London, British Library, Additional 34779
| England |
| London |
| British Library |
| Additional 34779 |
|
| s. xvin |
| English |
| Scribal dialect: Shropshire. Linguistic Atlas Grid Reference: 373 286, LP 4218 (McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin 1986, p. 102). |
An early fifteenth-century copy of
Piers Plowman (C-text) (Russell and Kane 1997, p. 10). The remainder of the original manuscript is now Manchester, John Rylands, MS 90.
Item: 1| ff. 2r-93v |
| Piers Plowman, C-text (IMEV 1459) |
| 'In a somur sesoun _______', rest illegible. |
| Illegible. |
| Defective - last 42 lines wanting. |
|
| Codex |
| Parchment. Not particularly good quality, some thick, some thin. Discoloured at beginning and end with wormholes. Various leaves have holes, corners seem to have been gnawed. |
| 300 mm x 205 mm |
|
iii + 1-28, 36 + 1, 4 8, 510, 64, 72, 8-108, 116, 122, 136, 148 (lacks 8) + iii. Catchwords on ff. 17v, 32v, 72v.
|
| Writing space of 240 x 100 mm. Single columns with 39-42 lines. Frame ruled in pencil. Distinctive frame with marginal column of 7 mm, used to insert guiding letters for each line. |
|
One scribe writing in an Anglicana Formata throughout. Characteristics: thick but
regular strokes, with minims traced separately. Occasionally the aspect of the hand changes, perhaps due to the speed of writing. In these instances the scribe uses Secretary forms of letters, minims are traced simultaneously and single compartment a appears (see f. 25r). Double compartment a; diamond shape head d with short looped ascender curving 45 degrees from the left to the right, closing the ascender to form a close upper lobe; 8 shape g with rounded head, the descender closes into a rounded lobe, although the lower lobe is not always closed, otiose tail attached to the head. Long and short r are used both in medial and final position; 8-shaped s used in particular in final position and long s used regularly in medial and initial position; the stem of ş is slightly bent towards the left 45 degrees, pointy head traced from half way from the stem up towards the beginning of the ascender leaving it slightly open, it is used regularly in initial and final position; open w traced with three strokes: two oblique, one not joined either at the top or at the bottom of the back and another front reversed three-shaped stroke on the right. Use of & and ?. No
punctuation. Body height: varies from 3 to 4 mm.
|
|
Large, decorated initial opens text. Passus capitals in blue. Latin and French in red. Paraphs red/blue. Underlining in red.
|
|
Not contemporary.
|
| ff. 94 |
| A hand of the sixteenth century has added various mariginalia.
|
| Good |
|
| Sixteenth century - ff. 32r, 68v ; f. 92v 'Robert prist is my'. Eighteenth century - f. 1r the number '58' is written in the hand of of Palgrave (d. 1771) with a note referring to a manuscript in the possession of [Joseph] Ames (d. 1759). Eighteenth/nineteenth century - the names of and are also mentioned as owners (f. 1r). Nineteenth century - the manuscript was in the collection of , (sale catalogue, part xi, 1836, no. 974), no. 1003 in Thorpe's sale-catalogue for 1836, and no. 9056 in the Phillips library. |
| Bought by the British Museum in 1895. |
Catalogued and encoded: Rebecca Farnham, University of Birmingham, January 2004.
Related Manuscripts and other documents
Scribal
The scribe of this manuscript also wrote the copy of the
Prick of Conscience now kept as Manchester, John Rylands Library, Eng. MS 90 (
olim Asburnham 136) with which it once formed one manuscript. On f. 1v of Manchester, John Rylands Library, Eng. MS 90 is 'Iste sunt testes hugone Chattok Taylor of Sint Albons Wyllyham scheddebolt Bayly araunt dwelling in the same Toune'.
- Warner, G. F., and Bickley, F. B., rev, 1901. Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1894-1898, London: printed by order of the trustees, pp. 83-4.
- Doyle, A. I. 1986. ‘Remarks on Surviving Manuscripts of Piers Plowman’, in Simpson, J. and Kratzmann, G., ed, Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of George H. Russell, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, pp. 35-48, p. 47.
- Hanna, R. 1994. ‘William Langland’, in Seymour, M. C., ed, Authors of the Middle Ages. English Writers of the Late Middle Ages, Aldershot: Ashgate, p. 173.
- Kane, G. 1988. ‘The Text’, in Alford, J. A., ed, A Companion to Piers Plowman, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 175-200.
- McIntosh, A., Samuels, M. L. and Benskin, M. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English: General Introduction, Index of Sources, Dot Maps, 4 vols, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1.
- http://searcharchives.bl.uk.
- Russell, G. and Kane G., ed, 1997. Piers Plowman: the C version: Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-well, Do-Better and Do-Best, London: Athlone Press, pp. 10-11.
- Samuels, M. L. 1988. ‘Dialect and Grammar’, in Alford, A. ed, A Companion to Piers Plowman, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 201-221, p. 206.
- Skeat, W. W., ed, 1873. The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman secundum wit et resoun: together with Dowell, Dobet, et Dobest, by William Langland: The ‘Whitaker’ text; or Text C, EETS, os, 54, London: Trübner, 3, pp. xlix-1.
