Durham University Library Archives & Special Collections Catalogue
Manuscript codex mainly written by William Ebesham at Westmister around 1483-85, containing a Latin version of John Mandeville's Travels. Owned by George Davenport and given by him to Bishop Cosin's Library around 1670.
Parchment and paper. Parchment for outer and inner bifolia of quires, smooth (f.1 wrinkled; small holes in f.7; flesh-side outermost), some a little narrower than the paper. Paper (quires 1-7: quarto, with watermark of a pot (cf. Briquet 12477- 8), identical with that in Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys MS. of Caxton's Ovid (translation dated April 1480) and his edition of Gower (completed September 1483); Dr P. Needham points out that from the dimensions, 225 x 165 mm, (even though trimmed) this stock of paper must have been of the median size (larger than the standard chancery). Quire 8: folio format (heavily trimmed), each leaf with watermark of a bull's head and Tau cross, very like Piccard II, x.435, used in Basle, Strasburg and Ulm in 1483-84.
foliated, i-iii, 1-105, by R. A. B. Mynors, mid 20th century
114, 216, 3-714, 8 two. Quires 1-7 numbered in ink with large roman numerals at top right of first recto, though erased on quires 1-4.
No visible pricking for horizontals. Written space 150 (quire 1) or 153 x 105 mm; ruled (quire 1), or framed, in ink. 35 long lines (quire 1), or 29-33; 95-99, 24.
Written, except f.95-99, in a distinctive secretary of variable currency, which might be styled Hybrida, at times with forms from anglicana, by an identifiable scribe; only the first heading in red, in a bastard (mixed) script. Ink darker at the start. f.95-99 in a rounder script of broadly similar type. Of the two supplements, items (5)-(9) and (10)-(12), the first was written by a second scribe on leaves ruled uniformly with the main part of the manuscript; the second supplement is the work of the main scribe, William Ebesham, who was also responsible for copies of items (11)-(12) in or after 1480, in Manchester, John Rylands University Library, MS Lat. 395, f.128 and 126.
Litterae notabiliores stroked with red, or, items 8-12, filled with yellow. Side notes, chapter heads, scriptural lemmata, etc. underlined in red. Paraphs and braces in red. Initials: (i) to items 2-7 and 10, and item 1 chapters, etc., 1, 2 or (f.95r) 3 line, in red; (ii) to start of item (1) Incipit, as (i), with pale ink flourishing touched with red; (iii) to start of item (1) Quia, 3 line, blue, with infilling and square surround in red and brown marginal penwork.
Scribe's reptition of a line at top of f.95v cancelled in red. Original side notes to item (1), infrequent between f.57 and 70 (chapters 63-74). Single added subject note, 15th century, f.82v.
Bound in Durham by Hutchinson, mid 17th century, brown calf, bordered with double blind fillets and with two pairs of vertical blind fillets c. 35 mm from spine, in a style recognisable as one by Hugh Hutchinson of Durham with his roll B gilt on board edges; mid 19th century endpapers; spine replaced late 20th century.
Written in England, Westminster, 1483-85.
Written in England, mainly by William Ebesham, possibly for Westminster Abbey or one of its monks, around 1483-85: Ebesham, a freelance scribe resident at Westminster at least in 1468, 1475-9 and in 1497, wrote several books for the abbey and its monks before 1474, after 1485 and between those dates, two still with and one formerly in a binding from Caxton's workshop, see Doyle 1957.
Inscription: “Fuit hic codex G. Davenport” according to Thomas Rud, probably from an inscription lost when the binding was repaired in the mid 19th century. 13th in Davenport's catalogue of manuscripts, c. 1670, Oxford Bodleian Library MS Tanner 88, f.72r-75v. Usual ex-libris and shelf-numbers by Rud on f.1r.
Translated from the Insular version of the French, in 88 chapters; one of six copies of the shorter text, but including a unique account of Mandeville's visit to the pope. This copy and Cambridge, Jesus College, MS 35 share chapter divisions not in the others, but are independent.
Incipit too short to distinguish the several treatises starting with the first few words. Incipit and explicit agree with those of B.L. MS Arundel 292 f.109v-112r (Norwich, 13th/14th century), where it follows De composicione chilindri
Account of the First Crusade and the eight kings of Jerusalem, ending with a passage on the Holy Cross, Also in Oxford Bodleian Library MS Laud 722 and B.L. MS Burney 76. This copy generally agrees with Laud, but agrees with Burney in omitting p.230 n.15, and in having important additional passages, p.230 n.11, p.237 n.3; it lacks some of Laud's errors, (e.g. p.230 n.25, p.236 n.13 “superauit”, p.240 n.a “in aduentu G”). The section on the kings (f.90r-92v) is almost identical with the corresponding part of the anonymous Historia Gotfridi, 516-519, which is treated separately in four Continental copies.
Not in Stegmüller. Each of the sixteen chapters is summarized in a quatrain of alternately rhyming lines, laid out as a couplet, the last two quatrains without rhymes and metre. f.94v blank but frame ruled uniformly.
Not identified. Seventeen monorhyming quatrains, the last, or possibly first, line consisting of a cue to an office hymn, set out to the right.
Seventeen monorhyming quatrains, each having a successive word of the Ave Maria at the start of the first three lines.
Windsor and Westminster are mentioned, not Chertsey, whence Henry's body was removed to Windsor in 1484.
Eleven pairs of internally and end rhymed verses each under a heading (the ages and end of man).
Ten pairs of lines.
71 stanzas
Extract from Rufinus' translation of Basil of Caesarea, Omelia 1, in Ps. i, associated with Augustine, and widely used in medieval commentaries on the Psalms; the version here is close to that in the preamble to Pseudo- Remi of Auxerre, Super Psalmos
Abbreviation of the anonymous Vita Hieronymi
Bibliotheca hagiographica Latina antiquae et medii aetatis 
(Brussels, 1898-1901); Supplements (Brussels, 1911, 1986)
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]).
Chevalier, U., Repertorium hymnologicum: Catalogue de chants, hymnes, proses, sequences, tropes en usage dans l'église latine depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours, (Louvain: Imprimerie Lefever, 1892-1920)
Doyle, A. I., "The work of a late fifteenth century English scribe, William Ebesham", Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 39 (1957), 298-325
Henry the Sixth: a reprint of John Blacman's memoir , ed. James, M. R. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1919)
Historia Gotfridi, in Recueil des historiens des croisades: historiens occidentaux V, (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 1895), 437-524
Kohler, C., "Histoire anonyme des rois de Jérusalem (1099-1187) composé peut-être à la fin du xiième siècle", Revue de l'Orient latin 5 (1897), 213-253
Piccard, G., Die Wasserzeichenkartei Piccard im Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart: Findbuch (Stuttgart : Kohlhammer, 1961-97)
Stegmüller, Friedrich, Repertorium biblicum medii aevi , (Madrid: 1950-1980)
Thorndike, Lynn and Kibre, P., A catalogue of incipits of mediaeval scientific writings in Latin (Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1963)
Walther, H., Carmina medii aevi posterioris latina 1. Initia carminum ac versuum medii aevi posterioris latinorum: alphabetisches Verzeichnis der Versanfänge mittellateinischer Dichtungen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959-69)