Manuscript Description London, British Library, MS Sloane 3501 | |
MS Appellation: | Master of Game |
Title: | Master of Game |
Contents: | Master of Game |
Language: | English |
Scribal Hands: | Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms. |
Material: | Parchment |
No of Folios: | 3 modern paper flyleaves + 2 original parchment flyleaves (ff 1-2) + 3-52 parchment + 3 original parchment flyleaves + 4 modern paper flyleaves |
Pagination: | Modern pencil in top right corner. |
Quiring: | 8's mounted on new paper guards |
Signatures: | First quire signatures trimmed and no longer visible. On f10 the second quire begins with bi-iiij. Thereafter signatures visible in quires c-f. Only the top of 'g' visible on one folio. |
Catchwords: | Regularly in bottom right corner underlined with sleigh in brown ink and occasionally the parallelogram is finished in red ink. |
Page Size: | 265 x 190 |
Frame: | 2 x vertical; 4 x horizontal of which 2 enclose the top line and two enclose the bottom line. Pricking visible on almost all fore-edges. |
Writing Space: | 190 x 120 |
Incipits and Explicits: | The beginning of each description is in rubric within the text. |
Marginal Headings: | Red chapter numbers in the margins. |
Table of Contents: | Folio 3 begins '[missing word] bygynneþ þe table of þe chapitiers þat [missing] contened in þe book of huntyng þe which [c]leped þe maistere of game'. Each section is then named and given a folio number. |
Title by Scribe: | Title page missing but Book is named in the Table of Contents which survives as f3. |
Borders: | A 4-sided border surrounds the table of contents on f3 with gold, blue, and dark pink/purple for the bars decorated with small sprays into the margins with green and gold decoration. |
Illuminated Initials: | 3 and 4-line gold champe initials on pink ground with blue infill or blue ground with pink infill. Short fronds in black ink with green leaves extend from each initial up and down the border. |
Miscellaneous Info: | Champe initials resemble those in Oxford CCC 198. |
Further Information: | J.J. Griffiths says in his description of the Tokyo, Waseda MS of Love's Mirrour, that the Register of the Skinners Company (Guildhall 31692) up to 22 Henry VI (1443-1444) is also by this scribe, ff 2-19 (1441) and sporadically thereafter to 1443-1444. See also Griffiths in Eng/MSS Studies 5 (1995), 214-219. [for illust. of f4 see Robinson, Dated and Datable London, Plate 116] For Griffiths see Nicholas Love at Waseda: Proceedings of the International Conference, 20-26 July 1995, ed. S. Oguro et al. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997). Note: Gilte Legende composed 1438 so Takamiya 45 must have been written after 1438. See also J.J.G. Alexander, 'William Abell, 'Lymnour' and 15th Century English Illumination' notes that the same artist did NLS Advocates' 18.1.7 (Nicholas Love), Manchester Rylands Eng. 1 (Troy Book), and Bodl. Laud Misc. 733 (Chronicle of England to Henry V). |