Historical miscellanies, including Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, the Secreta secretorum etc; Innocent III, De sacro altaris mysterio; England, s. xiiiex (I); s. xiii / xiv (II); s. xivin (III); s. xiv2/4 (IV); s. xiiiin (V)

Title

Historical miscellanies, including Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, the Secreta secretorum etc; Innocent III, De sacro altaris mysterio; England, s. xiiiex (I); s. xiii / xiv (II); s. xivin (III); s. xiv2/4 (IV); s. xiiiin (V)

Shelfmark

Christ Church MS. 99

Place of origin

England

Date

s. xiv in

s. xiii/xiv

s. xiiiex

s. xiv2/4

s. xiiiin

Language

Anglo-Norman

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Physical extent

Fols: i + 260 + i; both flyleaves former pastedowns

Binding

White leather over wood, the leather much torn, s. xiv. Sewn on four thongs taken straight into the board, as in Pollard’s Figure 4. Four grooves in both boards for straps and clasps, the two central ones longer; also, at the centre of the leading edge of the upper board, a recess for a decorative strap seating; two nail holes left by its clasp at the centre of the lower board. Stubs of nails, 25mm apart, from a chain staple in Watson’s position 4: there is no close parallel for such a staple among the institution’s other manuscripts, suggesting that this is evidence of its existence prior to arrival (see Appendix I). A ChCh bookplate on the original front pastedown, of medieval parchment, now raised (fol. i). This leaf, but not the rear pastedown, is reused, with accounts (s. xiv1) covering the recto, and (arranged by day) at the centre of the verso; the recto is much rubbed.

Provenance

All five parts were clearly bound together early, and this is confirmed by the presence of one early reader’s large annotating script (s. xiv) written in pencil in both the third and the fourth sections (fol. 95v and fol. 188v). The volume appears to have been in an institutional collection: as the chain-staple mark is not in a ChCh style, it is presumably medieval. The only other indication of the earlier history of the manuscript is ‘Thomas Paine’ (or ‘spaine’), with a few pentrials and three lines of notes on the calendar (the raised rear pastedown, s. xv). There are also two erasures, one at top of fol. 137v, and the other in the outer margin top of fol. 191v; they are not fully recoverable under UV but were clearly written by the same person using a secretary script and writing in English.

As this manuscript was not included in Thomas James’ Ecloga, it presumably arrived after that work’s publication in 1600 but it was certainly in the collection by 1676, when it is listed in the catalogue as ‘A.4’ (see Appendix I); that shelfmark which appears in the volume itself, at the verso of the opening flyleaf. That the volume seems not to have been chained at ChCh suggests it arrived after the practice of chaining manuscripts stopped, that is, after the 1630s. It is not clear whether the seventeenth-century annotations that appear in the first half of the manuscript, showing antiquarian interest particularly in the Historia ecclesiastica (fol. 1v, 11v, 20, 21, 22, 26v-27v, 62, 71 – 73, 77, 80, 81, 82, 84, 117, 118, 135v, 137, 143v), predate the volume’s arrival at Christ Church, though it must be said that they do not seem to relate to marginalia in other ChCh manuscripts.

The 1676 shelfmark is now cancelled and replaced with ‘F.16’, entered in Edward Smallwell’s hand, thus relating it to the New Library Catalogue though, in fact, it does not have an entry there (see Appendix IV).