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Manuscript Description
Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 307
 
Title:Confessio Amantis
Author:Gower
Contents:Confessio Amantis (A version) ff. 1-197. Text ends on f197, added texts and names on 197v-200r.
Language:English and Latin
Date Range:1400-1425
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:LP No. N/A; County Gloucs/Worcs border
Material:Parchment
No of Folios:2 newer paper flyleaves + 2 original parchment flyleaves with names on + 200 parchment leaves of which last is pasted onto newer paper leaf on verso side (because too thin and worn?) + 2 new paper flyleaves.
Pagination:Modern pencil in upper outer corners recto, foliating, but only on the first leaf of each quire. The quires are numbered in arabic in pencil on the lower outer corner of the recto of the first leaf of the quire also.
Quiring:8s
Signatures:Remains of medieval signatures though mostly cropped. They seem to have been lower case letters. A red 'a' on f3r, a brown 'e' on f34r and a brown 'h' on f60r.
Catchwords:By the scribe in the extreme lower inner corner of the last leaf to the right of the right frame for the second column, so in the gutter. They are copied in black ink and surrounded by a black ink scroll. This is drawn in fine lines with curls of the scroll stylised as successively smaller boxes one above the other at the top right and one below the other at the bottom left. (See f64v). Names of the seven deadly sins in the centre of lower margin of versos all through the section on the sins.
Page Size:400 x 263
Frame:4 x verticals enclosing two columns, 4 x horizontal enclosing top and bottom lines, ruled inside columns, fine brown lines, pricking survives only on top and bottoms, no outer edges (cropped).
Writing Space:277 x 79 + 17 + 78 = 277 x 174
Marginal Headings:All Latin is in rubric with extensive Latin rubric headings and Latin in text columns.
Running Titles:Paraphs precede running titles on both recto and verso. On verso they are blue with red penwork, on rectos, gold with blue.
Borders:On f1, a full wide bar border of gold with bands of blue or rose on which are white highlights. On f4v a thinner border on left side only with 4-line initial and such initials and borders begin each book.
Illuminated Initials:3-line blue initial with white highlights on gold ground with rose with white highlights. 4-line blue initial on f4v. Smaller divisions marked by 2-line gold initials on parti-coloured blue and rose grounds with white highlights.
Miniatures:Two miniatures. On f4v a miniature of the statue of Daniel's vision. On f9r, the Confessor.
Paragraph Marks:Alternating blue with red penwork and gold with darker blue penwork throughout.
Other Names (not owners):The flyleaves have many added Latin verses, aphorisms, beginnings of letters etc. On f1v: 'Johannem Mundy pertinet' and 'Mundy saluator sit nobis auxiliator', and 'Alex Cok vacat'. All these are 15th and 16th century hands. On fii(r) are many Latin verses and a much later attribution to Gower (18th c.?) On fii(v) there is a monogram of Mundy which looks like 'MD' with 'I' in the middle of the 'D'. At the end of the text, a 15th century scribble in faint ink 'a ma pleasaunce / Arundell' and below it the Mundy monogram in another ink, followed by French verses. On f297v are English verses copied (16th c.) by Thomas Smythe, of the county of Norfolk, merchant, with notes naming him and also Alexander Cok, yeoman of the county of Norfolk. On f199 are 16th and 17th c. notes and signatures of John Glastoke and W. Jacson. On f199v 'My goode frende [ ] Stanley knyght' in brown crayon. Also 'To Robt Parssor' in ink, and signatures of Vincent Mundy. James notes that the manuscript was probably given to the College by Mundy (273).
Miscellaneous Info:J.J. Griffiths says in his description of the Tokyo, Waseda MS of Love's Mirrour, that the Register of the Skinners Company (Guildhall 31692) up to 22 Henry VI (1443-1444) is also by this scribe, ff 2-19 (1441) and sporadically thereafter to 1443-1444. See also Griffiths in Eng/MSS Studies 5 (1995), 214-219. [for illust. of f4 see Robinson, Dated and Datable London, Plate 116] (see Griffiths in Nicholas Love at Waseda: Proceedings of the International Conference, 20-26 July 1995, ed. S. Oguro et al. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997). Re date, note that Gilte Legende composed 1438 so Takamiya 45 must have been written after 1438.
Further Information:James Catalogue of Pembroke College manuscripts, pp. 273-5.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP