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Manuscript Description
Scotland, National Library of Scotland, Advocates' MS 19.1.11
 
MS Appellation:Mandeville's Travels
Title:Regiment of Princes
Author:Hoccleve
Contents:(i) Liber maundevyle (f1); (ii) Sir Cleges (f71); (iii) Thomas Hoccleve De Regimine principum (f80).
Language:English
Date Range:1450-1500
Scribal Hands:
Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.
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Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.
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Material:Paper
No of Folios:iv new paper flyleaves with iv backing an earlier paper flyleaf with inscription (Comments) + 1-176 = 2 old vellum fly leaves + 3 new paper flyleaves
Pagination:Now part of combined texts and pencil foliation in extreme top right corner. In Hoccleve text, old numbering (see notes in Comments).
Quiring:8s. Advocates' Catalogue provides the following: 1 (8, missing 2) 2 (8, missing 4 and 5), 3-9 (8) 10 (10), 11-13 (8), 14 (8, missing 6), 15-20 (8), 21 (8, missing 6), 22 (8, missing 8), 23 (8, missing 1, 6-8), 24 (2)
Signatures:In the Hoccleve, the first quire is numbered in tiny ink numbers in lower right. First quire is numbered 1 -4, second quire numbered a1-4(ff9-13), b1-4 on ff 17-20. These continue regularly in every quire to upper case I, then k and l. Lower case l is the last quire. This coincides with the catchwords.
Catchwords:Catchwords at the end of every 8 folios where those folios are extant.
Page Size:285 x 200
Frame:2 x vertical in brown crayon; horizontal ruling on some folios in haphazard fashion extending beyond text-box into margins towards the end of the Hoccleve; pricking also survives in the Hoccleve text.
Writing Space:195 x 120 text box
Incipits and Explicits:On f119 'Hic incipit de fide obseuand' in red ink in the hand of the scribe who adds the glosses; explicit in the hand of the second scribe on f176r
Marginal Headings:Headings, notas and glosses throughout in the margins in red ink; not in the hand of the scribe of the text but they are comprehensive; red bracketting in places as well as bracketting in the ink of the text.
Title by Scribe:Title to the Hoccleve in a slightly later hand in red ink 'De regimine principum vocat the kyngys draught'
Paragraph Marks:Alternating red and blue paraphs to mark stanzas.
Flourished Initials:Blue 3-line initial to begin with red pen flourishing; same on f81v but initial has been cut out.
Other Names (not owners):Many scribbles and pen trials, probably 16th c. Verses of Erthe upon Erthe, (IMEV 3985) on ff70, 176v; Christ Triumphant (IMEV 1308) on f177v. On f82 is a list of thirteen Fridays; an account for cheese from Suffolk and Essex on f155; notes on Hoccleve on ff116 and 176; rough shields with attempts at armorial bearings on ff 176v and 178. Names of some possible owners include: Thomas Haselfote, 1544 on ff1v, 119, 123, 176v, William Patrike on f10, William Costerdemonger on f172v, Edward Thornton on f176v. Of Edward Thornton, Seymour remarks, 'possibly a descendent of Robert Thornton of East Newton but not that Edward, Robert's great-grandson, who died in 1586 and whose name appears in Lincoln Cath MS A.i.17'. The name of Sir Simeon Stuart, Bart., of Hartley Mauditt occurs on f3. More scribbled names include John Watsoun, William Benson, Robert Hardyng, Edward Gote; the names John Smith, and John Atkinson appear on f150, and John Pope and John Leggit on f177.
Miscellaneous Info:Each text in different hand; 2 hands for the Hoccleve. Note on the first flyleaf 'Ex Libris Bibliothecae Facultatis Juridicae Edinburgi 1808'. The Regiment was originally a separate book and retains the numbering 1-99 towards the top right of the folio but not in the corner; 15th-6th c. numbering rather than medieval but obviously done when text was a separate item. The Advocates' Catalogue description notes: 'Each of the three texts is in a different hand but they were probably put together at an early date as the titles and some marginal notes in i and iii appear to be in one 15th c. hand. The same hand wrote the title 'Liber de regimine principum' which has been erased, at the beginning of iii'.
Further Information:M.C. Seymour, 'The English Manuscripts of Mandeville's Travels', Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions iv (1974), pp. 195-6, and G. Guddat-Figge, 'Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Middle English Romances', Munich, 1976, pp. 119-120. C.R. Borland, 'Catalogue of Medieval Mss in the Advocates' Library', 1906-1908, deposited at the National Library of Scotland' which provides the following description of the watermarks where visible: 'Paper: watermarks scissors (cf Briquet 3763-5) in gatherings 1, 3, 9-18; wagon (cf Briquet 3528, 3540) in gatherings 4, 19-23; dog (cf Briquet 3612) in gatherings 5-8'.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP