Durham University Library Archives & Special Collections Catalogue
Fragment from Wace, Roman de Brut written in England early/mid 13th century reused as a hinge strip in an early 15th century binding.
Parchment
No pricking visible. Written space [full approximately 180] x 100-110 mm. Ruled in sharp greyish brown. 2 columns, [about 40] lines, module c.4.5 mm.
Written in small textura, competently.
Initial, to line 2495, 1-line, blue with red flourishing; probably similar initials in red, see the trace of blue flourishing between the final columns.
Inscribed “Mr Bonaventure Assheby” (16th/17th century) (also appears on DUL Add.MS. 1950/A/10). Bonaventure Assheby of Westminster esq. appears in the Middlesex Session Rolls 1584 and his children are entered in the parish register of Harefield in the 1580s and 1590s (Madden 1834, volume 5, p.13)
10 typescript pages of identification and contexts by Mlle Edith Brayer of the IRHT, Paris.
Written in England ?, early/mid 13th century.
Former hinge-strip, removed, together with two sheets of Sarum Horae now at SA 0011 (attributed to Richard Pynson, London; approximately 1500), from either a copy of Gregory IX, Decretales cum glossa, (Lyons 1504) Shelfmark of source: SB+ 0071 or a copy of Boniface VIII, Liber sextus cum glossa, etc., (Lyons 1507) Shelfmark of source: SB+ 0072 Both have bindings tooled with a roll and an ornament, Oldham SV.a.(3) and D.(1), found together on a book printed in 1506 and attributed to London. Unfortunately almost everything about the early 20th century rebinding of these books was incorrectly carried out, so opinions vary as to which book these fragments came from. Portfolio I/7a (see Catalogue of fragments, manuscript and printed, amongst Durham University Library Archives and Special Collections).
Horizontal strip, mostly blank margins (55-60 mm), from the foot of the outer bifolium of the second eight-leaf (?) quire, preserving two, three or four lines only of text from the foot of each column, and, on the final verso, the catchword to the following quire. Each column contained approximately 40 lines and each leaf approximately 160 lines; the intervening leaves lost between those here contained roughly 1009 lines (1408-2416), i.e. about 25 columns, which suggests that there were six intervening leaves, containing about 960 lines, with some 50 lines of the text not present in this copy. A preceding eight-leaf quire containing 1280 lines would have accommodated the opening lines (1-1249) and some preliminary matter. The surviving lines are: 1287-8, 1324-6, 1364-7, 1405-7; 2453-5, 2493-5, 2533-5 and 2575-7.
Arnold, I., ed., Wace, Le roman de Brut 
(Paris: SATF, 1938-40)
Madden, F., ed., Collectanea topographica et genealogica (London: J.B. Nichols and Son, 1834-43)
Weiss, Judith, "Two fragments from a newly discovered manuscript of Wace's "Brut"." Medium Ævum 68, no. 2 (1999) 268-77