Copy number: M-272(1)

For this copy see Coates–Jensen 247-8, no. 8.

Wanting the blank leaves [*1] and a1. The unsigned gathering of four leaves containing the ‘informationes et cautele' is bound at the end. The margin of fol. CCLV, G6, has been repaired with a parchment strip from a noted thirteenth-century breviary.

Binding: Seventeenth-century reversed calf, stamped with the arms of Ralph Sheldon; quarterly, 1 and 4 Sheldon, 2 Rudinge, 3 Willington. With sprinkled red-edged leaves and scars of index tabs. ‘33' painted in white at the head of the spine.

Size: 390 × 285 × 65 mm.

Size of leaf: 381 × 270 mm.

Marginal additions, mostly containing additional services for local saints, in perhaps one fifteenth-century book-hand; on E4v –E5r additional offices supplied in a contemporary cursive hand, with capital strokes in yellow. The word ‘Papa' and references to St Thomas Becket deleted in sixteenth-century black ink. On [nn4r] are two notes in the same sixteenth-century hand (apparently that of Humfrey Acton, for whom see below), the first (in English) detailing the length of the churchyard boundary at South Littleton church which was to be maintained by each land-holder; and the second (in Latin) recording the dedication of South Littleton church in 1204. On the documents see H. H. E. C[raster], ‘Notes and News', BQR 4,39 (1923), 54-5, at 54; and David C. Cox, Two South Littleton Documents from a Missal of Evesham Abbey, Vale of Evesham Historical Society Research Papers, 1 (Evesham, 1967), 27-34, with transcriptions of the documents at 31-3, the attribution of authorship to Acton (on the evidence of a comparison of the handwriting) at 27, the suggested dating of the notes to between 1540 and 1550 at 29, and an illustration of the second note at 33.

Provenance: John More (sixteenth century): see Ker, Medieval Libraries, 81, 261; inscriptions on [n2v] (upper margin, covered with parchment strip) and [n5r] (outer margin, covered with parchment square): ‘Orate pro bono statu magistri Johannis More decretorum doctoris qui hunc librum contulit capelle de le Battell Welle'. Evesham, chapel of Battle Well; C[raster], ‘Notes and News', 54 states that the site of the chapel is unknown. Evesham, Benedictine Abbey of BVM and S. Egwin; two parchment manuscript leaves written in a fifteenth/sixteenth-century hand and bound between y8 and z1 contain additional offices, including Translation of S. Egwin (fol. 1^r), ‘In commemoratione reliquarum' (leaf 1^v), which mentions the relics of SS. Egwin, Wystan, Oswald, Odulph as preserved ‘in presenti . . . ecclesia', thereby relating the provenance to Evesham Abbey: see C[raster], ‘Notes and News', 54; also other manuscript additions, covering local saints, e.g. on x6,7 (offices of S. Wystan and S. Odulph), y7v (office of S. Canute), [et]3r (memory of S. Credan), [et]4r (death of S. Thomas of Hereford), A3v (office of S. Oswald); on the shrines of various of these saints in the abbey see George May, A Descriptive History of the Town of Evesham (Evesham, 1845), 49-50. On [nn4v] an inscription in a sixteenth-century hand: ‘Iste liber constat [ ] anno domini M^o V^c ii'. Humfrey Acton (†1558); see Cox 27-8, who suggests that Acton removed the missal from Evesham and took it with him to South Littleton. South Littleton, church of S. Michael; Cox suggests that this item was subsequently removed to Worcester in c.1550: see Cox 28; Elizabeth Armstrong, ‘English Purchases of Printed Books from the Continent 1465-1526', English Historical Review, 94 (1979), 268-90 at 280; note on [nn4r] (see above), also inscription on the recto of front endleaf: ‘Missale Sarum ecclesiæ de South Littleton', in the hand of Anthony Wood, employed by Ralph Sheldon to arrange his library at Weston Park; see C[raster], ‘Notes and News', 55. Ralph Sheldon (1623-1684); coat of arms on upper cover. Sheldon armorial book-plate; see Howe, Book Plates, 26649, and James Roberts Brown, ‘Book-plate of Ralph Sheldon', Journal of Ex Libris Society, 5 (1896), 214-16, with book-plate reproduced on 214; also Sheldon's motto ‘In Posterum' on front endleaf; manuscript shelfmark, [?Sheldon] ‘C i/ii' on book-plate; sale (1781), lot 315, marked down to Richard Gough (1735-1809) for £0. 17. 0; note by Gough on recto of front endleaf: ‘17^s 1781'; C[raster], ‘Notes and News', 55 asserts incorrectly that this book was lot 17. Bequeathed to the Bodleian in 1809.

SHELFMARK: Gough Missals 33.