<Preliminary introduction.>

The HOLLIS cataloguing may be found here. It incorporates Baker’s provenance and our Summary Contents, leaving the following items to reproduce here:

“Description : [125] leaves : vellum, geneal. table, coats of arms ; 9 cm.

“Notes : Rubricated in blue and red; illuminated initials; miniature of a king --leaf [11].”

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 104, reads as follows:

“104 STATUTA VETERA
“MS. 173.

“C.xiv, 123 ff., illum, initials, miniature of a king, bound in old wooden boards with clasps. Includes a pedigree of Peytevyn, Bardolf and Hunt.

“Arms painted on fly (C.xv), Gules on a chevron azure between three cinquefoils or five molets pierced argent [BARDOLF]; and Or a chevron ermine between three escallops argent [PEYTEVYN] ; C.xvi inscription erased; sold at S. 2 July 1903, no. 291; obtained by Oswald Barron FSA (d. 1939); his wife’s sale, S. 3 June 1946, no. 181 to HLS; received on 25 July 1946.”

As will be seen below the foliation in both Baker and HOLLIS is misleading.

The manuscript is small, approximately 95 X 50 to 55 mm. The binding is definitely old, perhaps not so old as the manuscript, but probably pre-1500.

The manuscript has no foliation either ancient or modern. When the images were first placed in the Harvard PDS, we began a digital foliation on the first folio of Magna Carta, leaving the initial quires unfoliated. This foliation produced a count of 127 folios to the last folio that has writing on it, close to Baker’s count (123) and that in HOLLIS (125). Both of these foliations were probably done by hand. The last page of the main manuscript was on fol. 120v. Hence, neither of these previous foliations corresponded to anything that made complete sense. Rather than trying to reconcile these foliations with the actual one, it made more sense to refoliate the manuscript digitally. Since all of the folios date from some period in the Middle Ages, we foliated the manuscript fully. That gave us 139 folios.

The dorse of the initial folio (f. 1v) contains the pedigree. It is followed by what seems to be a bifolium that contains the arms that Baker notes, on the dorse of the first folio (f. 2v) and the recto of the second (f. 3r). There follow two duernions (f. 4–11) that contain a table of contents and a capitularia of Magna Carta, the charter of the Forest, the provisions of Merton, the statute of Marlborough, the statute of Gloucester, and Westminster I and II. There are no signature marks on the first quire of the main text, which appears to be a duernion. Signature marks are found in a rather unusual form beginning on fol. 16r, which is in the middle of the charter of the Forest. The last of these marks is found on fol. 99r. This quire ends on fol. 103v in the middle of the statute of Joint Tenants. As the signature marks indicate, and as is in fact the case, all the quires of the main text, except for the first, are quaternions. (Amost certainly, the first was originally one too; text is missing in Magna Carta from the end of c. 6 to the end of c. 35.) The quaternions continue to the end of the main manuscript, the last folios of the last quaternion being blank. The quiring of the remaining four folios is hard to discern. They may have originally been a duernion. There is later writing on one of them (fol. 138r–v).

Thus, with some uncertainty, we suggest the following collation:

Collation: i (f. 1), 1² (f. 2–3), 2–3⁴ (f. 4–11), 4⁸ (f. 12–15, 4 folios missing after f. 13v), 5–16⁸ (f. 16–103 with signature markings), 17–20⁸ (f. 104–135, no signature markings, f. 132–135 blank), ?21⁴ (f. 136–139 blank except for f. 138). The first folio and the first quire are almost certainly later additions; the last quire probably is.

The main manuscript, beginning with Magna Carta, is laid out with penciled lines for the header and text block of 30 lines of text and a footer, which is not used. The hand is consistent throughout and is probably the work of the same scribe. After the statute of York, the final ‘statute’ (‘De defensione iuris’) is entered in a different, later, hand.

It is possible that the statute of York was added later, but the script is similar to the main text, and the hand may be the same. It has no decorated capital, but the decorated capitals end with the statute of Winchester and are not found on the final items in the previous quire.

The informal hand that put in the last statute may also be the hand that put in the quotation from pseudo-Bracton on the last leaves and the motto (fol. 138r–v). It may be the hand that put in the genealogy. It is, in any case, a script of the fifteenth century, probably later in the century rather than earlier. The curious quire signatures may have been put in when the manuscript was bound or rebound, also probably in the fifteenth century. There is no proof that all of this is the work of, or done at the direction of, Thomas Hunte jnr, of whom more below, but it could have been.

The pedigree to which Baker refers (fol. 1v) begins with two male lines on the right and left-hand sides. The one on the left-hand side records in successive generations John Peytevyn, his son John, his son William, and his son William. The one on the right-hand side records Drugo Bardolff, his son, Drugo, his son Drugo, and a John Hunte, who is probably not related. The middle line, which begins parallel with the first William Peytevyn and the third Drugo Bardolff, records Agatha Peytevyn, Margery Bardolff, Thomas Hunte, and another Thomas Hunte. It all makes sense if we assume that Agatha Peytevyn married the third Drugo Bardolff. Their daughter Margery married John Hunte. They had a son Thomas Hunte, who had a son Thomas Hunte jnr.

The Peytevyns are hard to find. There are many people with this surname, and the Christian names are also very common. Bardolff, however, is not that common a surname and Drugo (Drew) is fairly rare. There was a Drugo Bardolff, sometimes described as Drugo Bardolff snr, a man of Dorset, who along with his wife Alice gave land to Hide abbey in 16 Edward III and who by himself gave land to Twynham priory in 29 Edward III.¹ A Drugo Bardolff of Dorset entered into a recognizance in the staple court in London with John Fauntelory, citizen and mercer of London, for £23 22d in 1409. He was dead by March 1422 when execution was ordered against his land in Dorset.² It is tempting to think that this Drugo is Drugo III of the genealogy. If that is right, then his daughter Margery was the grandmother of Thomas Hunte jnr, which would date the last-named in the mid- to late-15th century.

1. See 17 Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Proceedings. He may be same as the Drew Bardolf, who was removed from office as a coroner in Dorset in 1357, or it may be his son. Cal. Close R. (1354–1360) 367. (Thanks to JHB for this reference.)

2. See TNA C 131/60/17.

It seems likely that Thomas Hunte jnr was the owner of the manuscript. It seems unlikely that he was any of the three Thomas Hunts in Baker, Men of Court.³ That a man who was probably a member of the Dorset gentry in the second half of the fifteenth century had such a manuscript may tell us something. That he had ancestors on the female side of his family who boasted heraldic devices may indicate that the manuscript had been in the family for some time. There is nothing in the main manuscript that needs be later than the first Drugo Bardolff, early in the reign of Edward III. Indeed, there is nothing in the manuscript that needs be later than 1318, the statute of York of 12 Edw. 2, which we have used for our dating.

3. Id., 911–12.

More could be done. The erased 16th century indications of ownership may be visible under ultraviolet light. The quotation from pseudo-Bracton can probably be found. The heraldry of Peytevyn and Bardolff, however, is likely to prove a dead end. We now have a quite comprehensive dictionary of medieval English heraldry. It does contain the Peytevyn (misspelled on the basis of an auction catalogue) and Bardolff shields, but only from our manuscript.⁴

4. Dictionary of British Arms, D. H. B. Chesshyre and T. Woodcock ed., 4 vols. ([London]: Society of Antiquaries of London, 1992–2014) 3:334 (Peytevyn), 469 (Bardolf). (Thanks to JHB for these references.)