{ "viewingDirection": "left-to-right", "metadata": [ { "label": "Binding", "value": "

Current binding is mid-twentieth century.<\/p>" }, { "label": "Origin Place", "value": "Cambridge" }, { "label": "Provenance", "value": "Compiled in the University of Cambridge and stored in the University since its creation. Now part of the University Archives collection held at Cambridge University Library." }, { "label": "Physical Location", "value": "Cambridge University Library" }, { "label": "Extent", "value": "xvii + 171 + vii Leaf height: 280 mm, width: 205 mm." }, { "label": "Funding", "value": "" }, { "label": "Abstract", "value": "

This book was used to record the Proctors' annual accounts; that is, receipts and expenditure of great variety from the Chest, 1454-89. Receipts were from fees, including communae<\/i> paid on the occasion of academic acts, visum compote<\/i> and cautions. It was also used to record graces granted; commissions (that is, appointments of syndicates for special purposes); decrees of congregations; and occasionally as a register of documents. The 'grace' was originally a personal exemption from statutory requirements granted by the Regent House to those aspiring to a degree. It came to serve wider and more general purposes. From the fifteenth century degrees became increasingly 'gratuosi' rather than 'rigorosi' and the series of Grace Books therefore, of which this is the earliest surviving, provide what is virtually a register of degrees. Note that entries of fees become admissions with names, 1464-5 (f.31r<\/a>) and that long lists of cautions appear, 1466-7 (ff.40r-40v<\/a>). In 1533, John Mere, Esquire Bedell, used the volume (ff.52r-55v<\/a>) to record a diary of events during the year, including the Magna Congregatio<\/i> or Black Assembly (the annual ceremony at which the town authorities were obliged to swear obedience to those of the university), subsequently transcribed by Joseph Romilly (ff. 48v-50v<\/a>, 164r-168r<\/a>).<\/p>

Jacqueline Cox, Keeper of the University Archives and Dr James Freeman, Medieval Manuscripts Specialist<\/p>" }, { "label": "Date of Creation", "value": "1454-89, 1533" }, { "label": "Title", "value": "Liber Gratiarum Alpha" }, { "label": "Author(s) of the Record", "value": "Jacqueline Cox, Keeper of the University Archives and Dr James Freeman, Medieval Manuscripts Specialist" }, { "label": "Material", "value": "Paper" }, { "label": "Collation", "value": "

Owing to the tightness of the binding, the incidence of watermarks has been adduced in order to determine the structure of the quires (building on notes made by Henry Bradshaw on 11th December 1865 and now preserved as MS Add. 4548, f. 3r).<\/p>

The manuscript comprises probably 13 quires, mostly originally of 16 leaves each, made from three paper stocks, as follows:<\/p>