Beschreibung:

STATUTES OF THE REALM INCLUDING MAGNA CARTA, in law French and Latin, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [England, first quarter of the 14th century] 95 x 55mm. ii + 218 leaves: 1 -3 8, 4 7(of 8, lacking vi), 5-10 8, 11 1 2, 12-16 8, 17 4, 18 8, 19 1 2(including 4 misbound folios from 17), 20-23 8, 24 7, signature marks and catchwords throughout, 23 lines written in brown ink in a small charter hand between two verticals and 24 horizontals ruled in brown, justification: 74 x 38mm, paragraph marks in red, blue or gold throughout and, from f.188, with red and blue flourishing, TWENTY LARGE EXTRAVAGANTLY FLOURISHED DIVIDED INITIALS OF BURNISHED GOLD AND BLUE with ornate cadels and drolleries into the margin, large illuminated initial with border and drollery, and THIRTY-EIGHT HISTORIATED INITIALS accompanied by a cusped border with leaf terminals and marginal grotesques or drolleries (darkening to leaves of Calendar, a few borders or grotesques slightly cropped, small pigment losses to some initials and borders initials). 18th-century calf gilt with silver catches in modern purple morocco box. AN EARLY COPY OF THE STATUTES FUNDAMENTAL TO BRITISH LAW WITH AN EXCEPTIONAL AND EXTENSIVE CYCLE OF HISTORIATED INITIALS PROVENANCE: 1. Knowledge of the statutes of England was the basis for the administration of justice and medieval legal practice and it is probable that this manuscript was made for a lawyer. 2. Thomas Merton: notes added to the Calendar record the births of the children of Thomas Merton, Robert on 2 May and Elizabeth on 21 October, apparently in 1491/2 ('anno vii Henrici vii') 3. Sir Thomas Saunder : note on endleaf ii recording his gift of the manuscript to his son Edmond 20 July 1561 4. Edmond Saunder: inscription on flyleaf dated 20 July 1561 5. Edward Ire(?): cropped note in a 16th-century hand of the recto of endleaf ii 6. Ink-stamped monogram on f.16v, TSR superimposed on EL, with the date 1693 7. William Harcourt Hopper: his bookplate inside upper cover CONTENT: The earliest Statute Roll begins in 1278 and copies of the enrolled Statutes of England began to be produced from the beginning of the fourteenth century. The present manuscript opens with the confirmation of Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest that Edward I made following the constitutional crisis of 1297. It was in this form that Magna Carta first appeared in the Statute Book; it remained the most fundamental part of the enacted law until the eighteenth century. The present manuscript contains all the principal Statutes enrolled by Edward I (1272-1307) as part of the wide-ranging legislative reforms with which he sought to clarify the confused tangle of rules with which his realm had been governed: the Statutes of Westminster I and II (1275 and 1285), covering the whole field of property, criminal and constitutional law, the Statutes of Gloucester (1278), the Statute of Winchester (1285) and many others of more restricted application. The latest securely datable Statute included in this manuscript is De Conspiratoribus (ff.167v-168) of 1305 and, although several are of uncertain date and some, for example Visus francii plegii (ff.195-196), have been thought to date from the reign of Edward II, no Statute certainly enacted by him is included. The manuscript was certainly compiled before the reign of Edward III and it seems likely that it dates from the end of the reign of Edward I. It is an early response to the great development of statute law that was characteristic of the fourteenth century. The statutes were preceded by the Calendar and computational information necesssary to plan the course and courts of the year. The texts in law French in the present manuscript are identified below; the remainder of the texts are in Latin. Easter tables f.2; Calendar ff.3-8v; list of contents ff.9-10v; list of chapters in Magna Carta , De Foreste , Novi Articuli , Statutes of Merton, Marlborough, Westminster I, Gloucester and Westminster II ff. 11