HUGH OF ST CHER; S. XV (before 1466)

Title

HUGH OF ST CHER; S. XV (before 1466)

Shelfmark

Merton College MS. 150

Place of origin

England(?); written by a professional scribe Henry Mere

Date

S. XV (before 1466)

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Parchment

Physical extent

205 leaves (iii + 202)The head retrimmed.

Hands

Written in the elegant upright bookhand of the professional scribe Henry Mere, lemmata in larger script, its body occupying two lines of the gloss, with an intervening line for ascenders and descenders. At the foot of fol. 200v Mere has written ‘Item recepi pro istis septem quaternis xxiii s.’ M. B. Parkes, ‘A fifteenth-century scribe: Henry Mere’, BLR 6 (1961), 654–9; DHL, no. 101.

Decoration

Books open with handsome large initials, typical English professional work of the period: on fol. 1 9-line P with coloured foliage on a square gold ground, with 3-sided border; smaller initials in gold with white tracery on pink and blue grounds, sprays of green leaves and gold bezants in the margins (champes) on fols. 84, 102v, 122v, 140v, 166v, 181, 198. Blue initials flourished with red; red running heads on specially ruled lines, with blue paraphs; red underlining.

Binding

s. xix, sewn on five bands. Fols. i-ii and 201–2 are paper binding-leaves.

Provenance

At the head of fol. iiiv is ‘Liber domus scolarium de Merton ex dono magistri Henrici Seuer sacre pagine professoris ac eiusdem domus custodis incathenatus ad communem usum sociorum in libraria studere uolencium anno Domini M. CCCC. lxvi’. For Henry Sever, warden 1455–71, see MS 6.

On the same leaf is ‘O. 5. 1. Art:’, s. xvii. Inside the front board is the College bookplate with ‘O. 5. 2’, canc. and replaced with ‘M. 3. 1 (CLI)’ in red. ‘1’ is inked on the foredge.