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Harley MS 1605/3
- Record Id:
- 040-003536752
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-003536752
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100101216601.0x000001
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165165495.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 1605/3
- Title:
- The Forme of Cury (imperfect)
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript is the third of three volumes that comprise Harley MS 1605 (the others being Harley MS 1605/1 and Harley MS 1605/2). This part of the manuscript contains an imperfect copy of a Middle English collection of cookery recipes known as The Forme of Cury (The Method of Cooking). The text was originally written for the royal household of King Richard II (r. 1377–1399) towards the end of the 14th century. Other surviving manuscripts of The Forme of Cury housed at the British Library are Add MS 5016, Arundel MS 334, and Cotton MS Julius D VIII.
Harley MS 1605/3 was joined with Harley MS 1605/1 and Harley MS 1605/2 in the Harleian Library, but perhaps only as a loose gathering: Humfrey Wanley (b. 1672, d. 1726), Library-Keeper of the Harleian Library, described the manuscript as a ‘parchment-Book in quarto, consisting of divers Tracts to be bound up together’ (see Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts (1808), II, p. 149). Harley MS 1605 appears to have been separated and bound into three separate volumes at the British Museum.
Contents:
ff. 98r-118r: The Forme of Cury (imperfect), comprising 133 cookery recipes in Middle English. The opening of the text is missing.
[ff. 118v, 119v-120r, and 121v are blank].
The manuscript contains a number of later additions:
f. 119r: A recipe in Middle English (imperfect).
f. 120v: Added pen-trials.
f. 121r: A draft table of the manuscript’s contents.
Decoration:
Initials in blue with red pen-flourishing. Rubrics in red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-003536752", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 1605/3: The Forme of Cury (imperfect)" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-003536752 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 1605/3 : The Forme of Cury (imperfect) - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[7817]/040-003536752
- 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_100165165495.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1390
- End Date:
- 1440
- Date Range:
- 1390-early 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Parchment.
Dimensions: 213 x 150 mm (text space: 130 x 75 mm).
Foliation: ff. 24 (+ 9 unfoliated flyleaves at the beginning + 9 unfoliated flyleaves at the end).
Collation: Leaves mounted on guards by two or three.
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: Post-1600. British Museum in-house, with the Harley arms and motto gold-stamped at the centre of the outsides of the upper and lower covers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
Henry Worsley (b. 1675, d. 1747), scholar and manuscript collector, envoy at the court of Portugal (1714-21) and governor of Barbados (1721-31); donated by him to Robert Harley together with other manuscripts from his collection (now Harley MSS 1585-1747, 1811, 1812) before December 1712 (see Diary, ed. by Wright and Wright (1966), I, pp. xix-xx; Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 361).
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. Harley shelfmarks '91.A.21' and '1605 7/VI B' in black ink on f. 98r.
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish 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.
- Publications:
-
Paul Acker, ‘Texts from the Margin: Lydgate, Recipes, and Glosses in Bühler MS 17’, The Chaucer Review, 37:1 (2002), 59-85 (p. 68).
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), p. 149.
Curye on Inglysch. English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century (Including the 'Forme of Cury), ed. by C. B. Hieatt and S. Butler (London: Early English Text Society, 1985), pp. 24-30.
Peter Meredith, ‘The Language of Medieval Cookery’, in The English Cookery Book: Historical Essays, ed. by Eileen White (Totnes : Prospect, 2004), pp. 28-54.
Sarah Peters Kernan, ‘“For al them that delight in Cookery”: The Production and Use of Cookery Books in England, 1300–1600’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, The Ohio State University, 2016), p. 45.
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. 361, 399.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726 , ed. by Cyril Ernest Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I: 1715-1723, pp. xix-xx.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)