<Preliminary introduction>

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

“Description: 351 leaves : vellum ; 23 cm.

“Notes: Written in a neat legal hand, long lines, 28 to a full page.

“Calendar in red and black, illuminated floreate border to first page of text, painted capitals in blue and red, with ornamental pen letters.

“Bound in Russia leather with stamped blind floreate ornaments and leather clasps by Douglas Cockerell in 1900.”

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 60 reads as follows:

“REGISTRUM BREVIUM

“MS. 34.

“Late C.xiv, 351 ff., illum, border. Preceded by a calendar. The first writ is addressed to the bailiffs of Lincoln, and is tested 13 Nov. 8 Henry. Ends imperfectly. Followed (ff. 347-351) by ‘Capitula registri.’

“The calendar includes obits of William Chevir, Secondary Justice of the King’s Bench [in Ireland], d. 16 Jan. 1446/47; and of his widow Alice, d. 31 July 1447; and of Alianora Holywood, daughter and heir of Sir Robert Holywood, wife of Richard Bermyngham, esquire, d. 8 Aug. 1447; and of Christopher Talbot, d. 7 Sept. 9 Hen. IV [1408]; which suggest that the book was in Ireland by the early C.xv; ‘Donum Antonii Bruninge Ar. pro xxs.’ (C.xvii); acquired from Robert Steele by George Dunn in Dec. 1900; his sale, S. 12 Feb. 1913, no. 233; bought privately by HLS.

“Census, 1, 1029, no. 34; Early Registers, xxvi.”

Baker’s identification of the king in the initial writ of right patent is mistaken. It is Richard [II], not Henry [presumably, IV]. We might add that we think we can see a date of 1632 connected with the name of Antony Bruninge, esq., on fol. 7r, confirming Baker’s 17th-century date for this item of provenance.

The manuscript is approximately 230 X 165 mm.

The script is neat, legible, and consistent. The main script is of a style that we associate with the late 14th; there is nothing about it that would carry us over into the 15th. Other, less formal hands occasionally appear as additions or headers (several examples can be seen on fol. 1r).

Illustrations are limited to the large decorated initial capital and floral border at the beginning of the register (fol. 7r).

The binding is as described in the HOLLIS entry. The two clasps are made of lacquered cords. The mark of the binder Douglas Cockerell is found engraved on the back pastedown in the lower left-hand corner: 1900 with a distinctive ‘c’ in a circle separating ‘19’ from ‘00’. The binding is in good condition.

A large tear in fol. 225 has been sewn shut; a smaller one in fol. 112 does not affect the text.

There is no medieval foliation, but each header includes a numeric chapter number and an alphabetic section letter (from ‘A’ at the beginning to ‘K’ at the end). Signatures appear on the first four pages of each quire with the fifth indicated by a [plus sign].

There is a modern pencilled foliation in the upper right-hand corner of each folio. It probably dates from the time of the binding. It skips the initial endpapers and stops before the final endpapers. It tracks our digital foliation.

Quiring/collation:

1² (unfoliated), 2⁶ (f. 1–6), 3–11⁸ (f. 7–78), 12⁶ (f. 79–84), 13–19⁸ (f. 85–140), 20⁶ (f. 141–146), 21–45⁸ (f. 147–346), 46⁶ (f. 347–351, one missing after 351), 47² (unfoliated).

As noted above, the initial writ of right patent should be dated 13 Nov. 1384. There are an unusually large number of writs where the regnal year is given in the margin, some with the place as well. We were reluctant to use these for dating purposes, because some of them seem to refer to regnal years of Edward III, e.g. fol. 19r, where the year is given as 17, and the writ is said to be per preceptum Roberti Parning, who was the chancellor in 17 Edw. 3 (1343). There is, however, one (fol. 71v) where the regnal year, 14, is explicitly said to be that of Richard II, 1390–1.¹ There may be some with slightly later dates. An earlier version of this Introduction mentioned one from the 16th year, but we could not find it when we looked for the folio reference. Pending the discovery of later dates, we have used 1390–1 as the tentative date for the manuscript.

¹ There are some puzzles. Fol. 337v has a writ tested by the king at Reading, 8 Aug., in year 8 (1383). Richard II was not at Reading on 8 Aug. 1383, but he was close (Henley-on-the-Heath, Surrey). He reached Reading ten days later. N. Saul, Richard II 470. The writ is said to be by the [regency] council, which may already have been at Reading. That this is a writ of Richard II seems clear. On 8 Aug. 1334 (year 8), Edward III was in Odiham (Hants.) and heading west. W. M. Ormrod, Edward III 616.

The calendar may be slightly later. Fol. 7r, the first folio of the register proper, is worn as if it had been for some time at the top of a stack of unbound quires. As Baker notes, the calendar contains the obits of William Chevir, secondary justice of the King’s Bench in Ireland, who died on 16 Jan. 1446/7, and of his widow Alice, who died 31 July 1447. That suggests that the manuscript was in Ireland by that time. Some support for this proposition is found in the calendar itself, which notes, in what may be a different hand that 17 March is the feast ‘sci Patricii episcopi et confessoris apostoli Hibernii’ (sic). The Easter date in the calendar is 6 Kal. Aprilis, i.e. 27 Mar. Easter occurred on that date in 1345, 1407, 1418, and 1429. The last two are impossible, because the calendar contains the obit of one Christopher Talbot, who died on 7 Sep. 1408. 1345 is way too early for the manuscript. That would suggest that the calendar was made up in 1407. Talbot’s obit, unlike the other obits in the calendar, is incorporated into the calendar itself, not simply noted in the lower margin. Talbot could be, but is not necessarily, Irish. We thus have, as yet, no firm evidence that the manuscript was in Ireland before the 1440s.

The manuscript closes with a capitularium. It is based on the headers in the main manuscript, which almost certainly antedate the capitularium, though not necessarily by much. The capitularium is divided into ten sections lettered ‘a’ through ‘k’, one letter to page. Except for page ‘k’, the numbers of the chapters begin at the head of the page and end at the end of the page. They thus do not represent an attempt to organize the register by larger topics. The letter of the page and the chapter numbers were then transferred to the headers of the register itself in a hand that looks very much like the hand of the indexer and not that of the clerk who originally wrote the headers. We have used this numbering (a:1, a:2, etc.) in our Summary Contents. That results in a large number of sections, almost 250, but that is considerably less than the number of separate writs in the register, approximately 1600.

For the Summary Contents, then, we did not map the sections onto those that we have been using for other manuscripts of this period. (We do use it in the Analysis of Writs in order to make the comparison.) The order of the material does, however, seem to be pretty much the same. Many, if not most, of the ‘brevia de statuto’ are there, though they are not so marked. The material that follows formedon is quite similar to that of the other registers without being the same. HLS MS 168, which is roughly contemporary, seems to do a slightly better job of organizing the material that accumulated in the register largely in the second half of the 14th century, material that is, by and large, to be found after formedon. The person who put the headers in the register was interested in detail, not in generalization, and the indexer followed him. The result is the detailed guide to the register’s contents that we produce in the Summary Contents.

The Summary Contents uses the text that we found in the headers. We did, however, compare it with the text in the capitularium and have borrowed text from the capitularium where it was clearer than the headers.

Page ‘k’ of the capitularium has 9 chapters, the last of which ‘Carta perdonacionis utlagarie’ corresponds the header on what is now the last page of the register (fol. 346v). That page, however, ends in mid-sentence with a carryover at the bottom of the page. Something is clearly missing. How much is hard to tell, but we have reached the end of what is found in contemporary registers. It is possible, though not certain, that just one or two folios are missing, folios that got detached at some point before the indexer did his work. There is below the indexer’s c. 9 in a different hand and not following directly on c. 9 a note of the ‘capitulum decimum’, the beginning of text of which seems to be ‘Carta’. Perhaps a later or contemporary indexer knew what was missing, but it is also possible that this new indexer was thinking of changing the header for the last page, because the topic of the documents on that page seems to be changing from pardons for outlawry to writs concerning the statute of Labourers.

The size of this register and the large number of ‘administrative’ writs in it suggests that it was originally made for Chancery clerks. It probably ended up in the hands of an Irish King’s Bench justice, or of one his clerks, by the middle of the 15th century, but that does not mean that it was made for them. There is much in this register that would have been of use to them, particularly if they were trying to follow English practice. They seem, however, to have gotten a lot more than they really needed.