Register of Writs, manuscript in Latin, Anglo-Norman French and Middle English, on vellum [England (probably London), fifteenth and early sixteenth century]

(1) Richard Nykke (or Nix; c.1447-1535), last Catholic bishop of Norwich before the religious reforms of King Henry VIII, and a conservative and independent pro-Catholic voice in Reformation England: contemporary inscriptions on last vellum endleaf (“Liber Ricardi Nykke episcopi Norwicensis”) and along vertical edge between clasps on backboard (“Lib[er] Nyke Norwych”). He publically criticised the Lollards, expressed great anxiety about Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament and was among those ecclesiastics who defied Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1533 and had to be ‘brought to heel’. Before taking up ecclesiastical office, he studied Law at Bologna, and continued to practise it throughout his life, usually in the Catholic cause against Henry VIII. He had a substantial library, and also owned manuscripts with interests in Humanism (Durham Cathedral MS.C.iv.3: a fiftenth-century Piero Candido’s Latin translation of Plato’s Republic; and Cambridge, St. John’s College MS.205:a fiftenth-century Virgil, Opera) and medicine (Glasgow University Library, Hunterian MS.T.5.19: fourteenth-century Middle English medical recipes; and U.5.9: a fourteenth-century Speculum fleobothomie), as well as theological volumes (London, Lambeth Palace, formerly Sion College MS.L40.2/L.5: a thirteenth-century English Bible; Colchester Museum MS 213.32: a fifteenth-century Sarum Breviary; and Lincoln Cathedral MS.B.6.10: a fifteenth century Peter de Alliaco, Tractates) and legal reference works (the present manuscript and British Library, Sloane MS.990: a fourteenth-century Statuta Angliae antiqua). These last two must have been used by him in King’s Bench cases under Henry VII and perhaps also in his own defense in 1534 when he is reported to have been incarcerated in Marshalsea prison by Henry VIII.

(2) Henry Thomas Barratt: his inscription dated 1826 inside front board, recording the gift of the book from his father. Most probably the attorney and solicitor active in Huntingdon in the 1820s and 1830s. Given by him to the Law Society: their MS.6 (105.g).

N.R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, I, 1969, pp.120-21

A.B. Emden, Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to AD. 1500, II, 1958, pp.1382.

This is a substantial legal collection written for practical use by a medieval lawyer. In the early years of the sixteenth century the contents list, alphabetical index at the front and 8 new sections were added (fols.33-40, 65-88, 315-44, 358, 359, 400-09), evidently for Bishop Nykke, containing copies of further legal extracts and related material, including a writ addressed to Roger Lupton, clerk of the Hanaper (1509-17) in favour of St. Stephen’s, Westminster (fol.87r). Further additions to space at the ends of the book include the oath of the master of chancery, in French (fol.iiir), a list of charges payable by Genoese and other foreign merchants for safe-conduct in England (fol.404v-05r), the oath sworn by Richard II at his coronation (fol.410r), a short Middle English tract opening, “All writtez of Couenaunt …” (fol.iiiv), and perhaps most interestingly in a book used by a defender of English Catholicism during the Reformation, two copies of English formulas in the name of “the Bysshopryk of C” (either Canterbury, Chester, Chicester or Coventry) renouncing “all the wordys comprised in the Popes Bull made vnto me” and instead promising loyalty to “the kyng our sovreign lord” (fol.404r).