Cartulary of St Frideswide’s; England (Oxford), s. xvin.

Title

Cartulary of St Frideswide’s; England (Oxford), s. xvin.

Shelfmark

Christ Church MS. 340

Place of origin

England (Oxford)

Date

s. xvin

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Parchment (FSOS), with some water damage to upper part of many fore-edges. Pastedowns and outer most flyleaves (two unnumbered stubs followed by fol. i-iii at front; at back, three folios, pp. 515–520, followed by two stubs) are paper added with binding, one stock (crowned chain, enclosing two small shields – arms of Navarre and France – and with pendant: ‘PMAVDVIT’; cf. Churchill, no. 308 but with different pendant); the rest of the flyleaves, ie four at front (i4 [-4] ii2 [-1]) and four at rear (probably a four-leaf quire), are medieval parchment.

Physical extent

Fols: ix (numbered fols -, -, i-iv, pp. 1–6) + 250 (numbered pp. 7–506) + ix (paginated as pp. 507–20, -, -)

Hands

Written in anglicana formata, in the main a single hand (the latest document in the volume is dated 1411 [p. 58b]). Punctuation by point only.

Decoration

Headings in red. At the opening of individual entries, two-line alternate red and blue lombards, unflourished. Running titles identify the properties, in textura, introduced by red and blue paraphs. On p. 116, otherwise blank, near the foot in brown crayon, the rubricator’s count, ‘de litteris ij Cxxxviij. de parauis ij Cxxiij.’, in anglicana, s. xv1 (a similar but not fully legible note at p. 388).

Binding

Brown reversed calf over millboards, datable to 1683 (see below), with a central rectangle formed of a floral roll and with fleurons at the corners, both inside and outside the roll. Sewn on six thongs. In the top spine compartment, in gilt on red leather label ‘Cartularium S. Frideswidæ’; ‘Registrum de Oseney’ [sic] at the head of the spine in black ink (s. xviiex / s. xviiiin; same hand on spine of Archives, D&C vi.c.2 (= MS 338) etc. Attenuated remains of two pairs of blue ribbon ties. The binding of this manuscript is recorded in the Disbursement Book for 1683, ChCh Archives, xii.c.126, under third term, ‘Paper Wax and Parchment’: ‘Paid for binding {St Fridswist} Oseney booke in Calfe-skin pro bill – 4s’. It is signed by Richard Sedgley, a frequent binder for the House (the last payment to him is for binding an unspecified manuscript in 1719, the year of his death: xii.c.162, under first term). The confusion over which cartulary is meant echoes the ambivalence of the title on the spine, but it cannot be the Oseney Cartulary, D&C vi.c.1 (= MS 343), as that is still in its Cottonian binding.

Provenance

The active use of this cartulary at St Frideswide’s before its dissolution is visible in both the inserted texts and the various accretions of marginalia through the volume. The addition of the letter at p. 418 from Henry VIII to ‘our College … within our universite of Oxforde’ – a letter alluding to ‘some contention [that] hathe growen lately amon yowe’ and resolving it by setting the stipend of the Dean to that previously enjoyed by John Higden, and by instructing that ‘to hable felowes’ should each year be elected Treasurer – strongly suggests that the cartulary did not move from its previous home and was on the college site. In other words, this is the sole manuscript from the days of the Priory which has remained in situ and been owned by the successor institutions. We might wonder why the other cartulary, now next door at Corpus, did not enjoy the same fate.

At p. 513, upside down in the gutter: ‘Borrowed of yᵉ D & Can: this book wth those of Ensham & & [sic] yt of Oseney octob: MDCLIX & againe in Aug: MDCLXV: A Woode’, i.e. Anthony Wood, the seventeenth-century historian of Oxford. He also adds not only the contents list at p. v but also some annotations (eg pp. 25, 73, 80, 126–27 etc). This volume, cited as ‘registrum magnum’ or ‘great book’, thus became one of the sources for Wood’s description of the Priory: “Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Oxford,” composed in 1661–6, by Anthony Wood, ed. Andrew Clark, 3 vols, OHS, 15, 17 & 37 (Oxford, 1889–99), 2 (1890), 141–78.

Held in the Chapter House, it was recorded in the 1771 Catalogue as number 8, and described as ‘A Register Book of Charters &c. of the Monastery of Saint Frydeswyde’: Christ Church Archives, D&C iv.a.1, fol. 12.