Tractatus de Dunstaple et de Houcton

Summary

INTRODUCTION.

Of the earlier wanderings of this MS., nothing is known. Col. le Hardy informs me that about 1619/2C it was an exhibit in a Chancery suit, between Hen. Coney and Phil. Ferrers of Markyate Cell, esqrs., and Regin. Horne, Hen. Heward, Robt. Breydon, Robt. Moore, and others, of whom Hen. Coney had been granted free warren at Buckwood in 1619. It seems probable that the right to free warren merged with the Beechwood estate, which towards the end of the xvijth cent, passed to the family of Sebright; presumably this MS. was then among their title deeds. It was found among the muniments which Sir Giles Sebright entrusted to the Records Preservation Section of the British Records Association in 1935; and by the kind offices of Col. le Hardy was deposited, with other documents relating to Bedfordshire, at the County Record Office in Bedford in April 1936; its catalogue mark there is D.D.BS., 249. Other documents dealing with Beechwood have been deposited in the Hertford County Muniment Room. The MS. has not been identified in Tanner's list of records of this priory; it is probably not identical with a Registrum in the xviijth cent, collection of James Mickleton, thought by ? Petrie and Madden to have possibly passed to Durham Cathedral Library, but, as Mr. Knight the Assistant Librarian kindly informed me, not now to be found there. In a collection of excerpts from monastic documents at the Brit. Mus. are notes on Houghton Regis, clearly taken from our Tractatus and dated 1606. Further, Spelman knew and used the MS. for his Glossarium (N/59 below), published in 1626.

The manuscript is in very good condition, but unfortunately there remains of it only a fragment, ten folios in all. That it was much larger is shown by two facts—that the account of the priory begins with chapter xxij, and that, out of the priory's numerous possessions, only Houghton Regis was treated. The parchment folios measure about 7|in. wide and gf in. high (185 mm. by 237 mm.). Probably for the purposes of the Chancery suit already mentioned, their order had been reversed so as to begin with the Houghton section, and they then were paginated in their new order by a xvijth century hand; when they were taken down for cleaning and sizing by the editor, they were replaced and foliated in their original sequence.