Manuscript Description Holkham, Norfolk, Holkham Hall, Collection of the Earl of Leicester MS 667 | |
MS Appellation: | Hk (Manly and Rickert) |
Title: | Canterbury Tales |
Author: | Chaucer |
Contents: | Canterbury Tales |
Language: | English |
Date Range: | 1450-1475 |
Scribal Hands: | Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms. |
Dialect: | Essex/Suffolk |
Material: | Parchment |
No of Folios: | 86 |
Quiring: | 1(1 missing i-vii), 2(8), 3(6), 4-9(8), 10(7 v missing), 11(6), 12(5 i, ii, viii missing), 13(5 i, ii, viii missing) |
Signatures: | No signatures visible. |
Catchwords: | Regularly on final versos of quires on ff9v, 15v, 31v, 39v, 47v, 63v, 70v, 76v. |
Page Size: | 350 x 290 |
Frame: | Brown ink frame with double ruling at top and bottom. |
Writing Space: | 260 x 95 |
Incipits and Explicits: | No rubrics. |
Running Titles: | No running titles. |
Illuminated Initials: | Gold initials varying between 2-8 lines on pink and blue ground with some champe decoration for the beginning of tales and prologues. |
Paragraph Marks: | Alternate red and blue. |
Flourished Initials: | Some small initials in blue with red pen flourishing. |
Other Names (not owners): | Among several names found in the manuscript are '[H?]erry Doylle,' 'Thomas Doylle', and 'Phelip doylle' on f86v. Manly and Rickert suggest a Doyly family of Suffolk. Other names also suggest a Suffolk/Norfolk provenance. The manuscript has remained in the region and the autograph on f1 of Thomas William Coke (1754-1842) identifies the ancestry as that of the Earls of Leicester. |
Further Information: | Manly and Rickert I: 284-288. Seymour II: 84-86. |