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Manuscript Description Holkham, Norfolk, Holkham Hall, Collection of the Earl of Leicester MS 667 | |
| MS Appellation: | Hk (Manly and Rickert) |
| Title: | Canterbury Tales |
| Author: | Chaucer |
| Contents: | Canterbury Tales |
| Language: | English |
| Date Range: | 1450-1475 |
| Scribal Hands: | Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.                |
| Dialect: | Essex/Suffolk |
| Material: | Parchment |
| No of Folios: | 86 |
| Quiring: | 1(1 missing i-vii), 2(8), 3(6), 4-9(8), 10(7 v missing), 11(6), 12(5 i, ii, viii missing), 13(5 i, ii, viii missing) |
| Signatures: | No signatures visible. |
| Catchwords: | Regularly on final versos of quires on ff9v, 15v, 31v, 39v, 47v, 63v, 70v, 76v. |
| Page Size: | 350 x 290 |
| Frame: | Brown ink frame with double ruling at top and bottom. |
| Writing Space: | 260 x 95 |
| Incipits and Explicits: | No rubrics. |
| Running Titles: | No running titles. |
| Illuminated Initials: | Gold initials varying between 2-8 lines on pink and blue ground with some champe decoration for the beginning of tales and prologues. |
| Paragraph Marks: | Alternate red and blue. |
| Flourished Initials: | Some small initials in blue with red pen flourishing. |
| Other Names (not owners): | Among several names found in the manuscript are '[H?]erry Doylle,' 'Thomas Doylle', and 'Phelip doylle' on f86v. Manly and Rickert suggest a Doyly family of Suffolk. Other names also suggest a Suffolk/Norfolk provenance. The manuscript has remained in the region and the autograph on f1 of Thomas William Coke (1754-1842) identifies the ancestry as that of the Earls of Leicester. |
| Further Information: | Manly and Rickert I: 284-288. Seymour II: 84-86. |