Copy number: G-215(1)

Bound with 39 leaves of manuscript sermons in both Latin and English, five leaves at the front, the rest at the back, all the sermons written in a single sixteenth-century secretary hand; see N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, III (Oxford, 1983), 471-2; a large folder of typed notes and other material, mostly by G. H. Kempson, is now Marl. E 32*.

Wanting the blank leaf a1.

Binding: Sixteenth-century English (Oxford), perhaps c.1570, blind-tooled calf over pasteboards; two ties lost; rebacked and re-covered, with portions of the original backstrip and covers preserved. On both covers concentric fillets form an outer border and an inner frame. At each corner of the frame there was originally a small fleuron (Ker, Pastedowns, pl. XII, no. 28), although only one remains on the upper cover and three (one damaged) on the lower. In the inner rectangle of each cover is an ornamental centre-piece (Ker, Pastedowns, pl. VII, no. vii). On the spine a small ornamental stamp (Ker, Pastedowns, pl. XIII, no. 36).

Size: 208 × 143 × 44 mm.

Size of leaf: 200 × 130 mm.

Two parchment pastedowns, one at the front and one at the back, in a thirteenth/fourteenth-century hand, apparently on transubstantiation; see Ker, Pastedowns, no. 1595, where he suggests that the pastedowns may have been taken over from an earlier binding, a suggestion which he appears to retract in Ker, Medieval Manuscripts, III, 471, n. 1.

Copious marginal notes, in green and black ink, especially in the lower margins of c1 -h8, all in the hand which wrote the sermons, mainly in English, except on g2v -g3v and g6v -h8r. The notes are mostly extracts from patristic and other authors, with the names of the authors supplied in green, and with decoration in the form of horizontal bars and human faces supplied in black and green. ‘Nota' marks and underlining in the text in black and green. On the marginal notes see Ker, Medieval Manuscripts, III, 472, section no. 4.

Provenance: William White (1604-1678). Marlborough, Wiltshire, Vicar's Library, St Mary's; bequeathed by White in 1678 to the Mayor and Corporation of Marlborough for the use of successive vicars of St Mary's; former Marlborough shelfmarks on fore-edge: ‘604'; ‘33'. Deposited in the Bodleian Library in 1985; book-plate.

SHELFMARK: Marl. E 32.