubly world hath ay on honde'. Includes marginal notes in Latin providing the sources of the text. Printed from this manuscript by T. Wright, De Regimine Principum, a poem by Thomas Occleve (London: Roxburghe Club, 1860) (ff. 4r-101v);
2. The Chaste Empress or Jereslaus, poem, with a prose moralization, based on the Gesta Romanorum. Edited, with a collation of this manuscript in Hoccleve's Works, I: The Minor Poems in the Phillipps MS 8151, Cheltenham, and the Durham MS III 9, ed. by F. J. Furnivall (London: Early English Text Society, 1892-1925), p. 140. Incipit: 'In the Romayn jeestes writen is thus, Somtyme an emperour in the citee' (ff. 102r-120r);
3. Ars utilissima sciendi mori; edited in Hoccleve's Works, I (see above), p. 178. Incipit: 'Sithen all men naturelly desiren To knowe, O eterne sapience' (ff. 120v-137r);
4. The Joys of Heaven; edited in Hoccleve's Works, I (see above), p. 213. Incipit: 'Loo this is seide of that citee in pat place' (ff. 137r-138r);
5. Jonathas and Fellicula, poem and a prose moralization, based on the Gesta Romanorum. Edited in Hoccleve's Works, I (see above), p. 219. Incipit: 'Somtyme an Emperour prudent and wise Regned in Rome, and hade sones thre' (ff. 138v-149v).
The flyleaves include four texts added later in the 15the century:
- Three lines incipit: 'What is this worlde but oonly vanite?' f. 1v;
- Two seven-line stanzas, incipit: 'My lord, whan ye thys boke wolle ouyr redde' (f. 2r);
- Seven lines on a present of a ring, incipit: 'Goo, lytell ryng, to that ylke sucte That hath my hert in hyr demeayne' (f. 3r);
- A copy of the letter from Henry V to Charles VI of France, dated Tongue13 August 1417, incipit: 'Littera Henrici regis Anglie quinti missa Carolo [VI] regi Francie' (f. 150r).
Decoration:
1 miniature in colours and gold with foliate extensions, of the author presenting the book to king Henry V (f. 40r). 1 marginal miniature of Chaucer (f. 93v). 23 initials in colours and gold with partial bar-borders (ff. 4r, 40r, 42v, 48r, 53v, 57v, 63v, 69r, 74r, 75v, 84r, 89r, 91r, 94r, 101v, 102r, 119r, 120v, 136v, 137r, 138r, 138v, 149r). Initials in gold with brown pen-flourishing or in blue with red pen-flourishing. Two added drawings of two interlaced gloves (f. 102r), and Arundel's badge of a white horse with his motto 'My trust ys' (f. 120r).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Royal Collection
Royal Manuscripts Digitisation Project - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002107384 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 17 D VI : Thomas Hoccleve, The Regement of Princes, with other poems - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[1543]/040-002107384
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
150 + 8 folios.
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_17_D_VI (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1425
- End Date:
- 1449
- Date Range:
- 2nd quarter of the 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
- Restrictions to access apply please consult British Library staff
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment codex.
Dimensions: 265 x 175 mm (text space: 175 x 80 mn).
Foliation: ff. iv + 150 + iv (all unfoliated flyleaves are modern paper leaves; ff. 1-3, 150 are medieval parchment flyleaves).
Collation: i1+2 (ff. 1-3); ii-xix8 (ff. 4-147); xx2+1 (ff.149-150).
Layout: written in one column.
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house binding. 19th century.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England.
Provenance:
William FitzAlan (b. 1417, d. 1487), 16th earl of Arundel (1438-1487): inscribed with his name, 'Ever feythfull / Arundel' (f. 1), and in a different hand 'Wylyam Arondel' (f. 2r); his arms (f. 40r), and his arms impaling those of his wife, Joan, daughter of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury; his badge of a white horse with a motto 'My trust ys' (f. 120r).
Scribblings and signatures of Harry Courtenay, perhaps to be identified with the brother of Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, executed in 1469, inscribed: 'Trew and playne / Harry Courtenay'; E. Berkeley; perhaps of John Sutton, 4th baron Dudley: inscribed 'Alas porquey / Duddeley'; Eleanor Ross, wife of Richard Haute: inscribed 'Alyanor Roos'; 'Margeree', 'Johan Mathew', 'Jane Fytzlowys' (f. 1r); 'Wyngeffeld', 15th century (f. 1v).
Added verses, 15th century (ff. 1v-3r).
Signatures including: Blount (ff. 1v, 2), and Humfrey Blount (f. 3r), John Myll (ff. 2r, 3r), Acton (f. 2r), Folyet (f. 2r), Stoughton (f. 2r), John Womgey (f. 2r), Roland Schakyrley (f. 3r), 16th century.
John Lumley, 1st baron Lumley (b. c. 1533, d. 1609), collector and conspirator: inscribed with his name (f. 4); listed in the 1609 catalogue of his collection, no. 1190 (see The Lumley Library, 1956); passed to Henry, prince of Wales.
Henry Frederick, prince of Wales (b. 1594, d. 1612), eldest child of James I: his collection became part of the Royal Library.
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript, see Digitised Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
Joseph Strutt, Horda Angel-cynnan: or a Compleat View of the Manners, Customs, Arms, Habits, etc. of the Inhabitants of England, from the arrival of the Saxons till the reign of Henry the Eighth, 3 vols (London: White, 1775-76), III, pl. XXX.
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, pp. 251-52.
George L. Lam and Warren H. Smith, 'George Vertue's Contributions to Chaucerian Iconography', Modern Language Quarterly, 5 (1944), 303-22 (p. 307).
The Lumley Library: The Catalogue of 1609, ed. by Sears Jayne and Francis R. Johnson (London: British Museum, 1956), p. 150.
B. J. H. Rowe, 'Notes on the Clovis Miniature and the Bedford Portrait in the Bedford Book of Hours', Journal of the Archaeological Association, 25 (1962), 56-65 (p. 64, n. 3).
M. C. Saymour, 'The Manuscripts of Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes', Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions, 4 (1974) 255-97 (pp. 272-73).
R. F. Green, 'Notes on Some Manuscripts of Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes', The British Library Journal, 4 (1978) 37-41 (p. 37).
A. I. Doyle, 'English Books In and Out of Court from Edward III to Henry VII', in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London: Duckworth, 1983) pp. 161-81 (p. 176).
Jeanne E. Krochalis, 'Hoccleve's Chaucer Portrait', Chaucer Review, 21 (1986), 234-45 (p. 237).
D. C. Greetham, 'Challenges of Theory and Practice in Editing of Hoccleve's Regement of Princes', in Manuscripts and Texts: Editorial Problems in Later Middle English Literature: Essays from the 1985 Conference at the University of York, ed. by Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer 1987), pp. 60-94 (pp. 62 n. 6, 67).
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. 53, n. 7, 59 n. 52).
Derek Pearsall, 'Hoccleve's Regement of Princes: The Poetics of Royal Self-Representation', Speculum, 69 (1994), 386-410 (p. 402).
Lois Bragg, 'Chaucer's Monogram and the 'Hoccleve Portrait' Tradition', Word and Image, 12 (1996) 127-42 (p. 135, fig. 6).
D. B. Mahoney, 'Courtly Presentation and Authorial Self-Fashioning: Frontispiece Miniatures in Late Medieval French and English Manuscripts', Medievalia: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Medieval Studies Worldwide, 21 (1996), 97-160 (pp. 115-19).
Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 6, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), II, pp. 159, 161.
Thomas Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ed. by Charles R. Blyth (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, 1999), p. 15.
Nicholas Perkins, Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes: Counsel and Constraint (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), pp. 117, 157, 163, n. 53, 164, n. 57, 173, 174, 192.
Scot McKendrick, John Loeden, Kathleen Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), no. 64 [exhibition catalogue].
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)