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Detailed record for Egerton 848
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| Title |
Medical miscellany, including an astronomical calendar |
| Origin |
England, S. E. (London?) |
| Date |
1490 or 1491 |
| Language |
English |
| Script |
Gothic |
| Decoration |
Diagrams in red and brown, or in colours, including a Zodiac man (f. 21), and a volvelle with three moving parts (f. 22). Small initials in red or blue. Paraphs in blue. Highlighting of letters in yellow. Rubrics in purple, blue, or red. Cadels. |
| Dimensions in mm |
135 x 120 (100 x 90) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 22 |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Pre-1600. Brown leather blind-stamped wallet. |
| Provenance |
Probably made in London c. 1490: the calendrical material (ff. 3v-15) includes three 19-year lunar cycles, so the manuscript was probably made during the first of these, i.e. between 1481 and 1501; diagrams for finding the dominical letter and leap years are both marked '1491' (f. 17); tables of solar and lunar eclipses are from 1491 to 1506, and 1490 to 1505, respectively (f. 15v); the calendar has two highly-graded feasts of St Erkenwald: this and the subsequent provenance suggests an origin in London.
? John Smith, London, 16th century: a memorandum records that '… I, John Fysh(?), Dyer of London doythe owe unto John Smith of London cloth worker the some of 2s xd …' (f. 2)
? Baptist Trott, 17th century: inscribed with his name (f. 1v); men of this name were born in London c. 1555 and c. 1596.
Inscribed 'ffrankfort', 17th/18th century (f. 22v).
James Orchard Halliwell[-Phillipps] (b. 1820, d. 1889), antiquary and literary scholar: inscribed 'Bib. Hall 216' (f. 1v); catalogued for sale, 27 June 1840, lot 151, but withdrawn, along with the other manuscripts, all but one of which were sold en bloc to Rodd in July 1840 for £50: see Arthur Freeman and Janet Ing Freeman, ‘Phillipps, James Orchard Halliwell- (1820-1889)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Thomas Rodd the younger (b. 1796, d. 1849), London bookseller; bought from him by the British Museum on 13 August 1840 for £2 2s., along with 32 other manuscripts formerly owned by Halliwell-Phillipps, using the Bridgewater fund (£12,000 bequeathed in 1829 by Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (b. 1756, d. 1829). |
| Select bibliography |
List of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1836-1840 (London: British Museum, 1843), 1840, p. 19.
A Guide to the Exhibition of Some Part of the Egerton Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1929), no. 146.
D. A. Winstanley and R. W. Hunt, 'Halliwell Phillipps and Trinity College Library', The Library, 5th series, 2 (1947-48), 250-82 (p. 279).
Irma Taavitsainen, 'The Identification of Middle English Lunary MSS', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 88 (1987), 18-26 (pp. 18 n. 1, 25). |
| Last revised: 29 August 2006 |
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f. 21
Zodiac Man |
f. 22
Volvelle |
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