A Digital Catalogue of the

Pre-1500 Manuscripts and Incunables of the

Second Edition

RECORDS OF UNTRACED MANUSCRIPTS

I do not repeat the records provided in Manly-Rickert (1:606-45) and essentially repeated by Seymour (1997, pp. 256-60). The references below, then, are found in neither of those two lists (see also Rickert 1931). On Manly-Rickert’s first entry, however, see Richardson 1990 (Richard Sotheworth to John Stopyndon; 1:606-45; PROB 11/2B/268: Will of Richard Sotheworth of Easthenreth, Berkshire, 20 May 1418).

1474: York Medieval Probate Index, Probate Register 4, fol. 220r: John Preston (Will Date 10 August 1474, Probate Date 29 November 1474), bequeathed a book called “Cantrebery Talez” to Dominus Richard Barthilmewe, capellanus, supervisor of the will.note

1492: The MS used by Wynkyn de Worde and the annotator of the Sterling Library copy of Pn (for the latter see Mosser 2007). Partridge refers to this MS as W. See also Tokunaga 2005, especially Chapter 4. In order to account for Wy’s close relationship both to El-Ll² and Gg-Ph¹, and for the relative paucity of glosses in the latter pair, Partridge proposes that: “It seems most plausible to construct a W, and in turn a V, which sit in the tradition close to El and Gg, drawing on the same textual sources they did, and containing abundant numbers of glosses, which were dropped in the transmission history that produced Gg but survived elsewhere. Perhaps copying of V resulted in two types of text, both glossed—a Gg-Ph¹ type and an El-Ll² type—and a further stage of copying led specifically to Gg and Ph¹ but largely omitted glosses” (p. 349).

Late Fifteenth Century: Youngs records a fragment of the Parson’s Tale in Bodleian MS Latin misc. c.66, “a commonplace book compiled by the Cheshire gentleman Humphrey Newton of Newton and Pownall (1466-1536). Transcribed near the end of the book are around fifty lines of prose on the sins of swearing and flattery” (p. 207). “The lines of the Tale selected for the commonplace book were the diatribes against the swearers and flatters found in the section on the sin of ire. They comprise lines I [X] 600-21, 626-27, and the first thirteen words of 628. The omission of lines 622-25 appears deliberate as Humphrey ended line 621 with an etc.” (p. 209). Youngs notes elsewhere that “the section consists of three bifolia, 93 + 94, 96 + 97, 108 + 109; a parchment booklet, fols. 112-29; a quire, fols. 122-29; and fifteen single sheets. The material includes items dating to the 1510s, but most of the paper stocks date to the late fifteenth century, making them older than those contained in the first part of the commonplace book” (p. 213, n. 7). She is correct about the paper stocks; some appear to be congruent with those in Tc³.

Seventeenth Century: Edwards argues that copies of the Cook’s Tale and Gamelyn in Ashmole 45 derive from a lost [fifteenth-century] witness (2005, p. 125; for a transcription of the Ashmole 45 text of the Cook’s Tale, see pp. 126-8).

Seventeenth Century: Beadle identifies a manuscript of the Cook’s Tale “compleat” (i.e., including the Tale of Gamelyn) borrowed from John Selden by Sir Francis Kinaston and described by the latter. Beadle suggests the reference *Se².

1721: Henry Worsely, cited in Urry’s 1721 edition, and alluded to by Manly-Rickert (1:617: “lost Worsely MS?”). Edwards eliminates all surviving MSS and concludes “that Urry was describing a manuscript previously unrecorded by modern scholars and now lost” (1985, p. 58).

MS of the Franklin’s Tale in private hands in England: NIMEV 4019, MS 87; see Edwards 2005, p. 126, n. 19: “For example, at least one unrecorded fifteenth-century fragment of part of the Canterbury Tales survives in private hands in England.”