<Preliminary introductions>

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

“Description : 118 leaves : vellum ; 13 cm.

“Summary : Contains a Magna Carta, Charta de Foresta, and other statutes to 25 Edward I.

“Notes : Written by an English scribe, long lines, 22 to a full page.

“Rubricated in blue and red, with ornamental pen-letters.”

The cataloguing in Baker’s English Legal Manuscripts, 1, no. 80 reads as follows:

“STATUTA VETERA

“MS. 57.

“Early C.xiv, 118 ff., one oak board remaining.

“Acquired by George Dunn in July 1887; his sale, S. 11 Feb. 1913, no. 158; bought privately by HLS.

“Census, I, 1033, no. 57.”

The manuscript measures approximately 130 X 75 mm.

The binding seems to postdate Baker’s catalogue. His ‘one oak board remaining’ suggests that that board was detached from the manuscript when he saw it. The rebinding was made to match a medieval binding, oak boards with no cover, open spine. The rebinding used the medieval board as a front cover and a modern board as the back cover bound to the manuscript with thick twine. Remnants of the former binding (seq. 264–266) show what was probably the former front cover, an oak board, certainly not medieval, covered on the front with leather which continued over the spine, and not covered on the inside. The inside has written in pen in George Dunn’s hand ‘Statuta Anglie (c. 1296)’. The blank modern endpapers at the front and back were probably added when the manuscript was rebound, and Dunn’s collation of the manuscript (seq. 8–11) was probably bound into the manuscript at the same time. It is a shame that this collation of the manuscript was not checked and a proper quire map prepared when the rebinding was redone, but it was not.

Dunn was convinced that the original manuscript is to be dated to 1296, and that Edward the Second’s statute of York of 1318 was a later addition. We agree that the original collection is to be dated to 1296 or 1297 and that the Statute of York is a later addition, but the arguments supporting this conclusion are more complicated and less certain than Dunn made them out to be.

Dunn’s argument for the dating of the basic collection was that the writ that accompanies the Statute of Merchants is dated without a month in year 25 of Edward the First’s reign, rather than 13 as in S.R. That would make the year of grace 1296 or 1297. In addition to the date on the writ, other evidence for composition around 1296 or 1297 is that the version of Magna Carta given is that of Henry III in 1225 and not the confirmation by Edward I on 28 October 1297.

The section of the manuscript that contains the Statute of York is written in a different hand and is in a somewhat style from that of the rest of the manuscript. Further evidence that the Statute of York was a later addition is supplied by what comes before and after it. Two items before the Statute of York is a duplicate copy of the Statute of Westminster III (fol. 66r–66v). It had already appeared on fol. 59v–60r. The Statute of Gloucester appears after the Statute of York, but Gloucester ends in mid-sentence in the middle of c. 1 of the statute (fol. 73v) (something that Dunn did not notice). Folio 74r begins Westminster II, in what seems to be the same hand and style as the earlier parts of the manuscript. It occupies most of the rest of the manuscript.

Dunn’s theory was that fol. 66r–73v were a separate quire that was inserted into the manuscript at some later date, certainly after 1318, and that this quire was not part of the original collection. He thought that he had proven it in his collation, which is now bound into the manuscript and which he pronounced ‘perfect’ (seq. 11). We agree with his overall conclusion that fol. 66r–73v are a separate quire. We are not sure that Dunn got the quiring quite right, though we hasten to point out that Dunn was examining physically a manuscript that was probably at the time quite loosely bound, whereas we are working from images of a manuscript that has recently been rebound.

Dunn’s collation, translated into modern form with, where necessary, his identification of the contents follows: 1–2¹² (f. 1–24), 3¹⁰ (f. 25–34), 4¹² (f. 35–46), 5¹⁶ (f. 47–62), 6³ [sic] (f. 63–65) (‘. . . de Mercat. Breve’), 7⁸ (f. 66–73) (‘Quia emptores. de Vasto. tunc Stat. Ebor (recentius addit) et Gloucester’), 8–10¹² (f. 74–109v) (‘Westminst Second’), 11⁹ [sic] (f. 110–118) (‘West Sec. de Scaccario’).

Dunn missed the fact that Dies communes in banco is included after the Statutes of the Exchequer, but that fact does not affect what he concluded about his quire 7. His count of the folios (superscripts in our form) is a count of the folios that are actually there rather than of the folios in the original quires. Quires of three or nine folios are impossible; something has to have been taken out. That a folio was taken out after fol. 118 seems quite likely. Final blank folios are frequently removed, and we even think that we can see the stub. Dunn’s quire 6 is much more problematic. If it were originally a duernion, then the person who made it up might already have been anticipating the inclusion of quire 7. If it were larger than a duernion, then the original quire would have had to have been totally remade in order to get what we have now. That is not impossible, but it does not happen very often.

Independent of Dunn, we attempted a collation of what we could see on the images. We ended up with a collation almost exactly like Dunn’s except that we combined his quires 6 and 7 into one quire originally of 16 folios from which four were missing at uncertain places. This works mathematically, but we could see no evidence of any of the stubs, much less of four. Our quiring also did not make fol. 66–73 into an independent quire, and we have already seen that there is evidence in the contents that it is.

That got us to thinking about our (and Dunn’s) quire 5. Octernia are not impossible, but they are certainly rare. There may be a quire break between fol. 54 and 55. If there is, that would make quire 5 a quaternion, quire 6 a sesternion lacking one at the end, and quire 7 a regular quaternion. It also means that quire 7 could be a later addition, as its contents already suggest that it is.

Hence, our tentative collation, which could be confirmed or upset when we get a chance to examine the manuscript physically and which excludes the modern additions at front and back, is:

1–2¹² (f. 1–24), 3¹⁰ (f. 25–34), 4¹² (f. 36–46), 5⁸ (f. 47–54), 6¹² (f. 55–65, lacks one after f. 65), 7⁸ (f. 66–73), 8–10¹² (f. 74–109v), 11¹⁰ (f. 110–118, lacks one after f. 118).

This small portable manuscript contains just the basics. It is of some interest in that it tells us what the original owner, who, as we have seen, probably had the collection made sometime around 1296–7, thought the basics were (listed in the order in which they appear): Magna Carta, the Forest Charter (followed by the sentence of excommunication of 1253), Merton, Marlborough, Westminster I, Merchants (including the sample writ), Westminster III, Gloucester, Westminster II, and the so-called statutes of the Exchequer. Dies communes in Banco is an afterthought that may or may not have been part of the original scheme. When the original, or a subsequent owner, had the manuscript bound, he thought that Edward the Second’s statute of York of 1318 belonged among those basics and had a quire added to accommodate it. Since he added a pre-existing quire, he added Westminster III (repeated), Waste, the Statute of York, and the beginning, but not the whole, of the Statute of Gloucester.

All of this is plausible, but not certain. We do not know when the manuscript was bound, and we do not know that the ‘original’ binding, part of which we still have, goes all the way back to the 14th century. We rather doubt that it does. It might be more cautious to say that someone, at some point, put in the additional quire. The script of that quire need not be any later than the date of Statute of York, but that does not mean that it was joined with the basic collection shortly after 1318. Perhaps the safest thing to say is that somebody, probably at some point in the Middle Ages, wanted to put the additional quire into manuscript, and probably did so at the time that the manuscript was being (re)bound. This could have been a 17th-century antiquary, but that seems unlikely. Loose quires of this size would probably have been quite scarce by the 17th century. The further that we get away from the early years of the 14th century, the less likely it seems that someone would have wanted to add a whole quire to a manuscript of this size.

One more consideration: Dies communes in banco is tucked in without a heading at the end of Westminster II. The hand that added it may (we emphasize ‘may’) be the same hand as that of the additional quire. If that is the case, that may make it more likely that the additional quire was incorporated shortly after 1318.