Manuscripts of the West Midlands Catalogue

London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A.xi

Shelfmark

Country:	England
Settlement:	London
Repository:�	British Library
Idno:	Cotton Caligula A.xi
AltName:

Date and Language

Date:	s. xv1
Language:�	English
Dialect:	Scribal dialect (ff. 3r-168v): Gloucestershire. Linguistic Atlas Grid Reference: 399 225, LP 7100 (McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin 1986, p. 196).

Part 1

Contents

An early fifteenth-century manuscript, dated by Doyle to c. 1410-30 (Kane and Donaldson 1975, p. 5, n. 37) in three distinct parts containing Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, the B-text of Piers Plowman, and the De vita monachorum. Only ff. 3r-168v have been assigned a scribal dialect of Gloucestershire (McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin 1986, p. 196). The other texts have not been analysed linguistically.

Item: 1

Locus:	ff. 3r-168v
Title:	Chronicle (IMEV 727)
Incipit:	'Engelond his a wel god lond'.
Explicit:	'of holichurche me'.
Rubric:	'Historia regum anglice ad henricum tertium a roberto glocestrensi qui codem tempore floruit'.
Note:	Rubric added by a seventeenth/eighteenth-century hand.
Bibliography:

Item: 2

Locus:	f. 14r
Title:	Abridged English Metrical Brut (IMEV 1105)
Incipit:	'...�e king hid regnete king bladud'.
Explicit:	'soffret him bifore...'.
Note:	An insert of 47 lines after f. 13. Hanna suggests that the fragment dates from c. 1280 (2000, p. 100) although O'Farrell-Tate dates it to 1300-50 (2002, p. 20). The fragment has been stuck onto a large stub and measures 170 x 70 mm. F. 14v is blank.
Bibliography:	Edited from London, British Library, MS Royal 12 C.xii in O'Farrell-Tate 2002.

Item: 3

Locus:	f. 169v
Title:	Moral/religious verses
Incipit:
Explicit:
Note:	Notes by J. Selden? F. 169r is blank and the folio appears to be an additional parchment leaf stuck on to a stub.
Bibliography:

Physical Description

Form:	Codex
Support:�	Parchment
Extent:	220 x 155 mm
Collation:	Collation: Rebinding obscures evidence; probably eights throughout.
Layout:	Item 1: Page layout - single columns, 30 lines, drypoint, pricking not visible. Writing space - 185 x 105 mm.
Writing:	Item 1: One or possibly two scribes writing in an Anglicana Formata script. Characteristics: even, well-spaced rounded feet on minims; B-shaped w; long s in initial position; forked tops to k, l, h; ?; thorn; 8-shaped g; nearly flat topped t; elongated end strokes on s at end of line. Body height 2-3mm. Item 2 written in a much smaller script.
Decoration:	Item 1: Initial page - three-line red lombard. Generally - first letter of each line tinted red. From f. 6r - three- and four-line red Lombardic capitals. First letter of each line tinted red. Brown ink. From f. 29v - two-line green Lombardic capitals. From f. 52r - red and green paraphs in left margin. After f. 124r - no more colour used - last use of colour on f. 123v.
Binding:
Foliation:
Additions:
Condition:

Part 2

Contents

Item: 1

Locus:	ff. 170r-286r
Title:	Piers Plowman, B-text (IMEV 1459)
Incipit:	'In a somer sesun whan softe was the sunne'.
Explicit:	'and sitthe he gradde after grace til I gan awake'.
Rubric:	'Explicit hic opus hoc'.
Bibliography:	Skeat 1869, p. xviii. Kane and Donaldson 1975.

Physical Description

Form:	Codex
Support:�	Parchment of generally good condition but some wormholes.
Extent:	220 x 155 mm
Collation:
Layout:	Writing space of 145 mm x 120 mm (100 + 20 of additional margin) with wide margins and writing block off-centre. Ruling in drypoint, or lead (sharp grey lines).
Writing:	One scribe writing in an Anglicana script with Secretary features. Characteristics: e with pointed head; 2-shaped r in final and medial position; 8-shaped s in final position; double compartment a with pointed head; sigma s in initial position; ?; hooked ascender on b, l, and f; distinctive w. Body height: 2mm (see Benson and Blanchfield 1997, p. 68, pl. 8). Benson and Blanchfield describe the hand as 'anglicana with some secretary forms, particularly in the degree of angularity: small, jagged, neat writing with a slight forward slope; occasionally rather blotchy (1997, p. 70).
Decoration:	Item 1: initial page - eleven-line blue initial I with red penwork flourishing in left margin and along top creating a two-sided border. Three-line blue initials with red pen work flourishing for other textual divisions (see Benson and Blanchfield 1997, p. 68, pl. 8). Blue paraphs.
Binding:
Foliation:	Foliation: ff. ii + 113. The manuscript is foliated throughout the three volumes in three systems. The modern pencil foliation, ff. 3-288 (frontleaves foliated 1,2) is used in this description. The oldest system is by tens on the top left verso, ending at 200; the other is in ink (ff. 1-280) and is crossed out.
Additions:
Condition:

Part 3

Contents

Item: 1

Locus:	ff. 287r-288v
Title:	De vita monachorum
Incipit:	'Quid deceat monachum.'
Explicit:
Bibliography:

Physical Description

Form:
Support:�
Extent:	x
Collation:
Layout:
Writing:	Characteristics: very small hand. Body height: 1 mm.
Decoration:
Binding:	Not medieval. Size: 235 x 165 mm. Brown leather British Library binding with five raised bands on spine along with gold tooled, 'Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester/Piers Plowman/Aldelmus de Vita Monachorum'.
Foliation:
Additions:	Later drawings: drawing of comic face on ff. 224r and 229r. On f. 230r are three faces, two brown copies of one in black. On f. 286v there are two versions of Surrey's 'A Goodly Ensample', beginning 'When raging love withe extreme payne mooste krvle oon ple ther parte'. Both copies are in Secretary hands (see Kane and Donaldson 1988, p. 5 n. 41).
Condition:	Good

History

Origin:	Unknown
Provenance:	Kirby-Fulton argues that the Piers section of the manuscript was copied by a Chancery clerk (Kirby-Fulton 2000, p. 108). On f. 286v is written or Godeve. Owned by Sir Robert Cotton. Cotton's hand found on ff. 3r and 287r. Archbishop Parker's secretary wrote table of contents on f. 2r; probably also the title to Piers Plowman.

Record History

Catalogued and encoded: Rebecca Farnham, University of Birmingham, July 2004.

Related Manuscripts and other documents Textual Doyle suggests that British Library, MS Additional 10574 was copied from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodl. 814 with London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.xi 'related at one remove' (1986, p. 41).

Bibliography

Benson, C. D., and Blanchfield, L. S. 1997. The Manuscripts of Piers Plowman: the B-version, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, pp. 68-70, facsimile f. 209r.

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. 41.

Fisher, J. J. 1988. ‘Piers Plowman and the Chancery Tradition’, in Talbot Donaldson, E. T., Waldron, R. A., and Wittig, J. S., ed. Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane, Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, pp. 267-278.

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. 172.

Hanna, R. 2000. ‘Reconsidering the Auchinleck Manuscript’, in Pearsall, D., ed, New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies, Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, pp. 91-102.

http://searcharchives.bl.uk.

Hudson, A. 1966. ‘Tradition and Innovation in Some Middle English Manuscripts’, The Review of English Studies, 17, 359-372, p. 380, n. 1.

Hudson, A. 1969. ‘Robert of Gloucester and the Antiquaries, 1550-1800’, Notes and Queries, 214, 322-333, pp. 323, 324.

Kane, G., and Donaldson, E. T., ed, 1975, rpt. 1988. Piers Plowman: The B Version, London: Athlone, p. 5; facsimile of f. 209r in rpt. ed. 1988.

Kane, G. 1988. ‘The Text’, in Alford, J. A., ed, A Companion to Piers Plowman, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 175-200, p. 180.

Kerby-Fulton, K. 2000. ‘Professional Readers of Langland at Home and Abroad: New Directions in the Political and Bureaucratic Codicology of Piers Plowman’, in Pearsall, D., ed, New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies. Essays from the 1998 Harvard Conference, York: The University of York Centre for Medieval Studies, pp. 103-129.

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.

O‘Farrell-Tate, U. 2002. The Abridged English Metrical Brut edited from London, British Library MS Royal 12 C. XII, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, pp. 20-21.

British Museum. 1802. A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library Deposited in the British Museum, London: no publisher, p. 45.

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, p. 5.

Serjeantson, M. 1927. ‘The Dialects of the West Midlands’, Review of English Studies, 3, 54-67, p. 63.

Skeat, W. W., ed, 1869. The Vision of William Concerning Piers Plowman: secundum wit et resoun: together with Dowell, Dobet, et Dobest, by William Langland, Text B, EETS, os, 38, London: Tr�bner, 2, p. xvii.

Smith, T. 1696. Catalogue Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Cottoniae, Oxford.