A DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH MANUSCRIPT TERMINOLOGY 1450–2000 This page intentionally left blank A DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH MANUSCRIPT TERMINOLOGY 1450–2000 PETER BEAL 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. 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Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Litho ISBN 978–0–19–926544–2 13579108642 To Grace Ioppolo This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface viii Illustrations xii A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology 1 1450–2000 Select Bibliography 452 Preface This dictionary was originally inspired by John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors (first published in 1952). What he had done for books it seemed reasonable to do for manuscripts. Not, however, that the audience would be the same, for it is not necessarily collectors who handle manuscripts most. Almost everyone has been using, writing, annotating, or signing documents of one kind or another, whether letters, shopping lists, or tax forms, for most of their lives. Those with special interests in the field, who produce or handle them almost every day, range from writers and amateur genealogists to academics, archivists, historians, lawyers, postal workers, accountants, and, in effect, a host of others engaged in professions where documentation is their principal focus of attention. In the absence of a clear guide to such matters, it therefore seemed time to make a serious attempt to establish the language and vocabulary involved in the field of manuscripts and related subjects. So what terms to include, what to exclude, and where to draw the line? In fact, as this dictionary evolved from an estimated 250 entries into 1,500 or more (counting 600 cross-references), and as brief definitions grew longer, and as the boundaries of John Carter’s book were abandoned, it became clear that the main principle of selection operating here was my own interests and knowledge, which are now offered to the reader for what they are worth. The scope of this work is consequently as follows. The date 1450 is taken as my starting point as approximating to the invention of moveable type which ushered in the age of printing. I therefore exclude most terms relating to medieval manuscripts, which is a specialist field I leave to medievalists, while nevertheless including terms for some common types of manuscript that survived longer than 1450. I also eschew discussion of the detailed features of different scripts flourishing before or after 1450, since this, too, is a subject in its own right, best left to palaeographers, who are able to describe and illustrate the features of these scripts elsewhere at much greater length and more expertly than I can. As for extending coverage to 2000, I frankly admit to a special interest in the early modern period (16th–17th century), which the majority of the entries here makes perfectly obvious. Effectively I go up to the present, however, in so far as most earlier terms have continued to be used one way or another, or else remain of relevance to scholars and researchers in general, and in so far as they relate to writing matters and technologies in the pre-electronic era. In other words, I go as far as including ‘typewriters’, but (barring a few passing references) exclude the technical vocabulary generated by the age of computers (not excepting the ubiquitous ‘hypertext’), which, too, is a subject in itself. As for the term ‘English’ in my title, this is deliberately ambiguous. I deal with English terminology and also with terminology relating to English manuscripts or manuscripts in England and the English-speaking world. Nevertheless I take the liberty of very occasionally venturing overseas to non-English-speaking countries to mention other subjects that seem to me to be relevant in some respect, if only by way of contrast or comparison (such as ‘amatl’ in relation to paper, ‘portolan’ as a continental type of map, or the medieval ‘pecia system’ vis-a`-vis English systems of scribal production). So what terminology relates to manuscripts? I have attempted to encom- pass here a substantial number of types of document and related matters, including: . manuscripts usually categorized by their physical form or by the nature of their contents or function they perform (codicil, glebe terrier, letters patent, psalter); . physical materials associated with manuscripts (paper, ink, vellum); . other physical features, such as size, textual layout, decoration, and seals (duodecimo, cross-hatching, historiated, Great Seal); . condition of manuscripts (cockling, damp-staining, oxidation); . writing instruments and appurtenances (pen, pencil, inkwell, penknife); . writing surfaces (bureau, desk, writing box); . manuscript containers (cabinet, dispatch box, solander box); . writers and other functionaries responsible for document production (notary, scribe, scrivener); . notable custodians and repositories of manuscripts (Master of the Rolls, British Library, Public Record Office); . scripts and handwriting (secretary, italic, calligraphy); . lettering and palaeographical features (ascender, duct, flourish); . postal features (address, Bishop mark, gallows letter); . editing or printing of manuscripts (collation, eclectic, emendation, lemma); ix . other miscellaneous terms used in descriptions of manuscripts relating to such subjects as: –academic (matriculation register, supplicat); –accountancy and finance (cheque, invoice, ledger, waste book); –authorship (anonymous, ascription, ignoto); –cartography (portolan, rhumb-line, wind-rose); –dating (circa, contemporary, Old style, New style); –drama and literature (foul papers, promptbook, miscellany); –ecclesiastical (bull, missal, dimissorials); –ephemera (postcard, scrapbook, scripophily); –heraldry (coat of arms, emblazon, trick); –law (barrister, bond, courts of law, indenture); –maritime (log, order of battle, scrimshaw); –military (commission, return); –Public Records and State Papers (Close Rolls, Patent Rolls); –and other occasional subjects. I have, on the other hand, excluded most of the many literary genres occasion- ally represented in manuscripts (acrostic, ballad, carmen figuratum, epigram), as well as the technical vocabulary of professional archivists (e.g. de-accession, declassification, disposition, screening), of which there are various currently available glossaries. As for the subject of bibliography, I inevitably overlap with Carter onvarious occasions(binding, colophon,hinges, title-page),but exclude his terminology that relates purely to printed books. Clearly the types of manuscript included here could be extended by the hundred—as far as all those encompassed by the Dewey library classification system—if all are defined by their contents and subject matter (ranging from anatomy and erotica to witchcraft and zoology). By contrast, I have confined myself to just a few manuscripts defined by interesting subject (alchemical, Hermetic, Masonic, navigational, etc.) which tend to crop up from time to time in my own experience. While no doubt arguments about what should or should not be included here could be extended indefinitely, and some of my definitions mulled over as well, I hope that a wide range of readers will find my selection and treatment useful and informative. I can, of course, explain only what I know, not what I do not know (such as when and where many of the terms originated). In this context, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous observation comes to mind: ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.’ In the interests of clarity and readability, I have also decided not to clutter up the text with innumerable footnotes and source references. x I hope, above all, that this dictionary will stimulate more general interest in a field of human activity that those closely engaged in its study find endlessly fascinating. Illustrations In an ideal world, every term in this dictionary would be illustrated. As it is, I am enormously indebted for the large number of illustrations included