Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Guild Book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York
- 2 The Manuscript and the Civic Context
- 3 The Medieval Core: Calendar, Images and Charts
- 4 The Medieval Core: Texts
- 5 The Early Modern Use of the Book
- Conclusion
- Plate Section
- Edition of the Guild Book
- Appendix 1 Description of the Manuscript
- Appendix 2 Collations
- Appendix 3 Analysis of Parchment Folios
- Appendix 4 Analysis of Paper Folios
- Appendix 5 Witness to the Bloodletting Poem
- Appendix 6 Names Entered into the Guild Book
- Bibliography
- Index
- Health and Healing in the Middle Ages
1 - The Guild Book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 July 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Guild Book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York
- 2 The Manuscript and the Civic Context
- 3 The Medieval Core: Calendar, Images and Charts
- 4 The Medieval Core: Texts
- 5 The Early Modern Use of the Book
- Conclusion
- Plate Section
- Edition of the Guild Book
- Appendix 1 Description of the Manuscript
- Appendix 2 Collations
- Appendix 3 Analysis of Parchment Folios
- Appendix 4 Analysis of Paper Folios
- Appendix 5 Witness to the Bloodletting Poem
- Appendix 6 Names Entered into the Guild Book
- Bibliography
- Index
- Health and Healing in the Middle Ages
Summary
Provenance
Stamped in gold to a small rectangle of marbled paper and pasted inside the upper board of the guild book is the coat of arms of the eighth earl of Bridgewater, Francis Henry Egerton. The title was inherited by Egerton in 1823 and with it came the wealth that enabled him to make a bequest of over £12,000, in addition to his collection of manuscripts, to the British Museum. A supplementary £3,000 was bequeathed to the British Museum in 1838 by Charles Long, Baron Farnborough and cousin of Egerton. Monies from the Farnborough fund were used to purchase the York guild book in 1881. A brief minute reported the purchase on 9 April for the sum of £30 from W. H. Richardson. Custodianship by the British Museum, now British Library, is but one stage in the use and provenance of the manuscript.
The volume was sold, presumably on two occasions, following its ownership by the Guild and before it entered the collections of the British Museum. A note written in gold ink on fol. 34v states that the ‘book came into the possession of Mr. E. N. Alexander, by purchase, AD 1817’. This refers to Edward Nelson Alexander, a solicitor from Halifax with genealogical connections to medical men of York. Upon his death in 1859, the Halifax Guardian reported that ‘in a literary view, he will be much missed, he being one of the deepest read antiquarians of the parish’.
In 1830 Alexander had been a founding member of the Halifax Literary and Philosophical Society and he was subsequently elected as the Society's curator for antiquities and coins. Alexander was also a collector; he donated to the Society 150 coins from his personal collection and exhibited to his colleagues three antique gems in his possession. Antiquarian interests and financial means make Edward Nelson Alexander just the sort of person who would have acquired the guild book in 1817. It might even have been familial connections to medical practice in York that made the manuscript an attractive purchase; fol. 108v notes that a Doctor Alexander was made a contributor of the Guild. Regardless, the volume was not purchased as a source of useful medical knowledge but as a means of exploring the past.
- Type
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- Information
- The Guild Book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York (British Library, Egerton MS 2572)Study and Edition, pp. 8 - 21Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021