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Detailed record for Harley 432
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| Title |
'Senchas Már' or 'The Great Digest of Law', introduction to, and portion of the treatise on, the Irish law of Athgabáil, or 'Distress', with glosses |
| Origin |
Ireland, S. (Munster) |
| Date |
16th century |
| Language |
Irish |
| Script |
Insular minuscule, above top line |
| Decoration |
Two initials with foliate decoration in black (ff. 4, 7v). Initials with penwork decoration in black. |
| Dimensions in mm |
335 x 240 (250 x 180), in two columns |
| Official foliation |
ff. 1* + 20 + 10* (f. 1* is an early modern flyleaf, f. 10* a fragment; + 4 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 5 at the end) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. 19th century; marbled endleaves. |
| Provenance |
Possibly written in the Munster region in southern Ireland (see Hayes O'Grady 1926).
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. |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts, in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: [n. pub.], 1808-12), I (1808), no. 432.
Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Museum, ed. by Standish Hayes O’Grady and Robin Flower, revised by Myles Dillon, 3 vols (London: the British Museum, 1926-1953), I, pp. 146-47.
Liam Breatnach, A Companion to the Corpus iuris hibernici, Early Irish Law Series, 5 (Dublin: School of Celtic Studies / Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2005), p. 4. |
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