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Manuscript Description
Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.15 (595)
 
MS Appellation:M. R. James catalogue 595; Tc2 (Manly and Rickert)
Title:Canterbury Tales
Author:Chaucer
Contents:ff1-3 16th century tracts; ff3v-4v Prologue to Canterbury Tales (from Thynne's edition); ff5-315 Canterbury Tales; f 316 Piers Plowman's Crede
Language:English
Date Range:1485-1550; after 1485 (Seymour and Manly and Rickert). Additions are 16th century.
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:Standardised/Colourless
Material:Paper
No of Folios:Newer paper flyleaf + older paper flyleaf with table of contents on verso in later hand, 19th c? + fols 1-4, 4a, on which are written 'Eight Goodlie Questions', 'Balade' by Hoccleve and the Prologue to CT and very beginning of KnT, by a 16th c. hand + fols 5- 316 (black foliation, or) 9-620 (red pagination) + 317-328 (pp 621-?? Numbering goes crazy from 709 to 801, 803, 805, 807, 809, 901, 903 by same 16th century hand with text beginning 'Cros and curteis'
Pagination:Modern foliation up to f141 and red crayon pagination on rectos from beginning of Canterbury Tales (9).
Quiring:Mainly in 12's.
Signatures:None, but quires numbered by modern pencil in lower right of first folios each quire.
Catchwords:Catchwords in elaborate scrolls by scribe near centre of lower margin
Page Size:375 x 205
Frame:4 x vertical in two lines very close together for each side of text, 5 x horizontal under bottom line and both bottom and top of running title line and top line; grey-brown ink like text.
Writing Space:184 x 127
Incipits and Explicits:In rubric, with names underlined in red and red ink on ascenders of top lines.
Marginal Headings:Gloss work in red ink.
Running Titles:None
Table of Contents:Added to front flyleaf (unnumbered, but would be i) by a much later hand.
Flourished Initials:2-line red lombard initials flourished with brown ink to begin tales.
Other Names (not owners):Given to Trinity by Thomas Neville, Master of Trinity (1593-1615). However, the red crayon foliation is of a style which suggests earlier ownership by Archbishop Parker (1504-1575).
Miscellaneous Info:Monogram of TW on f5.
Further Information:A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge. 5 vols. Cambridge: University Press, 1856-67. Manly, John M. and Rickert, E. The Text of the Canterbury Tales, 8 vols, vol. I, 527-531, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940. Seymour, M. C. A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts, The Canterbury Tales, vol. 2, pp. 69-73. Aldershot, Hants: Scolar Press, 1997.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP