St Catharine's College : Register of Daniel Rough

St Catharine's College

<p style='text-align: justify;'>A mid-to-late 14^th century manuscript consisting largely of a register for the town of New Romney in Kent written by local clerk and fishmonger Daniel Rough. When the manuscript was bound sometime in the 16^th century, a paper quire containing a late-fifteenth-century charter of Edward IV was also included. The register itself is of interest (beyond its status as an artefact of Kentish history) for what it may tell us regarding the use of Latin and Anglo-Norman French in the late-fourteenth century, while fifteenth-century additions in English complete the trilingual picture for later medieval and early modern England. From a codicological perspective, the manuscript also holds interest as an example of a combined parchment and paper codex, and as a palimpsest: more than a dozen leaves have explicit signs of previous use, with many others showing evidence of scraping or cleaning. </p>