Christ Church MS. 145

Provenance and Acquisition

There are some signs of early and later use. Apart from the textual additions and corrections, which are fairly dense in the first 120 folios and again in the final folios, there is a more cursive script that annotates, adds cross-references in the Psalter and, in the early part of the volume, adds a leaf-shaped nota mark (eg fol. 31, 45^v, 52, 53, 53^v, 55, 57, 61 (with Latin original noted), 64, 79, 91^v, 92^v, 101, 130^v, 134, 141, 170, 175, 214, 364, 380). Another reader demonstrates interest in the tale of the Judgement of Solomon by making two pen and ink drawings in the margin (fol. 106). Much later, a reader writing in a humanist-influenced script in brown ink (s. xvi^med) notes a comparison with the ‘versio Gallicana’ (fol. 275^v, next to Daniel 8:5, glossing ‘buc of goet’). Considering the likely date of the annotation, it is legitimate to wonder whether this might be the work of Robert Clay, who is identified as a previous owner in an inscription at the front pastedown: ‘Anno domini 1575 Eduarde Saunders off flower [i.e., Flore, Northants.] 1575 The twenteth daye of Maye beinge in the yere of our Lorde god 1575 and in the sevententhe yere \of the raigne/ of our most gracious soueraigne Ladye Quene Elizabeth On Robert Claye then vycar of Flower in the countye of Northampton did geve this Byble vnto me Edwarde Saunders of the same parishe and countye’ (the front pastedown; Saunders also). On Clay, vicar of Flore from 1570 to 1579, and still alive in 1599, see Henry Isham Longden, Northamptonshire and Rutland Clergy from 1500, 3 vols (Nottingham, 1938), 3:145. At top right of the back pastedown, a price written (s. xvi^med): ‘praecium 3–6-8’; presumably this was what Clay paid for the volume.

The person to whom Clay gave this manuscript was the son of the MP Robert Saunders of Flore (on whom see S. T. Bindoff, History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1509–58, 3 vols (London, 1982), 3:274 and P. W. Hasler, History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1558–1603, 3 vols (London, 1981), 3:346), and thus was a nephew of the Marian supporter and judge, Sir Edward Saunders and his brother, Lawrence, a Marian martyr (see J. H. Baker and Tom Betteridge respectively in Oxford DNB). As well as the inscription, Saunders signed the manuscript at fol. iii^v (beneath an earlier pair of Latin verses), at the upper margin of fol. 1, and at the rear pastedown with his motto ‘Solatur conscientia et finis’.

Saunders’s youngest son by his wife Frances Tirringham (Walter C. Metcalfe ed., The Visitations of Northamptonshire...(London, 1887), 195–96), also Edward, came up to Christ Church in 1581, and earned the degrees of BA and MA in 1582/3 and 1586, respectively. He was rector of Green’s Norton (Northants.) until his death in 1631, aged about 67 (AO, 1314). There is, in the margin of fol. 1 of the manuscript, a note of his donation, presumably in his own hand (it is certainly not that of his father): ‘Liber Ecclesiæ Christi ex dono Edouardi Saunders Armigeri de Flower in Com: Northamptoniae’. Though the note is undated, we can use the material evidence of the binding to surmise a date of donation: the chain-staple, 55mm in length and 20mm wide, is unusual among those used at ChCh but it identical in dimensions to some of the staples provided for the printed books given by Mildred, Lady Burghley (on which, see Introduction); her donation was made in 1586, the year of Saunders’ MA, suggesting he gave the book at the time of his graduation.

That the manuscript was not, like all other early arrivals, re-chained in the early seventeenth century must be a function of its bulk: it was presumably stored sitting on its side, while its smaller colleagues were to be stored upright, and its abnormality meant altering its chaining was considered unnecessary. That it remained in its horizontal position into the eighteenth century is suggested by its position in the 1676 Catalogue (see Appendix I).

The manuscript was seen and catalogued by James (52) as MS 1: ‘Biblia Anglice vel Saxonice’. The manuscript contains, at front pastedown, the shelfmark relating to the 1676 Catalogue, ‘D.1’ (see Appendix I); it also has the New Library shelfmark ‘E.4’ (the latter in Edward Smallwell’s hand) at both top left of the front pastedown and top right of fol. iii. Smallwell also notes at top centre of fol. iii: ‘The Old & New Testament in Wickliffe’s Translation. Vide G10’, cross-referencing this manuscript with our MS. 146, where a similar note occurs.

Attached to the same folio is a letter from one of the editors of the Wycliffite Bible, Josiah Forshall, dated 14 July but without a year (fols i-ii). In it, he thanks the Dean and Chapter for loan of the manuscript for collation and praising the quality of its text. Behind this lies a tale which is reconstructed by Dove, First English Bible, 143 where she comments that ‘unfortunately, Forshall and [Frederic] Madden do not make use of the Christ Church Bible in the Old Testament. Forshall was to blame for this: after visiting Oxford to locate bibles in the Earlier Version, he reported that Christ Church had none. Madden later notes: “This was a fatal mistake”.’ So, Forshall’s letter to the Dean (which presumably dates from the early 1830s, but after 1832 as that is when Madden, described here as ‘Sir F. Madden’, was knighted) stating that ‘in point of completeness [it] has only one or two others equal to it’ was akin to atonement for his earlier oversight.