Christ Church MS. 123

Provenance and Acquisition

It is not possible to reconstruct the early history of this volume. There is a name cancelled at fol. iv, and two erased ownership inscriptions at fol. 189^v (following the explicit). From the seventeenth century, there is a name ‘John Rakeby[?]’ at fol. vi. The first fully identifiable owner writes his name at fol. v: ‘Æ Lanc^t lee his Booke 1671 | Eldred lancelott lee’. He has also signed on fol. 190, above an erased ownership inscription; and on fol. 191. On fol. 190, he follows his name with ‘qui ego hoc petiuit tam pro regni quam pro seipso sequitur ver... et desendit …‘, the remainder abraded away. In addition, at fol. 189^v, he writes ‘Rogerus hope vnus clericorum francisci wythini in officio placitorum’, and ‘Iohannes Yonge seruiens …[the rest overwritten with flourishes]’ (the latter’s name also at fol. 190^v). Eldred Lancelot Lee (Eldred presumably after the eleventh-century bishop of Worcester in whose diocese the Lee family’s ancestral home of Coton Hall, Shropshire, sat) is a known legal clerk from the reign of Charles II: J. S. Cockburn, ‘Seventeenth-Century Clerks of Assize – Some Anonymous Members of the Legal Profession’, The American Journal of Legal History, 13 (1969), 315–332 (328). The notes mentioning Hope and Yonge appear to be intended as aide-memoires concerning legal staff; that concerning Hope mentions the Tory judge Sir Francis Wythens (on whom see Eveline Cruickshanks in B. D. Henning, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons, 1660–1690(Cambridge, 1983), 3 vols, 3:783–84 and Stuart Handley in Oxford DNB). In 1686, Wythens and Eldred Lancelot Lee sat together on the Maidstone Assize: J. S. Cockburn, Calendar of Assize Records: Kent Indictments, Charles II, 1676–88(Woodbridge, 1997), 243 (no. 1261). It is reasonable to imagine that Lee carried this pocket-sized registrum brevium with him.

The earliest indication of ChCh ownership is the note: ‘The Dean at the request of D^r Wheeler one of the Chaplains of Christ Church deposited this Book in the Library June 20 1822’ (fol. ix). The Dean in question was Charles H. Hall; he matriculated at Christ Church in 1779, and received four degrees: his BA in 1783, MA in 1786, BD in 1794, and DD in 1800. He was a canon of Christ Church from 1799, the Regius Professor of Divinity 1807–9, and Dean from 1809 until 1824, when he moved to the deanery of Durham; he died in 1827 aged 70 (AOmod, 587; J. F. A. Mason in Oxford DNB). Charles Wheeler was chaplain of Christ Church 1820–31 and died in 1835, aged 38 (AOmod, 1534). The volume includes the old ChCh shelfmark ‘Arch Sup C.25’ (pencil, fol. iv^v), suggesting that this was added to the end of the C section which, in the New Library Catalogue, ended at 24 (see Appendix IV).