Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, and John Lydgate, poems; England (?Winchester), s. xvmed and xv3/4

Title

Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, and John Lydgate, poems; England (?Winchester), s. xvmed and xv3/4

Shelfmark

Christ Church MS. 152

Place of origin

England (?Winchester)

Date

s. xvmed and xv3/4

Language

Middle English (1100-1500)

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Paper, folded in folio. There are five watermarks: A: Cloche: not in Briquet, although as John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales, 8 vols (Chicago, 1940) state (1:85), no. 3984 (Italy and Bruges, 1435 × 1468, most uses 1435 × 1443) is the published mark most nearly resembling this one: excepting the two central bifolia of quire 12, universal in quires 1–3, 5–12, 106 full sheets, fol. 41 a watermarked half-sheet, fol. 101 one without watermark. B: Monts/Dreiberg: cf. Manly-Rickert’s identification with Briquet no. 11845 (Genoa, 1441–42): the stock of the intruded quire 4, five full sheets. C: Ciseaux: most closely resembles Piccard 9 (Werkzeug) iii, no. 668 (London, 1450): the second inmost bifolium of quire 12, fols 220+223. D: Tête de bœuf/Ochsenkopf: not in Piccard or Briquet, generally of the type Piccard 2 (Ochsenkopf) v: the central bifolium of quire 12, fols 221+222. E: Monts/Dreiberg: generally of the type Piccard 16 (Dreiberg) iv, nos 1151–1223, Italian papers of 1430 × 1450: universal in quires 13–18, 50 full sheets; fols 244, 275, and 284 half-sheets with watermark; fols 274, 276, 279, 283 and 299 unwatermarked half-sheets.

Physical extent

Fols: iii (numbered fols i-ii, 1) + 334 (currently numbered fols 2–342) + ii (unnumbered). All flyleaves paper (first and last marbled), apart from last at front (fol. 1), which is medieval parchment. (to the bounds, not the line ends)

Hands

Written in anglicana, originally a single scribe for items 2 and 6, who later added item 3; subsequently, another scribe, also writing an anglicana, inserted item 4 and, at another sitting, item 5. The second scribe has been tentatively identified with the ‘Morganus Scribe’, responsible for BodL, MS Ashmole 45: see the Late Medieval English Scribes website [last accessed 16th June 2016]. However, the contrast between the script in the Ashmole manuscript and in ours goes beyond a matter of grade; the differences of ductus suggest the identification should be rejected. More plausible is the possibility that this second scribe is the Thomas Vause who adds his name in the margin at fol. 72 (see provenance).

Punctuation in the verse by occasional point at mid-line, occasional virgula and comma at line ends, and punctus interrogativus; in the prose, by point, virgula, and double virgula (these last perhaps unfulfilled instructions for paraphs).

Decoration

Headings in red. At the openings of the texts, three- and four-line lombards, all except four of them red; the exceptions, in blue, include that at the opening of ‘Gamelyn’ (fol. 58v, and a number of one- and two-line examples dividing that text, a presentation unique within this manuscript), fols 261v and 270v (in ‘The Parson’s Tale’), and the opening of Lydgate’s Thebes (fol. 282).

Binding

Plain tan leather over millboards, with punches, s. xx. A note on fol. iv: ‘resewn and rebound 1975 (by A. B. R. Fairclough of Burford) and papers preserved from previous early 19 cent. binding’. Sewn on five thongs. ‘Chaucer’ in gilt in the top spine compartment. Pastedowns and endleaves modern marbled paper, a ChCh bookplate on the front pastedown. In a previous – presumably the first – binding that preceded the foliation now affixed in an early modern hand, the leaves of two quires, the 2nd and 10th, were misbound. They bear notes (s. xv) with signes de renvoi to direct a reader through the text, e.g. ‘turne over v. lefes to thys sygne [a diamond]’ (fol. 21v); given the rebinding, the answering signs now appear on the immediately following rectos. In quire 2, the five inner sheets were bound on the outside, and in quire 10, the two pairs of inmost sheets exchanged positions. See further Manly-Rickert, 1:88.

Acquisition

Donated by John Verney, as revealed by a note entered by Edward Smallwell at fol. 1: ‘D. D. Praenobilis Vir Iohannis Peyto Verney Baro Willoughby de Broke, A.D. 1769’ (fol. 1); cf. the 1769 entry in the Donors’ Register, MS LR 1, p. 252ª, recording the gift as ‘Librum MS Chauceri opera, Lidgate et aliorum complectentem’. Manly-Rickert document (1:91) the Verney family’s connection with Winchester College. Verney matriculated at Christ Church in 1755, but took no degree. He was elected MA in 1758, DCL in 1759, and died in 1816, aged 77 (AO mod, 1469). The New Library shelfmark ‘C.6’ appears, in Edward Smallwell’s hand at fol. 1, and in another script at the centre of fol. ii (see Appendix IV).

Provenance

There is reasonably extensive evidence for production and early ownership in the mid-south and near southwest: (a) ‘Thomas vause’ (fol. 72), perhaps the scribe of the additions (items 1, 4 and 5), whom Manly-Rickert identify (1:90) with an attorney for Winchester College, s. xv2. (b) ‘Grace and good manners maketh mann’, s. xv/xvi, completed as a distich, s. xvi2, ‘but who Louethe him that no good cand’ (IMEV 1009.3). The first line expands on a motto associated with Winchester College (fol. 1; the expanded Winchester motto appears again at fol. 151v); (c) ‘Ioh: Long [? Yong] liber’ (fol. 342, s. xvii). Late sixteenth/early seventeenth-century probate evidence suggests this was a common surname across a broad band of Wiltshire and Somerset, and nowhere else. Early in the seventeenth century, a ‘T. Long of Dorchester’, probably related to the widow of the early sixteenth-century antiquary Ralph Coppinger, owned BodL, MS Laud misc. 581 (Piers Plowman, B Version).