Manuscript Description Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Dd.8.19 | |
| Title: | Confessio Amantis |
| Author: | Gower |
| Contents: | Confessio Amantis (A version) ff. 1-130 |
| Language: | English and Latin |
| Date Range: | 1440-1465 |
| Scribal Hands: | Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms. Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.                 |
| Dialect: | LP No. N/A; County North Warwickshire |
| Material: | Parchment |
| No of Folios: | 2 paper flyleaves + 2 leaves of older book on canon law (13th c?), set in 2 columns with wide margins, the first recto showing by stains that it was used as flyleaf against original board + 130 + 3 stubs (131-3) + originally blank another leaf heavy parchment stained on verso where lay against original board, now scribbled all over on recto side by hands of 15-16 cc + 2 new paper flyleaves match those at front. |
| Pagination: | Modern pencil i-ii, 1-134 includes last stubs and flyleaf but none of the new paper flyleaves. |
| Quiring: | 8s |
| Catchwords: | By scribe, half down the wide lower margin on versos of last leaf each quire, begin at same place as lines of second column, no decoration except in rubric if rubric text follows on next leaf. |
| Page Size: | 375 x 255 |
| Frame: | 4 x vertical enclosing two columns; 8 x horizontal enclosing top and bottom lines, enclosing running titles and catchwords on every leaf even if catchwords only on last verso each quire; ruled within columns; fine black-grey lines |
| Writing Space: | 237 x 80 + 15 + 75 = 237 x 170 |
| Incipits and Explicits: | Rubric explicits and incipits by scribe with extended ascenders and descenders in wide space left for them as for example on f7v, 'Eplicit Prologue / Incipit liber primus'. |
| Marginal Headings: | Headings and Latin, including 'Confessor' and 'Amans' allotted a line between text rather than in margins and are all rubric. |
| Running Titles: | Running titles in rubric; 'liber' on verso and number spelled out as for example, 'primus' on recto. |
| Illuminated Initials: | Spaces left for large initials to begin books and smaller ones frequently throughout, but none filled. |
| Flourished Initials: | On first lines especially toward back, larger black initials at start of each column, decorated by scribe; see f122. No red and blue initials, though 2-line spaces left for them. |
| Other Names (not owners): | Luard: 'Mr Asshe [fol. ii-recto], Thomas Carsson [LRM reads 'Currson'] [fol i-verso, ii-recto], Ambrose Belson [fol. ii-recto], J. Barton [f134r]' LRM: James and Margey Croft, f134r; 'Shallmache' or 'Thallmache' f134r; see also, 'my lord Lawarr' on f134; on f134 a lengthy medical recipe, 15th c? and a pen trial for dating clause of an indenture reign of Elizabeth I; f.ii-recto has notes of gift of the book by Asshe to Cursson and from Cursson to Belson. |
| Miscellaneous Info: | Note re text, from Luard, page 345: 'Fol. 88 b is blank, after which a large gap occurs, extending over a fourth part of Book V. A considerable part of Book VII. is also wanting, and the whole of Book VIII. Fol. 15, 16, 17 have been transposed: they should have stood at the close of the volume, fol. 15 being last of all. The real end would therefore be at fol. 15 b ('With hym thre hundred and no mo'). ' |
| Further Information: | Luard, vol. 1, 344-5. |