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COPYRIGHT 2002 Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature
This article has three aims. First, it seeks to advertise the existence and establish the provenance of a previously unlisted manuscript of the Latin prose Brut chronicle, which may be added to the nineteen recently catalogued by Lister Matheson. (1) This manuscript, Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.7.13, fols [1.sup.r]-5[0.sup.v] (hereafter T), is the second to come to light in which the Brut is continued from 1437 to 1456 with material concerning the Benedictine abbey of Sherborne in Dorset. In content it is essentially identical to the other manuscript with a Sherborne continuation, British Library, MS Harley 3906 (hereafter H), variations consisting of a few words at most. (2) It will be shown that Twas copied from H, and that both have a Sherborne provenance. Secondly, a brief review of the contents of T, and by extension H, and an indication of the sources used in their compilation, will be provided as a contribution to the classification of Latin Brut manuscripts generally. The character of the Latin Brut has never been adequately defined, (3) and the material presented here is intended to shed light on the problem in so far as the two manuscripts with a Sherborne continuation are relevant to it. (4) Thirdly, a brief discussion of the relationship between T and H, an issue that naturally arises given their similarity, will be included, both for its bibliographical interest and for what it reveals about ownership of the Latin Brut in a medium-sized Benedictine house during the later fifteenth century. (5) Charles Kingsford thought the Sherborne appendix to H, in common with other localized continuations of the Latin Brut, unique, `written with no other object than to bring the particular copy ... a little more up to date'. (6) That there were multiple copies is further evidence of the interest that Sherborne's monks had in the history of their institution, and its place in a broader historical spectrum. This historical awareness is also manifest in other surviving late-medieval manuscripts from the monastery, and in the vault paintings of the now-destroyed chapter house, which John Leland tells us represented bishops of Sherborne. (7) The short continuations of Tand H are, however, the only surviving examples of domestic historiography proper produced at the monastery.
T was noted a century ago by M. R. James in his catalogue of Trinity's manuscripts. (8) He listed it as `Chronicon' but did not describe it, and this, along with its unusual (for a Brut) opening (`Adam pater generis humani genuit Seth qui genuit Enos ...'), may explain why it has been overlooked. Following Tis a copy of the second recension of William of Malmesbury's Gestapontificum (fols [58.sup.r]-[186.sup.r]), of which the fifth book is omitted for want of space. (9) Although the Gesta pontificum was completed in a post-medieval hand, its first two books are by the scribe of T. The deliberate (and unique) combination of these texts is also a declaration of their difference; R.7.13 was, like other manuscripts containing the Latin Brut (Lambeth Palace, MS 99, for example), planned as a historical compendium incorporating the essentials of both secular and religious history. On the recto of the fourth flyleaf is the beginning of what may have been intended as another Latin Brut (it contains part of an abridgement of the Albina prologue) written in a different but broadly contemporary hand. (10) This is not continued on the verso, however, and thus it cannot be regarded as a further, fragmentary Brut manuscript. (11) On the fifth flyleaf are two post-medieval notes, the first describing the Brut as `Epitome Chronicae Angliae', the second identifying it as the work of John de Taxter (a thirteenth-century monastic historian of Bury St Edmunds), the latter an error corrected by a subsequent reader.
Although T was copied from H, it seems unlikely to have been written long after 1456, for it breaks off at the same point (with the appearance of Halley's Comet) despite the provision of four blank leaves for further updating of the text. (12) Fols [1.sup.r], [58.sup.r], and [123.sup.r] of R.7.13 have professionally illuminated...
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