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Detailed record for Harley 3271
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| Title |
Miscellany, including the 'Tribal Hidage', or assessment list, Aelfric's treatise on Latin grammar, compotus notes, glossary material, and De initio creaturae (ff.128v-129), dated 1034 |
| Origin |
England (Mercia?) |
| Date |
1st half of the 11th century |
| Language |
Old English, Latin |
| Script |
Minuscule |
| Decoration |
Initials in red or brown, some with simple penwork decoration. Highlighting of letters in brown or red. |
| Dimensions in mm |
270 x 180 (220 x 150) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 3* + 129 ( + 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 3 at the end) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. |
| Provenance |
William Fleetwood [Fletewoode] (b. c.1525, d.1594), lawyer and antiquary: erased inscription of his name (ff. 3*verso and f. 129v); no. 1 of the manuscripts at Missenden abbey, the home of the Fleetwood family: see Ker 1957.
18th-century ? inscription '111 A ii' (f. 3*).
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts.
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d.1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library. |
| Notes |
The earliest and most complete of the seven surviving medieval manuscripts of the Tribal Hidage, according to Featherstone 2001 p. 23.
ff. 1* and 3* are parchment flyleaves; f. 2* is a paper flyleaf with a list of contents in Latin.
Added notated antiphon ‘Est deus in caelis’ (f. 113v) and prose for Pentecost ‘Sancti spiritus assit nobis gratia’ (f. 129v).
Musical notation: Anglo-Saxon neumes (with litterae significativae), England, second half of the 11th century |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 3271.
N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), no. 239 [with additional bibliography].
Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts: The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Library, 1979), no. 743.
G. L. Bursill-Hall, A Census of Medieval Latin Grammatical Manuscripts, Grammatica Speculativa: Sprachtheorie und Logik des Mittelalters, 4 (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1981), p. 118 no.138.
The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900, ed. by Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse (London: British Museum, 1991), no. [exhibition catalogue]. no. 26 [with additional bibliography].
Peter Featherstone, 'The Tribal Hidage and the Ealdormen of Mercia' in Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, ed. by Michelle P. Brown and Carol A. Farr (London: Leicester University Press, 2001), pp. 23-34.
Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 241 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001), no. 435.
The Leofric Missal I, ed. by Nicholas Orchard, Henry Bradshaw Society, 113 (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 2002), p. 167, 203.
K. D. Hartzell, Catalogue of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1200 containing Music (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), no. 163.
Michelle P. Brown, Manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon Age (London: British Library, 2007), p. 94 (plate). |
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f. 6v
Text page |
f. 7
Coloured initial |
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