Portable Secular Psalter with Antiphons; South Wales, with additions made in Hereford; 14th century, middle, and additions, 14th century, second half and 15th century

Title

Portable Secular Psalter with Antiphons; South Wales, with additions made in Hereford; 14th century, middle, and additions, 14th century, second half and 15th century

Shelfmark

MS. Hatton 106

Place of origin

England

English, South Wales ; additions made in Hereford

Date

14th century, middle; additions, 14th century, second half and 15th century

12th century

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

252 leaves Leaves were trimmed occasionally causing the loss of decoration.

Hands

Formal Gothic book hands, the work of several scribes; smaller script used for antiphons and invitatoria; black and brown ink.

Decoration

Blue KL monograms with red penwork in the calendar.

4- to 8-line blue and pink initials, on gold backgrounds (partially rubbed off), decorated with coiled tendrils and leaves, and borders, made of blue and pink bars with foliage at the beginnings of psalms 26 (fol. 30r), 38 (fol. 45r), 51 (fol. 60r), 52 (fol. 61r), 68 (fol. 76r), 80 (fol. 94v), 97 (fol. 111r), 109 (fol. 128r), 119 (fol. 143v) and Psalterium beatae Mariae (fol. 187r).

Major initials with borders, as above.

3-line blue initials with red penwork at the beginnings of psalm 118 (fol. 134r), the weekly canticles (fol. 163r) and the major parts of the Office of the Dead.

2-line blue initials with red penwork and penwork borders in the left margin at the beginnings of psalms, canticles, litany, prayers and parts of the Office of the Dead.

Guide-letters occasionally survive.

1-line alternating plain red and blue initials (with red penwork on fol. 8r) at the beginnings of verses and periods.

Penwork line-endings with geometric designs on fols. 8v–15v.

Rubrics in red ink.

Musical notation

Notation on staves.

Binding

Red leather over oak boards, early 15th century (?), Hereford (?). ‘106’ in white paint over ‘32’ (?) in ink on spine. One leather strap, detached, with a metal clasp (the second strap is now lost, only a fragment remains); two metal pins on the back cover and two catches (added). Sewn on five split tawed leather thongs; five raised bands on spine. Old Hatton no. ‘30’ on fore-edge.

Acquisition

Bodleian Library: bought in 1671 from Scott; came to the Library in September 1671 (see Summary catalogue, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 801–2). Earlier shelfmark: ‘Hatton (30)’; ‘Horae Beatae Virginis’ [sic] (fol. 2r).

Provenance

Made for the use of the diocese of Llandaff: evidence of the calendar and litany.

In Hereford in the second half of the 14th (?) and in the 16th centuries: added offices for the use of Hereford; Ethelbert, patron saint of Hereford Cathedral, added to the calendar in a 16th-century hand.

Dominican priory in Hereford (?)(Knowles and Hadcock, 1971): 15th-century Dominican entries in the calendar; the addition of antiphons and punctuation.

‘mutuo hunc librum accepi’ and ‘. . . at ego emi’, 16th century (fol. 247v).

Partially torn off ownership inscription, 16th century (?), lower pastedown: ‘Iste lyber con stat(?) . . . || churche h (?) . . .’. Pen trials (fol. 250v) and inscriptions on the lower pastedown (partly cut off), 16th century, possibly somewhat later: ‘He that stelyth this Boke ste . . . || Be hongyd Ap . . . || Qui librum fur . . . || Hunc liber s . . . || Benedictu . . .’ (the texts are a version of IMEV no. 1165 and of ‘Qui librum furat per collum pendere debet’, compare Durham, University Library MS. Cosin V. III. 22, fol. 18v).

John George: ‘sum Johannis Georgij Codex’, c. 1600, fol. ii verso.

Christopher, first Baron Hatton (bap. 1605, d. 1670), see ODNB.

Robert Scott, London bookseller (b. in or before 1632, d. 1709/10), see ODNB: purchased part of the library of Christopher Hatton.