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Detailed record for Harley 1320
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| Author |
Ranulf Higden |
| Title |
Polychronicon to the death of Edward III (d. 1377) |
| Origin |
England |
| Date |
1st half of the 15th century |
| Language |
Latin |
| Script |
Gothic cursive |
| Decoration |
Large initial in gold and colours combined with a foliate bar border (f. 1). 5 large puzzle initials in red and blue with pen-flourishing in purple, blue and red extending into the margins (ff. 37v, 63v, 104, 130v, 154v, 176v). Numerous smaller initials in blue with red pen-flourishing. |
| Dimensions in mm |
285 x 210 (215 x 155) (in 2 columns only ff. 24-26) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 203 (+ 5 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 1 unfoliated paper leaf after f. 202 |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. Marbled endpapers. |
| Provenance |
Stopford, c. 1500: name (of the scribe?) written ornamentally in red (f. 203).
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts.
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library. |
| Notes |
Leaf signatures.
Catchwords. |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), no. 1320.
John Taylor, The Universal Chronicle of Ranulf Higden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 154.
C. E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 319. |
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