Copy number: G-144(1)

Wanting the blank leaf [a1] and the greater part of [a2], [e6], and [i5].

Binding: Contemporary Flemish blind-tooled leather over wooden boards, two clasps lost; rebacked. Formerly chained: staple-marks of a hasp at the head of the upper cover. A panel repeated four times on each cover with the inscription: ‘Iacobus Gauer me ligauit', Jakob van Gavere, active in Bruges in the second half of the fifteenth century; see Staffan Fogelmark, Flemish and Related Panel-stamped Bindings: Evidence and Principles (New York, 1990), 126, and Weale, 302.

Size: 296 × 203 × 38 mm.

Size of leaf: 284 × 202 mm.

Pen-trials including English script and drawings in the pastedowns and throughout the book. On [m9v] fifteenth/sixteenth-century additions in an English hand, relating to superbia and the dictum ‘melius est humiliari'. 10 hexameters headed: ‘Qui ambulat in sua semplicitate post se derelinquet beatos filios; incipit: Pulcher flos dulcem dat sepe colore saporem'; followed by six rhythmic verses; incipit: ‘Exaltat quam inpium(?) sed fastus depriuat ipsum'; followed by 23 rhythmic verses, incipit: ‘Sic [ ] tempus superbia.' On [m10r] further additions in the same hand, incipit: ‘Melius est humiliari cum []lis quam dividere spolia cum superbis', 19 lines of prose.

In the remaining part of [a2r] pen-work decoration is supplied in red, extending from a now lost initial supplied in blue. Three-line initials are supplied in blue or red.

Provenance: Edmond Perman (sixteenth century); inscription on [b1v]: ‘By me Edmond Perman of London de prentis and habberdashere for ix [ ]'. Darley family (sixteenth century); on [c3v]: ‘By me Edmonde Perman | by me John Darlye | by me Robert Darlye | by me Elisabeth Darlye'. On [c9v]: ‘By me John of Darlye of London scoller of Cambriche', sixteenth-century hand. On [d10r]: ‘Amen sayd John Hall in [ ]'. Acquired after 1738, but before 1843; this copy is listed as a manuscript entry in the eight volume, interleaved and annotated copy of Fysher, Catalogus, now in the Library archives, at II (D‑H), opposite p. 493 [Library Records b. 294]; it is also listed in Catalogus (1843), III 308.

SHELFMARK: Auct. 2Q 2.3.

Copy number: G-144(2)

Bound in modern guard-book of fragments.

Fragments of two leaves only remain, [a4]: 193 × 178 mm, and [a5]: 193 × 173 mm.

Provenance: the shelfmark indicates a date of acquisition after c.1892.

SHELFMARK: Inc. b. G97.1(24).