<Preliminary introduction>

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

“Description: 336 leaves : vellum ; 16 cm.

“Notes: Written in law-Latin by an English scribe, long lines, 38 to a full page.

“Illuminated initials and ornamental pen letters.”

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 76 reads as follows:

REGISTRUM BREVIUM

“MS. 53.

“Late C.xiv, 336 ff. The first writ, concerning land in Lincolnshire, is tested 12 March 45 Edward III [1371].

“Stamp on cover with the letters H L and a coronet (C.xvii); acquired by George Dunn in Feb. 1897; his sale, S. 11 Feb. 1913, no. 38; bought privately by HLS.

“Census, I, 1033, no. 53; Early Registers, xxvi.”

The HOLLIS catalogue at one point described the manuscript as ‘Registrum brevium (Natura brevium)’. ‘Natura brevium’ should have been, as it is now, omitted. Both HOLLIS and Baker give the number of folios as 336, relying, as we will see below, on the medieval foliation. Our digital count, excluding the modern endpapers, is 353.

The manuscript is approximately 160 X 115 mm.

The primary script of the manuscript is unusually legible. It is less cursive than that of many legal manuscript without quite being a ‘book hand’. The script appears to be of approximately the same date as the attestation of the writ of right patent, i.e. 1371. Another, less regular, hand appears on fol. 209v, where what seems to be the ending of a writ that does not begin on the previous page is recorded. A third (even less regular hand) appears on fol. 351v, where another writ has been added to the collection. The second hand is probably a later than the main hand. The third hand, as we will see below, dates from the beginning of the 16th century. The pen trials on the final folios seem to date from the 15th century.

Paragraph marks in the main text are red and blue, as are initial capitals of various sizes and levels of elaborateness. There are no illustrations or grotesques.

The manuscript was rebound in 1988 (after Baker wrote). The new pigskin-and-birch-board binding is in excellent condition. The binder’s report (seq. 716) gives the technical details. Unfortunately, it does not include a quire map. The old boards have been retained in the library but are not photographed.

Medieval foliation can be found in the upper left corner of most of the folios; some of the foliation has been cut off. It does not match our digital foliation, ending up, for example, at 334, where we have 345. Signatures were probably marked on the first four pages of each quire, but for the most part only those on the first pages (written near the center of the lower margin) remain. Those on subsequent pages included both letters and numbers and are very close to the edge of the page.

The medieval foliation is, unfortunately, cut off on our folios 178 and 179. We cannot therefore tell whether the folios that the quiring suggests are missing had reached the point where they had medieval foliation on them, much less text. The end of fol. 178v could be the end of that writ, and fol. 179r begins a new writ.

Quire 46 has text only on the first folio; the rest are blank, though one of them has pencilled layout on it. It looks as if there is stub between fol. 346 and 347. The quiring, however, makes more sense if we do not assume that anything is missing. There is almost certainly no medieval text missing here.

Fol. 353 is beyond the end of the medieval text, containing only pen trials. There is a visible stub following it, but the quire itself may only have been a bifolium, which would have been the medieval endpapers.

Quiring/collation:

1² (unfoliated), 2–23⁸ (f. 1–176), 24–25⁶ (f. 177–184, four missing after 178), 26–46⁸ (f. 185–352), 47^? (f. 353–unfoliated, ? missing after 353).

There is nothing that we have found so far that would suggest a date later than the one on the initial writ of right patent, 12 March 1371. Putting it less precisely, there is nothing that we have found so far that would bring this register into the reign of Richard II. Some confirmation of the date on the initial writ of right patent can be found on the writ that follows, addressed to the bailiffs of a lord when the lord is out of the kingdom. The bailiffs are those of an honor of the earl of Derby, who at this date would be John of Gaunt. He was, indeed, out of the kingdom on the date of the writ. (Compare MS 166, where the lord in question is Henry of Grosmont.)

This is a large register, not quite so large as HLS MS 165, 155, 168, and 34, all of which date from the reign of Richard II, and to which we compare it in the Analysis of Writs. It is considerably larger than MS 166, which we dated to the middle of the reign of Edward III.

There is one piece of evidence that may be relevant to the provenance. Fol. 351v contains, in a much later hand, what seems to be a writ to the men and tenants of Lillingstone Dayrell, Bucks., making Thomas Palmer and John Whittington their attorneys to defend their rights in the forest of Whittlewood. The writ mentions Sir Thomas Lovell as the justice of the forest, a position that Lovell does not seem to have obtained until 1510. (S. J. Gunn, in ODNB s.n.) It would make sense, though it cannot be certain, that Palmer or Whittington owned the manuscript at this point. The former may be Thomas Palmer II in Baker’s Men of Court 2.1191; the latter John Whittington I, in id. 2.1667. The former seems more plausible on geographical grounds; he had definite Buckinghamshire connections. The latter, however, is known to have had a library; he is a former owner the statute-book, HLS MS 160. We lack any evidence of earlier medieval provenance, but there can be little doubt that this register was made for a professional. We have yet to discover any evidence of what kind of professional he might have been.

No heading found

As discussed in the Introduction, the date of this register seems quite solid, 12 March 1371 in the initial writ right patent, supported by a reference in the next writ to John of Gaunt as being out of the kingdom, which he was on that date.

The following table gives the names of the writs as found in the marginalia and counts them. Two counts of the writs are given in the right-hand columns. The first counts all the writs for which there are marginal notes, excluding, however, the notes that are labelled ‘Regula’ or ‘Nota’. The second excludes from the total all the writs where the marginal note includes the words ‘eodem’ or ‘aliter’. The conclusion that follows the table discusses the relationship of this register to the four that we have from the reign of Richard II, HLS MS 165, 155, 168, and 34.