Durham University Library Archives & Special Collections Catalogue
Bound manuscript copy of Henry de Gauchy's French translation of Giles of Rome's De regimine principum written in England in the late 14th century, with an incomplete copy of Geoffrey Chaucer's ABC hymn to the Virgin added soon afterwards. The manuscript was given by George Davenport to Bishop Cosin's Library ca. 1670. It was stolen from there in December 1998 and the present whereabouts of this manuscript is unknown.
Paper, folio (watermark of a triple mount surmounted by a cross, cf. Briquet, nos 11648 and following and especially for one of the pair perhaps 11917-20 (Italy, 1351-1426), and Heawood (15th century) fig. 67: Durham Cathedral Muniments, 1435-56)
Foliated, 1-203,18th/19th century, by R. Harrison.
1-2010, 212
Pricking for frame in outer and lower margins. Written space 195 x 123-126 mm.; framed in sharp grey shading to soft brown. 17-19 long lines.
Written in unusually large (minims 3 mm. high) anglicana, proficiently, by one hand, using a thinner nib for chapter headings. Ink pale brown. Punctuated with virgula, punctus and punctus elevatus.
General and chapter headings underlined in red. Running titles, capitals and chapter numbers touched with pale yellow. Marginal distinctions in red roman numerals.
Initials: (i) to chapters, 2 line, in red, with infilling and flourishing in grey blue; (ii) to parts 2-4, 3 or 4 line, in ink outline partly filled with green wash, on square ground of yellow wash, enclosing tinted ink drawings of face of bearded man with a bird issuing from his mouth (f.41), interlace (f.138) or female (?) head with a chaplet, and extended to demi vinet in ink with green and yellow wash, including (f.176) six male demi profiles, three with forked beards; (iii) to part 1, 6 line, historiated A in ink, formed by a man in a tight belted green upper garment with a brown hood, holding a ragged staff, and held upside down in the teeth of a winged dragon, enclosing a kneeling figure (the author) in mitre and uncoloured religious habit presenting red book to seated figure (the Dauphin) in green washed robe with ermine collar and gold crown, holding red sceptre, extended to full vinet in ink with yellow and pale red wash, supporting a man, clothed as figure forming initial but uncoloured save for red pointed shoes, holding a green ragged staff.
Neat original correction by striking through, subpunction, inter linear or marginal insertion, occasionally matchimg a marginal cross in ink. “Nota”, f.106v margin, by the main scribe.
Standard Tuckett binding, mid 19th century full brown calf over thick wooden boards (Charles Tuckett, binder to the British Museum, rebound many Durham manuscripts in the 19th century)
Written in England, late 14th century. The poem was added in the early 15th century - the use initial “qw” together with other spellings suggests East Anglian influence on the copyist or the exemplar.
Owned by George Davenport, by whom it was given to Bishop Cosin's Library. Inscription: “Geo. Davenport. | 1670.” on a paper slip from previous binding, stuck to front pastedown; his note of contents, f.1v. Thomas Rud's ex-libris.
Translation of De regimine principum, prologue & book i, with a chapter-list before each of the four parts. Of the three copies in the British Library cited by the editor (MSS Add. 22274, Egerton 811, and Harley 4385) none is closely akin to the Cosin copy. When compared with the edition the Cosin copy is fuller in some places, shorter in others; some wording, especially in the chapter lists and headings, and much spelling is different. The divisions and the placing of the chapter lists are the same, but the edition I,2,xxvii (p.81-83) comes in the Cosin copy, as it should, after I,2,xxviii xxxi (f.130-133, and likewise in the chapter list (f.40r-v); in the chapter list to I,3 the original scribe left a space for the heading to cap. ix and later added a note with the thinner pen that he appears to have used for the headings in the text: “cy deffaut le ixe chapitle. tout entier si la querretz” (f.137v), whereas in edition there is no reference to this chapter and so the headings are numbered 1-10, rather than 1-11 as here.
Couplet, added by the scribe, in the right margin, faded by damp, visible in ultra-violet: “Thenkyth on hym that this wrote | Qwanne ye seen hym not”. f.203v framed, but blank.
C.-M. Briquet, Les filigranes: dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu'en 1600 
(Amsterdam: Paper Publications Society, 1968)
Catalogi veteres librorum Ecclesiae cathedralis
dunelm. Catalogues of the library of Durham cathedral, at
various periods, from the conquest to the dissolution, including
catalogues of the library of the abbey of Hulne, and of the mss.
,
Surtees Society 7, (London: J.B. Nichols and Son, [1838]).
A. I. Doyle ,"Unrecorded Chaucer manuscript", The Durham philobiblon (v.1, pt.8) 1953, 54-55.
E. Heawood, Watermarks: mainly of the 17th and 18th centuries (Hilversum: Paper Publications Society, 1950)
S. P. Molenaer, Li livres du gouvernement des rois: a XIIth century French version of Egidio Colonna's treatise de Regimine principum , (Columbia University Studies in Romance Philology Literature 1; New York, 1899, reprinted 1966)
A new index of middle English verse , ed. J. Boffey A. S. G. Edwards (London: British Library, 2005)