Oxford, Jesus College, 29/2

| Shelfmark | Date and Language | Contents |
| Physical Description | History | Record History | Bibliography |


Shelfmark
Country:England
Settlement:Oxford
Repository: Jesus College
Idno:29/2
AltName:
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Date and Language
Date:s. xiiiex
Language: English
Dialect:Scribal Dialect (ff. 229-273): Herefordshire. Linguistic Atlas Grid Reference: 372 244, LP 7440 (McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin 1986, p. 199).
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Contents
A manuscript in two parts. Part 1 is a fifteenth-century copy of a Latin chronicle of the Kings of England 900-1445 and Part 2 is a collection of English, French and Latin texts dating to the second part of the thirteenth century. Cartlidge (1996, p. 239) and Hill (1977, p. 98) date the manuscript 1270-1300. According to Hill (1963, p. 206) the two manuscripts appear to have been together prior to the ownership of the Reverend Thomas Wilkins (1625/6-99) but were re-bound during his ownership.




























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Physical Description
Form:Codex
Support: Parchment
Extent:190 x 135 mm
Collation: Unascertained
Layout:Pricking: not visible. Writing space: - single columns - 140 x 100 mm and double columns - 145 x 60 mm. Frame and lines ruled in drypoint for 32 lines.
Writing:One scribe throughout, see Ker 1963, pp. xvi-xvii.
Decoration: Item 1: alternate red and blue initials at each quatrain. Two-line blue initials with red penwork to begin introduction to text. Four-line blue initial with red penwork to begin text proper. Other texts: decoration as above but without the red tinted letter at start of each line.
Binding: Not medieval but old. Size: 190 x 140 mm. Cover of brown leather over pasteboard. Sewing: rebacked and resewn with four raised bands across the spine. Evidence of two metal clasps. Decoration: interior rectangle in blind tooling made up of 3 lines.
Foliation:ff. ii modern paper + 257 + ii modern paper.
Additions: F. 155r - 'Tho. Wilkins' in a different ink but possibly the same hand 'In parte of a broaken leafe of this M.S. I found _____ verses written, whereby the author may be guest at.' 'Mayster Iohan eugretež of Guldenordežo./ And sendež eu to Seggen žat synge nul lye no./ Ac on žisse wise he will enoy his son:/ God louerd of heuene. beo vs alle among./ AMEN'. looks like the writer has tried to copy the hand of the original text he copied from (IMEV 2128.5).
Condition:Good
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History
Origin:
Provenance:First known owner: f. 109r dated before 1547, since, on f. 143v the same hand has written 'god saue the kynge and the quyne and thomas', a reference to Henry VIII (1509-47) and one of his queens. 'thys ys thomas ragland/ ys boke he that ste[leth] hym salbe/ hangyd by a crowke and thomas'- f. 109r. Perhaps Sir Thomas Ragland, originally of Carnlwdd in Llanarvan, Glamorganshire eldest son of Sir John Ragland of Carnlwdd knighted in 1513 and lord of Redwick, Monmouthshire in 1520. Hill 1963, p. 209. F. 47r 'thys ys Ihames carne ys hand record of ma[yster] thomas carne and' - sixteenth century. Donated to the Bodleian Library by the Reverend on 9th January, 1693. F. 257v - 'Tho. Wilkins'. F. 11(r) 'Bibliotheca Coll. Jesu...Tho. Wilkins S.S.B. Rector...'. for the transmission of this ms see Hill 1963.
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Record History
Catalogued and encoded: Rebecca Farnham, University of Birmingham, June 2004.
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Related Manuscripts and other documents Textual Owl and Nightingale - 'Because the two surviving manuscripts are so closely related, they effectively constitute only a single witness to the authorial text', Cartlidge, p. xl. Related to London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A. ix. They share the same copytext according to Cartlidge (2001, p. xl), who also suggests that 'At least one, and probably two, more copies of the poem existed in the library of the Premonstratensian abbey at Titchfield in Hampshire in 1400, but they are now lost'.
Bibliography
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