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The Royal Library As a Source for Sir Robert Cotton's Collection: a Preliminary List of Acquisitions

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THE ROYAL LIBRARY AS A SOURCE FOR SIR ROBERT COTTON'S COLLECTION: A PRELIMINARY LIST OF ACQUISITIONS JAMES P. CARLEY PUBLIC Record Office, Augmentation Office, Misc. Books i6o (E. 315/160), ff. iO7v-i2or, contains an alphabetical list of 910 books, printed and manuscript, found in the Upper Library at Westminster Palace in 1542.^ At approximately the same time the inventory was compiled, so it would appear, a number was entered into each book: this number corresponded to the place where the book occurred in the alphabetical sequences established by the list. Slightly afterwards, probably around 1550, more books came to Whitehall - presumably from Hampton Court and Greenwich - and these too were put into alphabetical order and an inventory number inserted.^ Somewhat later the printed and manuscript books were separated.^ The form of the inventory number inserted in each book is characteristic: it is always found on an upper recto corner of an early folio, and always takes the form 'No '. Most of the manuscripts found in the Upper Library at Westminster Palace, and it is manuscripts alone that I shall be discussing in this paper, were rescued from monastic houses at the time of the Dissolution^ and many have remained in the royal collection ever since. Not every title in the inventory, however, can be matched with a surviving royal book: indeed, approximately half disappeared at some point after 1542. The first major disruption, it would seem, must have occurred shortly after Henry VIII's death in 1547, in the period when Traheron, a radical evangehst, was librarian and when Edward VI's injunctions concerning the destruction of popish books were promulgated.'' Throughout Elizabeth's reign, too, books trickled out. Unwanted items, duplicates and such, went to interested individuals: Sir Thomas Pope (i5O7?-59)> William, Lord Howard of Effingham (d. 1573), Sir John Fortescue (d. 1607), and others. During the librarianships of Sir Peter Young (d. 1628) and his son Patrick Young (d. 1652), the situation improved and Sir Thomas Bodley, for example, was blocked in his scheme to remove books en masse to his own collection in Oxford. Nevertheless, individual items did continue to migrate. James Ussher (1581-1656) took possession of several manuscripts, including the beautiful illuminated psalter which survives as Trinity College, Dublin, MS. 53. Sir James Balfour of Denmilne (1600-57) acquired at least three manuscripts which are now in the Advocates Library in Edinburgh. Thomas Reid (d. 1624), Latin Secretary to James I and associated with Young in the translation into Latin of James's English writings, was given a luxurious bestiary, now Aberdeen, 52 U.L., MS. 24. Young, moreover, kept a certain number of books for himself, two of which can now be found in Oxford as Bodleian, Cherry MSS. 3 and 4.^ Young's principal dealings, however, seem to have been with Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631), with whom he made a variety of exchanges.' The following is a list of manuscripts, or parts of manuscripts, known to have been at Westminster in 1542, which migrated to Cotton's collection in the early seventeenth century. I. Cotton Vespasian B. XII (s. xv^). Among the post-1542 losses from the royal library, i.e. books no longer in the royal collection as such, is a text entitled 'Hunting and Hauking', whose inventory number should be 'No. 373'. At first glance this title would seem to pertain to a printed book, the well known Book of Hawking, Hunting and Biasing of Arms {The Book ofSt Albans),^ but, in fact, this is not the case. Rather, it describes a manuscript. Cotton Vespasian B. XII, which has the characteristic identifying number on f. 3r (fig. i).® Vespasian B. XII is a relatively elegant illuminated book which is made up of two texts :^'^ [a] William Twiti (d. 1328). Art of Hunting (ff. 3r-9r). This is the Middle English version of Twiti's UArt de Ve'nerie with a metrical introduction and three illustrations of the hunt and chase. ^^ [b] Edward of Norwich, second Duke of York (d. 1415). The Master of Game (ff. ior-io6r). His partial translation, with additions (written between 1406-13), of the Livre de la Chasse (1378) of Gaston III, Comte de Foix, undertaken for Henry V while he was still Prince of Wales. ^^ Although the text survives in a number of copies, the presentation copy appears to be lost.^^ Kathleen L. Scott has noted that decorations in Vespasian B. XII closely resemble work in a group of texts whose production may well be associated with Bury St Edmunds or Clare in the 14608.^* From her analysis of these manuscripts, Scott postulates that there must have been a group of wealthy provincial patrons acquiring books at this period and possibly having them illuminated in a single shop: 'The district may in fact have had only one illuminator's shop where a local, well-to-do buyer or his scribe/agent could have his books done (unless the buyer wished to go to the extra expense of sending a book to London). '^^ Most of the manuscripts examined by Scott are copies of works by John Lydgate, several of which descend from BL, Harl. MS. 2278, the text of Lydgate's Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund prepared for presentation to Henry VI after his prolonged visit to Bury St Edmunds in the Winter and Spring of 1433-4.^' Vespasian B. XII would, of course, also appeal to an aristocratic book purchaser and the possibly incomplete and partially erased arms which occur on ff. 10, 12 and 47V support the hypothesis of production for such an owner.^' On ff. iv, io6v, 107V, io8r, moreover, there are various annotations and scribblings which name specific individuals. On f. iv the following notes appear in a very late fifteenth-century hand: 'Johannes Herberts/Johannes of the pantry/Item payyde vnto gorge strokybe[.?] xx 1'. Herbert's name turns up elsewhere; particularly interesting is the reference on f. io8r: 'Iste lyber constat Johannes Harbytt'' 53 . /. Cotton MS. Vespasian B. XII, f 3 54 What these notes suggest, then, is that the book came to the Royal Household with a John Herbert who was an Officer of the Pantry. ^^ On f. io8r there is an erased inscription of ownership, and just below this the name 'Master Sapcot' appears. It seems likely that the reference here is to Sir John Sapcote (1448-1501), who was Squire of the Body 1472-85, and Knight of the Body 1485-1501.^^ Another individual is named on f. io8r, i.e. 'Henr. Branford' (possibly 'Bramford'): his name seems to be in a slightly later script.^** From all this one can conclude that Vespasian B. XII was produced in East Anglia for the individual whose erased arms appear in it. It may be he was a member of the Waldegrave family, although this is not certain. At some point the book came into the possession of John Herbert and was brought by him into the Royal Household, presumably shortly before 1500. Whether or not it passed from him to Master Sapcot or Walter Herbert is not clear; they may simply have been interested readers. (Whatever else, it is precisely the sort of book which would have appealed to courtiers.) Nor is there any indication of how it moved from private ownership into royal hands. The various jottings on the flyleaves make it seem improbable that it was a gift and unreturned borrowing would seem the most likely channel. To date, however, no independent documentary evidence has turned up to confirm this hypothesis and so the matter must remain within the realms of speculation. 2. Cotton Tiberius E. I (Redbourn, s. xiv). In the 1542 list No. 845 is described as 'Sanctilogium Io. de Anglia'. According to his Index Britanniae Scriptorum., moreover, John Bale saw a copy of' Sanctilogium Ioannis de Anglia' among the books in the king's library.^^ The reference quite clearly must be to John of Tynemouth's Sanctilogium Angliae, which survives, unedited, as the badly scorched Cotton Tiberius E. I, from Redbourn Priory.^^ Unfortunately, no inventory number can be detected in Tiberius E. I because of severe damage from the fire at Ashburnham House in 1731, but there is strong corroborating evidence to support the hypothesis that this manuscript came to Cotton from the royal collection. Cotton Tiberius E. I is a unique copy of the Sanctilogium Angliae. The next title in the 1542 inventory is 'Sanctilogium Guidonis': the only known copy of Guido de Castris's Sanctilogium survives as Royal 13 D. IX; it comes from Redbourn Priory and has the inventory number 846. These two manuscripts are the only identified survivors from Redbourn and they are very similar in their contents, which suggests that they would have both caught the eye of the individual collecting for the King at the time of the Dissolution. If Cotton Tiberius E. I is not identified as No. 845, moreover, then there must have been another copy of the same text which escaped the Dissolution and which Cotton acquired in some unknown manner from an equally unknown collector. At the same time, too, the Westminster copy would have had to have disappeared from the royal library, leaving no trace. The likelihood of this concatenation of events must certainly be almost nil.^^ 55 3- Cotton Vitellius E. VII, ff. 13-70 (Bardney, s. xiii-xiv). Around 1530 Henry VIII himself or one of his agents placed a cross beside the titles of five books from a list compiled at the Benedictine abbey of St Peter, St Paul and St Oswald at Bardney, Lincolnshire, and these volumes were subsequently removed to the royal collection.^'' Four can be identified, as would be anticipated, as surviving manuscripts from the Old Royal Library and all four carry Westminster inventory numbers.
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