<Preliminary introduction>

The HOLLIS cataloguing may be found here. The following items are worth repeating:

“Provenance : Formerly in the collection of Morris S. Arnold of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.”

“Description: [224] leaves : vellum ; 29 cm.

“Notes : Preceded by a chronological table and an index of statutes from Assise to Xp̄ienne court.

“Illuminated initials; rubricated.”

In Baker 1:1, this manuscript was listed as being in the collection of Professor Morris S. Arnold of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Judge Arnold’s gift of the manuscript to HLS allowed Baker to expand on the description in Baker 2:1:

“1 STATUTA NOVA, 1 EDWARD III TO 9 HENRY VI

“MS. 185.

“Mid-C.xv, 225 ff. (1) (ff. 1-16v) ‘Capitula statutorum’, a chronological table; (2) (ff. 17-20, concluded on 1-3) ‘Hic incipit kalendare’, an alphabetical index to the Statuta antiqua from Assisa to Xp̄iane courte; (3) (ff. 21-225v) statutes from 1 Edw. III to 9 Hen. VI, the last year incomplete.

“‘Richard Palmes’; ‘J. III. 4’ (altered in pencil to ‘L.J. VI’) on label (C.xix-xx).

The Baker description is a bit unclear. The chronological capitulary of the statutes is complete, so far as it goes, from fols. 1r through 16v. It is the alphabetical index that breaks off and is concluded elsewhere. In fact, it is concluded before the modern pencilled foliation begins, and before the chronological capitulary of the statutes. We are also unable to agree with Baker that the alphabetical index is of, or at least that it is primarily of, the ‘Statuta antiqua’. It is comprehensive, covering, with one later addition, statutes from Magna Carta through 5 Hen. 3. The last keyword in the alphabetical index of statutes is ‘Xp̄iane’ as Baker has it, not ‘Xp̄ienne’ as HOLLIS has it.

The manuscript measures approximately 290 X 180 mm.

It has an 18th- or 19th-century leather binding with blind tooled borders.

There are decorated red and blue capitals, some with scroll work, throughout the manuscript, beginning with the capitulary and extending until we reach the duplication of the statute of 8 Hen. 5, where the decorative program ceases. The design of the decoration on the capitals is standard, the execution of good quality. There are also red and blue paragraph marks. There is no decoration in the alphabetical index of the statutes.

The base hand is neat, small, and less cursive than many legal scripts. It is clearly professional work. The base hand seems to be responsible for all of the text except the alphabetical index of statutes and the obviously later marginalia.

There is a modern pencilled foliation that begins with the chronological capitulary of the statutes on seq. 13, omitting the continuation of the alphabetical index of the statutes that precedes it. That is not the way that we would have foliated the manuscript, but the existing pencilled foliation is visible and accurate for what it does. Hence, our digital foliation follows it. We have extended the digital foliation until we reach the modern freestanding endpapers, raising the total of numbered folios to 226 with four unnumbered medieval folios preceding it.

There are some signature markings, although they are hard to read.

The manuscript has 28 quires: 2 sesternions, 25 quaternions, and one ternion. This gives us the following collation:

i (seq. 3–4), 1–2¹² (seq. 5–12, f. 1–20), 3–27⁸ (f. 21–220), 28⁶ (f. 221–226), i (seq. 465–466).

Fol. 76 may be sewn in at the end of quire 9 substituting for the original ending of the quire, although this is not visible on the images. The contents of it are strange, a piece of 28 Edw. 3, duplicating something that is already there on fol. 69v and then, on the dorse, the beginning of the ordinance about herring, the heading for which is found at the end of fol. 75v.

Quire 24 is odd. It begins with the statutes of 8 Hen. 5 and 9 Hen. 5, stat. 1 (fol. 189r–192r). It then proceeds to duplicate those statutes, beginning toward the end of fol. 192r and running through to the middle of fol. 194r. The quire then proceeds through 9 Hen. 5, stat. 2, ending with 1 Hen. 6, which continues into quire 25. As previously noted, the decorative program ceases with the beginning of the first duplicated statute, and does not return again in the manuscript. There is no change of script at this point. While it is possible that there is a change of hand, we rather doubt that there is.

The easiest explanation for this oddity is that the scribe turned the manuscript over to the decorator after he had completed the first version of 9 Hen. 5, stat. 1. When he got the manuscript back, he was asked to continue into the reign of Henry VI. He used a different source for these statutes. The text of the duplicated 8 Hen. 5 does not include the preamble of the statute, whereas the first version of the statute does. Copying from a different source, he simply forgot that he already had 8 Hen. 5 and 9 Hen. 5, stat. 1, in the manuscript.

The fact that the chronological capitulary of the statutes does not go beyond Henry IV might make one think that this collection began life as a statute book containing statutes of Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV, and that the statutes of Henry V and the early years of Henry VI were later additions. The script and, we think, the hand give us pause. There is no obvious change of hand or script between Henry IV and Henry V. The source of the capitulary could have been an already existing list that did not go beyond Henry IV.

Although the chronological capitulary of the statutes could, on paleographical and stylistic grounds, be contemporary with the manuscript, the same cannot be said of the alphabetical index of statutes. The script of that index looks quite a bit later than the 1430s. Here we have solider evidence that the source of the index was an already existing index. It contains numerous references to the statutes that antedate 1 Edw. 3, the earliest statute in the manucript. There are preliminary transcriptions of the lemmata in the Detailed Contents below.

This alphabetical index bears a distinct resemblance to those in MS 40 and 170. Unlike those two, which seem to be virtually copies of each other from some common source, this one has some variations, but the similarities are substantial. All three indices basically end with 3 Hen. 5. MS 40 has one obviously later addition. This one does too: Under ‘officium coronatoris’ (seq. 7) there is a citation to 2 Hen. 6, but that, too, looks as if it was later addition. In all three manuscripts the lemmata proceed from ‘assisa’ through ‘Xp̄ien courte’. There are 214 independent lemmata in MS 40, 212 in MS 170, and 199 in this one. Almost all of the lemmata in this manuscript map onto those of MS 40 and 170, though there are some exceptions, mostly involving breaking down of a single lemma into multiple ones in this manuscript. For example, whereas MS 40 and 170 have a large number of statutes under the single heading ‘Appell’ this manuscript has five lemmata that begin ‘appell’: ‘appell’ del mort del home’, ‘appell’ de rape’, ‘appell’ de mahame’, ‘appell’’ [in general], and ‘appell’ dez gents’, the last of which is tucked in after ‘accusament’. The breaking down of individual lemmata in this manuscript means that the statistics given above are misleading. Thirty-two of the lemmata in MS 40 and 170 are not found in this manuscript, including the very large one under the general heading ‘assize’ at the beginning of MS 40 and 170. There are also seven that are found in this manuscript that are not found in MS 40 and 170, for example, ‘adminstr’ dez bienz ce’ q’ devie entestat’. Also, some of the citations in this manuscript do not match those in MS 40 and 170. We have not looked for these systematically; we have the impression that there are not many.

These differences should not detract from the fact that all three indices seem to derive from a common source. Not only do far too many of the lemmata map onto each other for the coincidence to have arisen by chance, but also one of the most problematic lemmata in MS 40 and 170, ‘Novelx’, appears in this manuscript though in a different way. The scribe wrote ‘n’ and then left a blank space (he seems to have been just as puzzled as we were), but he follows it with the same citations that are found in MS 40 and 170.

It is possible that all of the differences between the index in this manuscript and that of MS 40 and 170 are the product of the person who worked on this manuscipt. He started, we might imagine, with a copy of the index of MS 40 and 170 and made changes as he was copying. That possibility, however, seems less likely than the possibility that he began with a different version of the index from the one with which the scribes of MS 40 and 170 began. We might imagine that it was a somewhat older version. It contained fewer lemmata, and fewer individual index items had been combined under one heading. These features do not prove that it was older; an older, fuller version could have been abbreviated and the large headings broken down to make the one that was the source for this manuscript, but that seems less likely.

Baker, Men of Court 2:1193, records two men named Richard Palmes, one admitted Middle Temple c. 1525, the other admitted Lincoln’s Inn 26 June 1558. He records four men named Gryffyth (id. at 1:792) without a given name, with dates in both the 15th and 16th centuries.

Many of the statutes have extensive marginal notes in 16th c. script, probably from the second half of that century. The relationship between these marginalia and the index at the beginning of the manuscript needs to be explored. Baker’s second Richard Palmes or his Gryffyth _ IV could be the author these marginalia, but that is pure guess-work.