Yearbooks, in French, English, and Latin; London?, England, s. xvex

Title

Yearbooks, in French, English, and Latin; London?, England, s. xvex

Shelfmark

Exeter College MS. 115

Associated place

London

Bristol

Place of origin

London?, England

Date

item *2 added in s. xvi1(?).

s. xvex

Language

French

Middle English (1100-1500)

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

paper

Physical extent

1–5: written on 217 leaves of which the last is only a stub; watermark a hand with a five-pointed star or five-petalled flower on a stem, not identified in Briquet; 6*: a bifolium, watermark a hand holding a star or flower on a stem, not the same as that in the main part of the manuscript and also not identified in Briquet; *7 and *8: a scrap of paper without a watermark.

Hands

A legal script by one variable hand; unpunctuated. Item 5 is much neater than the rest.

Decoration

None. Spaces left for coloured capitals and headings remain empty.

Binding

The cover is a limp parchment sheet, virtually all doubled by folding and crudely sewn to the quires by knotted strips of parchment. There are the remains of two green ties on front and back covers. Reinforcing strips are mostly fragments of late medieval documents (all eight in item 1 are from the same document) but some are coarser membrane which had never been used for documents.

Provenance

Written by the unidentified John Morys who was probably a professional writer of such books, presumably in London judging by the several ex libris inscriptions by Francis Stradling, whom the list of payments in item *6 probably shows to have gone to London in 1491 and whom item *7 shows to have been living at Strand Inn, a Chancery Inn, presumably c. 1491. Stradling may have been the first owner, having bought the various sections separately: his name occurs on fols. 1r, 130v, 131r and again on fol. 216v, 'fraunces Stradlyng of [blank] ys The verryht honner of This Bouke Vytnestt m. Richard Bythemore and m. gills Dodyngton Gentilmen.' (These men have not been identified.) Unless he is the Francis Stradling who leased a plot of land belonging to the Bristol Blackfriars in January 1537/8 (see Trans. Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeobgical Society, 55 (1933), 156) the only certain fact known about his family is that his father lived in Bristol (see item *6). But item *8 also suggests a connection with Bristol, as does another payment to him in item *7, from the prior of ‘Farleygh’, i.e. the Cluniac priory of Monkton Farleigh, Wilts., four miles east of Bath, and there can be no doubt that he was one of a family that was prominent for many centuries in that area.

After Francis Stradling's period the book has no known history until it appears in CMA ii. 49–54, no. 1955. 31, as part of the library of Sir William Glynne, with the majority of whose manuscripts it came to Exeter by bequest of Joseph Sandford: see MS 87, History. On the spine is a small round label with Glynne’s number '31' printed on it, and 'N.31' is also on the back cover.

Exeter library identifications are, inside the front cover, the Exeter book stamp and 'MS 115'. (pencil). On a square paper label on the cover is 'CXV' (pencil) and on the spine 'CXV' in ink.