<Preliminary introduction>

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

“Description : [232] leaves : vellum ; 12 cm.

“Notes : Illuminated initials, rubricated; portrait of a king--leaf [5].”

The manuscript is not in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, most likely because the Library could not produce it at the time. It is in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 2, somewhat awkwardly. (HOLLIS has not been brought up to date to incorporate Baker’s material.) The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 2:8, no. 110.1 reads as follows:

“110.1 STATUTA VETERA; NOVAE NARRATIONES

“MS. 182.

“C.xiii2 or C.xiv, c. 230ff. The statutes begin with a miniature of Edward I. The Novae narrationes lack the first leaf. At the end is a C.xv table of regnal years down to Henry VI.

“Bought from Sweet & Maxwell, 16 Aug. 1951.”

As will be explained more fully below the count of the folios in neither Baker nor HOLLIS seems quite right.

The manuscript measures approximately 120 X 75 mm.

The binding probably dates from the 16th or 17th century. The boards are covered on the outside in leather with blind-tooled borders which is folded over the boards, so that the boards themselves are mostly visible on the inside. The gold-stamped ‘Harvard Law Library’ on the spine was certainly added after the manuscript was acquired in 1951, but the manuscript was not rebound.

There is one illuminated capital in red, blue, and gold leaf with strap floreated borders, and a large number of decorated capitals in red and blue with scroll work. There are red and blue paragraph marks throughout. The decorative program begins with the capitularium of the statutes and continues with decorated capitals through the statutes and into Novae narrationes on fol. 191v. The red and blue paragraph marks continue to the end of Novae narrationes (fol. 232v), but there is no decoration in the capitularium of Novae narrationes that follows. The design of the decorated capitals is standard; the quality of the execution is not particularly high.

The script is semi-cursive, perhaps less cursive than normal, typically English, of a style that dates from the late 13th century or early 14th. From the capitularium of the statutes to the end of Novae narrationes, it is probably the same hand. The ink is somewhat faded, but still legible. The pages seem somewhat darkened, but that may be the result of the light used for the photography rather than anything characteristic of the manuscript itself. The capitularium of Novae narrationes at the end is written in a much less faded ink, and the hand seems to be different. The script may be slightly later, but need not be. The hand of the table of kings has to be much later than that of the main manuscript, but that is on the basis of its contents; the script is informal and not obviously later.

There is no visible foliation either ancient or modern. Since there are no modern endpapers, we foliated the manuscript digitally from front to back and arrived at a total of 235. That put the miniature of Edward I on fol. 5r, as HOLLIS has it. The HOLLIS total of 232 apparently ends at the end of Novae narrationes and does not count its capitularium and the table of kings that follows. How Baker arrived at his total of 230 is unclear.

The manuscript has 20 quires of various lengths: 17 sesternions, two quinternions, and one duernion. Folios are missing after fol. 52, 119, and 233, giving us the following collation:

1⁴ (f. 1–4), 2–10¹² (f. 5–111, lacks one after f. 52), 11–12¹⁰ (f. 112–129, lacks one after f. 119), 13–21¹² (f. 130–235, lacks 2 after f. 233).

The loss of a folio after fol. 53 was probably followed by the loss of an entire quire. Folio 53v ends in the middle of c. 2 of Westminster II; folio 54r begins in the middle of c. 11. The loss of a folio after fol. 119 has resulted in the loss of the first folio of Novae narrationes. The loss of the folios after fol. 233 does not seem to have resulted in any loss of text. The table of kings ends in the middle of fol. 233. The following folios are cut vertically in the middle, but are, insofar as they survive, blank.

Quite unusually, there are no headings anyplace in the manuscript. One navigates the contents by the headers.

The Roman numerals without a letter in Novae narrationes are chapter markings. They correspond to the Roman numerals in the capitularium that follows the text.

Novae narrationes appears to be of the ‘C’ version of that text. We have not checked it for correspondence to the printed edition. It is not listed among the Harvard Law Library’s manuscripts of that text in Novae narrationes, ed. E. Shanks and S. F. C. Milsom, Selden Society 80 (London 1963), p. ccxviii.

The person who had this manuscript made up wanted a fairly full collection of statutes and a copy of Novae narrationes in portable form. That is what he got, nothing fancy, but useful for its purpose. The presence of Novae narrationes suggests that the original owner was a pleader, or had aspirations to become one, though not necessarily in the central royal courts.

The table of kings suggests that the manuscript remained useful for its original purposes into the reign of Henry VI.

After that, we get only hints. Someone in the 17th century wrote the initials ‘JS’ on the manuscript on fol. 1r. It would be tempting to think that that is same person as the one who wrote ‘Solong’ in a similar script on the top of fol. 233v were it not for the fact that ‘Solong’ is not a recorded English surname in this period. (The name is recorded [though rarely] in US census records in a much later period.) What we are looking at could be ‘Furlong’, which is a recorded English surname in this period. We have no confidence in our reading ‘Laurenc’’ for the signature written at an angle in a similar script next to it. The safest thing to say is that we have some records of 17th-century owners without any clear indication of what their names were, much less of who they were.