The British Library is delighted to be hosting Dan Jones on Monday, 23 September, when he will be talking about his breathtakingly brilliant new biography of King Henry V. You can join us in person at St Pancras or online. Things kick off at 1900 (we know, should have started at 1415), and Dan has agreed very kindly to sign copies of his book afterwards.

Come along and find out more about one of medieval England's most intriguing kings, the victor of Agincourt, conqueror of northern France, and immortalised by Shakespeare. 'Once more unto the British Library's Pigott Theatre, dear friends, once more!'

Tickets to attend in person or online can be purchased here.

Among the Cotton Charters and Rolls are several booklets, short manuscripts bound together and mostly dating from the 16th and 17th centuries. A great many of them are the private accounts and papers of the Cotton family, but Cotton Ch XVI 18 is something else entirely: a muster book from the English Civil War, more accurately known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

Entries recording that Nathaniel Naseby and Thomas Tarlton need muskets and that the whole company has one wagon, three horses, and a carter: Cotton Ch XVI 18, f. 11v

This short volume lists the troops raised for Colonel George Goring, Lord Goring (1608–1657), giving their names and whether they were a musketeer or a pikeman or needed equipment. A note at the back records that this was done on 7 September 1640 and on the orders of the Earl of Strafford, lord lieutenant-general of the royal army.

Entry recording that William Knowles has run away: Cotton Ch XVI 18, f. 2r

Clearly not everyone wanted to sign up. One man, William Knowles, is marked down as a runaway. Five others are listed as sick. In the end, Goring raised 41 pikemen, 104 musketeers, and 12 officers, for a total of 157 men. They were probably raised for the Bishops’ Wars (1639–1640), fought between King Charles I (r. 1625–1649), who wished to reform the Church of Scotland to be more like that of England, and the Covenanters, hardline Presbyterians who resisted him. The conflict marked the beginning of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Luckily for Colonel Goring’s soldiers, the war soon ended with the Treaty of Ripon on 14 October 1640, just over a month after they were mustered.

The total muster for Goring's company, including the signature of Philip D'Ewes: Cotton Ch XVI 18, f. 12r

But this was not the end of Colonel Goring’s military career. An ardent royalist, he would serve as lieutenant-general of the royal cavalry in the First English Civil War (1642–1646). He fought at the Battle of Marston Moor and commanded the western royalist army until its defeat at the Battle of Langport in 1645. Goring then retired to France on grounds of ill-health before going to Spain to command some English exiles in the Spanish army, where he died in 1657.

Painting of George Goring, after Anthony van Dyck, c. 1635–1640

The muster book gives Captain Richard D’Ewes (1615–1643) as Goring’s second-in-command. He had previously served under him in the Netherlands from 1636 to 1637. Richard was the younger brother of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1602–1650), an antiquary and friend of Sir Robert Cotton (1571–1631), who founded the Cotton Collection. Richard and Simonds took opposing sides in the Civil Wars, Richard declaring for the royalists, Simonds for Parliament. Richard had already fought for the king in 1639 and 1640 and he wrote to his brother in July 1642 imploring him to side with Charles, but Simonds refused.

In April 1643, Richard, now a lieutenant-colonel, was besieged in Reading by Parliamentarian forces. As one of the royalist officers leading the defence, Richard was shot with a cannonball in his left leg, tearing the flesh away to the bone. The wound turned gangrenous and the young officer died on 21 April, aged only twenty-eight. His brother wrote that the date ‘had been made sad and fatal to me by the loss of my most dear and only brother’ (J. Sears McGee, An Industrious Mind: The Worlds of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (Stanford, 2015), p. 391).

Etching of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, 2nd quarter of the 17th century

The manuscripts of Simonds D’Ewes, including this volume with its reminder of the service that led to his beloved brother’s death, were purchased by Robert Harley, 1st  earl of Oxford (1661-1724), in 1704. His descendants sold them to the nation for £10,000 in 1753, and they formed one of the foundation collections of the British Museum. Although most of these manuscripts are, of course, held in the British Library’s Harley Collection, several hundred subsequently found their way into the Cotton Collection. The original Cottons only went from Cotton Ch I 1 to XVI 3, but many unrelated charters were added to them in the 1790s, and given numbers in an extended sequence. These were at first called 'Cartae Miscellaneae Addendae', but the distinction was dropped in the late 1860s and 1870s, so that now they are all referred to as Cotton Charters. Amon them was Goring’s muster book, which presumably belonged to Richard D'Ewes and passed to his brother Simonds upon his death.

This is just one of more than 1,000 Cotton charters and rolls that we are adding to the British Library's online catalogue. As the project progresses, further blogposts will highlight other interesting documents from the collection.

 

Rory MacLellan

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The Cotton Charters and Rolls held at the British Library include many important items, like one of the four surviving copies of the 1215 Magna Carta (Cotton Ch XIII 31A), or have impressive seals (Cotton Ch XXI 11), or illuminated initials and decoration (Cotton Ch XVII 7).  But sometimes their appearance belies their importance, as is the case with Cotton Ch XI 73. This seems a fairly innocuous document, a small sheet of parchment, less than two inches by five, with a few holes, a little staining and no seal attached. Yet it is one of the oldest surviving records of its kind and preserves fascinating evidence of medieval England’s relations with Scotland.

The earliest surviving fine, issued in 1175: Cotton Ch XI 73

This charter is what is known as a final concord, or fine, and it has been described as the earliest surviving example of this kind of document (A Guide to the Manuscripts, Autographs, Charters, Seals, Illuminations and Bindings Exhibited in the Department of Manuscripts and in the Grenville Library (London, 1899), p. 42). It records that, before a tribunal of judges at Oxford, a woman called Ingrea, together with her three daughters, Gundred, Isabel and Margaret, agreed to give up any claims they had to some land in Oxford to Oseney Abbey, in return for the monks giving them 20s.

Medieval fines were court settlements putting an end to litigation — they did not necessarily have the connotation of a penalty for wrongdoing like the word does today. Originating in the late 12th century, fines became one of the standard methods to transfer freehold property until their abolition in 1833.

A fine would be copied three times onto a single sheet of parchment. Each was separated by a wavy line or the word ‘chirographum’, meaning handwritten, and then cut into three parts along that word or line. Each party would receive one of the top two copies of the document and the court would retain the bottom version, or foot. This was an early form of authentication. If the participants ever needed to prove that their copy was genuine, they could each bring their copies together and show that the cuts matched up.

A reunited chirograph in A C. W. Foster, ed., Final Concords of the County of Lincoln Volume 2 (Horncastle, Lincoln Record Society, 1920), frontispiece

As well as being the earliest surviving fine, what makes this charter particularly interesting is the dating clause, recording where and when the document was made. In the 12th century, most charters did not have a dating clause and historians have to work out the date by other means, such as the witness list. Fines were the first charters to regularly record their date, a typical formula being along the lines, ‘Given at London, Thursday after the Nativity of St John the Baptist, the third year of the reign of King Edward, son of King Henry’, which translates to 27 June 1275. But the dating clause of our charter is particularly unusual. The charter states it was given ‘close to the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul [21 June] after the lord king took the allegiance of the barons of Scotland at York’. This refers to the submission of William the Lion, king of Scots (r. 1165–1214), and his clergy and barons, to King Henry II of England (r. 1154–1189), which took place on 10 August 1175. William had invaded England in 1174 but was captured and taken in chains to Normandy, where Henry forced him to agree to the Treaty of Falaise. William became an English vassal, handing over hostages and key castles, and submitting the Church of Scotland to that of England. The 1175 ceremony in York formalised Scotland’s new subordinate status.

Seal of William the Lion, in Walter de Gray Birch, History of Scottish Seals from the Eleventh to the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols (Stirling and London, 1905–07), I, p. 109

By using William’s submission as his frame of reference rather than the traditional year of the king’s reign, the court scribe who wrote this document clearly thought that the ceremony was a landmark occurrence by which other events could be dated. Little did they know that Richard the Lionheart (r. 1189–1199) would subsequently cancel the treaty in 1189 in return for King William’s gift of 10,000 marks towards the Third Crusade. William's submission to the English Crown did become, however, a benchmark for kings from Edward I (r. 1272–1307) to Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547) to try and assert their claimed overlordship of Scotland, sparking almost 300 years of intermittent wars between the two kingdoms.

This is just one of more than 1,000 Cotton charters and rolls that we are adding to the British Library's online catalogue. As the project progresses, further blogposts will highlight other interesting documents from the collection.

 

Rory MacLellan

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Tickets are now on sale for the British Library’s major exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which runs from 25 October 2024 to 2 March 2025.

From the courage of Joan of Arc at her trial for heresy, and the visionary experiences of Julian of Norwich, to the artistry of the London silkwoman Alice Claver, the work of female medical practitioners, and the struggles of female rulers like Queen Melisende of Jerusalem, this exhibition explores the challenges, achievements and daily lives of women in Europe from 1100 to 1500. It will tell the history of medieval women through their own words and uncover their lives through manuscripts, documents and artefacts.

To whet your appetite before the exhibition opens in October, here are a few of the incredible items that will be on display:

The Book of Margery Kempe

The opening of the only surviving manuscript of The Book of Margery Kempe; Norfolk, c. 1445–1450: Add MS 61823, f. 1r

The earliest autobiography written in English, The Book of Margery Kempe is an extraordinary account of the experiences of a female mystic, her spiritual visions, pilgrimages to Rome, Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela, and her struggles for recognition in a male-dominated religious world. Margery’s Book was lost for centuries until this copy was discovered in a country house in 1934.

Christine de Pizan’s ‘Book of the Queen’

Christine de Pizan building the ‘City of Ladies’, from ‘The Book of the Queen’; Paris, c. 1410-1414: Harley MS 4431/2, f. 290r

The ‘Book of the Queen’ is the largest and most splendid manuscript of the works of Christine de Pizan, made for Isabeau of Bavaria (d. 1435), queen of France. Christine is often described as the first professional woman author in medieval Europe. Her Book of the City of Ladies recounts tales of exemplary historical, legendary and biblical women, building a metaphorical ‘city’ out of women’s achievements.

The Paston Letters

Letter from Margaret Paston to John Paston I, asking him to send her a new girdle and cloth for a gown; Norfolk, December 1441: Add MS 43490, f. 34r

The Pastons were a Norfolk family who climbed the social ladder from peasantry to landed gentry during the 15th century. They left behind a cache of around a thousand personal letters, giving unparalleled insight into their everyday lives. The women of the family are some of the most prolific correspondents, recording their joys, sorrows, loves, rivalries, friendships and arguments that span several generations.

The Sekenesse of Wymmen

Anatomical drawings featured in a section on childbirth, from The Sekenesse of Wymmen; England, 15th century: Sloane MS 2463, f. 17v

One of a number of items in the exhibition devoted to women’s health, this manuscript contains the Sekenesse of Wymmen, a widel- read gynaecological treatise. It features instructions to a midwife on how to assist a mother during complications in childbirth, with accompanying anatomical drawings showing the position of the baby in the womb.

The Foundation Charter of Bordesley Abbey

The foundation charter of Bordesley Abbey by Empress Matilda; Devizes, 1141–1142: Add Ch 75724

The foundation charter of Bordesley Abbey was made in the 1140s, a period of strife in England as a bitter civil war raged between Matilda and Stephen, rival claimants to the throne after the death of Henry I. This document styles Matilda as ‘Empress’ and ‘Lady of the English’ and features her seal, showing her crowned and holding a sceptre, enclosed within a distinctive silk seal bag.

The seal of Matilda: Devizes, 1141-1142: Add Ch 75724

Medieval Women: In Their Own Words is on show at the British Library from 25 October 2024 to 2 March 2025. You can pre-book your tickets online now.

This exhibition is made possible with support from Joanna and Graham Barker, Unwin Charitable Trust, and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts: a donor advised fund held at the London Community Foundation.

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It's not every day that the British Library acquires a previously unrecorded charter. And this one is something special. It is an example of an illuminated charter, which make up around 0.1% of the total survivals, and it bears an excellent impression of the Great Seal of England. The Library purchased the charter at auction at Bonham's on 20 June 2024 (lot 71), and it has been accessioned as Add Ch 77743. Once it has been catalogued and undergone minor conservation treatment, it will be made available to researchers in our Manuscripts Reading Room at St Pancras. We are extremely grateful to the British Library Collections Trust for generously supporting this acquisition.

A royal licence issued in the name of King Edward III of England (reigned 1327–1377) at Westminster: Add Ch 77743

The charter itself is a royal licence issued at Westminster on 15 November 1368, and is addressed to David de Wollore, one of the king's chancery clerks. It grants property to David in Ripon (Yorkshire), which would enable him to support a chaplain to perform divine service every day at the altar of St Andrew in the church there. The document opens with a decorated initial showing a cleric addressing his congregation, and in the upper margin there is a drawing of David firing a slingshot at Goliath in the opposite corner. We are aware of two other surviving decorated charters of Edward III, both in French collections, but neither of which is as extensively illuminated as this. The Great Seal is that of the so-called Seventh Seal of Edward III, used between 1360 and 1377, and is attached to the document on two plaited cords. One side shows the king on horseback, and on the other sitting on the throne. The unusual decoration of the document may point to its recipient being the Keeper of the Rolls, who was entrusted with applying the Great Seal to royal grants. 

We are very pleased to be able to add this document to the national collection, where it can be consulted alongside thousands of other medieval charters, including a number of royal grants. Many questions remain to be answered about the circumstances of this charter's production and its artist, including the identity of the cleric in the opening initial — there is much more to be learned about it. Add Ch 77743 has been acquired with the assistance of the British Library Collections Trust.

 

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From 1585 to 1586, an English fleet under the command of Sir Francis Drake (1540–1596) raided Spanish colonies across the Atlantic and the Caribbean. Part of an undeclared war between Protestant England and Catholic Spain, Drake’s expedition was a major escalation in the conflict, one that would culminate in the Spanish Armada’s attempted invasion of England in 1588. Among the Cotton Charters and Rolls, currently being catalogued as part of the British Library’s Hidden Collections project, is a copy of the original instructions given to Drake by Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603) for his Caribbean raid (Cotton Ch IV 25).

Elizabeth I’s draft instructions for Drake’s voyage: Cotton Ch IV 25

The document states that Elizabeth is pleased to approve the expedition of eleven ships, four barques and twenty pinnaces under Drake’s command. Most of the fleet’s vessels were owned by private individuals, each contributing ships in return for a share in the profits. The queen promises that each investor shall receive their portion and that, if she delays the expedition, it shall be at no cost to them.

To support the voyage, the queen also orders the Lord Admiral, Charles Howard, Lord Howard of Effingham (1536–1624), to deliver two of the Royal Navy’s ships to Drake, namely the Elizabeth Bonaventure and the Aide. The Bonaventure was a 47-gun galleon with a tonnage of 600. The Aide, with a tonnage of 200 to 250 and carrying 18 cannon, had already crossed the Atlantic once before as part of Martin Frobisher’s second expedition to Nunavut and Greenland in 1577. Frobisher would also join Drake’s fleet as his vice-admiral.

A model of the Bonaventure, St Mary’s Church, Painswick, photo by David Stowell, CC BY-SA 2.0

Although undated, we know that this document relates to Drake’s 1585 expedition as it refers to the West Indies, and this campaign was the only time that he led a fleet containing both the Bonaventure and the Aide. The Bonaventure was later part of his attack on Cadiz in 1587.

In the margin and between some of Elizabeth’s instructions are notes written in a different hand, that of William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1520–1598), the queen’s chief minister. Cecil's additions clarify or finesse the wording of Elizabeth’s orders and show that the document was a draft, likely held in the crown archives. Sir Robert Cotton’s access to royal records as a Member of Parliament, as well as his interest in antiquarian and historical matters, led to several other draft government papers from Elizabeth’s reign finding their way into his collection, such as Cotton Ch XV 43.

Draft letter of Elizabeth I to Thomas Bromley, lord chancellor, granting protection to John de Rivera of Zante, resident in London: Cotton Ch XV 43

In the end, Drake set sail from Plymouth on 14 September 1585 with twenty-five ships, including at least five barques, supported by at least eight pinnaces. The Bonaventure, with a crew of 250 to 300, served as his flagship. The fleet raided north-western Spain in October and Cape Verde in November before crossing the Atlantic, attacking Santo Domingo in what is now the Dominican Republic, Cartagena (modern Colombia), and St Augustine in Florida. Heading north, Drake visited the nascent English colony of Roanoke (North Carolina) before returning to England in July 1586. Despite pillaging so many Spanish colonies, the investors actually made a loss on the voyage. The Bonaventure and the Aide would both see service again two years later in 1588, as part of Lord Howard of Effingham's fleet defending England from the Spanish Armada.

Robert Adams’ map of the Spanish Armada’s route, 1588: Maps C.3.bb.5, final folio

This just one of more than 1,000 Cotton charters and rolls that we are re-cataloguing for inclusion in our online catalogue. As the project progresses, further blogposts will highlight other interesting documents from the collection.

 

Rory MacLellan

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In medieval England, land was conventionally held in return for either rent (in the form of money or other items) or service (acts performed by one party to the other). These items could range from token gifts like a rose or an arrowhead to valuable crops or produce. A typical service might entail a tenant serving in a jury or attending upon their lord in times of war. But some land was held on more unusual terms, and these more specific duties reveal fascinating details about medieval life and society. For instance, one Norfolk knight held his land from King Henry III (r. 1216–1272) for the service of carrying twelve fish pasties to the king wherever he was in England (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, I, London, 1904, no. 849).

Osbert of Arden’s grant of land to Thurkil Fundu: Cotton Ch XXII 3

The service recorded in one small document (Cotton Ch XXII 3) has been identified as some of the earliest evidence of English knights fighting in tournaments, and also of such events being held in England. Dating to between 1124 and 1139, it is a grant by Osbert of Arden giving Thurkil Fundu land in Ashbrook and a meadow in Kingsbury, both in Warwickshire. In return, Thurkil was to do service of carrying Osbert’s dyed lances from London or Northampton to Osbert’s house in Kingsbury, all on Osbert’s horses and at Osbert's expense. Thurkil would also attend upon him at tournaments overseas, again at Osbert’s own cost. He was effectively promising to be Osbert’s squire.

A 15th-century depiction of a tournament from the romance Ponthus: Royal MS 15 E VI, f. 220v

Popular imagination holds tournaments as contests between kings, dukes and earls, full of elaborate pageantry and ceremony. In fact, the earliest tourneys were usually more simple contests between knights. The great magnates would not fight in them until later in the 1100s. Henry I (r. 1100–1135) had even banned tournaments late in his reign and the Church regularly railed against them, bemoaning knights wasting their energies or even losing their lives in these mock combats when they could be going on crusade.

Dyed or painted lances like those owned by Osbert were typically used for parade and tournaments, with bare lances used for war. The references to London and Northampton suggest that these towns also staged tournaments at this time.

Thurkil, as his name suggests, was English, not Norman. Thurkil, or Turchil, was a Saxon name with Norse origins. Osbert is a Norman name, but his father was called Siward, another English name, and his great-grandfather was Æthelwine, a sheriff under Edward the Confessor. Here we have an English knight, less than a century after the Norman Conquest, fighting in tournaments in England and on the Continent.

Two men jousting on sheep: Royal MS 1 E V, f. 171r

It may have been at one of these tournaments that Osbert would later meet his patron, David I of Scotland (r. 1124–1153). The Scottish king, who had his own English ancestry, surrounded himself with many English and Norman knights from his time as Earl of Huntingdon in Henry I’s court. David was also interested in tournaments and had participated in a few in northern France in the 1120s. Osbert would go on to become one of David’s courtiers, joining his court in Scotland by the 1140s.

This charter was published first in 1903 by George F. Warner & Henry J. Ellis (Facsimiles of Royal and Other Charters in the British Museum, I, plate IX), and it was discussed in more detail by David Crouch, Tournament (2005), pp. 41, 64. You can read more about Osbert here.

Osbert of Arden's charter is just one of more than 1,000 Cotton charters and rolls that we are adding to the British Library's online catalogue. As the project progresses, further blogposts will highlight other interesting documents from the collection.

 

Rory MacLellan

Follow us @BLMedieval

It's that time of year when we carry out our annual manuscripts weigh-in.

The weighing of the Bedford Hours

In keeping with tradition, teams work overnight to weigh every manuscript in our collection. They then compare the results with the famous table compiled by Sir Horace Round (after whom the British Museum Round Reading Room was named). This enables scholars worldwide to embellish their papers with little-known facts that no-one could possibly verify, along the lines 'the Luttrell Psalter weighs as much as next door's dog'.

The weighing of the Splendor Solis

Here are some results from this year's survey. Note: manuscripts tend to gain an extra gram or two during Leap Years.

• The Bedford Hours, a masterpiece of 15th-century Parisian illumination: 9.0114 kg, or the same as a baby Pygmy Hippo (unwashed);
• Splendor Solis, an alchemical treatise made in Germany in the 1580s: 3.067 kg, or a flamingo standing on one leg;
• A charter of Raymond of Toulouse, with a wax seal: 0.0925 kg, or half a dormouse.

The weighing of the charter

All measurements have been scrutinised by the Guinness Book of Records, who have kindly asked us never to bother them again.

 

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