<Preliminary introduction>

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

“[211] leaves : vellum ; 28 cm.

“Notes: Written in a legal hand in small neat gothic letters, long lines, 35 to a full page.

“First folio contains a full richly painted and illuminated floreate border with a fine large initial miniature of King Edward IV in royal robes enthroned and holding a globe but without a sceptre, with the arms of Lord Hastings in border: AR[G]ENT A MAUNCH SABLE.

“Multiple errors in foliation.”

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 52 reads as follows:

“REGISTRUM BREVIUM

“MS. 25.

“Later C.xv, 235 ff., illum, initial and border. The first writ is by Henry Maupas, clerk, against Simon Gaunstede, for land in Burton, Yorkshire, tested 5 March [1476], 16 Edward IV.

Arms in border, Argent a maunch sable [HASTINGS], perhaps for William, Lord Hastings, executed in 1483; ‘Abbatiae de Letheringham Suffolkiae’ (early C.xvii); ‘R ... Bars ... Liber’ (in court-hand, c. 1600, on fly); ‘T. Leman’, presumably Thomas Leman FSA (d. 1826); ‘2667’ (C.xix catalogue no.); acquired by George Dunn in March 1898; his sale, S. 12 Feb. 1913, no. 239; bought privately by HLS.

“Census, I, 1027, no. 25; N.R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain (1964), 114; Early Registers, xxvi, cxvii n. 10.”

For reasons discussed below, we adopt the HOLLIS count of the number of folios rather than Baker’s. We have also been unable to find Baker’s catalogue number 2667, though we have no doubt that it is there.

The manuscript is approximately 280 X 200 mm.

The script is neat, legible, and informally elegant. A second, more spidery but still very legible hand begins after the quire break at fol. 194r and continues to the end of the manuscript. The first script is less cursive than most, without quite being a book hand. The second is more cursive. The first is hard to date but is not inconsistent with the date on the writ of right patent (1476); the second fits quite comfortably with that date.

The first page of the register includes an elaborate floral border, portrait, and coat of arms (fol. 1r). There are no other illustrations or grotesques. The marginalia on the first few pages are marked in red and blue with quite elaborate scroll work. These, however, soon cease.

The binding is leather and in good condition, although the covers seem to be detached from the spine. Both covers are decorated with a raised floral border and gold borderlines. The marbled pastedowns and freestanding endpapers strongly suggest a 19th-century date for the binding.

Medieval foliation is sparse; most of it appears to have been cut off, but a few numbers remain in the upper right corners. A few signatures also remain in the lower left corners; most have likewise been cut off. We foliated the manuscript digitally, omitting the modern endpapers at front and back, and ended up, as HOLLIS does, with 211. Baker was mislead by the medieval foliation on our fol. 209r. We strongly suspect that as many as three quires are now missing between our fol. 177 and 178. These could have contained more writs on statutes and almost certainly contained almost all of novel disseisin, which is represented by only few writs before mort d’ancestor begins. As indicated in the following table, some folios seem to have been moved around. The Detailed Contents also suggest that some of them are bound out of order.

Quiring/collation:

1³ (f. 1-3), 2-29⁸ (f. 4-209, one missing after 68, two missing after 193 later tipped in after 197, two unfoliated tipped in after 109, two missing after 119 tipped in at end of MS), 30² (210-211, tipped in from after 119).

There is no reason to doubt the date on the writ of right patent, 5 March 1476.¹ The script of the main hand is consistent with it, and that of the second pretty much requires something this late. That the first folio contains the arms of Lord Hastings, who would have been at the height of his power at this time, provides further support, though quite what the presence of those arms might mean requires further discussion.

¹It is possible that neither name in the initial writ of right patent was updated. A Henry Maupas, clerk, is found in the records relating to Beverley temp. Richard II (1395). W. Brown, ‘Documents from the Record Office Relating to Beverley’, Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society, 5 (1897) 49. A Simon Gaunstede was admitted and instituted to the rectory of Great Linford, Berks. in 1391. TNA C 270/32/29.

The contents of the register, however, do not require a date this late. Indeed, at least as so far discovered, they suggest a date around 1400. The queen named in the second writ is Anne, almost certainly Anne of Bohemia, Richard the Second’s first queen, who died in 1394. The next writ mentions John [of Gaunt], duke of Lancaster, who died in 1399. The third writ mentions a Henry, duke of Lancaster, who is probably Henry of Grosmont, who died in 1361. The writs contain numerous references to Edward III (e.g., fol. 72r, 156v, 164r). We have found so far only one reference to Richard II: ‘Aliter de escaeta sigillatum fuit apud W’ anno Regis Ricardi secundi viiio et fuit bonum per Scarle’ (fol. 150v). Scarle is almost certainly John Scarle, who was keeper of the great seal during Richard’s absence in Ireland during his eighth year. A. K. McHardy, in ODNB, s.n. So far we have found no references to any of the Lancastrians.² The Analysis of Writs shows that there is nothing about the structure and contents of the register that is incompatible with a date late in the reign of Richard II or in that of Henry IV. We should keep in mind, however, that this is the only register that we have with a date as late as this one.

²The reference on fol. 182v: ‘Irrotulatur tempore Regis E proavi anno viiio’ could have been written in the time of Richard II or of Henry IV. That on fol. 152r: ‘Aliter per Codyngton’; Anno primo’ could be tied down to a date if we could identify a senior clerk named Codyngton in some king’s first year. (It is not the name of a justice or chancellor or keeper of the rolls.)

Baker expresses some doubt about the arms of Lord Hastings (‘perhaps for William, Lord Hastings, executed in 1483’). The doubt is probably not that these are Hastings’ arms. They are, and anyone who used them in this period without authorization would have gotten into a lot of trouble. The doubt may, however, be one that we share, whether one can go from the indubitable fact that these are Hastings’ arms to the proposition, espoused in the pencilled provenance in the manuscript (seq. 12) (perhaps by Thomas Leman FSA) that the manuscript was made for Hastings in the sense that he was the original owner, much less that he would have used it. There is little about Hastings biography that suggests that he would have needed such a manuscript. See R. Horrox, in ODNB, s.n. Hastings, William, first Baron Hastings (c. 1430–1483). He certainly, however, would have needed men who had the knowledge that could be obtained from this manuscript. We are reminded that a whole book has been written about his indentured retainers: W. H. Dunham, Lord Hastings’ indentured retainers, 1461–83, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 39 (New Haven 1955). The suggestion, then, is that this book was made for one of Hastings’ lawyers who put Hastings’ arms on the book to show that he was one of Hastings’ men.

We are skeptical of the 17th-century note (seq. 5) that suggests that the manuscript belonged at one time to the ‘abbey’ of Letheringham (co. Suffolk). Letheringham was an Austin priory and never, so far as we are aware, ever called an abbey. What little that is known about the priory can be found in ‘Houses of Austin canons: Priory of Letheringham’, in the Victoria History of the County of Suffolk, 2 (London, 1975) 108, and that account makes it unlikely that it possessed much of a library. That, in turn, makes us even more skeptical of the pencilled provenance (seq. 12), which reconstructs a chain of ownership from Lord Hastings to the putative abbot of Letheringham. We are given pause, however, by the fact that Neil Ker (Medieval Libraries of Great Britain [1964] 114) seems to have accepted the proposition that Letheringham owned the manuscript at one point. More exploration is called for.

One swallow does not a summer make, and, as we have said before, this is the only register that we have that is this late. The fact, however, that a lawyer during the reign of Edward IV, who was certainly well-connected, had a copy made of a register that seems to contain nothing that can be dated after 1400 suggests that the register that lawyers needed ceased to be dynamic around that date. MS 27 and 26, which date from around the end of the first quarter of the 15th century do show some developments, but those developments were in registers designed, it would seem, for clerks, not in those designed for practicing lawyers.

No heading found

In the Introduction we date the register with some confidence to ca. 1476. We also note that there is little or nothing in its contents that requires a date after 1400. We pursue that argument here after the following table.

The table gives a rough transcription of the marginalia in the register in the order in which they appear on the page. Two counts of the writs are given in the right-hand columns. The first counts all the writs for which there are marginal notes, excluding, however, the notes that are labelled ‘Regula’ or ‘Nota’. The second excludes from the total all the writs where the marginal note includes the words ‘eodem’ or ‘aliter’.

The totals are not particularly large for a register that seems to have been copied from one made around 1400: 1665 in the long count, and 1020 in the short one. We should recall, however, that, as noted in the Introduction, as many as three quires may be missing between fol. 177 and 178. If we assume that the missing quires had on them the same average number of writs that the surviving quires have, we get totals of 1855 and 1136. This is actually just a bit larger than MS 23 (1763, 1118), to which, as we shall see, it bears some similarities.

We made up the Summary Contents mostly in Latin, using the headers and marginalia that seemed to indicate the beginnings of groups. For our purposes here, we need a more standard set of categories and proportions, so that we can make comparisons: Right (10%), Ecclesiastical (20%), Waste (3%), Replevin (5%), Trespass (19%), Criminal (0%), Account (2%), Debt (6%), Rights in land (3%), Annuity (0%), Mesne (0%), Wardship (1%), Succession (1%), Covenant (2%), Dower (1%), Writs on statutes (12%), Mort d’ancestor (1%), Ejectement (Quare eiecit) (0%), Entry (3%), Cessavit (0%), Formedon (4%), Testaments (2%), Ecclesiastical additional (1%). (Categories that show as zero are less than half a percent.) Before we get to the comparison, we should note that MS 25 is not so well organized as are some of those from the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Annuity is buried in Rights in land; Cessavit is buried in Formedon. If we compare it to MS 23, some differences emerge: Right (12%), Ecclesiastical (15%), Waste (2%), Replevin (3%), Trespass (17%), Account, Debt (6%), Rights in land (2%), Covenant (2%), Succession (3%), Writs on statutes (6%), Novel disseisin (10%), Mort d’ancestor (1%), Entry (4%), Formedon (2%), Testaments (1%), De indempnitate nominis (1%), Ad quod dampnum (5%), De libertatibus allocandis (2%), Ecclesiastical addition (3%), Mainprize (1%), Audita querela (1%), De supersedendo (1%). The principal differences are that MS 25, as we now have it, devotes virtually no space to Novel disseisin (vs. 10% in MS 23) and that MS 25 devotes far less space to items after formedon (3% vs. 15%). The absence of Novel disseisin is probably the result of loss of quires, but the fewer items after Formedon is a real difference. Not only is there less space devoted to them but the topics covered are limited principally to Testaments and to Ecclesiastical additional. (There are some other topics mixed in, but very few.) By contrast with MS 23, MS 25 devotes more space to Ecclesiastical (20% vs. 15%) and more to Writs on statutes (12% vs. 6%). The remaining differences in proportions are unlikely to be statistically significant, and the few differences in categories, other than the ones after formedon, are not real. That is to say, Annuity, Mesne, Wardship, Dower, and Cessavit are all found in MS 23; they just do not show as separate categories.

The greater amount of attention devoted to Writs on statutes may be a development of the later 15th century. We are reminded that this is the period in which lectures on the statutes began to flourish in the Inns of Court. For the rest, MS 25 seems just a bit out of date, even assuming that it is copied from a register that was compiled around 1400. As suggested in the Introduction, it may be that the quite real developments in the registers that date from late in the reign of Richard II and the early years of the 15th century were of more interest to clerks than they were to practicing lawyers.