<Preliminary introduction>

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

“Description : 159 leaves : vellum ; 21 cm.

“Summary : Includes Statuta Angliae followed by other texts, including De antiquo dominico corone; De compoto reddendo; Modus compoti; Judicium essoniorum; Fet asaver; Cadit assisa; Summa bastardie; Modus componendi brevia; Detento namii vetiti.

“Notes : Written in law-French (Statutes) and Latin (Tracts).

“With large colored capitals and borders in red and blue.

“Some statutes are added in 15th century hands.”

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 87 reads as follows:

“STATUTA VETERA; TRACTS

“MS. 80.

“C.xiv, 159 ff. Some statutes are added in C.xv hands. The tracts include: De antiquo dominico corone; De compoto reddendo; Modus compoti; Judicium essoniorum; Fet asaver; Cadit assisa; Summa bastardie; Modus componendi brevia; Detentio namii vetiti (‘Detentio namii vetiti pro districtione facienda . . . ’).

“‘W. Marchall’ (C.xv); ‘Noverint universi per presentes me Ricardum Marchall . . . ’ (identified on another page as of Isleworth); ‘Stephyn Horsswell’ is mentioned in three notes of receipts, one dated 1514 (recording a payment to Bartholomew Prous, a Devon attorney and member of the Inner Temple); two receipts by Richard Baynard, perhaps the member of Lincoln’s Inn (one being for money received from Horsswell); ‘Thomas Bouryng unus justiciariorum domini regis’ (bis, late C.xv), i.e. the Devon JP under Hen. VII; ‘Fuit homo missus a Deo cui nomen erat Johannes’ (bis, c. 1500); ‘Noverint universi per presentes me Johannem Agas . . . ’; Thomas Thorpe catalogue (1836), no. ‘1229’ (number in pencil); bought by Sir Thomas Phillipps (MS. 9595); his sale, S. 9 June 1910, no. 759, to Maggs; their catalogue 341 (1915), no. 240; and catalogue 404 (1921), no. 24 (‘24/404’ in pencil); bought from them and received on 14 Aug. 1925.

“Census, I, 1040, no. 80.”

The date that this manuscript has carried in the HOLLIS catalogue for many years, ‘ca. 1350’, is so misleading as to be simply wrong. As appears more fully in the Summary and Detailed Contents, the manuscript is in two parts, the first of which has nothing that needs be dated after 1299, and the second of which contains a collection of statutes from the reigns of Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI, in a strange order that will be discussed below. Baker’s decription of the tracts contained in the manuscript is also somewhat misleading in that it suggests that ‘De compoto reddendi’ and ‘Modus compoti’ are two separate tracts. They are, in fact, two ways of describing the same tract. ‘Detento namii vetitit’ in the HOLLIS catalogue should, of course, read ‘Detentio namii vetiti’ as it is in Baker’s description.

The manuscript measures approximately 210 X 145 mm.

Most of the outer cover has worn off the (?parchment) binding, which otherwise remains intact, though it is loose. The blank endpapers at the front and back were probably added when the manuscript was bound, probably sometime between the mid-16th and the 19th centuries.

A number of hands are at work, particularly in the first part. We have, however, seen nothing so far in that part that would suggest a date after 1300. The Lancastrian statutes are, of course, written in a later script, probably mid-15th century, and there seem to be more than one hand at work here, too.

The decoration described in HOLLIS is found only in the earlier part of the manuscript.

The early modern provenance described by Baker is found in two places, at the end of the 13th-century part, and at the end of the 15th-century part. It is described in the Detailed Contents. There is no overlap between the two sets of names.

There is an early modern folio number 159 in the upper right-hand corner of our digital fol. 162r, the last folio in the manuscript that has medieval writing on it. Similar numbers or numbers in pencil appear elsewhere (usually every ten folios). For the most part, however, the manuscript lacks foliation. We have not determined where it goes off the track, but it clearly does so. Despite the fact that it means that one has to add one to the numerous references to this manuscript in Baker’s Cambridge Legal Manuscripts, we felt it made sense to refoliate the manuscript digitally, raising the total number of medieval folios to 162, not counting the front and back endpapers.

The manuscript has two sesternions, two quinternions, 13 quaternions, two ternions, and one duernion, all excluding the initial and final modern endpapers. One folio is missing after fol. 57 and one after fol. 114. This gives us the following collation:

1–9⁸ (f. 1–71, lacks one after fol. 57), 10⁶ (f. 72–77), 11–12⁸ (f. 78–93), 13⁴ (f. 94–97), 14¹⁰ (f. 98–107), 15–16⁸ (f. 108–122, lacks one after fol. 114), 17¹² (f. 123–134), 18¹⁰ (f. 135–144), 19¹² (f. 145–156), 20⁶ (f. 157–162).

That the two parts of the manuscript were originally separate seems clear. When they were bound together is less clear granted the uncertainty of the dates in most of the marks of ownership. The binding and what dates we have in the notes of ownership would suggest that it did not happen before the mid-16th century.

We close by putting the quiring together with the contents in an attempt to explain the strange order of the Lancastrian statutes. The chronological range of these statutes is from 1 Hen. 4 through 8 Hen. 6. They may at one time have been a relatively complete collection of such statutes, but they were not when our putative early modern binder got them. Quires were missing, leaving other quires with no obvious beginning or end; there were unaccounted-for folios lying about. The binder began with our quire 14, which contains 1 Hen 4 and the beginning of 2 Hen. 4. He then put in quire 15, encouraged by the fact that the header says ‘end of year 2 beginning of year 3’ without saying of what king. In fact, it begins with the end of year 2 and the beginning of year 3 of Henry VI. The rest of quire and the next (16) contains years 4, 5, and 6 of Henry VI, and the beginning of year 8. The binder then had two quires (17 and 18) that seemed to go together in their succession of regnal years (but without any indication of the king until fol. 141), so he put these next, giving us the end of the long year 4 of Henry IV, years 5, 6, 7, and 9, and the beginning of year 11. He then had a long quire (19) that is mistaken in one of its attributions to a king (‘sexti’ when it should be ‘quinti’), but, in fact, contains statutes Henry V: the end of year 5, stat. 1; all of year 5, stat. 2; an item from year 6 not in S.R., and the beginning of year 7. He then had to figure out what to do with what he had left over. He made up a quire containing c. 15–23 of 2 Hen. 4 (including most of ‘De heretico comburendo’), and two individual folios of material from 8 Hen. 6 (quire 20). We should not be too critical. The clues as to what is what were elusive; some of the pages are faded, and S.R was not available. What he did saved what is left of the Lancastrian portion of the manuscript for future generations.