<Preliminary introduction>

The HOLLIS cataloguing may be found here. The following item is worth repeating:

“Description: 151 leaves ; 27 cm.

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 94 reads as follows:

“STATUTA VETERA; TRACTS

“MS. 161.

“C.xiv, 151 ff. The tracts are: De antiquo dominico corone; Fet asaver; Hengham Magna and Parva; Judicium essoniorum; Cadit assisa; Cum sit necessarium (i.e. Modus componendi brevia). The table also mentions Exceptiones ad cassandum brevia; Tractatus de bastardia; Tractatus corone; Articuli in narrando; Registrum brevium; but these are no longer present.

“‘Iste liber constat Willelmo Russell’ (c. 1500); ‘Iste liber pertinet ad Thomam Leynthall’; ‘Iste liber constat Thoma Leynthall’ (early C.xvi); ‘Tho. Norrys’ (c. 1600); later belonged to Dr Cox Macro (d. 1767) of Norton, Suffolk; his sale, Christie’s, Feb. 1820, lot 51; bought privately by Hudson Gurney (d. 1864) of Keswick Hall, Norfolk; passed to his descendant, Major Quintin Edward Gurney (d. 1968) of Bawdeswell Hall, Norfolk; his sale, S. 31 March 1936, no. 201, to Sweet & Maxwell for HLS; received on 22 Oct. 1936.

“HMC, Twelfth Report, App. IX, 121, no. ii.”

The date that this manuscript has carried in the HOLLIS catalogue for many years, ‘ca. 1350’, is misleading, as is the assignment of the manuscript to the time of Edward III on the cover. As the summary and the detailed contents show, there is nothing in the main text of the manuscript that needs be dated after 1299. The script might bring us into the 14th century, but not very far.

The manuscript measures approximately 210 X 140 mm.

The pigskin-and-board binding was almost certainly added after HLL acquired the manuscript. The front cover has a double geometric gold border, ‘Harvard Law School’ on the bottom of the front cover in gold letters, with a title in gold letters ‘STATUTA ANGLIÆ, / BEGINNING / WITH MAGNA CHARTA, / WRITTEN IN THE / TIME OF EDWARD III’. The back cover grooved for gold leaf but not filled in. The binding is in good condition. Unusually, there are no modern endpapers.

There are red and blue decorated capitals throughout and red and blue paragraph marks. The style of the decorated capitals, particularly those with scroll work and straps in the margins, differs somewhat from the usual design. The decoration is interesting but not of notably high quality.

The script in the main manuscript throughout is semi-cursive, typical of English legal manuscripts of the late 13th and early 14th centuries. There is probably more than one hand at work.

There is no foliation either ancient or modern that we have been able to find. Since all the folios are old, probably all medieval, we digitally foliated the manuscript from front to back. This corresponds to Baker’s foliation in his references in Cambridge Legal Manuscripts, until he reaches fol. 130, where he falls one behind. The main manuscript thus begins on our fol. 2r. Folio 1 has some medieval writing on it, but it is mostly notes from a later period. Adding it to the count raises the number of folios in HOLLIS and Baker from 151 to 152.

The manuscript consists of one ternion followed by 19 regular quaternions. One folio is missing before fol. 2 (text most likely unaffected) and another after fol. 149 (text affected). There is probably one more missing before fol. 150 and an uncertain number missing after fol. 152. Additional quires of text are missing from the end of the manuscript. This gives us the following collation:

1⁶ (f. 1–5, lacks one before 2), 2–12⁸ (f. 6–93), 13⁴ (f. 94–97), 14–20⁸ (f. 98–152, lacks one after 150).

We may not have quire 20 right. There is a folio missing after fol. 150; the stub is visible. One folio may not be enough to accommodate the end of ‘Hengham parva’ and the beginning of ‘Cum sit necessarium’, which follows and which is also defective. ‘Cum sit necessarium is also defective at the end, but here there is a carryover indicating a quire break, so it seems likely that quire 20 is a quaternion lacking one in the middle, and that the rest of ‘Cum sit necessarium’ originally followed on a new quire.

That more than one quire is missing at the end is clear. The table of contents on fol. 2r lists ‘Exceptiones ad cassandum brevia’, ‘Tractatus de bastardia’, ‘Tractatus corone’, ‘Placita corone’, ‘Articuli in narrando’, and a Registrum brevium as following ‘Cum sit necessarium’, none of which is now there.

This was at one time a quite complete late 13th-century law library in one manuscript. It still contains a large number of tracts and a quite large collection of statutes. It was almost certainly made for some sort of legal professional.

We have attempted to transcribe some of the marginal notes in an early modern hand that appear quite frequently in the manuscript. The author, who seems to have been operating in the first half of the 17th century, attempted to reconcile the contents of the manuscript with one or more books of statutes by Tottell and Pulton (whom he seems to have pronounced ‘Poul’n’). The same hand is also responsible for many of the notes at the beginning of the manuscript. The identifications in some instances are off mark by modern standards, but they are of some interest to those who are pursuing the understanding of the past of the 17th century.