Binding

Bound in brown calfskin over pasteboards with blind stamped and rolled decoration, by Wiseman, 1862.

Evidence preserved in MSS Ff.1.25(1) and MS Ff.1.25(5) (recycled endleaf bearing four friction-holes and rust stains, suggesting the presence formerly of four corner-bosses and a chain staple) indicates that all five volumes were previously bound together in similar style to that of the binding on other manuscripts donated to the University Library by Matthew Parker (for an example, see: MS Ii.2.4). See Provenance and Acquisition for further details.

Thomas James's catalogue, Ecloga Oxonio-Cantabrigiensis (1600) allocates two numbers to MS Ff.1.25:

• 244: 1. Gu. Malmesbury de pontificum gestis, lib. 59, vltimus liber scriptus est a neoterico ... 2. Nouella historia Anglorum ...
• 245: 1. Liber cum hac inscriptione. Itinerarium peregrinantium in terram sanctam ... 2. Galfridu Monumetensis ...

This implies that the manuscript was bound in two volumes at this time. However, in the list of manuscripts donated by Parker to the University Library in 1574, the manuscript is described as containing 460 pages. Such statements of extent were given for each of Parker's donations and were also written onto one of the opening leaves of the manuscripts themselves (see MS Ff.1.25(1), f. 3r). None of the other manuscripts within the Ff.1.25 classmark contain such an inscription, and the total number of pages amounts to 460, by the Parkerian pagination (see Foliation for further details).

Furthermore, as described above, Parker's donations were (with the odd exception) bound in a consistent format, and where the manuscripts have been rebound since that time this evidence is often preserved within the new binding. In MS Ff.1.25(1), only the recycled endleaves at the front of the volume have been preserved. Only Ff.1.25(5) contains similar endleaves, and only at the rear; they are found in none of the other volumes. The material evidence thus points to the manuscripts that are now Ff.1.25(1)-(5) having arrived bound as a single volume. Furthermore, each of these volumes bear evidence of having had the author(s) and title(s) of their contents inked onto the fore-edges of their leaves, presumably by Abraham Wheelocke , who treated other manuscripts in a similar manner (see, for example, MS Ff.1.28. This indicates moreover that the manuscript remained as a single volume in the mid-17th century.

In his History of the University Library, David McKitterick recounts that the part of this manuscript containing the Historia regum Britanniae (now MS Ff.1.25(5)) was discovered to be missing when the manuscripts in the Old Library were inspected in 1732 and again in 1748: the number '245' assigned by James in 1600 is in both lists, in the first with the partial title 'Galfrid: monumethensis etc' (see Cambridge, University Library, MS Add. 4451, ff. 18r and 19r). The implication is that by this stage Ff.1.25 had been rebound into two volumes. However, a more probable explanation is that James's assigning of two numbers to the manuscript misled the compilers of these lists of missing books, who were searching fruitlessly for Geoffrey of Monmouth and other texts bound into a discrete volume, when in fact they remained in place in the same volume as what James has designated '244'. Indeed, that no mention is made in the Catalogue of manuscripts preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, vol. 2 (1857) means that it is almost certain that it was not divided into separate volumes until 1862.