Brut Chronicle

Description

Manuscript in Middle English in several Anglicana bookhands on parchment containing the text of the Brut Chronicle (Prose Brut). Contemporary scribal additions in Anglicana bookhand correcting omissions and adding references in margins (cf. leaf 56r and v). Decoration: Rubricated with red initials and rubrics throughout. Occasional marginal references in red ink (cf. leaves 6r, 110r). Major initial: fol. 1r. A rubric introducing the first chapter, with pen flourishing and infill. Pages ruled with a stylus. With two initial blank leaves, and 13 final blank leaves, some bearing pentrials. Collation probably: [two initial blanks], [A12, B-N12], [three final blanks]. Incipit: Fol. 1r ‘Here begynnyth a book called the Cronyclys of Engelonde of the whiche book bysyde the prologe this ys the furste chapyter’ (rubric). Explicit: Fol. 148r, ‘and manfully countred wt oure English men’. Annotations: Pen trials to leaf [ii]r: ‘Jesus In the bygynnyng was the Word’; naive drawings and pen
trials to the final blank leaves, including: ‘Unto the King Our Soveren Lord At hys pales of westmester’. Chapter numbers added throughout in a later hand. Occasional marginalia in more than one sixteenth or seventeenth-century English hand (cf. leaves 25r and 48r (marginal), 52v (interlinear); leaf 60v). Maniculae: leaves 13r, 48v. Nineteenth-century MS on leaf [ii]v: Phillipps MS 8856. Printed bookseller’s description of the manuscript loosely inserted at front. Leaf size: 295 mm x 200 mm. Text frame: 185-205 mm x 130-140 mm. Single column of 34-41 lines.


Referenced in: Private pleasures : illuminated manuscripts from Persia to Paris: the collection of Denys Spittle (Cambridge : Fitzwilliam Museum, [2007]) pp. 50-51. Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum in Biblioteca D. Thomae Phillipps, BT, 1837-1871 (The Middle Hill Catalogue), no. 8856. Potten, Edward, 'From Byzantium to Alberto Sangorski: Treasures from the Thomas Edward Watson Collection at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds', The Book Collector, Autumn 2023, pp. 1-16 (pp. 6-8).

Features

Fifteenth-century wooden boards; original leather now wanting, the boards have been covered in the nineteenth century with plain brown Russia calf; sewn on six split leather thongs; spine direct-lettered in gilt: Cronyclye of Engelonde M.S. Vell XV Cent.; marbled endpapers.

Provenance

Pentrials and signatures including ‘by my antony wolhous’ (i.e.: Probably Anthony Wolhouse / Wolhows (1533-c.1587), the father of Nicholas Wolhouse (1562-c.1602)). Pentrial on final blank leaf: ‘to the king our sovren Lord At hys pales of westmester W. Sped’ [i.e.: W. Speed?]. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872). Listed in the catalogue of Sir Thomas Phillipps’ library: 'Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum in Bibliotheca d. Thomæ Phillipps, Bart.', no. 8856. Sold at Sotheby’s in the Phillipps sale, 10 June 1896, lot 617. Printed book label on front pastedown: Thomas Edward Watson [i.e.: Sir Thomas Edward Watson (1851-1921)]; thence Sir Geoffrey Watson (1897-1961), Daphne Southwell [Watson] (1907-1998); Stanley Denys Trevor Spittle (1920–2003). Accepted in lieu of Estate Duty by H M Government and allocated to Special Collections & Galleries at the University of Leeds Libraries, 2022.

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