London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian, B.xvi
| England |
| London |
| British Library |
| Cotton Vespasian, B.xvi |
|
| s. xiv/xv |
| English |
| Scribal dialect: Warwickshire. Linguistic Atlas Grid Reference: 415 255, LP 4686 (McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin 1986, p. 244). Only Piers Plowman has been linguistically analysed. |
A late-fourteenth/early fifteenth-century (Russell 1997) manuscript containing the C-text of
Piers Plowman. The manuscript is essentially a
Piers manuscript, the text being written by one scribe in the late fourteenth century, with texts added during the mid-fifteenth century: ballads regarding the death of William de la Pole, and the visit by the King and Queen to St. Paul's, and a poem against Lollards.
Item: 1| f. 1r |
| Poem on the fall |
| 'Bote haym hie soue and he no mo. |
| 'he hu scholde bryng the amen'. |
D'Evelyn 1959; Severs 1970, pp. 413, 556.
|
Item: 2| f. 1v-2r |
| Ballad on the death of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk (IMEV 1555) |
| 'In the moneth of may when grasse growes grene'. |
| 'and şat all englond ioyfull may synge/ Şe commendacioun with placebo & dirige'. |
| Duke of Suffolk d. 2nd May 1450. |
Wright 1839, pp. 232-4; Robbins 1959, p. 187-189.
|
Item: 3| ff. 2v-3v |
| Poem against the Lollards (IMEV 1926) |
| 'Lo he şat can be cristes clerk'. |
| 'defende vs all fro lollardis'. |
Wright 1839, pp. 243-7; Robbins 1959, p. 152.
|
Item: 4| f. 4r-v |
| Ballad upon the visit made by the King and Queen to St. Pauls in 1458 (IMEV 3929) |
| 'Whan charite is chosen with states to stonde'. |
| 'That anglond may reioise to concorde & vnite'. |
| A poem on the reconciliation of the Yorkists with Henry VI |
Wright 1839, pp. 254-256; Robbins 1959, pp. 194-196.
|
Item: 5| f. 5r |
| Proclamation |
| 'O all you i sende gretynge wot ye şat i am kyng of all kynges lord of all lordes'. |
| 'Writen in şe yere of youre gret god my cosyn mcccc xli yere'. |
| Proclamation dated 1416. |
|
Item: 6| f. 5v |
| The breadth and length of an acre of land |
|
|
| In a later hand. |
|
Item: 7| ff. 6r-95r |
| Piers Plowman, C-text (IMEV 1459) |
| 'In a somer seson whan softe was şe sonne'. |
| 'and seşşe he gradde after grace til i gan awake'. |
| 'Explicit secundus passus de dobest'. |
Russel and Kane 1997.
|
Item: 8| f. 95v |
| Holy Blood of Hailes Abbey |
|
|
| A Latin note, in a later hand, regarding the Holy Blood of Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire. |
|
| Codex |
| Parchment |
| 265 x 190 mm |
|
ii + 16 (wants 4); 28, ff. 6r-13v, catchword; 38, ff. 14r-21v, catchword; 48, ff. 22r-29v, catchword; 58, ff. 30r-37v, catchword; 68, ff. 38r-45v, catchword; 78, ff. 46r-53v, catchword; 88, ff. 54r-61v, catchword; 98, ff. 62r-67v (wants 4, 5), catchword; 108, ff. 68r-74v (wants 8); 118, ff. 75r-82v, catchword; 128, ff. 83r-90v, catchword; 138 (wants 6, 7, 8), ff. 91r-95v.
|
| Pricking, where visible, of small horizontal slits. Writing space of 230 x 135 mm. Single columns with 41 lines. Frame and lines ruled in drypoint. |
|
Scribe 1: ff. 1-5r - cursive, a later hand than that of the Piers text. Mid-late fifteenth century
Scribe 2: f. 5v - cursive, a later hand than that of the Piers text. Mid-late fifteenth century.
Scribe 3: ff. 6r-95r - responsible for Piers Plowman. Bastard Anglicana (Russell 1997, p. 8). Doyle considers this hand to be 'bastard anglicana (in its minims) or feretextura (in loop-less ascenders) (1986, p. 43).
Scribe 4: f. 95v - cursive.
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|
Item 1: three lines in black ink alternating with three lines in red ink throughout.
Item 2: c. six-line capital I in initial position. Brackets in red. Red paraphs throughout.
Item 7: c. ten-line blue initial I with red penwork flourishing and blue penwork extending along length of left margin, half way along bottom margin and whole of top margin. On the right hand of the top margin there is a penwork roundel with penwork for 1/4 of the length of the right margin forming a three/four sided border. Red and blue paraphs. Red end-line decoration pen squiggles. Red dots to mark halfway along line of verse. For each passus, four-line blue initials with red penwork extending along margin for a short way, ff. 8v, 14v, 20r, 23r now oxidised. Nota bene - hand f. 7r-v.
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Not contemporary.
|
| ff. 1-95. |
|
|
| Unknown |
| Inscription on f. 2r in an unpractised eighteenth-century script, 'Robert'. |
Catalogued and encoded: Rebecca Farnham, University of Birmingham, February 2004.
- British Museum. 1802. A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library Deposited in the British Museum, London: no publisher, p. 441.
- D’Evelyn, C. and Mill, A. J. 1959 for 1957. The South English Legendary: edited from Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 145 and British Museum MS Harley 2277 with variants from [other manuscripts], 3 vols, EETS, os, 235, 236, 244, London: Oxford University Press, 3.
- 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. 43.
- 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. 174.
- 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: County Dictionary, 4 vols, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 4.
- Pearsall, D., ed, 1978. Piers Plowman: an Edition of the C-text, London: Arnold.
- Robbins, R. H., ed, 1959. Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, New York: Columbia University Press.
- 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. 8-9.
- 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.
- Severs, J. B., and Hartung, A. E., ed., 1970. A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1500, 10 vols, New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2.
- Skeat, W. W., ed, 1867. The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman: secundum wit et resoun: together with Dowell, Dobet, et Dobest, by William Langland, edited from the ‘Vernon MS’, EETS, os, 28, London: Trübner, 1, pp. xxxix-xli.
- Thompson, E. M. 1912. An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 481-482.
- Wright, C. E. 1960. English Vernacular Hands from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Centuries, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 14.
- Wright, T. ed, 1839. Political Songs of England, John to Edward II, Camden Society, 6, London: Camden Society.
