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Manuscript Description
Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 393, part I
 
Title:Five manuscripts bound together; Astrolabe (abstracts from) is no. 40 towards the end of the first.
Author:Chaucer
Contents:Astronomical treatises with abstracts from the Astrolabe on f96rv only.
Language:English
Date Range:1453 as suggested by a note on f1 'Anno domini 1453 me scripsit in isto argenteo calamo'
Scribal Hands:
Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.
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Material:Paper (crumbling)
No of Folios:Part 1 = ix + 112 + iv with several missing folios.
Pagination:Medieval numeration supplemented by later numerals. However the book begins at f24 and proceeds to f212 with many folios missing and seven folios misbound after the following book.
Signatures:A few remnants on crumbling edges.
Page Size:295 x 205
Frame:None
Writing Space:250 x 185
Incipits and Explicits:There is an explicit to the excerpted piece and an incipit to the conclusion.
Title by Scribe:The Tretys off the Astrolbye
Further Information:See Seymour for identification of one of the three scribes in this first part as Henry Cranebroke, Benedictine of Christ Church Canterbury (d. 1466) whose hand is also found in MS. Royal 10 B. ix and monogram in MS Selden supra 65. Again, according to Seymour, 'he corresponded with John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, at whose manor at Selling, Kent, MS Laud misc. 416 was written'. This is a link with the scribe signing himself 'Iohannis Neuton'. Seymour also cites R. Weiss, 'Humanism in England during the fifteenth century' (3rd edn. 1967) pp. 130-131.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP