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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.
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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.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP