<Preliminary introduction>

The HOLLIS cataloguing may be found here.

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 47 reads as follows:

“47 STATUTA NOVA, 8 EDWARD III TO 11 HENRY VI
“47 MS. 20.

“Mid-C.xv, 133 ff. Preceded by part of an index, from Mayntenance to Pardon only. Imperfect at beginning and end.

“Acquired by George Dunn in Dec. 1887; his sale, S. 12 Feb. 1913, no. 269; bought privately by HLS.

“Census, I, 1026, no. 20.”

The manuscript measures approximately 280 X 200 mm.

The binding is English green morocco with gilt borders, ca. 1880–1890, in good condition. The basically blank leaves at the beginning and end were probably added at the time of the binding.

There are two pencilled foliations that are relatively complete, beginning with the first folio of the calendar and not including the endpapers. They are in a 19th-century hand and seem to have been made when George Dunn had the manuscript rebound. One of them is in the upper right-hand corner. It contains some corrections, some of which are reflected in a second foliation that appears in the same place irregularly. If the corrections are taken into account both of them run from 1 to 133 and correspond to what we got when we foliated the manuscript digitally. The second relatively complete pencilled foliation is in the bottom center. It does not always correspond to the one in the upper right-hand corner. This foliation seems to represent the order in which Dunn found the manuscript. He then moved folios around to correspond to the chronological order, and had the manuscript bound in this order.

The fourth foliation, written top center in pen and ink with a quill, but not medieval, does not begin until our fol. 95, where it gives the number 134. It continues, with one major interruption at our fol. 99–106, to the end of the manuscript which is marked as fol. 166. The presence of the gap suggests that when this foliation was made there already were quires out of order, and this suggestion is confirmed by the bottom center foliation. The fact that this older foliation runs to fol. 166 suggests that between the time that this foliation was made and time when Dunn got the manuscript 34 folios were lost. We says ‘suggests’ because the older foliation is not complete. (It may have been complete at one time; there is evidence that the manuscript was trimmed at the top when it was bound, perhaps even when it acquired the current binding.)

It is likely that a large number of the missing folios were at the beginning of the manuscript.The calendar is fragmentary, running from ‘Mayntenaunce’ to ‘Pardon’. Those lemmata take up four folios. A crude estimate would suggest that as many as 20 folios could be missing here. The first statute begins in the middle of 8 Edward III. Manuscripts that begin in 1 Edward III frequently contain quite a bit of material from the years 1–7. Hence, all of the missing folios could have been at the beginning. Unfortunately, we know that they were not. In addition to at least one folio that is missing at the end (11 Hen. 6 is not quite complete), there is at least one folio missing after our fol. 23, 32, 35, 61, 66, 75, and 129. In the case of the last-named, there are probably a minimum of two folios missing. In the case of fol. 32, treated in more detail below, there may be three folios missing. In all these cases the missing folios result in missing text.

If the manuscript were disbound, it would probably be possible to reconstruct the original quiring. Since disbinding is unlikely to happen any time soon, we have attempted to state the quiring as it is now. The current binding is quite tight, and the quire breaks are not visible. There are no signature marks. We have relied on the carryovers and the indications that Dunn moved quires. With so much missing and with the obvious evidence of rearrangement of material which probably led to some quires being reconstructed, our statement can only be approximate.

Collation: 1⁴ (f. 1–4), 2⁶ (f. 5–10), 3⁸ (f. 11–18), 4² (f. 19–20), 5⁴ (f. 21–24), 6⁶ (f. 25–30), ii (f. 31–32), 7⁴ (f. 33–36), 8–10⁸ (f. 37–60), 11⁶ (f. 61–66), 12⁸ (f. 67–75), 13³ (f. 76–78), 14⁴ (f. 79–82), 15⁸ (f. 83–90), 16–17⁴ (f. 91–98), 18⁸ (f. 99–106), 19³ (f. 107–109), 20⁴ (f. 108–111), 23–24⁸ (f. 112–129), 23⁴ (f. 130–133).

There is no obvious break between quires 2 and 3, so the division here is arbitrary. Dunn moved quire 4 to its present position where it clearly belongs both because of the continuity of the text and because fol. 20v has a carryover to fol. 21r. There are gaps in the text of quire 5 between fol. 21 and 22 and between fol. 23 and 24. In this case we can reconstruct how the loss of text occurred. There was a bifolium (21a and 23a, if you will) that is now lost. Since 24v has has a carryover to 25r, we can say with reasonable confidence that quire 5 was originally a ternion.

We marked quire 6 as a ternion followed by two folios tipped in. That is not the only possibility, but what is going on here is not regular. There are gaps in the text following fol. 31v, 32r, and 32v. All three pages have carryovers in a medieval script, the first two in a style slightly different from the one that marks quire breaks in the rest of the manuscript. None of these carryovers is picked up on the following page. At a minimum that indicates that at least the first two and perhaps the third mark gaps in the text of considerable antiquity. We might hypothesize that these mark original scribal or binding errors that were later corrected on folios that are now missing. (It is possible that these carryovers are picked up later, but we have not found them, and it seems unlikely that we missed them.)

Dunn moved quires 7–10 to their present position, where they clearly belong chronologically. There is a gap in the text following fol. 35; hence, quire 7 may have been reconstructed in a way that cannot be discerned without disbinding. Quire 8 may also be reconstructed. Statutes of Richard 2 begin on fol. 40r, and changes of ruler usually begin a new quire in medieval statute books. A gathering of 3 folios and another of 5 would, however, be quite unusual; the entire quire was all in one place when Dunn found it, and the carryover on fol. 44v is picked up on fol. 45r. Quires 9 and 10 are regular quaternions, with carryovers that are picked up on the succeeding page.

Dunn moved quires 11–13 to their present position where they clearly belong chronologically. There is a gap in the text following the first folio of quire 11 (fol. 61) and another following the last folio of the quire (fol. 66), where there is also a carryover that is not picked up on the following page. At least two folios are missing, but it cannot have been a bifolium granted the position of the gaps. How the quire is currently constructed cannot be discerned without disbinding the manuscript. Quire 12 appears to be a regular quaternion. There is no carryover at the end, but text is missing following the last folio (fol. 74). Statutes of Henry IV begin quire 13, which ends (fol. 78v) with a carryover that is picked up on the succeeding page. Without determining how quire 13 is currently structured, we can imagine it was originally a duernion with the now-missing folio at the beginning, although that would mean that Henry IV began in mid-quire.

Dunn moved quires 14–17 to their current position where they clearly belong chronologically. Quires 14 and 15 have carryovers that are picked up on the following page. As we have marked the quiring, statutes of Henry V begin in the middle of quire 16, but the fact that quire 17 has older foliation, and the preceding and subsequent quires do not, suggests that both 16 and 17 are regular duernions.

Dunn moved quire 18 to its current position where it clearly belongs chronologically. The last folio (106v) has a carryover that is picked up on the following page.

Dunn left quires 19–23 where he found them. They are all marked with the older foliation. Quire 19 is now a gathering of three folios, but we frequently find that a folio has been cut out at the end of a reign. Quire 20, a duernion, begins statutes of Henry VI. It has a carryover that is picked up on the following page. Quire 21, a quaternion, also has a carryover picked up on the following page. Quire 22, also a quaternion, has a carryover that is not picked up on the following page. On the basis of what is in S.R. for these years of Henry VI there is probably more than one folio missing here. Since we are at the beginning of the quire that gap may have been matched by folios at the end of the quire. Something is clearly missing at the end, because the manuscript ends in mid-sentence.

Spaces were left for decorated intial capitals throughout the manuscript, but none were drawn. In some cases, the scribe added a small letter where the capital ought to have been.

The manuscript is written in an English legal hand, long lines, 45 to a full page. The script of the index/calendar may be in a style a bit later than that of the main text, but it is not obviously later than that of the last statute (1433). The pages are laid out in pencil with lines for a header, 45 lines of text, and a large space at the bottom.

Although several folios of the manuscript are missing, the condition of what remains is quite good. The handwriting is clear and legible, obviously professional.

Notes in Dunn’s handwriting, most identifying statutes, are pencilled in English throughout the manuscript. At the end is a longer pencilled addition in French, which fills in some of the missing text in 11 Hen. 6.

The last datable item in the main collection is the statute 11 Hen. 6. Other than the fact that text is missing at the end of the manuscript, there is nothing that would indicate a date any later than that. Hence our approximate date of ca. 1433. This may be a bit too early, but it seems likely that it is closer to right than Dunn’s estimate of ca. 1450.

There are no indications of provenance prior to Dunn’s note of his acquisition in 1887. It is possible that some existed on end papers that were discarded when Dunn had the manuscript rebound, but Dunn was not one to throw things out that indicated medieval or even early modern ownership. What we must imagine is that Dunn acquired a manuscript that was a total mess. If it was bound at all (it may have been just a stack of unbound quires), the binding was not doing its job. We cannot criticize him for rearranging the manuscript and having it bound. A modern codicologist, of course, would have left a better record of what the quiring was like when he found the manuscript and what, if anything, was done to remake the quires.

If we try to extrapolate back to what manuscript was like in the fifteenth century, we note that a fine piece of professional writing was never completed. Illustrations were clearly contemplated which are not there. Two, possibly three, botches around folios 31 and 32 were noticed. Perhaps they were corrected on individual folios that were later lost because the manuscript was not immediately bound; perhaps they were never corrected. We certainly cannot prove that this was a manuscript that was bespoke and never picked up. (Perhaps the person who ordered it died or fell on bad times.) It is, however, possible that that is what happened.

The only evidence that the manuscript was ever used is that an alphabetical index was put in in what may be a slightly later script. That same hand may also be the one responsible for the explicit at the end of the statutes of Edward III and the insertion of the short extract from the Modus tenendi parliamentum. All these things could, however, have been done in the scriptorium that was making up the manuscript.

We imagine that unbound quires of the manuscript were lying around, and pieces of it went missing. Someone in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century (it is unlikely to have been any earlier than that) foliated what was left of it, but more was lost before Dunn acquired it.

What we can say with reasonable confidence is that this manuscript was designed to be a high-quality production, perhaps a display manuscript, that never served its original purpose. There is nothing in it that needs be associated with the practice of law. The slight differences in content between this manuscript and others containing similar material may point to a merchant or a town as the person or entity that originally ordered it. Lawyers may have looked it in subsequent years, but it was such a mess that no one wanted it. It would have taken too much work to put it in a condition that would make it useable as statute-book. It is only when someone was interested in it because it was medieval that anything was done to rescue it. The person who did that was George Dunn.

We close with a word about the fragmentary alphabetical index. It is called in the headers ‘Calendare novorum statutorum’, the first, and we might add, the only instance that we have found so far of that term being used for statutes that postdate Edward II. As already noted, it has lemmata running from ‘Mayntenaunce’ to ‘Pardon’. It is nicely laid out in a professional hand that, as is also already noted, may be slightly later than that of the main manuscript. There is no decoration, but the lemma appears in the left-hand margin followed by an abridgement of the statute with penned lines forming a brace around the abridgement and pointing to the citation in the right-hand margin. There are spaces after each lemma.

The index belongs to that type of alphabetical index that has lemmata from ‘Accusacion/Accusements’ to ‘Wursted’, such as MS 21 and MS 42. Like those indices it contains no references to statutes before Edward III, and all of the statutory references are preceded by an abridgement of the contents of the statute. All of the lemmata in this manuscript map onto those of MS 21 for ‘Mauntenance’ to ‘Pardon’, except that it does not contain the lemma ‘Mainprise’, which is unique to MS 21 in this group. (Even MS 29, which expands the coverage to statutes that antedate Edward III, does not have it.) The latest citations are to 18 Hen. 6 (1440), of which there are three. Hence, our addition to the date of the manuscript of 1440 in parentheses.