<Preliminary introduction>

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

“Provenance: ‘Henricus Salmon tunc possydet librum teste Edmundo S. cum multis alis quos nunc perscribere mora est’ (16c.); ‘Mr. Robarte Radclyff of Tyckencot is the right possessor of this booke’ (late 16c.); ‘Elizabeth Gressham’ (ca. 1600); armorial bookplate of Edward Hailstone (d. 1890); his sale at Sotheby (no. 1726) on 23 April 1891 to William Ridler; bought from him by George Dunn in Feb. 1892 (Dunn’s book label with arms: Per Fesse Azure And Gules A Wolf Salient Erminois And In Chief Three Estoiles or); his sale at Sotheby (no. 166) on 11 Feb. 1913 to HLS.

“Description: 156 leaves : vellum ; 15 cm.

“Summary: Contains a magna carta and some Irish statutes at the end.

“Notes : Written by an English scribe, long lines, 27 to a full page.

“Illuminated initials.

“Publications: Barker, Nicholas, ‘A Register of writs and the scales binder’, The Book Collector, v.21, no. 3 (Autumn 1972), 356-379; cf. 375.”

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 77 reads as follows:

“STATUTA VETERA

“MS. 54.

“C.xiv, 156 ff., binding of stamped calf (with a gothic T) over oak boards, attributed to the Scales binder (C.xv). Some Irish statutes at the end.

“‘Henricus Salmon tunc possydet librum, teste Edmundo S. cum multis aliis quos nunc perscribere mora est’ (C.xvi); ‘Mr Robarte Radclyff of Tyckencot is the right possessor of this booke’ (late C.xvi); ‘Elizabeth Gressham’ (c. 1600); label with arms, Per fesse azure and gules a wolf salient erminois and in chief three estoiles or [WILSON]; armorial book- plate of Edward Hailstone (d. 1890); his sale, S. 23 April 1891, no. 1726, to Ridler; bought from him by George Dunn, Feb. 1892; his sale, S. 11 Feb. 1913, no. 166; bought privately by HLS.

“Census, I, 1033, no. 54.”

The HOLLIS description seems to attribute the arms (Per fesse azure and gules, etc.) that are pasted in on a label on the inside front to George Dunn. There is no reason to think that they are. Baker seems to think that they belonged to Elizabeth Gressham (Wilson), or to someone in between her and Hailstone. The total folios given by both Baker and HOLLIS does not correspond to any standard way of counting folios. As discussed below, 162 fols. is probably the most enlightening way of putting it. Perhaps most important, the ‘Irish statutes at the end’ promised by both Baker and HOLLIS turn out to be just a copy of the Statutum Hibernie de coheredibus, 20 Hen. 3. (S.R. 1:5), fol. 153v. There is nothing before or after it that has anything to do with Ireland.

The manuscript is approximately 150 X 100 mm.

The script is legible and consistent throughout the contents, capitularium, and most of the main text. There is no reason to doubt that this script is contemporary with the last datable item in the text, 1328. A second, and probably somewhat later, hand begins on fol. 148 with Districciones Scaccarii and continues through the end of the main manuscript on fol. 154. Additional hands wrote the notes and pen trials on fol. 155–162. There are occasional additions to the text in a different hand, e.g., fol. 93r.

Red and blue ink is used to draw the large decorated capitals and the paragraph marks. There are no decorated capitals or paragraph marks after fol. 148. There are no illustrations anywhere.

The calf-and-board binding appears to be in good condition for its age. It has been identified as the work of the ‘Scales Binder’, who operated in the 15th century. See the reference in the HOLLIS cataloguing, above. It is stamped with a design of trefoils set in crosshatched diamonds; the back cover has ‘T’ stamped on it.

That fol. 148 through 154 originally had a separate existence but were brought into the manuscript when it was bound in the 15th century seems reasonably clear. They contain a duplicate copy of Statutum Hibernie de coheredibus, fol. 153v, a statute that already appears in the manuscript in a slightly different version on fol. 111r. There would be no reason to recopy what was already in the manuscript, but every reason to add this packet to the manuscript for the items that it contains that are not in the base manuscript. Further confirming that this is later addition is the fact that its contents are listed in the table of contents in a different hand. This additional packet contains an item that is quite rare in manuscript statute books, an ordinance (or ecclesiastical constitution) against malicious prosecution of writs of account and trespass. Language similar to this item is found in c. 16 of John Stratford’s provincial constitutions of London of 1342. See G. L. Bray, Records of Convocation: Canterbury 1313–1377, 218.

Damage to the manuscript would seem to include four folios missing at the beginning, two folios, which were probably blank, missing before fol. 9, and one torn out before fol. 160.

The manuscript is foliated in what is probably an early modern hand, but the hand may be as early as the binding. We have supplied that foliation in the detailed table of contents below. It indicates that four folios are missing at the beginning and two before fol. 9. It stops at fol. 137 (141 in the manuscript foliation). As noted above, HOLLIS and Baker counted 156 folios, on what basis we cannot tell. Fol. 162v has a note at the bottom that seems to say that the manuscript contains 158 folios. The foliation in the PDS reaches 156, but is one off because fol. 10 is duplicated, and does not include the final folios. Since no one seems to have gotten it quite right, it seemed best to refoliate the manuscript digitally. There are no modern endpapers. All the folios are medieval. We have therefore refoliated the manuscript digitally from front to back, arriving at a total of 162.

Signatures appear on all six folios of about half the quires separated from each other by unsigned quires. While it is possible that some of these quires are sesternions instead of ternions, that seems unlikely because almost all the quire breaks seem visibly obvious. Putting them all at six folios makes the quiring regular except for the last two.

(We have some doubts about what follows. We are inclined to think that fol. 160–162 were the original end of the manuscript before the two later quires were added. That would make fol. 148–153 and 154–159 ternions, and 160–162, a duernion lacking one. It also means that something before fol. 148 is not a ternion. An examination in situ might resolve the problem, but as it is, we offer the following collation as probable but by no means certain.)

Quiring/collation:

1–26⁶ (1–155, lacks two before 20), 27^?8 (f. 156–162, lacks one before 160).

We have not been able to improve on Baker’s provenance, but note that it probably could be filled out. The same pages that have the notes of provenance that Baker transcribed also have other notes of provenance that seem to have been rubbed out. Some of them are probably legible under uv. Fol. 156r has notes of a transaction on Trinity Sunday 1534 that might yield some further information about the manuscript in the 16th century.

By the time we reach the 16th century it seems that the manuscript was not in the possession of a member of the legal profession. Neither of male names that Baker has identified seems to be in his Men of Court. Prior to the 16th century, there is some, although not overwhelming, evidence that the manuscript was made for an ecclesiastic. The ordinance concerning those clerks who deliberately misread returns of sheriffs, fol. 123v, is rare, and unusual to find in a portable manuscript that seems to contain just the basics. The ordinance (or ecclesiastical constitution) against malicious prosecution of writs of account and trespass, fol. 154r, may be of ecclesiastical origin. Someone has added notes, De iuramento, on fol. 162v. All of the instances where an oath is required (seven in all) seem to be cases in ecclesiastical courts. The fact that the manuscript contains the Article on the statute of Gloucester (S.R. 1:52), an item that is found elsewhere only in the comprehensive HLS MS 10, may point to a London provenance and away from an ecclesiastical, but the two are not incompatible. The inclusion of the Statute of Consultation, found, once again, only here and in MS 10, points back in the ecclesiastical direction.