<Preliminary introduction>

The HOLLIS cataloguing may be found here. The following items are worth repeating:

“Description : 74 leaves : vellum ; 14 cm.

“Summary : Contains entries of various statutes.”

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 93 reads as follows:

“STATUTA VETERA

“MS. 160.

“C.xiv, 74 ff.

“Belonged to Thomas Troute, attorney of the Common Pleas, c. 1500; ‘Johannes Whittyngton est hujus libri possessor ex dono Thome Troute de Bodmyn in com. Cornubie’; perhaps the volume sold at Hodgson’s, 23 April 1937, no. 551; sold at S. 7 March 1939, no. 364, to Thomas Thorp; his catalogue 215 (1939), no. 867; bought from him, and received on 10 July 1939.”

The date that this manuscript has carried in the HOLLIS catalogue for many years, ‘ca. 1350’, is misleading. As the summary and the detailed contents show, there is nothing in the main text of the manuscript that needs be dated after 1318, and nothing in its style or script that suggests a later date.

The manuscript measures approximately 140 X 105 mm.

The binding is limp parchment, of uncertain date. It is not recent, but almost certainly not medieval. The cords at the spine are exposed. There is evidence that the manuscript was trimmed at the top and bottom for binding. The blank endpapers at the back are probably contemporaneous with the binding.

The script of the manuscript is professional, less cursive than many. Its legibility is somewhat – seriously so only in few places – impeded by the fact that the writing is faded and the pages darkened, particularly at the beginning and the end. It would seem that the manuscript went through a period when it was not well bound, or, perhaps, not bound at all. The parchment is, moreover, quite thin, and there is some bleeding from recto to verso and vice versa.

There many decorated capitals and red and blue paragraph marks throughout. The design of the decorated capitals is standard, and the execution of good quality.

There is a modern foliation in pencil in the upper right-hand corner. It includes all the medieval folios and is accurate. We have used it for the digital foliation. The manuscript also has a full set of signature marks, also in pencil, in the lower margin, probably done by the same person who did the foliation. We have included these in the Detailed Contents. They end with the last of the statutes on fol. 72, and make no attempt to quire fol. 73–74.

Excluding the final endpapers, the manuscript has nine regular quaternions, followed by two bifolia. One folio is missing from the beginning of the manuscript, one after fol. 37. This gives us the following collation:

1–9⁸ (f. 1–70, lacks 1 before fol. 1 and 1 after fol. 37), 10² (f. 71–72), 11² (f. 72–73).

It is possible that quire 10 was originally a quaternion like the previous quires. If so, it now lacks six, because the bifolium that follows it is not part of that quire. It is of a different size and was clearly added to accommodate the runover of the prayer that starts on fol. 72v and probably also to add some, if not, all of the items that follow.

How much has been lost at the beginning of the manuscript is hard to tell. Folio 1r begins in the middle of c. 13 of Marlborough, and a folio is obviously torn out before it. The manuscript probably originally contained Magna Carta, the Forest Charter, and perhaps other statutes antedating Marlborough. The folio that is missing after fol. 37 was probably cut out before any text was added (or because the scribe had botched it). As it is, the text of Westminster II continues without a break from fol. 37 to fol. 38.

The statutes of Edward I are quite selective. The manuscript lacks, for example, Westminster III. There are only two items in the collection of statutes that are not in S.R.: the fairly standard ‘Modus exceptionum’ and an item called ‘Dilaciones curie’, but which is not the text normally found under that heading. The later non-statutory items at the end are of some interest historically and religiously, but not particularly legally.