<Preliminary introduction.>

The HOLLIS cataloguing may be found here.

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 105 reads as follows:

“105 STATUTA VETERA
“MS. 174.

“C.xiv, illum, initial, oak boards. The statute 36 Edward III, c. 15, is added.

“Bought from Martin Breslauer, London, and received on 24 Jan. 1947.”

The manuscript is small, approximately 120 X 75 mm.

The oak board binding is old, probably not contemporary with the manuscript, but probably before 1500. There is evidence that the manuscript was trimmed at the top for binding, and the basically blank leaves at the end are probably a later addition. The binding is covered in parchment that is not in good condition. There are remains of a clasp (a hole on the front cover where the clasp would have gone, and a boss on the back cover to which it would have been attached), but the clasp is no longer there.

There is no foliation in the manuscript. When it was placed in the PDS, we added digital foliation beginning with the first folio and continuing to the last folio on which there is writing, but not including the blanks at the end. That gave us 161 folios. Baker does not give a foliation. HOLLIS had a total of 158, which is hard to reconcile with the reality. Since all the quires are medieval, it seemed best to foliate the manuscript entirely. We did that digitally, giving us a total of 170.

The quiring is regular. The main part of the manuscript has 20 quaternions and a final bifolium. Two folios are missing, one following fol. 33, the other following 90. In the case of the first, text is missing at the end of the provisions of Merton and the beginning of the statutue of Marlborough. In the case of the second, nothing is missing from the text. The additional quires at the end are ternions, but two folios were torn out from the very end of the manuscript. That gives us the following collation:

Collation: 1–4⁸ (f. 1–32), 5⁸ (f. 33–39, lacks 1 after f. 33), 6–11⁸ (f. 40–87), 12⁸ (f. 88–94, lacks 1 after f. 90), 13–19⁸ (f. 95–158), 20² (f. 159–160), 21–22⁶ (f. 161–170, 2 torn out after f. 170).

The initial ‘E’ of Magna Carta is decorated in dark red and blue and what may be gold leaf with red scrollwork issuing into the margins. Other major initials are decorated in red and blue with, once more, scrollwork issuing into the margins. There are red and blue paragraph marks throughout. There are no miniatures.

Most, perhaps all, of the folios of the main manuscript are laid out in pencil with lines for a header, 25 lines of text, and a rather large space at the bottom.

The condition of the manuscript is in some places rather poor. The handwriting shows some fading, though most of it is legible, particularly since the texts are well known.

On fol. 1r a hand of the late 14th or early 15th century has written: “Summa ecclesiarum Anglie – xlv ?milia ?lx; Summa villarum Anglie – lij ?milia et iiij (a superscript suggests that this should be 4 score); Summa feodorum militum – lij ?milia ccxv; De quibus in manibus religiosorum xxviij [one character illegible] et xv.” Whether these numbers are in the right order of magnitude (and even whether the abbreviation for milia is in fact an abbreviation for milia) requires more work.¹ The point here is that an interest in these numbers bespeaks someone connected with central administration, perhaps with the Exchequer. The only other medieval additions to the manuscript that we have so far found are some notes about weights and measures following the so-called ‘statutum de Cibariis’, a brief note about a writ (fol. 160v), and the text on folio that follows of c. 15 of stat. 36 Edw. 3, which is written in a later and more informal hand. This last is the well-known – and, so far as we can tell, ineffective – statute authorizing pleading in English rather than French. The copy of the statute is complete; a brief note follows.

The last datable item in the main collection is the statute 10 Edw. 3, stat 3. There is nothing in it that would indicate a date any later than that. Nor is there anything in the additional quires that requires a date later then 36 Edw. 3. Hence our approximate dates: ca. 1340 (1365).