Tw enty papers are gathered here as an offering to Andrew Watson, reflecting the areas of his own special interests in manuscript studies, monastic books and medieval learning, the dispersal of monastic libraries in England, and the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century collectors through whom many former monastic books came into the major manuscript collections of England today. Some papers have a predominantly medieval interest, others are of rather less concern to medievalists, but many shed light on the transmission of medieval books in England through the hands of later owners and collectors to their current locations. Rather than selecting what is of strictly medieval interest I shall summarize and comment on what each contribution has to say before going on to consider something about how best to present lists of medieval books.
In the first paper, "Books and learning at Gloucester abbey in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries" (pp. 3-26), Rodney Thomson examines about forty books produced at Gloucester abbey between the time of Abbot Godeman (1113-1130) and Abbot Thomas Bredon (1224-1228). Half of these were assigned to Gloucester abbey by Neil Ker in Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, but only nine contain ex libris inscriptions. Ker extended the list by observing styles of inscription, scribal hands and annotating hands, and adding books which contained these without explicit evidence of provenance; Thomson has continued this work, especially through a close examination of books now at Hereford, and identified a number of scribal hands at work in several books now associated with Gloucester. He adds other books also linked to the group and he is aware of an emerging cluster of manuscripts that illustrate aspects of the movement of texts, books, and scribes between several religious houses in the lower Severn valley, including Gloucester, Worcester, Winchcombe, and St. Guthlac's at Hereford, a cell of Gloucester abbey. In this context I wonder whether some books are not misplaced in his lists: Hereford cathedral, P. III. 2 and P. VI. 1, for example, may have been made at Gloucester or by the same copyists as worked at Gloucester, but from an early date both belonged at St. Guthlac's, as their ex libris show. Other questions about the lists emerge from a comparison with Ker's work. BL MS Royal 3 B. X (s. xiii) is accepted by Thomson as probably a Gloucester book (pp. 4-5), but it is not in the lists; the same is true of Royal 6 D. IX and Royal 8 A. XXI; and others passed over in silence include BL MS Harley 627 (s. xiii{^1^}) and Lambeth Palace, MS 179 (s. xiii{^1^}). They were perhaps all judged too late for inclusion, though no terminal date is indicated in the paper. Accepting the elusive nature of the evidence for origin with many of these books, Thomson foresees that "many more Gloucester books await discovery" (p. 5). Their homogeneity and high standard of manufacture testify to an active and continuous scriptorial tradition, though their common characteristics are hard to specify. Several points of interest emerge: that Gloucester owned a number of rare texts, such as Mansuetus (CPL 1170), Novatus (CPL 1154), Simeon of Durham on Origen, Gervase of Tilbury on the Pater noster and Hugh of Barzelle; that Gloucester provided exemplars for books at Winchcombe; and that the school at Gloucester, known to have been flourishing in the twelfth century, has bequeathed us a lecture-gloss on Boethius in Caius College, MS 309.
Tessa Webber follows up her edition with Andrew Watson of the Augustinian booklists by examining their evidence for "Latin devotional texts and the books of the Augustinian canons of Thurgarton priory and Leicester abbey in the later middle ages" (pp. 27-41). A recently identified list of books from Thurgarton, where Walter Hilton OSA spent his later years, reveals an unexpected range of late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century devotional literature. By contrast the canons of Leicester renewed their copies of many works of twelfth-, thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century piety. Dr. Webber is cautious on the question of whether Geoffrey Salow, canon of Leicester, was really the author of Lucerna conscientiae, a work better attested there than anywhere else. I note in passing that a major source of this work, the treatise De domo conscientiae attributed to Hugh of Saint-Victor (Bloomfield 1787), was popular at Leicester, where four copies are entered in the catalogue, one of them formerly belonging to Salow himself (A20.333). There was also, as it happens, a copy at Thurgarton (A36.3).
"Two sequences of dated illuminated manuscripts made in Oxford 1450-64" (pp. 43-69) are discussed by Kathleen Scott. Both are series of John Duns Scotus, both made by the same German copyist Johannes Reynbold, one of them for Richard Scarborough in 1451-55 passed to Merton College within twenty years, the other made in 1460-65 for William Gray was given to Balliol College. Scott concentrates on the limners who added the initials and borders, identifying two separate teams working on the different series; some of these artists were active in Oxford through the whole period, and questions are raised about the choice of the patron or the copyist, and considerations of cost, taste and the availability of artists in distributing work. Another contemporary series, works of Hugh of Saint-Cher at Exeter College--now being catalogued by Andrew Watson--will need more detailed examination; but from the three series Scott establishes that there were at least nine limners working in Oxford and a tenth, a foreigner, willing to work in Oxford as well as London, active in the period 1451 to 1465. The precise dates on p. 65 need adjustment for Lady Day dating, so that the colophon in MS 204 should be interpreted as 17 March 1461/2 and that in MS 291 as 4 January 1464/5, but that does not alter the conclusions. Scott's inference (p. 63) that the need to resort to a London limner may have been because local artists were overstretched seems to me unlikely, but her work is the first to seek to establish from dated manuscripts how many may have been active in Oxford at the same time. My expectation would be that these few extant dated specimens cannot be expected to represent the full extent of available means of production.
Alan Piper's contribution, "Dr Thomas Swalell, monk of Durham, archivist and bibliophile (d. 1539)" (pp. 71-100), constructs the career and activities of Thomas Swalwell from the most fragmentary of evidence--his annotations in archives and books- -and reveals an energetic and scholarly monk, almost always holding some administrative office in the community though passed over for the highest, and seemingly constantly reading and thinking about what he read as the basis for his teaching and preaching. It is a pity that, as Piper says, "Swalwell's temperament remains stubbornly hidden" (p. 88). The text of this essay reads well and avoids overwhelming the reader with the detail on which it depends. The endnotes, on the other hand, present only such detail as supports the text and that is left largely unconnected; one is left to link some note of Swalwell's with the text on which it hangs only by a shelfmark reference to the copy of the printed book in which he wrote, without title or context; one can form no sense of whether there was any coherence in his comments on particular texts, nor even in how many books his marginal notes have so far been found. I should not wish the essay to have been spoilt by excessive detail, but endnotes are not the ideal medium for presenting the evidence Piper has brought together.
"Archaizing hands in English manuscripts" (pp. 101-140), by Malcolm Parkes, is concerned mainly with the sympathetic imitation of earlier hands when supplying leaves to fill a lacuna in an older book or even when making a complementary volume. While his opening pages consider and illustrate the other circumstances in which archaizing hands are used--to lend authenticity to copies of a document, for example, or to a forged document, or for antiquarian purposes--the core of his discussion (pp. 110-23) deals with manuscripts produced at Christ Church Canterbury in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century designed to simulate the visual effect of the familiar twelfth-century biblical and patristic books with which the library there was well supplied. A futher section examines Matthew Parker's use of archaizing techniques in making good defective manuscripts, and the treatment goes on to illustrate Humphrey Wanley's learned facsimiles of much older hands.
The fourteenth-century French composer's ownership and use of BAV MS Regin. lat. 544 is the main topic of Andrew Wathey's essay, "Philippe de Vitry's books" (pp. 145-52), but two other manuscripts linked to him by inscription are also considered.
Elisabeth Leedham-Green and David McKitterick print and annotate "A catalogue of Cambridge University Library in 1583" (pp. 153-235; catalogue, pp. 166-229). This forms a sequel to the three catalogues from 1557, 1573, and 1573-4 printed by Oates & Pink in Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 1 (1952) 310-40. The next document of its kind dates from the 1650s. 1583 was a significant time, almost the culmination of ten years' soliciting of donations on the part of Andrew Perne. He was successful with Matthew Parker, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Robert Horne, and others, though the catalogue was taken too early to include Perne's own bequest of books to the library. This planned accession and the evidence for its effect--the gift usually of new books specially bound--is discussed in the introduction. The catalogue itself includes a good many manuscripts and printed books acquired long before 1583, and where possible the shelfmark of the book is given as well as notes on its donor, markings, and contents. "Not found" reflects in a modest proportion of cases their lack of success in matching extant books with the catalogue, though even in such cases the work and even the edition can sometimes by identified. The formula "Not identified" is used in those cases familiar from medieval booklists where the wording of the catalogue is not sufficient for a modern user to identify the work and where a cross-match of shelfmark has not provided the answer. Sometimes both formulae were abandoned: a guess in the notes at 246 "Flavius Josephus grecus", "Presumably one of the Froben editions", left it neither found nor not found, but unilluminatingly identified as "Flavius Josephus: Opera (Greek)". Elsewhere the formulae have been confused, especially in sections listing manuscripts rather than printed books: so 270 "Franciscus super Sum" is not identified, but 272 "Holcot super libros sapientiales" or 277 "Scotus super primum sententiarum" are surely as identified as 266 "Aul: Gell: Noct:" (described as "MS. Not found"). Another formula "Unidentified MS" is used where a manuscript is not cross-matched and its contents are unidentifiable from the catalogue, as 309 "Tractatus de occupacione cordis". But is this formula correctly used with 307 "Sermones Holcotae", surely his Sermones dominicales as mentioned in the 1473 catalogue of the University Library or as in Peterhouse, MS 210: should this not be "MS. Not found"? Examples could be multiplied, though fortunately the reader is hardly the poorer for these minor inconsistences. And I failed to grasp how, among printed books, 258 "Aeneas Silvius" ("Not found") merges into 258A which the note identifies as a 12th-century copy of Aelfric's Catholic Homilies, now CUL MS Gg.3.28. Some notes also suggest that for manuscript material identification has not proceeded much beyond the information of the other 16th-century catalogues: why else is 318 "Libri Mosis", matched with MS Dd.7.15, identified as "Wood, abbot of St Martin de Bello, Super quinque libros Moysi" rather than the more familiar Odo of Canterbury, abbot of Battle, Commentary on Genesis-Numbers? There are real difficulties in dealing with booklists that combine manuscript and printed books, compounded where many but not all are extant. Leedham-Green and McKitterick have done a heroic job, and closer editorial oversight could have avoided these criticisms. More serious are the lack of an index to the catalogue, the lack of references to the 1473 catalogue, though the three 16th-century inventories are cited where relevant, and perhaps also the lack of some chronological conspectus of accessions, insofar as the evidence of the catalogues and donation records make this possible.
Kristian Jensen and Alan Coates of the Bodleian Library's incunabula project contribute "The Bodleian Library's acquisition of incunabula with English and Scottish medieval monastic provenances" (pp. 237-59). They list 28 extant books with the evidence for provenance and history down to their acquisition by the Bodleian--a small number in comparison with the library's 600 or so manuscripts with monastic provenances. In most cases the incunabula bear evidence of having belonged to members of religious orders rather than having formed part of monastic libraries. Two of the books listed correct Ker's listing: A 2.8 Th. Seld. is listed by Ker under Balliol College but is shown here to have belonged to a canon, perhaps Richard Codyngdon of Leeds priory or Richard Cotinden of Bilsington priory; Auct. 1 Q. 6.9 is listed by Ker under Haughmond but the inscription calls him "chanon of Hanto[n?]", leading to the suggestion that he was canon of St James's, Northampton. More importantly, eleven books described here have not had the evidence of their possible monastic ownership recorded by Ker: (according to the list numbers here) no. 7, possibly from Durham; no. 9; perhaps belonged to a monk of Evesham; no. 13, Westminster; no. 15, belonged to a Cambridge Carmelite and an Oxford Franciscan; no. 18, from Sheen; no. 19, from Coupar abbey; no. 20, belonged to an abbot of Kinloss; no. 22, belonged to a Cistercian of Woburn and St Bernard's College; no. 23, belonged to a monk of Lewes; no. 25, belonged to a monk and to a Dominican; no. 26, belonged to a Franciscan. Q: What is the order of this list? Answer below. Not all of these items would have been accepted by Ker as attested monastic books but, even so, it is clear that more printed books could be provenanced in Britain than have yet been, but the nature of printed book catalogues means that it is necessary both to examine the books themselves and also to investigate thoroughly the names of past owners.
Christopher de Hamel's "The dispersal of the library of Christ Church, Canterbury, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century" (pp. 263-79), seeks to tell a story. Already from the first half of the fourteenth century books were leaving the Christ Church library documented in Prior Eastry's catalogue. Some went out on loan, some were used in bindings, many were shipped to Oxford for the student monks at Canterbury College, and most did not come back. Because of the wide inconsistencies between the lists of Canterbury College books, de Hamel argues that many more may have gone from the cathedral priory to Oxford than are documented. The books of the college seem in no small measure to have ended up with Oxford bookbinders, and some may be identified even among pastedown fragments from the fortunate survival of an inscription in one case and from recognizable mid-15th-cent. marginal signs from Christ Church in a number of others. Some of the most interesting illustrations of this story are kept in the footnotes. For example, one fragment of Peter Lombard's Magna glosatura on the Epistles, identified from the marginal signs, was acquired by Philip Bliss from an Oxford binding in the 1820s, passed to Sir Thomas Phillipps, and resurfaced in modern times, being sold in 1977 and 1991. It is now in the Scho/yen Collection, and note 34 adds that its 12th-cent. hand and especially its early layout (becoming obsolete in the 1160s) make it probable that this comes from the copy given to the priory by Archbishop Thomas Becket, no. 803 in Eastry's catalogue. De Hamel goes on to trace the dispersal of those books that remained in Canterbury, observing the dates in the mid- to late-16th century when they appear in the hands of members of the cathedral chapter or of local Kentish families. What he is the first to notice is that books from the upper library, created in the 1430s and attested in an extant list of 1508, do not appear in private hands until 1582 and after, when "they strayed in armfuls", the largest surviving clutch being those acquired by Archbishop Whitgift and Dean Nevile and given by them to Trinity College, Cambridge. He infers that the upper library had been more or less sealed off until this date after a fire in 1535.
David Selwyn's valuable book, The Library of Thomas Cranmer, Oxford Bibliographical Society, 3rd ser. 1 (1996), 204-207, lists by provenance those of Cranmer's books, about thirty manuscripts and ten printed books, that bear evidence of having formerly belonged to English monasteries or to individual religious. They are individually described in their appropriate places in Selwyn's book. Here, "Thomas Cranmer and the dispersal of medieval libraries: the provenance of some of his medieval manuscripts and printed books" (pp. 281-94), Selwyn discusses the circumstances in which Cranmer, whether as a fellow in Cambridge or subsequently as archbishop of Canterbury, might have acquired them, and in so doing puts flesh on the bones of his catalogue. It would have been easier for the reader if the number references to this catalogue had been included in the text rather than in endnotes. What is clear is that only a part of Cranmer's former monastic books were spoils of the Dissolution; others were acquired in the market-place from earlier disposals. Even with groups of manuscripts, such as the eight (or nine) from Bath abbey and the three from Bristol, it has been impossible to establish how they came into Cranmer's possession.
For Anglo-Saxonists there is Timothy Graham's essay, "Robert Talbot's 'Old Saxonice Bede': Cambridge University Library, MS Kk. 3. 18 and 'Alphabetum Norwagicum' of British Library Cotton MSS, Domitian A. IX" (pp. 295-316). Talbot (c1505-1558) is the earliest 16th-century scholar known to have taken a real interest in Old English. More than forty years ago Neil Ker identified ten manuscripts of varied provenance wholly or partly in English that had been annotated by Talbot besides twenty-odd Latin books, the latter from Norwich where he was a prebendary from 1548 to his death. One such note, against the runic alphabet on a single stray leaf, now bound as MS Cotton Domitian A. IX, fol. 11, refers to another such alphabet in his copy of the Old English Bede, which Graham identifies as CUL MS Kk. 3. 18, a manuscript from Worcester cathedral priory, which Talbot annotated and which he seems to have compared with the Latin text; the manuscript was bound or rebound for Matthew Parker who gave it along with other books to the University Library in 1574 (422 in the catalogue of 1583 edited in this volume). Graham argues that the second alphabet, on an endleaf now missing from MS Kk. 3. 18, is the "Alphabetum Norwagicum" now mounted as fol. 10 in MS Cotton Domitian A. IX, suggesting that the roman letters added to it are in Talbot's hand and considering other evidence for Talbot's interest in the runic alphabet.
The Latin trade in books from the Continent through the 16th and much of the 17th centuries was the inevitable consequence of the undeveloped state of scholarly printing in London. Julian Robert's paper, "Importing books for Oxford, 1500-1640" (pp. 317-33), does not attempt a general history of this trade, though a general picture emerges. Rather he focuses on the limited evidence from purchasers, especially libraries in Oxford, that show something of how the demand was met in the two principal centres for the purchase of learned books. In the earlier 16th century at both universities, institutionalized in Cambridge, learned books were imported directly to the university towns to meet demand, but increasingly from the mid 16th century the imports were channelled through a small number of importers in London. Until the 1580s the trade, whether direct or through London, was dominated by Dutch booksellers denizated in England.
A. I. Doyle's investigation of the letters of the 16th-century antiquary William Claxton (now in BL MS Harley 374) and his notes made in Durham manuscripts, "William Claxton and the Durham chronicles" (pp. 335-55), reveals the work of an early local historian continuing the Durham chronicles down to the time of Cuthbert Tunstall. In the process Dr. Doyle throws light on the dispersal of manuscripts from Durham cathedral. The historical manuscripts in which we find Claxton at work are now Bodl. MS Laud Misc. 700, Bodl. MS Fairfax 6, DUL MS Cosin V. II. 6, and BL MS Add. 24059, with a single leaf also in CUL MS Add. 4406. All of these must have been in his own hands and were never returned to the cathedral library.
Among the early benefactions entered in the Benefactors Book of the Bodleian Library is the gift of sixteen medieval manuscripts and thirty-six printed books presented in 1604 by Charles Howard (1536-1624), 2nd Lord Howard of Effingham and from 1596 1st earl of Nottingham. James Carley, "Sir Thomas Bodley's library and its acquisitions: an edition of the Nottingham benefaction of 1604" (pp. 357-86), prints and annotates the list of these books. His discussion concentrates on three batches among the books given by the earl. One comprises eleven former monastic manuscripts that had demonstrably formed part of Henry VIII's library. Many of the printed books must also have belonged to the king, as a number of Henrician bindings shows. Four other printed books had belonged to Sir Thomas Copley (+1584) and some of these had previously formed part of Cranmer's library. Carley argues that Copley, a bibliophile, was probably the person who collected the whole group of manuscripts and printed books that subsequently belonged to Lord Howard until coveted and obtained by Thomas Bodley.
Robert Glover (1544-1588), Somerset Herald, had formed a collection of medieval manuscripts and historical transcripts that was recognized as important in his own time. An inventory was made shortly after his death, now BL MS Lansdowne 58 fols. 103-106, which Pamela Selwyn hopes at a future date to publish. Her discussion here, "'Such special bookes of Mr Somersettes as were sould to Mr Secretary': the fate of Robert Glover's collections" (pp. 389-401), follows up the implications of another list of books purchased from Glover's library by Mr. Secretary, copied into Bodl. MS Ashmole 836 with the erroneous date 1570 in error for 1590. The Secretary in question was William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1520-1598), and several books are traced as passing through his hands. Copies of the so-called Burghley Sale Catalogue of November 1687 with contemporay annotations reveal not a few medieval manuscripts as well as collections of transcripts of Glover's, confirming that at least a substantial part of his collection had been acquired by Lord Burghley. Dispersal of the collection, however, began almost immediately, and has continued. One group from Glover's collection was acquired by the earl of Kent at the sale in 1687 and remained at Wrest Park until broken up and sold in 1922. The paper is a foretaste of Mrs. Selwyn's long anticipated publication of the Burghley Sale Catalogue, here tracing the ownership of some of his books back to before Lord Burghley acquired them and forwards into our own time. It will be better appreciated when we have in evidence her editions of the Lansdowne and Ashmole lists as well as the Burghley Catalogue.
Mirjam Foot, "For king, earl, and diplomat: some vellum bindings of the first half of the seventeenth century" (pp. 403-412), describes and illustrates a number of gold-tooled vellum bindings, the work of one London bindery active by 1624 and continuing after 1642, some limp, some over pasteboards. Two 17th-century manuscript manuals on binding provide trade information on how a vellum binding over pasteboard was made, while the earlier of the two, by Anselm Faust of Antwerp (1612), describes the techniques of gold tooling on vellum.
In " Pennarum nitor: a Jacobean scribal patternbook" (pp. 413-28), Janet Backhouse describes BL MS Add. 36991, a pattern- book of alphabets, figures, and heraldry made by a Norfolk clergyman, Joseph Lawson, in 1608. Other pattern-books of the same era are compared, and Dr. Backhouse suggests in one instance that Lawson's source, probably indirect, may have been a medieval manuscript from Bury St. Edmunds, now Bodl. MS Bodley 130.
The focus of Colin Tite's contribution, "Sir Robert Cotton, Sir Thomas Tempest and an Anglo-Saxon gospel book: a Cottonian paper in the Harleian library" (pp. 429-39), is a list (MS Harley 6849, fol. 84), datable between 1626 and Cotton's death in 1631, of eight books in the possession of Sir Thomas Tempest of Stella, Co. Durham, which Cotton wished to acquire, among them certainly the Durham collection now BL MS Harley 4843. The four gospels "Saxonica caractere et Saxonica interpretatione" can hardly be the Lindisfarne gospels, which was already in Cotton's possession in or near 1621. The other gospel book with an Old English gloss, the Rushworth gospels (in the Bodleian Library since about 1681), is a plausible candidate; Tite suggests the book, which escaped Cotton's grasp, passed from Sir Thomas Tempest to his cousin Sir Richard Tempest and from him to John Rushworth (p. 434).
A. S. G. Edwards, "Medieval manuscripts owned by William Browne of Tavistock (1590/1?-1643/5?)" (pp. 441-9), identifies seventeen manuscripts that bear the distinctive signature of William Browne, author of Britannia's Pastorals and The Shepherd's Pipe. His collecting interests focused on manuscripts of Middle English prose and especially verse. Browne edited Thomas Hoccleve's Tale of Jonathas and projected an edition of his other poems, and he stands as a very early specialist in the study of English poetry from the 15th century.
Mostyn manuscripts, catalogued at Mostyn by Alfred Horwood for the Historical Manuscripts Commission in 1898, are often still cited as such, though the collection was dispersed by sales in 1918, 1920, and 1974. This collection was the result of a 19th-century merging of the libraries from five Welsh houses. The richest of these for medieval books was that formed by Sir Thomas Mostyn (+1692) at Gloddaith, catalogued after his death, and these are the subject of Daniel Huws's paper, "Sir Thomas Mostyn and the Mostyn manuscripts" (pp. 451-72). In printing and annotating the 1692 catalogue, Huws is in some cases able to identify the sales at which Mostyn purchased the books, in most cases he has identified its place in the sale catalogues from the collection's dispersal, and in many cases he has also given the present or last known location of the book. This will serve as a valuable point of reference for books once in a collection kept together from the 17th century into the era of modern textual scholarship but now scattered.
Lists of books are the great common denominator in this collection of essays. Four contributions print booklists from the 16th and 17th centuries, Leedham-Green and McKitterick, Carley, Tite, and Huws. Three give lists of extant books, Thomson of 12th- and early 13th-century books from or perhaps made at Gloucester abbey, Jensen and Coates of incunabula now in the Bodleian that bear evidence of having belonged to English or Scottish religious houses or their members, and Edwards of manuscripts with the signature of William Browne. Others might have done so: Pamela Selwyn might have chosen to print here the inventory of Glover's books, while Piper might better have tabulated as a list the books in which he has found Thomas Swalwell's notes. The lack of any common style in printing and annotating early modern lists seems regrettable. While strict uniformity would have been impossible, this reviewer would have been a more tyrannical editor than Carley and Tite in trying to achieve some similarity in the information provided by the different contributors who included such documents. The best model is surely the corpus of British medieval library catalogues, from the same publisher as this volume. Yet the lists here so far ignore that model as not even to distinguish by size of type the text of the documents from the editors' notes. Lists put together in our own time by diligent inquiry, whether in one library or many, present a more difficult problem than most documents: the compiler has to impose some shape on them. The one thing that is clear in the arrangement of all three is the shelfmarks. Edwards's list (pp. 445-7) is very concise, giving shelfmark, a few words identifying the main work contained, the form of Browne's signature, and (where available) a reference to a description other than in the obvious library catalogues. The order is by shelfmark, yet libraries are arranged not alphabetically but according to the number of items they hold. This list is printed in text size; the others are printed only in note size. Thomson's list is divided into three classes according to the likelihood of the Gloucester connexion, and each class is arranged simply by shelfmark, while each entry attempts a very concise description of the manuscript. To have numbered the list would have facilitated reference between it and the preceding discussion. It is frustrating, for example, that one cannot turn from the mention of rare treatises such as Mansuetus or Novatus (p. 9) to the list of books but must first go to the endnotes for a shelfmark; and on moving back to the list, the contents are not itemized in sufficient detail for these texts to appear. Since the argument that led to the construction of the list moves outwards from books with explicit evidence of provenance to those sharing scribes, it might have made more logical sense to give priority to those with ex libris inscriptions or other positive evidence, and then to add the classes of constructive attributions in declining order of confidence. I found it helpful to add prominently Ker's letter-coding for the basis of attribution and to highlight the phrase "Not in Ker", often buried invisibly in the description, so that I could see more clearly how much Thomson has added to our evidence for Gloucester. The list by Coates and Jensen is analogous not to Ker's text but to his index of printed books. Though far better laid out than Thomson's list, shelfmarks are still the most visually distinct component, but it is not in shelfmark order. The list is numbered, but its arrangement is not spelt out. The answer: it is alphabetical according to the order to which the houses or individuals belonged, Augustinian (nos. 1-3), Benedictine (nos. 4-14), Carmelite (no. 15), Carthusian (nos. 16-18), Cistercian (nos. 19-22), Cluniac (no. 23), Crutched (no. 24), Dominican (no. 25), Franciscan (nos. 26-7), Premonstratensian (no. 28). How many readers will have realised that? I doubt whether this is a meaningful arrangement. As with Thomson, Ker references or the words "Not in Ker" do not leap to the eye, and a comparison with his index would have been the quickest way to see where this study adds to our available reference data; once again I had to get out my highlighter to do a job which authors, editors, and designer seem not to have thought sufficiently about: translating meaning into print. Lists of extant books will usually require individual decisions about arrangement and layout, and the answers will be different for a list that embodies arguments and uncertainties and one that is designed, like Ker's, to meet a reference need. If this volume teaches us something over and above the conclusions of the individual contributors, it is that presenting information based on drawing together a group of extant books, whether defined by their origin or ownership or location or some other aspect of their history, requires serious thought.
The usual apparatus of a Festschrift in the form of an embarrassing biographical sketch and a list of the honorand's principal published writings complete this volume. It is one that contains more of lasting value than many such volumes and it will no doubt be much cited.