Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- [1395]-[1405] (Creation)
Level of description
File
Extent and medium
258 ff. (4 modern binding leaves, followed by original parchment leaves foliated 2-250 ff., and a further 4 modern binding leaves) : Parchment ; approx. 290 x 205 mm. (trimmed irregularly), written space variable, from 210-230 x 115-130 mm.
Rebound at NLW in 1956 in red morocco, blind stamped diamond and rectangular geometrical patterns, with metal ring and hook clasps and braided leather hinges. Sewn on five double bands. This binding replaced covers of dark leather on (possibly medieval) oak boards, removed (together with a guard leaf from a saec xiii Sarum Breviary) in 1930, and retained.
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Archival history
Numerous sixteenth-century inscriptions testify to the presence then of the manuscript in Chester: ‘ffouke Dutton Huius ly[bri] est possesor’ (f. 87); ‘R Wryne’ (f. 125 verso); Brereton family records of five births (f. 128 verso); ‘Joh[ann]es Barcomsted gen[erosus] huius libri’ (f. 145 verso); Banestar/Bannester family records of five births (f. 165); ‘Gilbart Nelsoun’ (f. 44); ‘James pratri’ (f. 171 verso); ‘Willm Dymmocke’ (f. 171 verso). The Brereton family records include the births of Frances, Richard, and Ann ‘at llanver neare carnarvon’ (f. 128 verso), and on f. 152 verso is a memorandum of debt, due 1625, signed ‘Andrew Brereton of llanvairiscaird in the Countie of Carnarvon gent’ (who died 1649). This may explain the way in which the manuscript travelled from Chester to Caernarfon, and thence to Hengwrt. The manuscript is included in the 1658 catalogue of manuscripts belonging to Robert Vaughan of Hengwrt, Meirionnydd as ‘Membrana 154 Chaucer’s Works very fairly written on vellom. In fol. 4 inches thick’.
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
A late fourteenth-, or early fifteenth-century manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, lacking VIII(G)554-1481 (i.e., the Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue and Tale); X(I)1180-end lost).
Doyle and Parkes’s ‘Scribe B’, the scribe of the Hengwrt Chaucer, has long been identified as having also been responsible for writing other manuscripts, including the Ellesmere Chaucer (Huntington Library MS 26 C 9). He was identified in 2006 by Linne Mooney as Adam Pinkhurst, a London-based scrivener associated with Chaucer.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Item: 2.1. Action: Digitized. Action identifier: Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI). Date: 20140808. Site of action: NLW. Authorization: NLW. Authorizing institution: Bill Endres of the University of Kentucky. Extent: ff. 2, 2v, 13v, 14, 85v, 87v, 159, 159v, 209v. Type of unit: Folios.
Accruals
System of arrangement
According to McCormick and Heseltine ‘This MS was misbound very early in its history’ (p. 245). According to Seymour, the fives sections of the manuscript ‘were not intended to be visually distinct in the bound volume’ (p. 31).
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Access to the original manuscript by authorised permission only. Readers are directed to use surrogate copies.
Conditions governing reproduction
Usual copyright laws apply.
Language of material
Script of material
Language and script notes
Middle English.
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Portions of the manuscript show historic damage, with top outer corners, and lower corners of ff. 210-215, gnawed by rodents before the manuscript arrived at NLW. The damaged portions were replaced with blank parchment in 1956.
Finding aids
Generated finding aid
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Digital version available http://hdl.handle.net/10107/4628556 (viewed September 2018)
Available on microfilm at the Library.
Digital images of the manuscript are available on CD-Rom in the Library's Reading Room.
Monochrome images of the manuscript are available in The Canterbury Tales: A Facsimile and Transcription of the Hengwrt Manuscript, with Variants from the Ellesmere Manuscript, ed. by Paul C. Ruggiers (Norman, Oklahoma, 1979).
Related units of description
Publication note
W. McCormick and J. E. Heseltine, The Manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Oxford, 1933), pp. 245-251.
Publication note
J. M. Manly and E. Rickert, 'The Hengwrt Manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales', The National Library of Wales Journal, 1 (1939), 59-75.
Publication note
The Text of the Canterbury Tales, Studied on the Basis of All Known Manuscripts (Chicago, 1940), ed. by J. M. Manly and E. Rickert, I, 266-283.
Publication note
A. I. Doyle and M. B. Parkes, 'Palaeographical Introduction', in The Canterbury Tales: A Facsimile and Transcription of the Hengwrt Manuscript, with Variants from the Ellesmere Manuscript, ed. by Paul G. Ruggiers (Norman, Oklahoma, 1979), pp. xix-xlix.
Publication note
N. F. Blake, The Canterbury Tales, Edited from the Hengwrt Manuscript (London, 1980).
Publication note
Charles A. Owen, Jr., The Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge, 1991).
Publication note
M. C. Seymour, A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts (Aldershot, 1997), II, 31-34.
Publication note
D. W. Mosser, 'Manuscript description', The Hengwrt Chaucer Digital Facsimile, ed. Estelle Stubbs (Leicester, 2000).
Publication note
Linne R. Mooney, 'Chaucer's Scribe', Speculum, 81 (2006), 97-138.
Publication note
Linne R. Mooney and Estelle Stubbs, Scribes and the City: London Guildhall Clerks and the Dissemination of Middle English Literature, 1375-1425 (York, 2013).
Publication note
'Manuscript description' on the 'Late Medieval English Scribes' database (viewed 1 April 2014).
Notes area
Note
Varying form of title: Chaucer Hengwrt.
Note
Previously Hengwrt MS 154.
Note
Title supplied by NLW cataloguers based on contents and modern usage.
Note
Siglum Hg.
Note
Pencil foliations begin with the first page as 2, possibly as the ‘leaf from an early-fourteenth-century Sarum breviary with musical notation’ was formerly bound with the text as f. 1 (Doyle and Parkes 1979, p. xlii).
Note
Script: anglicana formata, with double-compartment a, and looped ascenders on b and d, now identified as the hand of Adam Pinkhurst. The supplementary five hands include that of Thomas Hoccleve (on ff. 88 verso, 138 verso and 150).
Note
Ink: dark brown, or grey-ish brown.
Note
Decoration: The opening page (f. 2) begins with a 7-line initial W in blue, gold, red and pink. The text is surrounded by a full border–bars of the same colors, decorated with knots and trefoils–although the heading (‘Here bygynneth the Book of the tales of Cauntbury’), in a gold-brown ink, is above, and in places overlapped by, the top bar. Two-line blue initials with red penwork mark the openings of tales, prologues, and links. Smaller blue paraphs mark lesser textual divisions and glosses.
Note
Marginalia: names of pilgrims in left margin of the Prologue, and Latin quotations and other glosses thereafter in right margin.
Note
Ruled: Single columns of 39-44 lines per page. Ruled in dry point with pricks, some folios ruled in lead.
Note
Collation: 1-5(8), 6(2), 7(6), 8-11(8), 12(6), 13-20(8), 21(8+1), 22(8+8), 23-28(8), 29(10), 30-31(8). Signatures visible in quires 16-29 only.
Note
Locale: London.
Note
Preferred citation: Peniarth MS 392D [RESTRICTED ACCESS].
Alternative identifier(s)
Virtua system control number
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Description control area
Description identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation revision deletion
April 2014.
Language(s)
Script(s)
Sources
Archivist's note
Description compiled by Maredudd ap Huw, based on the work of previous describers, including Daniel W. Mosser.
Digital object metadata
Latitude
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Media type
Image
Mime-type
image/jpeg