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Two pre-Conquest manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

James P. Carley
James P. Carley
Affiliation:
York University, Toronto
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Extract

The earliest identified surviving manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey date from the ninth and tenth centuries, but there are reliable post-Conquest traditions claiming that valuable books were found at the monastery as early as the reign of Ine, king of the West Saxons (688–726). By the tenth century at the latest there are reports of an ‘Irish school’ at Glastonbury, famous for its learning and books, and St Dunstan's earliest biographer, the anonymous. B., relates that Dunstan himself studied with the Irish at Glastonbury. During Dunstan's abbacy (940–56) – that is, at the period when most historians would place the beginnings of the English tenth-century reform movement – there was a general revival at Glastonbury which included a concerted policy of book acquisition and the establishment of a productive scriptorium. Not surprisingly, Dunstan's abbacy was viewed by the community ever afterwards as one of the most glorious periods in the early history of the monastery, especially since the later Anglo-Saxon abbots showed a marked falling off in devotion and loyalty to the intellectual inheritance of their monastery. Æthelweard and Æthelnoth, the last two Anglo-Saxon abbots, were especially reprehensible, and confiscated lands and ornaments for the benefit of their own kin. Nor did the situation improve immediately after the Conquest: the first Norman abbot, Thurstan, actually had to call in soldiers to quell his unruly monks. In spite of these disruptions, a fine collection of pre-Conquest books seems to have survived more or less intact into the twelfth century; when the seasoned traveller and connoisseur of books, William of Malmesbury, saw the collection in the late 1120s he was greatly impressed: ‘tanta librorum pulchritudo et antiquitas exuberat’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 16 , December 1987 , pp. 197 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1 Writing in the late 1120s, for example, William of Malmesbury reports that King Ine gave ‘coopertoria librorum euuangelii de xx libris et lx mankis auri’ (The Early History of Glastonbury. An Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesbury's ‘De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie’, ed. and trans. J. Scott (Woodbridge, 1981), p. 96).Google Scholar

2 See. Dunstani, B.'s Vita S. in Memorials of St Dunstan, ed. Stubbs, W., RS 63 (London, 1874), 3–52, at 10–11Google Scholar also Lapidge, M., ‘The Cult of St Indract at Glastonbury’, Ireland in Early Mediaeval Europe: Studies in Memory of Kathleen Hughes, ed. Whitelock, D., McKitterick, R., and Dumville, D. (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 179–212, at 180–3.Google Scholar

3 Dunstan himself, so his biographer relates (Memorials, ed. Stubbs, pp. 20–1), took a leading part in this process: he illustrated texts and corrected exemplars. On his identity as the correcting and annotating ‘Hand D’ of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F. 4. 32, see Hunt, R. W., Saint Dunstan's Classbook from Glastonbury, Umbrae Codicum Occidentalium 4 (Amsterdam, 1961), vi, xiv and xviGoogle Scholar. On Cambridge, University Library, Ee. 2. 4 as a possible Glastonbury book, corrected by Dunstan, see Bishop, T. A. M., ‘An Early Example of Insular-Caroline’, Trans. of the Cambridge Bibliographical Soc. 4 (1964–1968), 396–400Google Scholar. For the possible Glastonbury origin of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 183, see Keynes, S., ‘King Athelstan's Books’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England. Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. Lapidge, M. and Gneuss, H. (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 143–201, at 184–5Google Scholar. See also Higgitt, J., ‘Glastonbury, Dunstan, Monasticism and Manuscripts’, Art Hist. 2 (1979), 275–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who stresses the importance of the scriptorium at Glastonbury during this period and notes that Glastonbury ‘was perhaps the first English house to adopt Caroline minuscule, the reformed script evolved on the continent during the reign of Charlemagne and introduced into several English houses as a result of the contact with continental monasteries established during the monastic reform of the tenth century’ (p. 276); and Bishop, T. A. M., English Caroline Minuscule (Oxford, 1971), pp. xvii, xviii and 1–2.Google Scholar

4 As late as the sixteenth century the Glastonbury monks continued to claim Dunstan as one of their chief patrons and to minimize his links with other establishments and with Canterbury in particular. Indeed, in 1508 Abbot Richard Beere engaged in a major – and well documented – dispute with the archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, over Dunstan's relics. Hunt suggests (Saint Dunstan's Classbook, p. xv) that the various booklets associated with St Dunstan which together now form Auct. F. 4. 32 were assembled as a single book at the time of this dispute and the inscription on Ir added: ‘Pictura et scriptura huius pagine subtus visa est de propria manu sancti Dunstani.’

5 On these three abbots, see William's, De Antquitate, ed. Scott, pp. 134 and 156–8.Google Scholar

6 Willelmi Malmesbiriensis monachi de gestis pontificum Anglorum libri quinque, ed. N.E.S.A. Hamilton, RS 52 (London, 1870), 196.Google Scholar

7 See Carley, J. P., ‘John Leland and the Contents of English pre-Dissolution Libraries: Glastonbury Abbey’ Scriptorium 40 (1986), 107–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There was a major fire at Glastonbury in 1184 and the later Glastonbury chroniclers Adam of Damerham and John of Glastonbury both state that books were destroyed at this time. Still, a variety of indications – such as a group of books copied for Henry of Blois just before the fire, most of which survived intact–suggest that the loss of books in the fire may not have been as extensive as was later claimed.

8 In the preface to his printed edition of Leland's ‘New Year's Gift’ of 1546/7 (John Leyland. The Laboryouse Serche for Englandes Antiquitees (London, 1549Google Scholar repr. Amsterdam, 1975)), John Bale provides a contemporary description of the fate of the English monastic libraries: ‘A great nomber of them whych purchased those superstycyouse mansyons, reserued of those lybrarye bokes, some to serue theyr iakes, some to scoure theyr candelstyckes, & some to rubbe their bootes. Some they solde to the grossers and sope sellers, & some they sent ouer see to be bokebynders, not in small nombre, but at tymes whole shyppes full, to the wonderynge of the foren nacyons' (B.Ir).

9 It is possible that Leland himself took manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey for his own collection or for the libraries of Henry VIII – certainly he later claimed to have acquired a copy of St Patrick's Charter from Glastonbury. On tshe topic of private collectors and their importance to the survival of manuscripts from individual libraries, see Wright, C. E., ‘The Dispersal of the Libraries in the Sixteenth Century’, The English Library before 1700, ed. Wormald, F. and Wright, C. E. (London, 1958), pp. 148–75Google Scholar. For the types of text most likely to have survied the Dissolution, see Ker, N. R., ‘The Migration of Manuscripts from the English Medieval Libraries’, The Library 4th ser. 23 (1943), 1–11.Google Scholar

10 Gneuss, H., ‘A Preliminary List of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1100’, ASE 9 (1981), 1–60Google Scholar, finds only five items for which a Glastonbury provenance can be established: Cambridge, University Library, Ee. 2. 4 (922); University Library, Kk. 5. 32 (2074), fols. 49–73; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F. 4. 32 (S.C. 2176), Bodley 579 (S.C. 2675) and Hatton 30 (S.C. 4076). Rella, F. A. (‘Continental Manuscripts acquired for English Centers in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Centuries: a Preliminary Checklist’, Anglia 98 (1980), 107–16)Google Scholar adds two other items which may have been at Glastonbury by the mid-tenth century: London, Lambeth Palace Library, 237, fols. 146–208, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C. 697. Yet another manuscript, now Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 3363, has annotations by Hand D, that is, the hand which seems to be that of Dunstan writing at Glastonbury before 957 – on which see Parkes, M. B., ‘A Note on MS Vatican, Bibl. Apost., lat. 3363’, Boethius. His Life, Thought and Influence, ed. Gibson, M. (Oxford, 1981), pp. 425–7Google Scholar. On the slight possibility of a Glastonbury provenance for London, BL, Add. 24193, see R. W. Hunt, ‘Manuscript Evidence for Knowledge of the Poems of Venantius Fortunatus in late Anglo-Saxon England’ (with and appendix, ‘Knowledge of the Poems in the Earlier Period’, by Lapidge, M.), ASE 8 (1979), 279–95, at 286Google Scholar. It is also worth nothing that in his Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, 2nd ed. (London, 1964)Google Scholar, N. R. Ker gives fewer than forty proved survivors from Glastonbury for the whole Middle Ages (pp. 90–1).

11 Higgitt (‘Glastonbury’, p. 282) suggests that there is also a tendency among modern art historians and palaeographers to associate unascribed manuscripts with more famous houses such as Winchester and Canterbury through a kind of osmosis.

12 In the guidelines proposed for editors of the forthcoming Corpus of British and Medieval Library Catalogues it has been emphasized that editors should employ this method wherever possible. Naturally, this kind of proof can never be conclusive: even in the case of a long series of matching entries there is always the remote possibility of a lost twin.

13 This inventory survives in Cambridge, Trinity College R. 5. 33 (724), 102r–103v. It was first ptd Hearne, T., Johannis … Glastoniensis chronica sive historia de rebus Glastoniensibus. 2 vols. (Oxford, 1726) ii, 423–44Google Scholar and repr. Williams, T. W., Somerset Mediaeval Libraries (Bristol, 1897), pp. 55–76Google Scholar. The arrangement of the 1247/8 catalogue is typical of similar lists from the twelfth century onwards, on which see Derolez, A., Les Catalogues de bibliothèques, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental 31 (Turnhout, 1979), 30–1:Google Scholar ‘la Bible et ses commentaires, les Pères les plus estimés (S. Augustin, S. Jérôme, S. Ambroise, S. Grégoire le Grand), suivis par les Pères jugés de second rang et les théologiens du moyen âge. Dans les dernières rubriques du catalogue sont consignés le cas échéant les vies de saints, les textes législatifs, les sermons, l'histoire, éventuellement la médicine et les sciences, les ouvrages en langues vulgaires et, suivant le caractère de la bibliothèque, aussi les livres d'école (libri scolastici) et les livres liturgiques.’ The 1247/8 list also exhibits a tendency common among catalogues in the later Middle Ages (during a period, that is, when numbers of books were fast increasing) to supplement the old categories with increased numbers of author headings and more complex subject hedings.

14 As he moved a title to a new position the annotator naturally expunged the old entry, and he was very meticulous in his work. Interestingly, six manuscripts (two of which are described as inutilis) are removed and placed in a special heading at the end of the catalogue where they are described as amissi: ‘Beda de arte rethorica. Passiones sanctorum martirum et translacio sancti benedicti. Item translacio sancti benedicti. Priscianus de nomine et pronomine et uerbo. Regula de gestis et capcione hybernie et quedam alia in eodem uolumine. Freculfus.’

15 To date I have not come across any other English catalogue of the period which makes use of such categories, although an Exeter catalogue of 1327 notes the existence of – but does not list individually – ‘multi alii libri vetustate consumpti Gallice, Anglice, et Latine scripti, qui non appreciantur, que nullius valoris reputantur’ (see Wilson, R. M., ‘The Contents of the Mediaeval Library’, The English Library before 1700, ed. Wormald, and Wright, , pp. 85–111, at 86)Google Scholar. The most intriguing category in the Glastonbury list is, of course, uetustissimi, and eight books are so described. Two, not unexpectedly, come under the heading of works by St Jerome: Ieronimus super Matheum (see Dekkers, E. and Garr, A., Clavis Patrum Lationrum, 2nd ed. (Steenbrugge, 1961)Google Scholar, no. 590) and the spurious Ieronimus de consonancia ewangeliorum (Clavis, no. 631). A third item is the equally popular translation by Rufinus of Origen's Commentary on the Pentateuch: Origenes super libros mosaice (Stegmüller, F., Repertorium biblicum medii aevi, 11 vols. (Madrid, 1950–1980), nos. 6170–80.Google Scholar Two ancient copies of Priscian's Institutio de nomine et pronomine et uerbo are listed. Law, V., The Insular Latin Grammarians (Woodbridge, 1982), p. 21Google Scholar, points out that this was one of the best known grammatical works in Britain in the seventh and eighth centuries – it seems possible therefore that the Glastonbury copies date from this period. There are also two ancient copies of Alcuin's Liber de uirtutibus et uitiis. Both are the first item in composite manuscripts, the other components of which are also given; neither, however, can be associated with surving manuscripts. Finally, there is a copy of Eutyches's Ars de uerbo, which has survived as the first quire of Auct. F. 4. 32 (fols. 1–9).

16 The numbering in parentheses below, as elsewhere, is editorial.

17 In these entries the reference is presumably to the eighth-century vita by Felix of Crowland, at least one copy of which was still found in the library as late as 1533. On manuscripts of Felix's vita see Roberts, J., ‘An Inventory of Early Guthlac Materials’, Mediaeval Studies 32 (1970), 193–233, at 194–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar see also Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1956). Colgrave (p. 44)Google Scholar lists the three Glastonbury manuscripts as missing. On John Leland's reference to the vita see J. P. Carley, ‘John Leland and the Contents’, p. 114. There was a well developed cult of St Guthlac at Glastonbury, partially as a result of an early confusion between the Crowland saint and a local ninth-century abbot of the same name, on which see The Cbronicle of Glastonbury Abbey. An Edition, Translation and Study of John of Glastonbury's ‘Cronica sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesie’, ed. J. P. Carley and trans. D. Townsend (Woodbridge, 1985), p. 275.Google Scholar

18 Sancti Iuliani Toletanae sedis episcopi opera I, ed. J. N. Hillgarth, CCSL 115 (Turnhout, 1976), 9–126Google Scholar on surviving manuscripts, see pp. xxv–xxxvi. The Prognosticon existed in a very large number of copies in England as well as on the Continent; see Hillgarth, J. N., ‘El Prognosticon futuri saeculi de San Julián de Toledo’, Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia 30 (1957), 5–57.Google Scholar

19 The fact that the various copies of Julian’s Prognosticon were separated in the inventory by a number of unrelated manuscripts highlights the kind of problem which the 1248 cataloguer was trying – not always successfully – to resolve. In a system where there is no means of crossreferencing, what does one do with multiple entries? In fact, Britun, if it was he, shifted a number of his predecessor's entries to new positions on the grounds that the second or third text might seem more important than the first.

20 Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis, auctore Joanne Lelando Londinate, ed. A. Hall, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1719) 1, 131Google Scholar. As the twenty-fourth item in his list of books from Glastonbury, Leland mentions ‘Aenigmata Simposii, Aldhelmi, Eusebii, Tautuni’, on which see my ‘John Leland and the Contents’, pp. 116–17. It is not surprising, by the way, that the 1247/8 catalogue gives only one title from this group of riddle collections, since the lists of contents in the catalogue were by no means comprehensive; often only the first or most famous item was noted. All the collections have been ptd Collectiones aenigmatum Merovingicae aetatis, in Tatvini Opera omnia. Variae collectiones Aenigmatum Merovingicae aetatis. Anonymus de dubiis nominibus, ed. M. de Marco and F. Glorie, 2 vols., CCSL 133–133A (Turnhout, 1968) I, 167–271 and 371–539, and I, 621–723.Google Scholar

21 For a full description see Rigg, A. G. and Wieland, G. R., ‘A Canterbury Classbook of the mideleventh Century (the “Cambridge Songs” Manuscript)’, ASE 4 (1975), 113–30Google Scholar. For Leland's list of books from St Augustine's, Canterbury, see Joannis Lelandi antiquarii de rebus Britannicis collectanea, ed. T. Hearne, 3rd ed., 6 vols. (London, 1774) IV, 7–8Google Scholar. The riddle collections are all contained in Part III of Gg. 5–35, although in a slightly different order from that in BL Royal 12. C. XXIII: Eusebius (370r–374v), Tatwine (374–377v), Symphosius (389r–394r), and Aldhelm (394r–407r).

22 Dated to the beginning of the eleventh century; see Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar, no. 263. See also O'Keeffe, K. O'B., ‘The Text of Aldhelm's Enigma no. c in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C. 697, and Exeter Riddle 40’, ASE 14 (1985), 61–73 at 65–6Google Scholar. In her analysis of the text of Aldhelm's Enigmata, O'Keeffe comes to the conclusion that although Gg. 5. 35 and Royal 12. C. XXIII clearly shared an exemplar for the early part of the text, it is tempting to postulate – but impossible as yet to prove – that Gg. 5. 35 had a different exemplar after 398v.

23 Bishop, T. A. M., ‘Notes on Cambridge Manuscripts, Part VII: the Early Minuscule of Christ Church, Canterbury’, Trans. of the Cambridge Bibliographical Soc. 3 (1959–1963), 413–23, at 421–2.Google Scholar

24 Personal communication from Dr M. T. Gibson, who is preparing an edition of the medieval Canterbury catalogues. See also James, M. R., The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge, 1903).Google Scholar

25 The relationship between this manuscript, however, and the one represented by the earlier entry in the catalogue – that is, the manuscript beginning with Felix’s vita – is not yet clear me.

26 See Ker, Catalogue, no. 263. Lord William Howard (1563–1640) of Naworth Castle, Cumberland, was an avid collector of manuscripts and owned, , inter alia, Oxford, Bodleian LibraryGoogle Scholar, Lat. hist. a. 2 (the ‘Magna Tabula’), a fifteenth-century Glastonbury book. After he died a number of his manuscripts went to his nephew Thomas, on which see Selections from the Housebold Books of the Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle, ed. G. Ornsby, Surtees Soc. 68 (London, 1877), lxGoogle Scholar. It seems at least possible, therefore, that Royal 12. C. XXIII also originally formed part of Lord William's collection and that he had had access to a group of Glastonbury manuscripts.

27 My discussion of the date and origin of Kk. 5. 34 is based on Lapidge, M., ‘Three Latin Poems from Æthelwold's School at Winchester’, ASE I (1972), 85–137.Google Scholar

28 The titles are those provided by Lapidge, ibid.

29 See ibid. pp. 105–6; see also below, n. 43.

30 For specific parallels see ibid. pp. 89–90.

31 Lapidge (ibid. p. 95) reports the opinion of T. A. M. Bishop on this matter. Bishop's pronouncement was guarded, as indeed it must be, given the paucity of surviving manuscripts in the Winchester, and particularly New Minster, literary script of this period.

32 Each quire has quire signatures in the original hand in the middle of the bottom margin, the numbering advancing from ix (72 V) to xiii (104 V). Fol. 112–that is, the last leaf of quire xiv – is missing.

33 Miss Jayne Ringrose has kindly identified the foliation as that of Pink, formerly Head of the Manuscript Department, who has replaced somewhat earlier numbers which began (also in pencil) at 1. In the following description my references are to Pink's foliation. Manuscript headings are given in capitals; titles in lower case are editorial.

34 See Sancti Aurelii Augustini Quaestiones euangeliorum cum appendice Quaestionum XVI in Matthaeum, ed. A. Mutzenbecher, CCSL 44B (Turnhout, 1980), 73–83.Google Scholar

35 corr. from sumptas.

36 See Bloomfield, M. W.et al., Incipits of Latin Works on the Virtues and Vices, 1100–1500 A.D. (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), nos. 0455 and 3550Google Scholar see also Winandy, J., ‘L'oeuvre littéraire d' Ambroise Autpert’, RB 60 (1950), 93–119, at 98–100Google Scholar. This work is attributed to a variety of other authors, including St Augustine and lsidore of Seville.

37 See Divjak, J., Die bandscbriftlicbe Überlieferung der Werke des Heiligen Augustinus. IV: Spanien und Portugal, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.–hist. Klasse, Sitzungsberichte 292 (Vienna, 1974), 33 and 302.Google Scholar

38 Sermonesvarii, nos. 151, 152, 153 and 154 (ptd PL 38, 814–40). As far as I can discover, there is no standard collection of sermons by Augustine beginning with this sermon and taking as its heading ‘Orationes Augustini de concupiscentia carnis aduersus spiritum’. See Verbraken, P.-P., Etudes critiques sur les sermons authentiques de Saint Augustin, Instrumenta Patristica 12 (Steenbrugge, 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 For a description of the other contents of this manuscript see Cuissard, C., Inventaire des manuscrits de la bibliothèque d'Orléans. Fonds de Fleury (Orléans, 1885), pp. 76–8Google Scholar. Dr Elisabeth, Pellegrin has kindly put her notes on Orléans 159Google Scholar (136) at my disposal.

40 I have checked all the references (without any success) in the exhaustive index scriptorum in Mutzenbecher's edition of the Quaestiones euangeliorum, pp. 152–72.

41 The source for my discussion of the textual tradition of Ausonius is Reeve, M. D., ‘Ausonius’, in Texts and Transmission, ed. Reynolds, pp. 26–8Google Scholar, and the articles cited therein.

42 Personal communication: ‘Ins. x2, when Kk. 5.34 was written, Z is not otherwise known to have circulated, and relatives of V must also have been rare, because only one other survivesin the Oratio (Paris lat. 7558, s. ix2/4, probably from central France) and only two others in the Technopaegnion (Paris lat. 2772, s. ix3/4, probably from Lyon, and Leiden Voss. lat. Q. 33, part iii, s. x, French). In what privileged library did the conflation of these rare versions take place? In 1981, through working on the transmission of Cicero's Aratea, I became aware of connexions in s. x2 between Fleury and Winchester, and it occurred to me that Fleury might well have been the place that had both Ausonian selections at its disposal: first, because at the date of V the movements of the Spaniard Theodulf link Fleury with Lyon and doubtless with its Spanish colony, secondly, because Paris lat. 18275 (s. xiii, containing excerpts from a selection very much like Z) comes from the neighbourhood of Paris.’

43 See ‘The Letter of.L. to Archbishop Dunstan’, The Cult of St Switbun, Winchester Stud. 4.2 (Oxford, forthcoming)Google Scholar. It must be noted, however, that Lapidge's case, strong as it may seem, is based on stylistic grounds alone.

44 The translation is that of Lapidge, ‘The Letter of.L. to Archbishop Dunstan’. The Latin (as emended by Lapidge from the badly damaged manuscript) reads: ‘ut commentum Flori quod habet domnus abbas Oscarus, et alios libellos qui habentur Wintonie quique conda<m> sui fuerunt, <nunc> pro Christi nomine illi reddere faciatis, quoniam qui<dem> hoc coenobium Floriacense quo nunc degit – utpote igne <consumptum> – his caret codicellis’.

45 See Voss, L., Heinrich von Blois Biscbof von Wincbester (1129–1171) (Berlin, 1932)Google ScholarKnowles, D., Saints and Scholars. Twenty-five Medieval Portraits (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 51–62Google Scholar also Wormald, F., The Winchester Psalter (London, 1973), pp. 125–6Google Scholar. According to Henry's own account he found Glastonbury Abbey at the point of ruin when he first became abbot and he therefore set about restoring the monastery. He also encouraged William of Malmesbury to write his history of Glastonbury which, in turn, was dedicated to him.

46 See Adami de Domerham Historia de rebus gestis Glastoniensibus, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1727) II, 317–18Google Scholar. That the manuscript described in the 1247/8 catalogue was a copy of Kk. 5. 34 is at least theoretically possible, but it certainly does not appear in the list of books transcribed for Henry. Nor does it seem a likely candidate for copying in its entirety during the period.

47 See Haney, K. E., ‘The Provenance of the Psalter of Henry of Blois’, Manuscripta 24 (1980), 40–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is also worth noting that Henry's successor as abbot was Robert (1171–8), who had previously been prior at Winchester Cathedral and who could also have brought books with him: see Knowles, D., Brooke, C. N. L. and London, V. C. M., The Heads of Religious Houses, England and Wales 940–1216 (Cambridge, 1972), p. 80.Google Scholar

48 See Reeve, M. D., ‘The Textual Tradition of the Appendix Vergiliana’, Maia 28 (1976), 233–51, at 250–1.Google Scholar

49 Harwood was a fellow of Corpus Christi College and a prebendary of Winchester from 1581 to 1623- Several of the manuscripts (although certainly not all) which he gave to the Bodleian are from Winchester and this tempted Reeve to speculate that Kk. 5. 34 stayed in the Winchester area after the Dissolution. Assuming that the manuscript moved to Glastonbury before 1247, however, this line of reasoning no longer pertains. By the time Bernard saw the manuscript, moreover, Harwood would long since have been dead and this, it seems to me, makes the identification somewhat dubious. An even more remote candidate is Sir Thomas Whorwood of Holton Park, Wheatley, near Oxford, whose wife Ursala (d. 1653) owned London, BL, Add. 9381 (from Bodmin Priory)- on which see Ker, Catalogue, no. 126.

50 On Moore see McKitterick, D., Cambridge University Library, A History. The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 47–86.Google Scholar

51 The research for this article was undertaken during my period as Munby Fellow in Bibliography at the Cambridge University Library and I am deeply grateful to the committee which elected me to the fellowship and to my colleagues at the University Library. I should also like to thank Dr Michael Lapidge, Dr David Dumville and Professor Michael Reeve for their advice and for their careful reading of this article.