Roger de Hoveden, Annales

Title

Roger de Hoveden, Annales

Shelfmark

St John's College MS 97

Place of origin

England

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Paper (fols. 1–16)and vellum (fols. 17–98) (HSOS/HFFH). The paper leaves form a regular quire of eight sheets folded in folio. The watermark, Einhorn/Licorne, most closely resembles Briquet, no. 10309 (1525 × 1526), but the chain here runs through three of the legs, not through the horn . Compare also no. 10308 (1524), more distantly no. 10306(1516 × 1519), all papers recorded from Normandy.

Physical extent

Fols. iv + 96+ iv (numbered fols. 97–8, v–vi)

Hands

Written in gothic textura prescissa , above the top line. Punctuation by low and medial point and punctus elevatus.

Decoration

Thoroughly unfinished; there are spaces for 1- and 2-line capitals and for headings, none filled.

Binding

Brown leather over millboards, with a simple gold fillet, s. xvii. Sewn on five thongs. Black ink ‘97’ on a paper lozenge at the head of the spine, in black ink on the leading edges. Pastedowns old vellum, on the front one a College bookplate, various notes on both (see Provenance below). These date from a binding of s. xv, where the thongs were pegged two to a hole, as in Pollard’s figure 6. At the front, two modern paper flyleaves and two medieval vellum ones (the first, fol. iii, has some offset from the current front pastedown); at the rear, at least two modern paper flyleaves (v–vi). Fols. 97–8 appear to have been flyleaves in an earlier binding; they are extraneous to the quiring of the book, and their page rules differ from those elsewhere, a writing area 215 130 in 35 long lines.

Provenance

From Durham Cathedral Priory : ‘k’ both precedes and is written above the title (fol. 1), identifying the book as ‘liber historiarum’ K in the 1395 catalogue. See [James Raine, ed.], Catalogi veteres librorum ecclesiae cathedralis Dunelm., Surtees Society 7 (1838), 56: ‘K. Cronica Regum Northumbriae, seu Regum Angliae. II fo., “cione sua.” In addition, on the front pastedown ‘Liber Sancti Cutberti’ (s. xv?) and a variety of imitative pen-trials, including ‘Cutbertus puer bo nusindolis’ (an early modern imitation of medieval textura) (Ker, MLGB75) .

Pen-trials (fol. 17, lower margin; fol. 78 v, lower margin, both s. xv; the rear pastedown, s. xvi).

The old College shelfmark ‘Abac: ij N. 37’ (the front pastedown and fol. 16v, where the number has been altered from 38, which is now cancelled).

A variety of more recent additions: a note ‘this booke was printed anno Domini 1596’ (the front pastedown); notes on the authorship of the chronicle – Hoveden or Simeon of Durham? ( fols. iv, 17, s. xvii); a note by Stubbs, directing attention to the 1395 Durham catalogue, dated 23 December 1872 ( fol. i); ‘This booke is by Shive (Shire?) called Liber Dunelmensis’ (s. xvii, fol. iii).