10 - Book production outside commercial contexts

Summary

On f. 98r of BodL, MS Lat. misc. c.66 the following inscription is found: ‘Qui scripcit carmen Humffridus est sibi nomen’ (‘He who wrote the song, Humphrey is his own name’). The scribe was also the owner and compiler of this late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century commonplace book: he was Humphrey Newton of Newton and Pownall in Cheshire (1466–1536). Although his note is like a colophon, it is in approximate Latin (note the idiosyncratic spelling of ‘scripcit’ and the contorted syntax), and there is no ‘carmen’ or song in the immediate vicinity. It appears amidst two alphabetic series of ornamented capital letters modelled on secretary script (ff. 95–103 and 104v) in a quire including a majority of courtly poems (ff. 92v–111v); those letters may be announced as ‘De Exemplis scribendi pro scriptore’ in the authorial table of contents (f. 92r) (Figure 10.1), and they may have been ‘valuable’ for the drafting of legal documents which they precede. The model alphabets make it seem as if Humphrey was a full-time professional scrivener displaying some of his skills. But he was not (although he may have undertaken conveyancing for himself and neighbours), and his mock-colophon may simply serve as an oddly placed and elaborate pen-trial. At any rate, the inscription creates an effect of ingenious trompe l'oeil, as does much else in Humphrey's highly personal manuscript which was never intended to be a commercial artefact.