Register Brevium, The Register of Writs, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 GBP

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Description

362 leaves (12 blank or mostly blank) plus 4 thick vellum flyleaves, 227mm. by 160mm., lacking one leaf after fol.14, else complete, collation: i^{12, ii^{13 [of 14, lacking iii], iii-xxxv^{10, xxxvi^{7 [of 10, blank viii-x cancelled], mostly with catchwords and ad hoc leaf signatures, c.34 lines, ruled in black, written-space 133mm. by 95mm., written in dark brown ink in an English legal bookhand, paragraph-marks throughout in red or blue (usually many on every page), running-titles and marginal headings marked with similar paragraph-marks,}}}} seventy-five illuminated initials, 3 lines high, in highly burnished gold on red and blue grounds with white tracery and with penwork sprays into the margins with green petals and gold bezants, a few early additions (blank spaces for many more), a few minor stains and signs of use, a few wormholes at beginning, generally in very fine condition with wide and mostly original margins, eighteenth-century English red morocco gilt, spine in compartments gilt, gilt title, marbled endleaves, red edges

Provenance

provenance

(1) Doubtless written and illuminated in London. It is one of a clearly recognisable group of luxurious and closely related legal manuscripts associated with the Inns of Court in the middle of the second half of the fifteenth century (cf. K.L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390-1490, II, 1996, pp.344-47, nos.131-33, with many references). The latest writ here was issued on 19 August 1468 at Reading, where Parliament had met that year to avoid the plague in Westminster.

(2) Signature on flyleaf, “E. Willes, 9 Ap: 1742”, perhaps Edward Willes (c.1723-1787), Solicitor General and Chief Judge of Common Pleas, who had entered Lincoln’s Inn in January 1741 and was called to the bar in 1747.

(3) Sir Clive Coates (1879-1971), of Helperby Hall, North Yorkshire, where the book may have been since the eighteenth century, with his booklabel ‘CC’; he married Lady Celia Crewe-Milne in 1946, and changed his surname to Milne-Coates; sale by his executors in our rooms, 24 June 1986, lot 108, to Maggs.

(4) Maggs, Bulletin 14 (1988), no.3, bought by the present owner in November 1987.

Catalogue Note

text

The Register of Writs is a formulary of real and fictitious examples of documents issued by the Royal Chancery. “According to Sir Edward Coke, the Register of Writs is ‘the name of a most ancient Book, and of great Authority in Law’. It consists of an enumeration of original writs current in the English Chancery, that is, writs originating actions. From these royal writs the common law descends” (E. De Haas and G.D.G. Hall, Early Registers of Writs, 1970, Selden Society, LXXXVII, p.xi). The text can be traced back to the twelfth century and was used by lawyers and religious houses as well as by members of the Chancery. It was continually modified and updated and the many blank spaces in the manuscript are in anticipation of constant additions. It was printed four times, 1531-1687. The text in the present manuscript is preceded by a long table of chapter headings, opening “Kalendarium, Capitulum primum, De brevibus de recto patentibus …” (fol.1r) and it ends on fol.360v,”… T[este] R[ege] apud Redynge xix die Augusti Anno octavo”.