<Preliminary introduction>

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

“Description: 130 leaves : vellum ; 16 cm.

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

“Ornamental pen letters and painted capitals in blue and red.”

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 75 reads as follows:

REGISTRUM BREVIUM

“MS. 52.

“Early C.xiv, 130 ff., doeskin over wooden boards. The first writ, concerning land in Yorkshire, is tested at Nottingham 15 Sept. 4 Edward.

“Belonged to Sir Thomas Phillipps (MS. 22940, altered to 24778); his sale, S. 12 June 1896, no. 434, to Ellis for George Dunn; his sale, S. 12 Feb. 1913, no. 231; bought privately by HLS.

“Census, I, 1033, no. 52; Early Registers, xv n. 2, xxvi.”

The date for the manuscript in the HOLLIS catalogue, 1276, is, as we will argue, below, too early.

The manuscript is approximately 160 X 105 mm.

The script is consistent and legible. Its style suggests the late 13th century rather than the 14th. Another, less formal hand begins on fol. 127v and ends on fol. 130r, after which a ?third hand, similar to the primary one, fills the final page of text. A few other hands, less formal and more recent, appear in the marginalia. One of them cites a statute of Edward III.

The manuscript is decorated with red and blue paragraph marks and initial capitals with an elaborately decorated large capital on the first page (fol. 1r). There are no illustrations or grotesques.

The doeskin binding is old and somewhat warped with much of the surface coloring worn off.

On some of the images the main hand appears faded, though this may be problem with the photographing rather than with the manuscript itself. There are none that we have found that are so faint as to be illegible or even that difficult to read. One page near the end of the manuscript (seq. 268, unfoliated) is fragmentary; a few others are missing.

There is no medieval foliation. Faint signatures can be detected in thick, reddish letters in the lower corners of the first four pages of each quire.

Quiring/collation (does not include end pages):

1–16⁸ (f. 1–126), 17⁶ (127–130, ?two missing after 126).

The initial writ of right patent is tested at Nottingham on 15 Sep. in year 4 of a King Edward. We conclude in the introduction to the Analysis of Writs that that Edward is most likely Edward II, and that the year is 1310. The conclusion to the Analysis argues that the register is pretty much what we would expect for that year.

The last folio that has medieval writing on it has an extract from Domesday for Melksham, co. Wilts. The extract is written in a 14th-century script, probably later than that of the main manuscript, but not much later. On the same page as the Domesday of Melksham is the name Wappenbury in a 17th–century script. Below this and crossed-out in 16th–century court hand is ‘W.ion’s’, which may be W. Jones. Wappenbury we can probably add to Baker’s provenance; Jones only if we dare. If we do dare, and want to speculate, William Jones III or IV in Baker’s Men of Court 2:952 are both possible. There is a third entry between the two, also crossed out, that may be fully legible under uv. What is legible on the image suggests that it records the receipt of the manuscript by Wappenbury.

Speculation is to the original owner is difficult. The only thing that the register contains other than the register itself is the Domesday of Melksham. That is certainly not enough to conclude that the original owner was an attorney, but it may be enough to suggest that he might have been. A study of the marginalia that are not part of the original text might reveal more. We can, however, conclude, as we do in the conclusion to the Analysis of Writs, that this is a not particularly good copy of a quite full and up-to-date register that was in circulation in the early 14th century.

No heading found

As noted in the Introduction, the initial writ of right patent is tested at Nottingham on 15 Sep. in year 4 of a King Edward. If that is Edward I, then the year is 1276. The contents of the register preclude that year unless we are to assume that the maker of the register did not update the initial writ to reflect, at least, the year in which he began to write. On the basis of the structure and contents of this register (more fully discussed after the table listing the contents), however, it seems more likely that the Edward in question is Edward II, and that the year is 1310. The likelihood is not a certainty. (The itinteraries do not help much. Edward I was at Bath on 15 Sep. 1276, and Edward II was in Scotland on 15 Sep. 1310. Edward II was at Nottingham on 5 and 6 Aug. 1310; nothing in Edward the First’s itinerary comes close.) We have yet to find anything in the manuscript that is dependent on anything later than Westminster II (1285), although that statute does seem to be fully integrated into the contents of the register. As noted in the Introduction, the script seems to be more like that of the late 13th than of the 14th century, but scripts are notoriously unreliable when one is trying to place a writing into a decade. We have not examined all the writs, but those that we have examine suggest that real names and dates have been aggressively normalized or omitted. That is some evidence, supported by what we say in the conclusion to the table, that what we have is a copy of a register that was in circulation, rather than a bespoke register.

The following table gives the names of the writs as found in the marginalia and counts them. Two counts are given in the right-hand columns of the table. The first counts all the writs, excluding any marginalia marked ‘nota’ or ‘regula’. The second excludes from that total all the writs where the heading includes the words ‘eodem’ or ‘aliter’.

While this register contains only a few more writs than MS 24 (507 vs. 471) (using the second of the two totals), and, using the first of the two counts, which is closer to what Hall used for ‘R’, somewhat fewer (819) than Hall’s ‘R’ (886), it is closer to Hall’s ‘R’ in both its structure and its contents than is MS 24.

The structure requires some discussion. We suspect that there was misbinding in the exemplar from which this register was copied. (It is less likely that there is in the manuscript itself, both because the quiring seems regular and the items that are out of position do not correspond to where the quire-breaks are; many do not even begin a folio.) Fol. 15v ends with De terra replegianda positioned where we would expect find it at the end of the long section on right (cf. Hall’s R73, 74, 75) and just before the writ of right of advowson (fol. 16r). But the header De terra replegianda returns again fol. 21v–22r following a series of writs of consultation. Although the only named writ on these folios is a supersedeas until the justices can hear a claim of warranty, it looks as if this folio continues from 15v. On fol. 22v we begin a series of waste writs, marked as such in the headers, which run to fol. 24v, but fol. 25r begins a series of ecclesiastical writs that look as if they belong with the group that runs from fol. 16r–21r. (The headers are missing here.) These run basically to fol. 37v, where another series of waste writs begins, which run to fol. 42r, where replevin begins. These writs run to fol. 54v where we find De minis, then De bonis asportatis, and the header De trans’ begins on fol. 55r.

Despite the apparent jumble, the grouping seems clear enough. If we put together what seems to go together, we get the following groups with their approximate proportions of coverages: Right (12%), Ecclesiastical (17%), Waste (7%), Replevin (10%), Trespass (7%), Criminal (7%), Pardons (5%), Account (3%), Writs on statutes (2%), Rights in land (6%), Debt (0%), Local courts (0%), Wardship (2%), Assizes (7%), Novel disseisin (5%), Mort d’ancestor (3%), Entry (6%), Formedon (0%), Ad quod dampnum (2%). (The categories that show as 0% are all there, but occupy less than half a folio.) Waste is pretty clearly broken out and is substantial (7%). Whether this expansion is the result of having finally come to grips with Marlborough, c. 23, and Gloucester, c. 5, is a question that can be asked but not answered here. New categories have emerged. Although there is a writ of pardon in the criminal section of MS 24, this is the first time that that we have seen a separate category of pardons with substantial coverage (5%). This is also the first time that we have seen a header ‘Brevia de statuto’. We will not see it again until mid-century. In MS 52 it is applied to what we have called ‘Assizes’, though the appellation is appropriate because most, if not all, of the writs in this section could be thought to have been derived from Westminster II, c. 38. We have applied it to an earlier section that does not have a heading, where we find a collection of writs at the end of account said in the marginalia to be derived from statutes: Westminster II, c. 11 and Marlborough, c. 21 (22 in S.R.). The former concerns the imprisonment of accountants. The latter is cited, somewhat tendentiously, for the proposition ‘Quod nullus implacitetur de libero tenemento suo sine brevi Regis’. New too, is the group of writs Ad quod dampnum, at the end where they are also found in Hall’s register ‘R’, and where they will continue to be found throughout the 14th century and beyond. This section may be a later addition; it is written in a different hand.

Not only are there new contents in the register that are like those in ‘R’, but the older contents have been brought up to date. Entry knows writs in the post. Formedon is firmly separated from entry, and the three writs that ultimately were derived from c. 1 of Westminster II are there and given with their proper names. The jumble in the middle of MS 24 seems to have been broken into more definite categories. Debt and Local courts (view of frankpledge) are skimpy but there. The idiosyncratic size of the criminal category in MS 24 has been reduced to a more normal size.