Homilies, Book of Common Prayer, and Psalms for use in Anglican Services; England, 1561-?62, with additions of c. 1580

Title

Homilies, Book of Common Prayer, and Psalms for use in Anglican Services; England, 1561-?62, with additions of c. 1580

Shelfmark

Christ Church MS. 150

Place of origin

England

Date

1561–?62, with additions of c. 1580

Language

English

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Paper (watermark only partially visible: crown?).

Physical extent

Fols: xiii + 587. First opening flyleaf (fol. i) and flyleaf at back (fol. 587) are parchment, in each case conjoint with the originally blank pastedown.

Hands

Written throughout by one scribe, who is identifiable as Robert Tyas (see provenance). His script varies through the manuscript but is persistently tiny, usually slightly slanted and italic-influenced.

Decoration

The mise-en-page, setting the text within a rectangle, has been described above. In addition, there are running headers in all items. The scribe also adds, as well as the opening title-page (item 1), some initials, mainly concentrated in items 2 and 4. The preface to item 2 opens at fol. 2 with a 10-line initial, including a grotesque, in red, yellow and blue. Through this item and the next, there are two types of initials, the first providing foliage around letter, imitating printed initials; they occur at fol. 3 (9 lines), 8v (8 lines), 83 (9 lines, in red, with short border), 96 (10 lines), 117 (4 lines, with gold and red, and short border), 118 (4 lines, gold, with red used for half-border), 118v (likewise, with border including Tudor rose), 119 (likewise, but 5 lines), 119v (5 lines, letter in black and gold), 120v (5 lines), 122v (likewise), 260v (9 lines), 276v (likewise), 277 (8 lines). The other style involves grisaille historiated initials, occurring at fol. 95 (10 lines, all’antica vase and foliage), 99v (grapes and acorn), 101 (with red outlining), 119v (5 lines, turkey with red throat, a notably early depiction, given that William Strickland’s grant of arms including the bird he had imported from the New World occurred in 1550), 120 (5 lines, acorn, with nut in red and letter in gold), 123 (5 lines, artichoke), 124 (4 lines, fruit and flower) 125v (6 lines, grotesque), 133 (8 lines), 134v (6 lines, Tudor rose and pomengrate in the compartments of ‘B’, on the stem the letters ‘RO’ and ‘RT’), 136v (5 lines, bird, branch and fruit), 137 (6 lines, knotted letter ‘A’). Item 5 opens, at fol. 311, with an initial of 9 lines in which the letter grows leaves, with sections painted in blue and gold, and grisaille. In item 6, there is also an historiated initial, at fol. 417, the letter ‘T’ formed by a bird and cornucopia with a roll reading ‘cantate domino nouum’ (Psalm 98); the initial is the height of two staves, which, in this item and item 10, have black notation on red lines. In addition, in this item and item 8, the first letter of each Psalm is rubricated, as is the name of the composer. In item 9, the notation is written on black lines.

Musical notation

Staves with black notation on red lines

Binding

Cream leather over wooden boards, sewn on five thongs, s. xvii in?. Gilded ornamentation: diamond-shaped centrepiece, in between the initials ‘M’ and ‘S’, placed within a simple rectangle with four acorn-motif cornerpieces, all within another rectangle at very edge of boards; a stamp of leaves in each compartment of the spine. The centrepiece is closest to but decidedly distinct from fig.4(i) in David Pearson, ‘English Centre-piece Bookbindings 1560–1640’ in Mirjam M. Foot ed., Eloquent Witnesses. Bookbindings and their History (London, 2004), 106–26. Two large, broad metal strips, clasps and clips in situ.

Provenance

The scribe gives his surname as Tyas at fol. 1, and, at fol. 134v, provides, in the initial, clues to his Christian name being Robert. In addition, at fol. 114v, he draws a manicula pointing to 14 December and, in outer margin, a drawing of two hands joined with, above, the date ‘1573’. From these snippets of information, it is possible to identify him as the Robert Tyas who married Millisent Browne in 1573: London Marriage Licences 1521–1869, ed. Joseph Foster (London, 1887), col. 1372, licence provided on 8 December. He was a servant to the Royal Wardrobe, eventually being its Clerk in the 1590s and first years of the seventeenth century: CSP Elizabeth, 24:96 (505); CSP James I, 3:88 and 93 (42 and 55). It is perhaps Robert himself (since the script is of the late sixteenth century) who adds in secretary script a note at the top of fol. 579: ‘A quiet life who list to lead | let him vouchsafe these lines to read | & redding print them in his mind | a quiet life then shall he find’.

It would appear that the volume descended within the family, since it was another Tyas who gave it to Christ Church. It is recorded in the Donors’ Register (MS LR 1), under the year 1675, at p. 174a: Ornatissimus Vir Thomas Tyas Art. Magr hujus Ecclesiae Alumnus D.D. A Manuscript in English containing the book of common praier & the Homilies appointed to be read on sundaies & holy-daies. 8º.

Born in Middlesex 1610 or 1611, Thomas Tyas or Tias, went up to Christ Church 24 February 1631/2 and received his BA 20 October 1632 and MA 4 June 1635; he was ordained deacon on 22 December 1639 (AO; CCED). His later career is not fully clear but he was still in residence at ChCh in 1648 when he crossed with the Parliamentarian Visitors (The Register of the Visitors of the University of Oxford from A.D. 1647 to A.D. 1658, ed. Montagu Burrows, Camden Society (London, 1881), 30 and 130).

The one complicating factor is the presence of the letters ‘MS’ on both boards of the binding. Though these might simply signify this is a manuscript, it would be more customary for them to stand for a person’s initials. If so, there is one relative of Thomas Tyas for whom they would be appropriate: the scribe, Robert, had a daughter who was christened Margaret and who in 1600 married Thomas (b. 1568; fl. 1634), one of the sons of Edwin Sandys, archbishop of York (E. S. Sandys, History of the family of Sandys, 2 vols (Barrow-in-Furness, 1930), 2: pedigree C). Her married initials were thus ‘MS’ and so perhaps she inherited this volume and it was bound for her. If so, it was patently returned later to the family of her birth.

This manuscript arrived just in time to appear in the 1676 catalogue (Appendix I, [15]) but the shelfmark recorded there does not appear in the book itself. The only shelfmark at the inside of its upper board is written by Edward Smallwell and is the New Library ‘G.13’.

Within the manuscript is kept evidence of later interest in the volume: a two-page typed letter from the hymnologist and Vicar of Deddington, Maurice Frost (1888–1961), dated 16 February 1940, is stuck to fol. iv, while a typescript description of items 6 to 10 (undated) by the English scholar, W[illiam A.] Ringler (1912–87) is kept loose with it; there is also a twentieth-century pencil note by ‘TYP’ at fol. 587. All those concentrate their attention on the metrical Psalms with notation; their comments are summarised in the on-line ChCh Music Catalogue.