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Manuscript Description
England, London, British Library MS Cotton Tiberius D. VII Volume 1
 
MS Appellation:C (Waldron)
Title:Polychronicon
Author:Trevisa's translation of Higden
Contents:Trevisa's trans of Polychronicon: vol. 1 ff1-164
Language:English
Date Range:1390-1415
Scribal Hands:
Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.
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Dialect:LP 7051; County: Gloucs
Material:Parchment
No of Folios:i paper flyleaf and its stub + 164 parchment folios partly burned and mounted onto paper + i paper flyleaf and its stub.
Pagination:Modern pencil in upper right corner of the paper on which leaves are mounted; slightly older ink for same foliation in extreme upper outer corners of rectos.
Quiring:12s
Catchwords:None appear to survive: may have been cropped either at bottom (if written very far down lower margin (still ca. 30 mm of margin left) or on right if written in gutter since versos cropped close to right margin of text.
Page Size:f164 (least burned) 308 x 213
Frame:Invisible on most folios; appears to have been two verticals and three horizontals enclosing top line and under bottom line, ruled within, fine grey lines; no pricking survives; MS leaves have been cropped, tears at edges from withering from heat of the fire.
Writing Space:272 x 190
Incipits and Explicits:Incipits and explicits in rubric. Ends incomplete.
Marginal Headings:Headings in rubric in more formal bastard anglicana in spaces left for them. Some single words in the text in rubric also. Black ink chapter numbers in margins by scribe, eg 'cm 50m' in right margin f45.
Running Titles:Chapter numbers as running titles also by scribe in roman numerals in upper right corners recto eg 'xliiij' on f48.
Title by Scribe:Bits of red ink at extreme top centre margin of f1r suggest once a title there.
Flourished Initials:On f1, 8-line blue initial with red penwork forming square around it.
Other Names (not owners):Several hands of 15th-16th centuries have annotated in margins.
Further Information:Cotton catalogue, 1.39; Ronald Waldron, John Trevisa's Translation of the Polychronicon of Ranulph Higden, Book VI, Middle English Texts 35(2004), pp. xxiii-xxiv.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP