Paper Stocks in Western Medieval Manuscripts : Paper stock

Paper Stocks in Western Medieval Manuscripts

A copy of John Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes in English on paper, 75 ff. Ringrose, SCAMM, p. 281 notes the names ‘Thomas Radclyffe’ in the inside lower cover and, on f. 2r, ‘Richard Tylney’, Alderman, grocer and Warden of the Grocer’s Company, London between 1478 and 1497. Tylney’s name also appears in BL, MS Harley 3352 (Kathleen L. Scott, ‘Past Ownership: Evidence of Book Ownership by English Merchants in the Later Middle Ages’ in Makers and Users of Medieval Books, edited by C. M. Meale and D. Pearsall (D.S. Brewer, Cambridge 2014), pp. 150-177 (p. 164).Add. 6864 is a mixed-media manuscript made up of paper quires with inner and outer parchment stubs. The stubs have been recycled and contain writing. The manuscript is written on one paper stock folded in folio. Each folio measures approximately 286 mm in height x 212 mm in width, and the sheets are folded in folio. This suggests that the original sheets had dimensions ranging between 300-315 mm in height x 420-460 mm in width, a format of paper known as Chancery, which was the most common size of paper in medieval England. The range of measurements depends on the precise dimensions of the original sheets before folding and the trimming of the folio before binding.This paper is marked by a bull head surmounted by a star and its twin mark. The paper of f. 5r is attested on <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://memoryofpaper.eu/BernsteinPortal/appl_start.disp#'>Bernstein</a> as WZMA 576, dated 1454-5. It also seems to be the same paper used in CUL, MSS Dd.3.19 (ff. 41 -109), Dd.3.52 and Add. 7318 (ff. 28-60). This last manuscript is often referred to as a scrivener’s book, possibly belonging to William Broun of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, in the first instance. This bull head paper, however, was used for a slightly later set of writings in Add. 7318, which includes wills, conveyances and notes on contracts relating to Bury St Edmunds, datable between 1455-66 (see A. E. B. Owen, 'A Scrivener’s Notebook from Bury St. Edmunds', Archives: The Journal of the British Records Association, 14 (1979), pp. 16-22, and described in SCAMM, pp. 617-8). A tracing of this bull head also appears in a document held amongst the papers of John Fenn, in which it is indicated that it comes from a draft of Sir John Falstoff’s will 3 November 1459 (Norfolk Record Office, MC 525/2/2). Given this evidence, it is reasonable to assume that this paper stock was used in the East of England during the mid-fifteenth century.These images have been produced through MSI in order to capture physical details of the item.Orietta Da Rold and Logan Rivers