Medical recipes and texts, mostly in Middle English; England, 15th century, second half

Title

Medical recipes and texts, mostly in Middle English; England, 15th century, second half

Shelfmark

MS. Add. B. 60

Place of origin

England

Date

15th century, second half

Language

English

Latin

Anglo-Norman

Middle English (1100-1500)

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

ii + ii + 127 + ii + ii leaves

Hands

Written in a single mixed hand, predominantly secretary.

Additions in probably more than one contemporary hand (fols. 122r-124v; fols. 124v, 125v-126v) and in several 16th- and 17th-century hands (fols. iii recto - iv verso, 125v, 127v-129v)

Decoration

Fols. 1r-83v: headings written in a larger module and underlined in red.

Fols. 87r-122v: headings in red.

Fols. 1r-122v: calligraphic initials in red or in the ink of the text.

Fol. 122v: 3-line initial in blue.

Fol. 127r: Diagram of Christ's side wound.

Binding

17th-century binding of blind-tooled leather over pasteboard, with the panel design on both covers later reworked; 'Treatise on Physic' on the spine.

The left pastedown, fols. i-ii and 130-1, and the right pastedown are separate paper endleaves from the current binding. Fols. iii-iv, 128-129 are separate paper endleaves from an earlier binding. Fol. 127, an integral endleaf, was a pastedown in a further earlier binding of tanned leather.

Acquisition

'Bought from J. E. Cornish, bookseller, 33 Piccadilly, Manchester, 1880' (left pastedown).

Provenance

Extensive signs of use including numerous marginal annotations of recipe topics.

Erased early-modern ownership inscription (?), illegible, fol. iii verso; erased early-modern name (Thomas ...), fol. 126v.

Possibly first day, lot 74 in the sale of the library of Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), 8 June 1809 and two following days (Catalogue of the Very Choice and Extremely Valuable Library ..., p. 9).

Adam Clarke (1762-1832), Irish minister and scholar, MS. 151, in A historical and descriptive catalogue of the European and Asiatic manuscripts in the library of the late Dr. Adam Clarke, F.S.A., M.R.I.A., etc. (1835) (cf. Madan's note 'No. CLI in some collection' on the pastedown; no such mark apparently extant); no. 120 in his sale (A List of Manuscripts ... Formerly in the Possession of the late Dr. Adam Clarke; On Sale ... by Baynes And Son (London, 1836), p. 11; cutting from the catalogue pasted to fol. i recto.

'J. H. from J. N. R. March 1841'.

'Lot 167 in some sale' (Madan's note, left pastedown; evidence for this no longer present)