The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220

Orietta Da Rold

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 636

The Peterborough Chronicle

Date: s. xii1, xiimed

Summary:

The manuscript contains a copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The Peterborough Chronicle (version E, Irvine 2004) on fols 86v-90v. In the margins of fols 86v-90v a later hand, s. xiii2, wrote a prose Anglo-Norman chronicle (Dean 1999, n. 13 and Ker 1957, p. 425).

Manuscript Items:

1. Item: fols 1r/1-91v/29

   Title (B.17.9): Chronicles and Historical Texts: The Peterborough Chronicle (MS E)

   Incipit: (1r/1) Brittene iȝland is ehta hund mila lang

   Explicit: (91v/29) xrrist him un...

   Text Language: English

   Note: Fol. 91v is very badly worn and the final lines of the chronicle are virtually illegible.

   Bibliography:

   Ker 1957, item 346

   Irvine 2004

Physical Description:

Object Description:

Form: codex

Extent:

210 mm x 145 mm (dimensions of most - size of leaves)

240 mm x 165 mm (dimensions of fols 86-90 - size of leaves)

c. 170 mm x 100 mm (dimensions of all - size of written space)

Foliation and/or Pagination: Fols 1-91+ xiv. Foliated in red pencil.

Collation:

Quires: 1-710, fols 1-70; 810, + 1 foilo after fol. 80, fols 71-81; 910, fols 82-91, s. xiv modern paper, possibly s. xvii (see also, O'Brien O'Keeffe 2003).

Layout description:

Written in 30 long lines. Fol. 91 is written on 29 lines, and fols 2-7 are written in two columns. Ruled in hard point, Quire 1, fols 1-10, and lead.

Hand description:

Number of hands: 2

Summary: The manuscript is copied by two scribes over time.

Hand: main text
• Scope: major
• Script: English Vernacular Minuscule
• Ker reference: Ker 346 Scribe 1
• Description: fols 1r-88v/9. The scribe wrote the text in different stages. Fols 1r-81r/10 was written at the same time. After that the writing changes in aspect and colour of ink, inidicating that the annals up to fol. 88v/9 were probably written in six blocks: 1122, 1123, 1124, 1125-6 'lande', 1126 'On þes'- 1127, 1128-31. The hand is a round English vernacular hand which uses both Caroline and insular letter-forms (see, also Ker 1957, p. 425; Whitelock 1954, pp. 14-17; O'Brien O'Keeffe 2003, p. 42; Irvine 2004 , pp. xix-xxii)
• Summary of the characteristics of the hand:
• a: insular for English and Latin.
• d: insular with ascender slightly curving to the right
• f: insular.
• g: insular.
• r: insular.
• s: insular. The low and high form of s are used indifferently.
• ð: the same size as d, with a median stroke starting usually on the ascender and concluding with a dot to the left.
• Short and tapered descenders curving to the left.
• Abbreviations:
• Infrequent (see, for a full analysis Irvine 2004, pp. xxiv-xxviii)
• Litterae Notabiliores:
• The head of nota ˥ is curved.
• Other manuscripts:
  • Tiberius C. i (Clark 1954 and Ker 1957, p. 425)
  • Harley 3667 (Clark 1954 )
• Date: s. xii 1

Hand: main text
• Scope: major
• Scribe: Ker 346 SC2
• Script: English Vernacular Minuscule
• Description: Fols 88v/10-91. Scribe 2 writes in a clear upright and compressed minuscule, using mainly Caroline letter forms (Ker 1957, p. 425; Whitelock 1954, pp. 14-17; Irvine 2004, pp. xxi-xxiii).
• Summary of the characteristics of the hand:
• f: with a descender often below the line.
• r: with a descender often below the line.
• s: with a descender often below the line.
• þ used along with th.
• ð used along with th.
• u often used instead of ƿ.
• ƿ used with u or uu.
• Ƿ capital W always stands instead of Ƿ.
• descenders often descend below the line, as they would not normally do in a Latin literary text of this date, and turn to the left at the end.
• Abbreviations:
• More frequent than Scribe 1 (see, for a full analysis Irvine 2004, pp. xxiv-xxviii)
• Other manuscripts:
  • Corrections in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 134 (Bishop 1953, p. 440)
  • London, Society of Antiquaries, MS 60, fols 6-71. (Bishop 1953, p. 440)
• Date: s. xii med

Decoration Description:

The ornamental inital B on fol. 1r is green with decoration in red.

Additions:

A quire of 14 folios, datable s. xvii: was added to the manuscript, and it is foliated 92-103. Fols 92r-97r contains transcripts by William L'Isle from the The Parker Chronicle (CCCC 173, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A version). The quire also contains seventeenth-century tables of contents of nine Parkerian homilaries and miscellaneous notes in various hands (O'Brien O'Keeffe 2003, p. 41).

Binding Description:

Seventeenth-century, reproduced in Whitelock (1954).

History:

Origin:

Copied at Peterborough Abbey in the twelfth-century. On fol. 1r there is an erased inscription, s. xiv: 'alienauerit...sit...et a celesti consolacione alienatus' (Ker 1957, p. 426).

Provenance:

William Cecil, Lord Burghleigh (1520-1598) owned the manuscript from which Laurence Nowell (d. 1576) made a transcription, now London, British Library, Add. 43704 in 1565 while he was in residence at Burghleigh House. Whitelock notes that it was probably owned by Parker by 1566/67, as Parkerian underlinings, scoring in the margin and pointing fingers agree closely with the citations of the Chronicle in A Defence of Priestes Mariages of that date (Whitelock 1954, p. 23). Acquired by Laud in 1636 from William L'Isle, s. xvii1 (Ker 1957, p. 426 and O'Brien O'Keeffe 2003, p. 41).

Acquisition:

Laud's gift to the Bodleian Library in 1639 (Wanley 1954, p. 426).

Additional Information:

Administration Information:

Manuscript described by Orietta Da Rold with the assistance of Hollie Morgan and George Younge (2010; 2013).

Surrogates:

Whitelock, Dorothy, ed., The Peterborough Chronicle: The Bodleian Manuscript Laud Misc. 636, with an appendix by Cecil Clark, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 4 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1954)

O'Brien O'Keeffe, Katherine, 'Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud. Misc. 636 (1003), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E-text) ("Peterborough Chronicle")', in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2003), vol. 10: Manuscripts Containing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Works by Bede, and Other Texts, pp. 41-44

Images of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud. Misc. 636 are available on LUNA at the Bodleian Library.

Bibliography:

Bately, Janet M., ed., The Anglo- Saxon Chronicle, A Collaborative Edition: Volume 3, MS A (Cambridge: Brewer, 1986)

Bishop, Terence Alan Martyn, 'Bibliographical Notes. Notes on Cambridge Manuscripts', Transaction of Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 1 (1949-53), 432-41

Clark, Cecily, 'Notes on MS. Laud Misc. 636', Medium Ævum, 23 (1954), 71-75

Dean, Ruth J., and Boulton Maureen B. M., Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, Anglo-Norman Text Society Occasional Publications Series, 3 (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1999)

Foltys, Christian, ed., Brutus, Li Rei de Engleterre, Le Livere de Reis de Engleterre (Berlin: E. Reuter Gesellschaft, 1962)

Glover, John, ed., Le Livere de Reis de Brittanie e le Livere de Reis de Engleterre, Rolls Series, 42 (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1865)

Graham, Timothy, and Andrew G. Watson, The Recovery of the Past in Early Elizabethan England: Documents by John Bale and John Joscelyn from the Circle of Matthew Parker, Cambridge Bibliographical Society Monograph, 13 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 1998)

Howarth, H. H., Archaeological Journal, xlv (1908), 158-81

Irvine, Susan, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A Collaborative Edition: The E-Text (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004)

James, M. R., Lists of Manuscripts Formerly in Peterborough Abbey Library, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, suppl. 5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Bibliographical Society, 1926)

Ker, N. R., 'Some Notes on the Peterborough Chronicle', Medium Ævum, 3 (1934), 136

---, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), item 346

Laing, Margaret, Catalogue of Sources for a Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1993), pp. 138-9

LUNA, (http://bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk:8180/luna/servlet; accessed August 2010)

Lutz, Angelika, 'Das Studium der Angelsächsischen Chronik im 16. Jahr-hundert: Nowell und Joscelyn', Anglia, 100 (1982), 301-56

Morris, Avril Margaret, 'Forging Links with the Past: The Twelfth-Century Reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon Peterborough ' (unpublished, University of Leicester, 2006)

O'Brien O'Keeffe, Katherine, 'Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud. Misc. 636 (1003), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E-text) ("Peterborough Chronicle")', in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2003), vol. 10: Manuscripts Containing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Works by Bede, and Other Texts, pp. 41-44

Plummer, Charles, ed., Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, repr. with a bibliographical note by Dorothy Whitelock, 2 vols (1892-99; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952)

---, ed., Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896)

Roberts, Jane, Guide to Scripts Used in English Writings up to 1500 (London: British Library, 2005)

Wanley, Humfrey, Antique literature septentrionalis liber alter (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1705)

Whitelock, Dorothy, ed., The Peterborough Chronicle: The Bodleian Manuscript Laud Misc. 636, with an appendix by Cecil Clark, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 4 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1954)