Chronicles of England 2nd edn (Caxton): London, British Library, C.10.b.4 = BL.IB.55063
Physical Description:
Object Description:
Form: Codex
Material: Paper
Size: 242 mm x 180 mm (dimensions of all - size of leaves)
Size: 242 mm x 192 mm (dimensions of sheet a3-6, from another copy? - size of leaves)
Collation:
- Imperfect; wanting the first quire, the blank leaf a1, and leaves a7, x7-8,
y1-6.
Quire b, c4-5, g8, m7 and r8 were made up in 1846 from another unidentified copy.
Leaves a2-6 were made up in 1857, probably from three unidentified copies, including one leaf, a5, from the copy used in 1846.
Condition: Heavily cropped.
Rubrication and decorated initials:
- Number of hands: ?
- Summary: Initials in red. Red ink smudges occur in many pages. a3r (one of the made up leaves)
has paraphs in red.
- Hand: Initials
- Scope:
Hand decoration:
Drawings illustrative of the text on n6r, n7v, P4r.
Binding Description:
Bound in the private bindery of King George III, in gold-tooled straight-grain red morocco with his arms.
Additions:
Numerous marginal annotations in two hands (16th C).
some pen-trials.
Texts in leaves a7, x7-8, y1-6 are transcribed from the edition of 1480, possibly by John Ratcliffe.
Accompanying Material:
35 cuts from the 1577 edition of Holinshed's Chronicles have been inserted at an early date.
History:
- Provenance:
- John Hamshire (16th C), h6r, c1r.
- John Ratcliffe (before 1776).
- Bouthg by G. Nicol for King George III, Ratcliffe's sale, March 1776 (lot 1022)
- Provenance: For the unidentified copies from which leaves were added in 1846
- John Burcombe in his Booke, 1678 (b2r)
- Arthur Ford (b5v)
- Morris Jarvis (m7v)
- Acquisition:
- British Museum (1829)
Image Gallery:
Works referred:
Administration Information:
Images are supplied by Lotte Hellinga and scanned by CH and LM (2015).
All the information are quoted from BMC XI with kind permission by the editor.
Ed. by TK (2015)