<Preliminary introduction>

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

“Description : 362 leaves : vellum ; 22 cm.

“Summary : Contains statutes in law-French and Latin from 1 Edward III to 23 Henry VI. Preceded by an index from Assisa to Xp̄ien courte. Statutes of 1 Edward IV added in a different hand. Probably written by Preston.

“Notes : Written by an English scribe in a legal hand, long lines, 33 to full page.

“Numerous ornamental pen letters with marginal decorations.”

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 65 reads as follows:

“STATUTA NOVA, 1 EDWARD III TO 23 HENRY VI

“MS. 40.

“Mid-C.xv, 362 ff., doeskin over wooden boards. Preceded by an index from Assisa to Xp̄ien courte. Statutes of 1 Edward IV added in a different hand.

“‘Qui carmen scripsit Prestun dominus benedixit’ (C.xv, at the end of Ric. II and 8 Hen. VI); ‘Henricus Bossevile possessor’ (c. 1600); acquired by George Dunn in Dec. 1898; his sale, S. 12 Feb. 1913, no. 274; bought privately by HLS.

“Census, I, 1030, no. 40.”

As will be seen below, both Baker and HOLLIS seem to miscount the total number of folios.

The manuscript measures approximately 220 X 170 mm.

The doeskin-and-board binding is of considerable antiquity. The doeskin is pock-marked. It is peeling on the spine. The covers are folded over onto the boards on the inside leaving a considerable amount of the boards exposed. If we assume that the front and back endpapers were added when the manuscript was most recently bound, we can date the binding from before 1461–2, because the back endpapers have the statute of 1 Edw. 4 of that date.

There are decorated initial capitals beginning each statute up to 23 Hen. 6. They are of a standard style in red and blue with scrollwork in the margins and of good, but not notably high, quality. In some of the early statutes of Edward III, the headers, the chapter numbers, and the first words in litterae notabiliores in the text seem to be covered in a very light colored wash, which looks orange on the images. If this was part of the decorative scheme it soon ceases.

The script of the text throughout is a semi-cursive one, characteristic of what we find in English legal manuscripts of the mid-fifteenth century, and clearly professional. More than one hand seems to be at work, but differentiating among them is not easy. We are inclined to think most of the text of the statutes up to 8 Hen. 6 was the work of one hand. It seems to change for the statutes after that and to change again for the statute of 1 Edw. 4. The text of the index is probably the product of a different hand, but in a similar style.

The keywords and the marginalia of the index are written in litterae notabiliores. The script of these is quite different from that of the main text. Whether it is the same hand writing in very different style or another hand we are unsure. The same litterae notabiliores are also used for the headers, headings, and the chapter markings in the margin of much of the text and also for the first word of the chapters of statutes within the text. These are less distinctive after 8 Hen. 6, and not distinctive at all in 1 Edw. 4. Much of the text up to 8 Hen. 6 also has marginalia in a more informal script. Whether and how these marginalia are connected to the index requires more exploration.

There is no foliation either ancient or modern that we can see on the images. The foliation which both HOLLIS and Baker are assuming excludes the initial, mostly blank, parchment endpapers. If it is asumed to end before the back endpapers, that would give us 364 folios rather than the 362 found in both Baker and HOLLIS. We continued this foliation digitally into the back endpapers in order to incorporate the later-added statute of 1 Edw. 4.

The manuscript has mostly regular quaternions preceded and followed by the endpapers, which are duernions. A stretch in the middle breaks the regularity. It seems to include one tipped-in folio (fol. 273) and what appears to be a stub after fol. 277. There are what seem to be binding strings between fol. 288 and 289, which is where we would expect to find if that quire were a quinternion. Taking all this into account, we get the following collation:

1⁴ (seq. 4–11), 2–35⁸ (f. 1–272), 36⁴ (f. 273–277, 1 tipped in [f. 273]), 37⁸ (f. 278–283) 38¹⁰ (f. 284–293), 39–47⁸ (f. 294–365), 48⁴ (f. 366–369).

What happened with quires 36–38 seems relatively clear. The long text of 8 Hen. 6 was made up independently of the base manuscript out of irregular quires, a duernion, a quaternion, and a quinternion. It was joined to an already existing quire that had writing on just the first folio, the end of 6 Hen. 6. The rest of the quire was removed and the single folio was joined to the duernion that began 8 Hen. 6. What we see at the end of the duernion is the stub of the folio that got tipped in at the beginning. That this is what happened is supported by the facts that fol. 273r has a note in the upper right-hand corner (although this note is illegible on the images), that fol. 273v has a carryover at the bottom right (unusual for a folio that is not the end of a quire), and that fol. 278r continues c. 8 of 8 Hen. 6 from fol. 277v without anything missing from the text.

The explicit of 8 Hen. 6 on fol. 293r (fol. 293v is blank) is written in particularly elaborate litterae notabiliores. Below it in the same script we find: ‘Qui carmen scripsit Prestun dominus benedixit’. The same verse in the same script is found with the explicit at the end of the statutes of Richard II (fol. 176r). HOLLIS suggests that Prestun (Preston) is the name of the scribe, without making clear what he was the scribe of. Perhaps we should be more cautious. What the line says is that Prestun wrote the ‘carmen’, presumably the verse that we are reading. (It also says that the Lord ‘has blessed’ [‘benedixit’] Prestun, rather than the normal ‘may the Lord bless’ [‘benedicat’]). Of course, if it said that, then the final verb would not rhyme with ‘scripsit’.)

It is probably safe to say that Prestun also wrote the text in litterae notabiliores in the index, most of the keywords and the explicit. He certainly seems to have been responsible for most, if not all, of the incipits, explicits, and headers in the statutes up to 8 Hen. 6 and at least some of the chapter numbers in the margin and at least some of the litterae notabiliores within the text that mark the beginnings of the chapters of the statutes. (This is particularly noticeable at the beginning of the statutes of Edward III, where it looks as if he may have written over an already existing text.) Whether he is responsible for all of the litterae notabiliores in the statutes is not certain. Even less certain is whether his is also the hand of the main text.

That the manuscript was added to over time seems clear. At a minimum the statute of 1 Edw. 4 at the very end of the manuscript after three blank pages was a later addition. There is twenty year gap between the last consecutive statute, 23 Hen. 6, and this one. Prestun’s explicit after the last statute of Richard II may indicate that at one time the manuscript stopped there, although the main hand is almost certainly later than 1399. There does seem to be a change of style and perhaps of hand after 8 Hen. 6. Prestun’s explicit may indicate that the manuscript at one time stopped there, though the fact that 8 Hen. 6 was at one time on separate quires may cast doubt on that proposition. That the alphabetical index was added to the manuscript from sources other than the manuscript also seems clear. Like the index in HLS MS 170, to which it a striking resemblance, it includes many references to statutes that antedate anything that is the manuscript. That Prestun was involved in the making of the index seems clear.

Certainty is not possible. It seems likely, however, that assembly of the main contents of this manuscript occurred in the 1440s and that it was bound at that time. Alternatively, we might want to push the assembly, and perhaps the binding, back to the 1430s (8 Hen. 6). The discovery of a reference in the index to a statute after that date would preclude that possibility, but we have not so far discovered any such reference. Under either possibility, the statute of 1 Edw. 4 is a decidedly later addition.

Turning to the alphabetical index, we have laid out the lemmata in the Detailed Contents below. It is clear, as just noted, that this index was made up independently of the collection of statutes in the manuscript. It contains many references to statutes prior to 1 Edw. 3, the first statute in the manuscript. With one exception so far discovered, the last reference in the index is to 3 Hen. 5. That exception, pretty clearly a later addition, is to 8 Hen. 6, one of the possible dates that we have suggested for the assembly of the manuscript.

So far as we been able to discover, the index is largely the same as that in MS 170. With two exceptions, the lemmata are the same, and they proceed in the same order. Again with a couple of exceptions and so far as we have been able to discover, the statutory references that accompany the lemmata are the same. The parallels in the headings include such unusual items as a mysterious lemma ‘Novelx’ (MS 40, fol. 9v; MS 170, fol. 309v), a garbled abridgement of the statutes of Richard II that followed the Peasants’ Revolt (MS 40, fol. 13r; MS 170, fol. 316r), and a correction of a statutory reference from 4 Hen. 4 to 5 Hen. 4 (MS 40, fol. 9r; MS 170, fol. 308v). The exceptions in the lemmata are ‘Hunters’, citing 13 Ric. 2 [stat. 1] c. 16 (MS 40, fol. 7v) and ‘Corone de Royalme Taille’, citing 7 Hen. 4 c. 2 (MS 40, fol. 4v), neither of which in MS 170. The lemma ‘Hunters’ is already in both manuscripts as ‘Veners’ (MS 40, fol. 12v; MS 170, fol. 315v), citing 13 Ric. 2 c. 14 (c. 13 in S.R.). ‘Hunters’ and ‘Corone de Royalme Taille’ could well have been later additions to MS 40. MS 170 seems to be slightly earlier than MS 40 (last statute 8 Hen. 6, itself a later addition). The only things so far discovered in the index in MS 170 that are not in MS 40 are two additional citations to statutes in what is obviously a different hand (MS 170, fol. 314v, under ‘Usure’).

It seems likely that both indices are derived ultimately from a common source that was made shortly after 3 Hen. 5 (1415–16). This common source also seems to have been in fairly wide circulation. MS 185 shares many, but not all, of the same lemmata and statutory citations, but MS 185 has additions to and subtractions from the base text. (See the Introduction to MS 185.)