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Manuscript Description
Nottingham, University of Nottingham Library, Wollaton Library Collection MS WLC LM 8
 
MS Appellation:olim Wollaton Hall, Middleton 8
Title:Confessio Amantis
Author:Gower
Contents:Confessio Amantis, ff1ra-200va; [note rest of 200v blank and new quire begins on 201; Turville-Petre and Hanna calls 201-5 Booklet II]: Gower's Anglo-Norman Traiti', ff201ra-3va; Gower's Latin lyric, Quis sit vel qualis sacer ordo connubialis, 9 lines, f203va; Gower's Latin lyric, ''[C]armen quod Iohannes Gower super amoris multiplici varietate sub compendio metrice composuit', f203va-b; Gower's 8-line Latin lyric, [L]ex docet auctorum quod iter carnale bonorum f203vb; Gower's Quia unusquisque, ff203vb-204ra; Gower's Latin Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia, ff204ra-205vb.
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:County; Gowerian/Northern
Material:Parchment
No of Folios:i original parchment flyleaf stained by fold-over of leather + 205 + ii original parchment flyleaves second verso of which stained by fold-over of leather.
Pagination:Modern pencil upper outer of rectos, foliating, but not in corner but sitting on the top line of frame and running right up to the fifth vertical, ie it's above the top line of text and running up against the right frame line for second column.
Quiring:8s; collation 1-258 | 268 (lacks 6 to 8, all presumably cancelled blanks and at least two of them stubs).
Signatures:'from the second quire, all leaves in the first half of each quire signed, with letter and arabic numeral (quires 2-26 = a-z, &, con).'
Catchwords:'Regular catchwords on more and less elaborate scrolls, the first two examples ochre-washed
in lower margin below right column, running up to right frame line for column, the more elaborate scrolls are rounded and have shading to give 3-d effect, fine line above and below the catchword inside the scroll, as fine-line shadow or upper and lower frame.
Page Size:384 x 260
Frame:6 x vertical, two either side of each column plus one close to outer edges of columns to create a narrow space between column and any glosses; 4 x horizontal enclosing top and bottom lines ruled within columns but not in space between them, and no ruling for running titles or catchwords; fine grey lines, pricking survives outer edges many leaves and also at very edges of top and bottom so not on all leaves.
Writing Space:c. 265 x 170-180 in two columns, eg f55 265 x 170 with columns 79 + 11 + 80.
Incipits and Explicits:Just the usual Confessio Amantis ending which names him in rubrics at end.
Marginal Headings:Rubric Latin portions written in text block, not in margins.
Running Titles:'The usual Confessio 'copious red for Gower's Latin, and running titles in red, from f9, give the book number across the opening, eg 'Liber | primus'.
Miniatures:'Some lower-margin drawings, often as decorative appendages to descenders: leaves on ff67, 186rb-87rb; pig-like rodents on f67v; fish on f70; a fish and a mouse on f70v. All these are covering blemishes in the vellum and later, possibly as late as s. xvi. Much more elaborate decoration planned but not completed. The text only begins at fol. 1ra/15, the blank space presumably reserved for a column-wide introductory painting, probably planned to illustrate Nebuchadnezzar's dream, well-attested in this position in the MSS, but here never executed'. The book is thoroughly unfinished: a nine-line unfilled blank for an initial at the opening; four-line examples at the heads of the books; one- and two-line spaces for smaller divisions, in all cases with guide-letters in the blanks.'
Other Names (not owners):Upside down at the foot, f16: 'By me Henry Wylloughbye'.
Miscellaneous Info:Description taken partly from Hanna and Turville-Petre, The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts, pp 100-101.; see also their description of binding, leather on boards].
Further Information:See further Jeremy Griffiths, ''Confessio Amantis': the Poem and its Pictures', Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments, ed. Alastair Minnis (Cambridge, 1983), 163-78, esp. 167-68. See also HMC 236; Macaulay, EETS ES 81 (1900), clvi; catalogue, item 2, with a reduced image. Hanna, Ralph, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts: Texts, Owners and Readers. York: York Medieval Press, 2010.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP