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Yates Thompson MS 47
- Record Id:
- 040-002355517
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002354332
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000827.0x00007f
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165175742.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Yates Thompson MS 47
- Title:
- John Lydgate, Lives of St Edmund and St Fremund
- Scope & Content:
-
ff. 1r-108r : John Lydgate, Lives of St Edmund and St Fremund.
f. ixr: Added English proverb in a 15th-century hand, 'A man without mercie of mercie shall misse / Out hee shall have mercie that mercifull is'.
f. 108v: Added English rhyme (?), partially erased, in a 15th-century hand: '... in the Countie of Londan gentellman vpon the one'.
ff. 109r-111r: Table of contents in a 16th-century hand.
Decoration:
53 miniatures, half-page or smaller, in colours and gold (ff. 1r, 4r, 6v, 7v, 10v, 12r, 13r, 14r, 15r, 16r (x2), 17r, 19r, 19v, 21v, 22v, 31r, 32r, 34r, 34v, 35r, 36r, 36v, 37v, 39v, 42r, 45v, 47r, 49r, 49v, 51r, 51v, 52r, 54r, 55r, 61v, 64v, 65r, 65v, 68r, 69v, 70v, 71v, 81r, 83r, 86r, 89v, 90v, 93v, 94v, 97r, 102r, 103r); outline drawing of a man on f. 111v.
Two large initials in purple on a gold background with foliate pen-work decoration colours and three-sided foliate borders with colours and gold (ff. 1r and 5r).
59 large initials in gold on a blue and purple background with foliate pen-flourishing in green and gold (ff. 4r, 8r, 10r, 13v, 14r, 15r, 16r, 16v, 17v, 19r, 19v, 21v, 22v, 29r, 31v, 32v, 34v, 35v, 36r, 37r, 37v, 39v, 41v, 42r, 43v, 46r, 47r, 49v, 50r, 51r, 52r, 52v, 54v, 55v, 56v, 57r, 60v, 64v, 65v, 66r, 68r, 69v, 70v, 78r, 85r, 86v, 87r (x2), 88r, 90r, 92r, 92v, 94r, 97v, 102v, 104v, 106r, 107r, 107v).
Paragraph signs in blue or gold with red, blue, or purple pen-flourishing at the beginning of each new stanza.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Yates Thompson Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002354332
040-002355517 - Is part of:
- Yates Thompson MS 1-59 : Yates Thompson Manuscripts
Yates Thompson MS 47 : John Lydgate, Lives of St Edmund and St Fremund - Hierarchy:
- 032-002354332[0051]/040-002355517
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Yates Thompson MS 1-59
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100165175742.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1461
- End Date:
- 1475
- Date Range:
- between 1461 and c 1475
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 250 x 170 mm (text space: 140 x 95 mm).
Foliation: xiv + 111 (+ 1 unfoliated modern parchment flyleaf + 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 1 unfoliated modern parchment flyleaf at the end); ff. i-iii are modern paper leaves; ff. iv-vii are papers pasted onto ff. i-iii; ff. viii-xiv are 15th-century parchment leaves.
Script: Gothic cursive (Anglicana).
Binding: Post-1600. Burgundy velvet; gilt edges.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Southeastern England (probably Bury St Edmunds).
Provenance:
This copy of John Lydgate's Lives of SS Edmund and Fremund is datable after 1461 because of internal references to Edward IV (r. 1461-1470). The manuscript was copied by the Edmund-Fremund scribe and artists who were active near Bury St Edmunds during the 1460s and who collaborated on several other Lydgate manuscripts (see Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1996, II, p. 308).
The Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmund, Suffolk: its arms, including gules shield with human and zoomorphic figures argent (Adam and Eve, serpent), a tree (the tree of knowledge), serpent (Satan), and lamb or (lamb of God) (f. 105v); azure with three crowns or (f. 107r).
Perhaps Margaret Fitzwauter or Fitzwalter, second wife of Sir John Radcliffe of Attleborough (? b. 1452, d. 1496), Norfolk: inscribed, adjacent to the shield on f. 107r: 'thys boke gyfen to my lady beaumoun be har loufenge moder margaret ffytz wauter with all my hart'. The same or another 15th-century owner has annotated the manuscript (e.g. ff. viiirecto, 10r, 23r).
John Stow (? b. 1525, d. 1605): table of contents (ff. 109r-110r) and annotations perhaps in his hand.
Llewlyn Nevill Vaughan Lloyd-Mostyn (b. 1856, d. 1929), 3rd baron Mostyn of Mostyn Hall; his sale, London, 13 July 1920, lot 74.
Henry Yates Thompson (b. 1838, d. 1928), collector of illuminated manuscripts and newspaper proprietor: with his book-plate inscribed 'bbee.e.e [i.e. £1100.0.0] / [bought from] Mostyn / sale / July 13th 1920' (inside upper cover).
Bequeathed to the British Museum in 1941 by Mrs Henry Yates Thompson.
- 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. S. G. Edwards, 'The McGill Fragment of Lydgate's Fall of Princes', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relative aux manuscrits (1974), 75-77 (p. 77).
Kathleen Scott, 'Lydgate's Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund: A Newly-Located Manuscript in Arundel Castle', Viator, 13 (1982), 335-66.
Two East Anglian Picture Books: A Facsimile of the Helmingham Herbal and Bestiary and Bodleian Ms. Ashmole 1504, ed. by Nicholas Barker (London: The Roxburghe Club, 1988), p. 10.
Kathleen L. Scott, ‘Caveat Lector: Ownership and Standardization in the Illustration of Fifteenth-Century English Manuscripts’, in English Manuscript Studies, 1, ed. by Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths (London: British Library, 1989), 19-63 (p. 60 n. 58).
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. 59 n. 51).
Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 144.
Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), I, figs. 416-19, II, no. 112 pp. 307-09.
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. 11.
Alexandra Gillespie, Print Culture and the Medieval Author: Chaucer, Lydgate and their Books: 1473-1557 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 38-40.
Sonja Drimmer, 'Picturing the King or the Saint: Two Miniature Programmes for Lydgate's Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund', in Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe 1350-1550: Packaging, Presentation and Consumption, ed. by E. Cayley and S. Powell (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2012), 48-67.
Rebecca Pinner, The Cult of St Edmund in Medieval East Anglia (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015), pp. 102-5.
- Exhibitions:
- The Middle Ages, (online), 26 March 2015-
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)