Western Medieval Manuscripts : The Geste of King Horn, with fragments of other Middle English verse texts

Western Medieval Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>This single quire of fourteen leaves evidently once formed part of a larger manuscript, made probably in the first quarter of the fourteenth century (though some scholars have proposed dates as early as the third quarter of the thirteenth century, and as late as the mid-fourteenth century). Of the three Middle English verse texts it contains, only the middle one - <i>King Horn</i> - is complete: at the front, <i>Floris and Blaunchfleur</i> begins imperfectly, while at the back, <i>The Assumption of Our Lady</i>, ends after just 240 lines. Nothing of the rest of the manuscript is known to survive.</p><p>Nothing is known either of the manuscript's origins or of its ownership until it came into the possession of the antiquary Joseph Holland (d. 1605). It is generally agreed that it was Holland who was responsible for having this quire bound with a manuscript anthology of Chaucer's writings (now <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-GG-00004-00027-00001/1'>MS Gg.4.27(1)</a>). Certainly Holland owned both manuscripts: they each contain his characteristic mark of annotation (a curved line above two dots, as on f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(23);return false;'>10r</a> of this volume). Holland made various interventions in MS Gg.4.27(1): most notably, supplying textual deficiencies in the mutilated manuscript on added leaves, inserting materials such as a frontispiece and other texts and apparatus, and also foliating the manuscript in black ink. Unlike Chaucer's works, the texts in Gg.4.27(2) have not survived widely in manuscript copies, nor were they disseminated in printed editions until the nineteenth century. It is therefore not surprising that Holland did not - or, rather, was likely not able to - 'restore' the imperfect copies of <i>Floris and Blaunchfleur</i> or <i>The Assumption of Our Lady</i> to something like their complete form, in similar manner to his treatment of the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>, <i>Troilus and Criseyde</i>, and other Chaucerian texts. However, if Holland did indeed bind the two together, it is curious that his foliation did not include leaves that were physically part of the manuscript. This may reflect Holland's awareness that these works were not Chaucerian, and that he bound them in owing to the fact that they too were verse texts written in Middle English, and therefore had a generic connection with the contents of the rest of the manuscript. Alternatively, they may have come into his possession after he had foliated the rest of the manuscript, but before he had had it rebound with his supplementary leaves.</p><p>After Holland's death, these manuscripts almost certainly passed through the hands of Richard Holdsworth (1590-1649), to whom the University Library is indebted for a substantial portion of its holdings of Middle English manuscripts. His collection of manuscripts and printed books came to the Library in July 1664. The inventory of Holdsworth's manuscripts (preserved in two copies, now MS Dd.8.45 and MS Ff.4.27), compiled by William Crowe, gave only brief descriptions of the books' contents; the entry that most likely refers to the volume - '51. Chaucer's Workes' - makes no mention of these leaves. Indeed, they appear to have been generally overlooked until John Mitchell Kemble added the following note to the manuscript (this note is now preserved separately to MS Gg.4.27(2), among the Hollandian additions to MS Gg.4.27(1)):</p><p><i>Note: after p. 482b of this volume are inserted fourteen folios in parchment containing a fine copy of the fragment of Floriz and Blauncheflur. A copy of King Horn and a poem on the assumption of our Lady. To the best of my knowledge these have never been noticed.</i></p><p>The full contents of the manuscript were first described in published form in 1858, in the third volume of the <i>Catalogue of manuscripts preserved in the library of the University of Cambridge</i>. These leaves were bound between the end of the <i>Supplicatio amantis</i> and before Chaucer's <i>Retraction</i> and other Hollandian additions. The pencil numbering - ・21, ・22 and ・23 - at the beginning of each text in MS Gg.4.27(2) refers to the numbering in that catalogue. However, they were not long afterwards subject to further rearrangement by Henry Bradshaw, who began his career at the University Library in November 1856, but whose contact with the manuscripts and printed books properly began from 1859 onwards (he was subsequently appointed University Librarian in 1867, in which post he served until his untimely death in 1886). (This matter is dealt with in greater detail in the description of <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-GG-00004-00027-00001/1'>MS Gg.4.27(1)</a>). It was in the course of this rearrangement that Bradshaw had these present leaves removed from the manuscript and reclassified as 'MS Gg.4.27.2', the remainder thereby becoming 'MS Gg.4.27.1'. In his personal copy of the catalogue of manuscripts (now Cambridge, University Library, Adv.c.77.52), Bradshaw had noted against Gg.4.27, 'out on a bond 14^th Nov^r 64'. Records of Bradshaw's borrowing of the manuscript are preserved in H.R. Luard, <i>A chronological list of the graces, documents, and other papers in the University Registry which concern the University Library</i> (Cambridge, 1870). Entries nos 755 and 760 confirm that by February 1866, the manuscript had been separated into two volumes thereafter referred to as 'MS Gg.4.27.1' and the King Horn leaves as 'MS Gg.4.27.2' (see: Beadle (2019) for further details). The separation of the final running number by a full-stop reflects 19th- and early 20th-century practice, though brackets were also in use during this period and is the preferred approach today. The state of MS Gg.4.27(1) at the time of Bradshaw' death - bound or unbound - is not known, but it was certainly rebound in 1896; these covers are preserved with the manuscript. Perhaps MS Gg.4.27(2) was bound at that point too, if it had not already been. When the two manuscripts were the subject of two separate, unpublished descriptions by M.R. James (now <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://archivesearch.lib.cam.ac.uk/repositories/2/archival_objects/90557'>UA ULIB 7/3/74/35</a>), he noted that the binding of each was 'new'. MS Gg.4.27(2) was rebound once more in 1983, at Cambridge University Library; similar rebinding of MS Gg.4.27(1) followed fourteen years later.</p><p>Dr James Freeman<br /> Medieval Manuscripts Specialist<br /> Cambridge University Library</p></p>