Statuta Angliae, the Acts of Parliament from the first year of King Edward III to the twenty-third of Henry VI, in Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on vellum [England (most probably London), c.1450]

180 leaves (plus two modern vellum endleaves at each end, and including 1 blank leaf), 280mm. by 200mm., wanting two text leaves, else complete, remains of some contemporary quire signatures and catchwords, c.37 lines in brown ink in a number of professional anglicana hands, rubrics in angular capitals in same, paragraph marks in red and blue, running titles at head of pages, 3-line initials in blue with red penwork, full illuminated frontispiece with a 4-line initial in pink and blue with delicate white penwork (on fol.34r, following extensive index at front), enclosing a spray of fleshy and coloured acanthus leaves on brightly burnished gold grounds, with gold, pink and blue bars entwined with acanthus leaves and a large and realistic flowerhead with a golden pinecone-shaped centre, extending along height of inner margin to form text frame, other coloured foliage sprouting from upper and lower corners to enclose text at head and foot of page, some small spots and stains to a few text leaves, else in near flawless condition, marbled endleaves, nineteenth-century English mottled calf over pasteboards, gilt-tooled with double fillet and flowers at corners, corners bumped and spine with a few cracks, else in good condition

1. Written and illuminated c.1450, most probably in London: the text ends in 1444-45, and the fine frontispiece is very close to that of a contemporary manuscript of the same text (now London, PRO. E164/10, recorded by K. Scott, Dated and Datable English Manuscript Borders c.1395-1499, 2002, pp.64-5, as the product of a London workshop).

2. Most probably from the library of James Sotheby (d.1720), which was rich in medieval English manuscripts including a Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde and the Visions of Piers Plowman, now Huntingdon Library, MS.Hm143; to his heir C.W.H. Sotheby (d.1887) of Ecton Hall, Northants.: his armorial bookplate inside front board, and thence to his half-brother Major-General Frederick Edward Sotheby (d.1909), and to Lt.-Col. H.G. Sotheby (1871-1954); his sale in our rooms, The Sotheby Heirlooms part VII, 22 November 1955, lot 443 (illustrated), to the Robinson brothers for £260.

3. Bought by the present owner, an American collector, in 1991.

text

The text comprises the Acts of Parliament from the first year of King Edward III (1327) to the twenty-third of Henry VI (1444-45), opening “Come Hugh le dispenser le pier & hugh le dispenser le fitz nadgers a la suite Thomas adouges Count de Lancastre seneschal denglesche …”. It includes the controversial Statute of Labourers of 1349, which following the decimations of the Black Death from 1348-79, commanded the peasantry to work at their pre-pestilence wages. Increasingly severe penalties were spelt out in the acts of 1350 and 1360, in which a labourer who left his service for a town or another place would be declared an outlaw and branded with an ‘F’ (for fauxine) on his forehead, and the law extended its reach even into what the newly wealthy peasant might wear, forbidding the "outrageous and extravagant apparel of so many people, unsuitable to their estate and degree, which shall bring destruction and impoverishment to all the land”. Such overly punitive acts led to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1389, and following Richard II’s treacherous murder of its leaders the same tensions continued well into the fifteenth century when the present manuscript was copied.