Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge Libraries

A catalogue of Western manuscripts and papyri at Cambridge University Library, the Fitzwilliam Museum and selected Cambridge colleges

Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.5.5

Legal texts

Contents

Introduction: A writ is a form of legal instrument or instruction, issued by a court or other authority, that requires the addressee(s) to act or refrain from acting in a particular way. They are - in F.B. Wiener's memorable phrase - the 'seed-bed of the common law': that is, the system of law that emerged from judicial ruling rather than from statute. The earliest legal text-books in England were in large part commentaries on writs, each usually referred to eponymously: 'Glanvill', the Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regum Anglie attributed to Ranulf de Glanvill (d. 1190), chief justiciar of England; and 'Bracton', De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae attributed to Henry Bracton (d. 1268), an ecclesiastic and justice of the assize. As the common law grew, so did the number of writs, and registers of increasing size were made in ever greater number, in order to provide lawyers with indispensible reference guides to a vast store of legal precedent. Registers of writs were therefore practical books, but that did not preclude their decoration or ornamentation. Evidently, the present manuscript was the source of some pride to whomever commissioned its production, since they chose to expend additional money on having it decorated. It is preceded by a 'Kalendarium', essentially a table of contents listing the writs covered across forty-six chapters, ornamented by coloured and pen-flourished initials, and paraph marks in the alternating red-blue sequence typical of late medieval manuscripts. The first page of the register proper opens with a large historiated initial R, inside which Richard II is depicted, enthroned with crown and sceptre. This begins the text of the first of a group of writs of right, which was issued in Richard's name at Westminster on 4 March 1381/82. Writs of right concern the restoration of property to its rightful owner, and the two parties concerned here were John de Burton, cleric, and Robert de Faryngton. Smaller, illuminated initials mark the beginnings of each chapter throughout the rest of the manuscript. The manuscript was included in the Curious Cures project on account of the two medical recipes that are found on its final leaf, both copied by the same fifteenth-century hand. The first is 'A good medicine to avoyde flewme and corrupcion out off thi stomoke', and recommends skinning a year-old cat, leaving the hair on the outside and tawing the inside (a process that would involve soaking it in a solution of alum and salt). This side should then be anointed with 'an oyle that is called oleum ciriacum'. '[L]ay it to thi stomoke and let it be sewed to thi dowbelet and it shall hele the.' In her recent study of Middle English medical recipes (2022), Hannah Bower has identified other examples of plasters being integrated into one's clothing by way of application: attached to cloth and sewn together 'in þe manere of a dublet' for wearing around the body (cf. Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.1.65 , f. 252v). Such analogies, she concludes, reflect the domestic spaces in which remedy books were increasingly used. Gilbertus Anglicus, in his Compendium medicinae, repeatedly used similes as diagnostic aids, and comparisons also appear in uroscopy texts (both Latin and Middle English), and these stylistic influences were absorbed into medical information conveyed in the common language. The second recipe was intended 'to sharpe a mannys witts whan thei be dull in labour'. One can imagine medieval lawyers, wearied by the demands of their clients or the travails of business, and burdened with paper- and parchment-work, being sorely in need of a stimulant. 'Take rede vyneger whan thu gost to thi bedde and let rubbe the hert of thi fote [i.e. the middle] and thyn ankleys with a lynyn clowte be a fyre and chanfe it well till it have dronke up half a saweser full and that shall make thi wittes sharp and freshe.' Modern-day readers are no doubt grateful for the ubiquity of tea and coffee. Dr James Freeman|Medieval Manuscripts Specialist|Cambridge University Library

Language(s): Latin and Middle English

1. 2r-6r
Kalendarium
Language(s): Latin
Incipit: 2r Capitulum primum Im
Explicit: 6r Aliter pardonacione vtlagarie
2. 8r-201v
Register of writs
Language(s): Latin
Incipit: 8r: Ricardus dei gracia Rex Angliae et ffrancie et dominus Hiberniae Balliuis suis Eboracum salutem
Explicit: 201v Et habeas ibi summonitores nomina militum etcaetera
3. 204v
Poem on appearance versus reality
Language(s): Middle English
Rubric: 204v Consulare Cura Corbettes [added title]
Incipit: 204v Many men seme wise till they be assayed / And many men seme riche till there debtes be payed

Full transcription; added in the late 15th century.

NIMEV 2092.55
DIMEV 3404-1
4. 204v
Poem encouraging to chose God instead of wordly goods
Language(s): Middle English
Rubric: 204v Consulare Cura Corbettes [added title]
Incipit: 204v Yf love of parentes may allure, yf hope of wordlye gayne / Yf feare of god maye the procure, then hit take thowe some payne

Full transcription; added in the late 15th century.

DIMEV 2374-1
5. 205
Two medical recipes
Language(s): Middle English

Two medical recipes to purge phlegm ('to avoyde flewme') and to sharpen one's mind ('to sharpe a mannys witts'), added in the 15th century.

Physical Description

Secundo Folio: 3r De averiis
Secundo Folio: 9r annum pro
Form: codex
Support: Parchment (FHHF)
Extent: Codex: i + 206 + i leaves. 225 × 165 mm.
Foliation:

Mid-20th-century foliation:

[a], i, 1-205, [b]

Numbering in pencil in the upper right-hand corner of the rectos.

Collation

  • Quires 1-58 (ff. i recto-39v)
  • Quire 612 (ff. 40r-51v)
  • Quire 7-88 (ff. 52r-67v)
  • Quire 910 (ff. 68r-77v)
  • Quire 10-258 (ff. 78r-205v)

1-58 612 7-88 910 10-258

Quire signatures ('B-S') in the lower margins of the first rectos of quires 3-19.

 Horizontal catchwords in the hand of the scribe in brown ink in the right lower margin of last versos of quires.

Layout

175 × 120 mm. Ruled in pencil, frame and line ruling. Single columns. 40-41 lines to the page, written below top line.

Hand(s)

Written by a single scribe in an Anglicana script.

The added Middle English poems and recipes on ff. 204v-205r are written by two hands writing in cursive scripts with Anglicana features, dating to the late 15th and/or early 16th century.

Decoration

On f. 8r is a large (10-line) blue and pink initial on a gold ground and with partial (3-sided) bar borders with acanthus leaves in gold, blue, purple, and white. Inside the intial is a miniature of King Richard II, seated, with crown and sceptre.

Two-line initials in blue or red in frames of penwork decoration in the opposite colour, used only on ff. 2r-6r.

Three-line initials in blue or purple on gold-stamped grounds with sprays of foliate in blue, purple, and white, used only on ff. 8r-201v.

Paraphs in blue or red.

Additions

Quire signatures ('1-25') in the bottom right-hand corner of the recto side of the first leaf of each quire, and '+' in the same position on the first leaf after the centre of the quire, written in pencil by a hand of the 20th century.

Collation formula written in pencil by the hand of H.L. Pink on the rear pastedown.

Binding

Quarter brown goatskin with marbled paper sides and vellum corner tips; the spine with four raised bands and two rectangles of black leather gold-stamped with the inscriptions: ‘Registrum Brevium’ and ‘Ff.5.5’

The binding was made by Douglas Cockerell and Son , Grantchester, August 1966 (see inscription by H.L. Pink on the front pastedown).

Binding height: 235mm; width: 170mm; depth: 50 mm.

History

Origin: 15th century. ; England.

Provenance and Acquisition

Corbett (fl. 16th century) : ‘Registrum Corbet’ inscribed on ff. i recto, 1r, 1v, and 2r. The Middle English poems on 204v have the added title: ‘Consulare Cura Corbettes’. According to Baker and Ringrose (1996), he may have been Reynold Corbert (d. 1566), J.Q.B.

Francis Tate (d. 1616) , bencher of the Middle Temple: ? his number '41' inscribed on f. 205v (see Baker and Ringrose (1996)).

John Moore (1646-1714) , bishop of Ely: no. 501 (f. 1r) in Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ (c. 1697), Volume 2 Part 1, p. 373 (no. 9649).

Presented to the University Library in 1715 by George I : donation bookplate engraved by John Pine in 1736 on the inside cover.

Additional Information

Record Sources

This catalogue entry draws on Jayne Ringrose, Summary Catalogue of the Additional Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge University Library acquired before 1940 (Woodbridge, 2009), by kind permission of the Boydell Press.

Availability

Entry to read in the Library is permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card. For information on eligibility and admissions procedures, see Joining the Library). For further enquiries, and to confirm the availability of the manuscript, please contact the Special Collections Reading Room.

Bibliography

    A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, (Cambridge, 2: Ee-Ff, Cambridge University Press, 1857) The History of the Register of Original Writs, III Harvard Law Review, Maitland, F. W. (3, 5, 212-225, 1889, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1321839) Early Registers of Writs Publications of the Selden Society, De Haas, ElsaHall, G. D. G. (London, Quaritch, 1970) A Catalogue of English Legal Manuscripts in Cambridge University Library, with Codicological Descriptions of the Early Manuscripts, Baker, J.H.Ringrose, J.S. (Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1996) Manuscripts in the University Library, Cambridge (Dd-Oo) Index of Middle English prose, Connolly, Margaret (Woodbridge, D.S. Brewer, 2009)

Funding of Cataloguing

Wellcome

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Cambridge Digital Library

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