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Detailed record for Harley 1866
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| Title |
Excerpts from the Textus Roffensis (facsimile on parchment) |
| Origin |
England |
| Date |
1st quarter of the 18th century, before 1719 |
| Language |
Latin and English |
| Script |
Gothic |
| Scribe |
Elizabeth Elstob |
| Decoration |
1 large hisitoriated initial 'R'(egnante) with Christ and a dragon. Display script in various colours (ff. 1, 8). Large plain initials in various colours (ff. 2, 4v, 6). Rubrics in red. Capitals marked in red. |
| Dimensions in mm |
260 x 180 (185 x 105) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 9 (+ 1 unfoliated paper and 3 parchment flyleaves at the beginning + 2 unfoliated parchment + several paper flyleaves at the end) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. Mottled brown leather with gold tooling. |
| Provenance |
Written by Elizabeth Elstob (b. 1683, d. 1756), Anglo-Saxon scholar. Humfrey Wanley paid Elizabeth Elstob 5 guineas on 7 October 1719 for producing this facsimile and one other (see Welbeck Wanleyana, Misc. no. 68, BM Loan 29/260 and Wright 1972).
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 |
Includes a copy of king Ethelbert's charter of the foundation or endowment of the church of Rochester; bearing the date 4 kal. Maias, indictione 7 (see Harley Catalogue). |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), no. 1866.
Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 144. |
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