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Manuscript Description
London, British Library, MS Arundel 38
 
MS Appellation:Regiment of Princes
Title:Regiment of Princes
Author:Hoccleve
Contents:De Regimine Principum (presentation copy)
Language:English
Date Range:1400-1425; after 1413 when Henry V acceded to the throne.
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:Parchment
No of Folios:1 marbled paper + 2 paper (second with Norfolk crest on bookplate) + 98 parchment text block + 1 parchment original flyleaf + 2 paper + 1 marbled paper
Pagination:Modern pencil foliation.
Quiring:8s
Signatures:Signatures are mostly cropped, but see a red 'l iiij' on f76r and top of a red letter in the lower margin eg f83r, both to right of right frame line for text, so in the narrow column between text and glosses column, at the extreme lower edge of page (unless cropped even more severely than appears).
Catchwords:None in most quires but see f8v and f16v, by the scribe, up to right line of text frame, black ink, fine-line black ink parallelogram around which on f8v has a loop as left side and continuation of loop below and to left.
Page Size:292 x 185
Frame:4 x vertical enclosing text and glosses which have their own column on outer edge; 2 x horizontal top and bottom; text column ruled; very faint fine grey lines; no pricking survives.
Writing Space:185 x 80 ca. (ruled for 185 x 97) plus ruled glosses column ca. 185 x 46 Between columns is 10, thus 185 x 153
Incipits and Explicits:Just an Explicit at the end on f98v.
Marginal Headings:In black ink with blue initials, red flourishing, written by scribe, in large space allowed for them.
Borders:On f81v, pink with white highlighting creating foliage pattern, with bar border down left side in blue, gold and rose, sprays of blue, pink, rose, and gold flowers plus tiny green leaves and green squiggles around gold balls, at intervals on the bar border and across top and bottom margins. All very high quality.
Illuminated Initials:4-line initials at major text divisions eg f1 blue and silver and f81v blue with white highlighting on gold ground. On f1 crest of red background with three lions rampant set inside letter; on f81v, pink with white highlighting creating foliage pattern. Similar but slightly smaller (and different artist?) on f71, which has the crest of a single crowned lion rampant inside the letter.
Paragraph Marks:Before each stanza are paraphs alternating gold with purple penwork and blue with red penwork; so also at each change of speaker within stanzas; similar paraphs and flourishing before each gloss.
Flourished Initials:Sub-headings at major parts of text set off in blank space of several lines, written in black ink except for an initial in blue with red or gold with purple penwork flourishing.
Further Information:Cat. Arundel, p.9. The Arundel Catalogue in the British Library Manuscript Reading Room has a hand-written note in margin, 'See article by Gerhard Schmidt, 'Two Unknown English Horae of the 15th Century', Burlington Magazine (Feb. 1961), pp. 42-54. The manuscript itself has the following notes on sheet bound between marbled flyleaf and first paper flyleaf at front: Palaeographical Society, ser. I, pl. 251 (f. 37 reproduced). Schools of Illumination, pt. IV, 1922, plate 11 (f. 37). British Museum Lantern'slides xiij (2), 96 (fol. 37 reproduced). M. Rickert Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages, London, 1954, p. 176, plate 175a. Folio 37 reproduced in Gervase Matthew, The Court of Richard II, 1968, plate 13 and page 203.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP