Manuscript Description Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson B.190 | |
| Title: | Prose Brut |
| Contents: | Prose Brut |
| Language: | English |
| Date Range: | After the sixth year of Henry V which is where the text ends. |
| Scribal Hands: | Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms. |
| Material: | Parchment |
| No of Folios: | iii paper flyleaves + i original parchment flyleaf + 2 paper inserts + 2-163 parchment + iii paper flyleaves. |
| Pagination: | Clear later foliation in black ink after f11. |
| Quiring: | 8 except for first quire of four leaves only because of missing text. |
| Signatures: | Despite the dirty and degraded condition of many of the lower corners, it is still possible to see the occasional signatures: fiii and fiiij on ff56-57; giii and giiij on ff 64-65; hii-hiiij on ff71-73 and what seems to be piii on f129. |
| Catchwords: | Absolutely regular throughout except for a missing one on an excised folio after f100. In the hand of the scribe, the ink of the text, enclosed in a scroll of dark ink with the words surrounded by a red outline. |
| Page Size: | ca. 270 x 210 |
| Frame: | None visible |
| Writing Space: | 180 x 135 |
| Incipits and Explicits: | In red ink, within the text box for divisions in the text. |
| Marginal Headings: | Subject introductions within the text in red ink. |
| Title by Scribe: | First folios missing. |
| Flourished Initials: | Blue mainly 2-line initials with red flourishing. |
| Other Names (not owners): | On f2 in the lower margin 'Given me by John Archbishop of York anno 1699'. T. Gale |
| Further Information: | On an inserted paper leaf after the old original parchment flyleaf is an explanation for the beginning of the text which has been supplemented from a manuscript apparently then in the public library of the University of Cambridge. The writer remarks that both manuscripts are in essence the same as the version printed and extended by Caxton at a later date. This may explain the heading 'Caxton' at the top of f2. The writer may have been the T. Gale identified in the lower margin of the same folio. |