MS 174

Summary

Described Thomas James 63; Stanley F. 7; Nasmith 174; T.D. Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Materials Relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland to the End of the Reign of Henry VII, Rolls Series 26, 3 vols. (London, 1865), p. 4; James, Corpus 174; Brie, vol. 2, p. vi; Matheson, Brut, p. 88; Index of Images 59.

[1]

f. 1

In the noble lande of syrrie þer was a noble king and mighty and a man of grete renoun þat men called dyocliciam þat wel and worþely […] gouernede and reuled þoruʒ his noble chi[.]alrye so þat he conquerede alle þe landes aboute him so þat almost alle þe kinges of þe worlde to him were entendaunt hit bifel þat …

f. 198^v

… made hym knyght the which knyg [sic] edward whan he had regned .lj. ʒere and more the .xj. kl of iuyn he deide att shene and is beried worschipfully at westmynster on whos soule god haue mercy amen.

‘Here may a man hure engelande was fferst callede albyon and þoruʒ wham hit had þe name’. The Brut. Folio 1^r is worn and the writing in places illegible. At the head of the page in a s. xvi hand: ‘William Caxtons Fructus Temporum’. Below the last line of text on f. 198^v in red crayon in the hand of Matthew Parker: ‘hic desunt usque ad 7 h quinti’. In pen below this in a later hand: ‘imperfect he wrot to almost the End of Edw: 4^th’. Wells Rev. 8:2818 [10]. IPMEP 374. Ed. Brie (1906–08), who used the present MS as his base text for the 1333–1377 continuation, i.e. ff. 172^v–198^v (vol. 2, pp. 291–332).

Other texts: Matheson notes that the English Brut has survived in 181 medieval and post-medieval manuscripts (three of which contain two discrete texts of the work). He classifies the present MS as belonging in Group CV-1377 f.c. (i.e. Common version to 1377 with full continuation), along with BL Harley 2279, ff. 3–146; BL Stowe 68, ff. 1–189^v; Manchester, John Rylands Eng 102, ff. 1–101^v and Eng 103(2), ff. 1–130^v; Philadelphia, Free Libr of Philadelphia Lewis 238, ff. 1–126.