Seinte Katerine, Seinte Marherete, Seinte Iuliene, Hali Meiðhad, Sawles Warde — 13th century, first half (c. 1240?); English, South-West Midlands, perhaps Hereford (?)

Title

Seinte Katerine, Seinte Marherete, Seinte Iuliene, Hali Meiðhad, Sawles Warde — 13th century, first half (c. 1240?); English, South-West Midlands, perhaps Hereford (?)

Shelfmark

MS. Bodl. 34

Place of origin

English, South-West Midlands, perhaps Hereford (?)

Date

13th century, first half (c. 1240?)

Language

Middle English (1100-1500)

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

i (later paper) + 81 + i (later paper) folios, foliated i, 1–80; 20 is double (20b is an inserted slip of parchment containing replacement text). Cropped, with loss of marginal text e.g. on fols. 53r, 72r.

Hands

One scribe writing an early textualis. Fols. 18v-21v corrected by a contemporary scribe.

Decoration

Rubrics.

Initials, and line-fillers in red.

Many initials not filled in.

Binding

Late 16th or early 17th century binding.

Acquisition

Presented by him in 1612.

Provenance

For a date c. 1240, see M. Parkes as reported in the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English. For the possible Hereford origin see Millett (2011).

Mid-sixteenth-century pen-trials and scribbles (all printed in Ker (1960) pp. xiii-xiv) refer to lesser Herefordshire gentry associated with Tedstone Delamere, Castle Frome, Much Cowarne, and Ledbury.

Thomas Twyne (d. 1613)