Manuscript Description USA, Chicago, University of Chicago, Regenstein Library MS 564 | |
| MS Appellation: | McCormick, Mc (Manly and Rickert) |
| Title: | Canterbury Tales |
| Author: | Chaucer |
| Contents: | Canterbury Tales |
| Language: | English |
| Date Range: | 1430-1460 |
| Scribal Hands: | Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.               |
| Dialect: | W.Oxon |
| Material: | Parchment |
| No of Folios: | ii (old paper flyleaves) + 192 + i (old paper flyleaf) |
| Pagination: | Modern foliation. |
| Quiring: | 1-24(8) |
| Signatures: | Original signatures but probably 8 quires missing at the beginning as well as several at the end. Signatures begin with jiiii. For quires from 24-29, abbreviations 'et' (and), 'con' (with) 'est and 'amen'. From quire 30 a new alphabetic system begins. |
| Catchwords: | Regularly on the final verso of quires. |
| Page Size: | 280 x 187 |
| Frame: | Very faint lead margins and occasional remains of ruling visible. |
| Writing Space: | 225 x 93 |
| Incipits and Explicits: | Space left for rubrics. Some basic names added at a much later date. |
| Marginal Headings: | Added by the scribe in the ink of the text in the tales of the Clerk and Wife of Bath. In the Tale of Melibeus there are numerous marginal names and references to authorities. |
| Running Titles: | None |
| Paragraph Marks: | Alternating red and blue paraphs in the Tale of Melibeus. |
| Flourished Initials: | Blue Lombard initials with red pen-work flourishing |
| Other Names (not owners): | Several folios have the faint remains of names which seem to be of the sixteenth century. On f72 is 'Iohne Poulethe'. On f146 is 'Edmunde harwel 'and again on f176v 'This is Edmundes Harewell Booke'. Another Harwell name is 'Richard' on f157r. The name 'Thomas Baskervyle' occurs on ff179r and 182v. See Manly and Rickert for suggested relationships. A label on the flyleaf indicates that the manuscript was owned by the Earl of Ashburnham at whose sale it was acquired for Sir William McCormick. The University Library of Chicago bought the manuscript on the death of McCormick. |
| Further Information: | Manly and Rickert I: 356-360. Seymour II: 74-76. McCormick, 1933: 327-333. |