[In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1906, Gasquet provides an economic perspective on medieval bookmaking.]

Turning over the pages of our annals the reader constantly comes upon some record of books made for, or given to the library of the monastery or house in which the writer lived, or in which he was specially interested.¹ Sometimes also in manuscript volumes, though not as frequently as we could wish, we find some details of the actual making of a manuscript, of the cost, for instance, of the materials, of the payments made for the writing, for the illumination, and for the binding. Less frequently again we come upon chance indications and directions made by one scribe to help a second, or to direct the illuminator and rubricator, who was to follow him in working upon the MS., as to his part in the work.

The churchwardens' books and other similar accounts help us in a measure to estimate the cost of bookmaking and bookbinding and to understand how, and under what conditions, the scribe and the binder did their work in the place—parish or house—that employed them. They show us the itinerant bookbinder playing his trade, accompanied not infrequently by his wife to do the stitching of the quires for him. The couple wandered from place to place where their services might be desired, and made their bargains for new work and for old; for complete binding or old patching, settling down for a time in the parish or village which needed their help. Lastly, old wills and inventories enable us to form some idea of the kind of books possessed by private individuals in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

All this, of course, presents a vast field for any patient enquirer; but for the purpose of a brief paper such as this it is somewhat difficult to know where to begin. As, however, I make no pretence of having made any exhaustive collection of facts from the sources I have indicated, I will ask you to let me merely illustrate the kind of information we get in them from entries taken almost at haphazard from the pages of my note books.

From the earliest times, as all know, when (if we are to believe what so many of our would-be instructors tell us) people cared little or nothing about the Bible, and knew still less about it, the greatest pains were most certainly taken in the preparation and embellishment of the Sacred text. Of this, at least, there can be no doubt. Gospel books used in the services and known as Textus, were often, if not generally, bound in covers of gold and other precious metals, and enriched very frequently with jewels, ivories, or cameos. The Sacred Books were carried in procession by the deacons before chanting the Gospels that all the clergy and people might bow to them in reverence of the Holy Scripture, and the jewelled volumes were placed upon the altars during the divine service as the most precious of ornaments. The Monk Elmham, for instance, writes in his history that in the sacristy of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, such a Textus and a Psalter were preserved to be placed on the altar on great feasts. “Since,” as the same chronicler tells us, “on the outside there was wrought in full relief the image of Christ blessing, and the four evangelists” in silver. And this, as we are told, was merely one of these precious Scripture books belonging to St. Augustine's. In the same way, in 1077, Abbot Paul, of St. Albans, had made for his monastery “two texts ornamented with gold, silver, and precious gems.” We learn from the St. Albans annalist that this same abbot obtained from a Norman knight two parts of his tithe of the vil of Hatfield towards the expenses of making these books. The abbot watched over the work himself, and directed that certain rations of food should be given daily to the scribes, in order that they might not be required to leave their work. “In this way,” says the historian, “the abbot caused many splendid volumes to be written for the church by chosen scribes brought from a distance,” and “he had many choice volumes written in the Scriptorium, which he had built, Lanfranc supplying him with the texts to copy.”

At the beginning of the thirteenth century Walter of Colchester, a celebrated worker in metals, became a monk of St. Albans, drawn thither by another great artist, Br. Ralph Guby. He is said to have bound a Textus in a cover of gold, upon which was chiselled and wrought, with great skill, a figure of Christ in majesty, with the four Evangelists. But it is unnecessary to illustrate this matter further. References to these precious bindings are to be found scattered all over the pages of the Monastic Chronicles, and any proper account of the ornamentation of such books would itself be sufficient to furnish a paper, although possibly the subject is one more properly relating to art than to bibliography.

The wonderful series of monastic registers of St. Albans printed in the Rolls Series, even from mere incidental references, affords us some idea of how the library of a great abbey grew through the care of successive abbots. The Abbot Paul, to whom I have already referred, ruled the house from 1077 to 1093. In that time he had enriched the collection of books by twenty-eight manuscripts, most of them apparently being church books and monastic consuetudinaries. We can understand why this should have been so if we remember that Paul was the first Norman abbot, and no doubt he desired to reconstruct the old Saxon monastic life on the lines which he knew abroad. For this purpose he introduced Lanfranc's Consuetudinary, or book of customs, and during the years of his rule he made St. Albans, as the chronicle records, “almost a school of religious observance,” to which men were sent to learn the newest mode of monastic discipline. Abbot Paul's successor, Abbot Richard, governed the abbey till 1119. He gave, and had written to give to the abbey many books, but one especially is noted in the Gesta Abbatum. This is a missal or mass book to be used in the daily Conventual Mass. At the beginning of this volume the abbot was himself depicted kneeling at the feet of Our Lord, and on the same page in letters of gold was inscribed his name as that of the donor. It was in this abbot's time that the well-known fire in the school during the progress of a miracle play happened. In this conflagration there perished several copes that had been lent from the great sacristy of the abbey, as well as many precious books. It is said to have been in reparation for this loss that Geoffrey the schoolmaster offered himself as a monk to serve the monastery. In process of time the schoolmaster rose to be abbot, and whilst holding office was able to give a missal enriched with gold and many other church books to his house.

Abbot Robert, who became superior of St. Albans in 1151, during the fifteen years he ruled the destinies of the abbey, is said to have “had written so many books” that the annalist unfortunately thought “it would occupy too much space to set down their names.” Symon, surnamed “the Englishman,” was the nineteenth abbot, ruling the monastery from 1167 to 1183. He was a literary man himself, and he did all he could to attract well-educated men to the abbey. He made a collection of the best books, and caused authentic texts of the Old and New Testament and glossed versions to be copied in the Scriptorium without a fault. Here again the annalist tantalizes us by saying that “no finer books could be seen, but that it would take too long to set down the list of them.” Nor does his addition to this excuse tend to reconcile us to it: “Still, those who wish to see the books themselves,” he writes, “may find them in the painted press, over against the tomb of Saint Roger in the church, which was made to contain them.” “By (looking at) them,” he adds, “may be understood what a lover of the Scriptures Abbot Symon really was.”

It was this abbot also who created the office of Historiographer at St. Albans, and established a systematic, and we might almost say, scientific method of writing history, trained in which school were Matthew Paris, Walsingham, and the rest. Two or three scribes were kept constantly at work copying documents, etc., which were collected for this purpose and preserved in this way. The very handwriting of the St. Albans school, as all know, is characteristic of the place; the original master scribe must have impressed his individuality upon his pupils, and have thus handed down the very type of handwriting which became traditional in the place.

During the time of John, the twenty-first abbot, who died in 1214, through the industry of the then head of the Scriptorium, many important books, well written and carefully collated, were added to the monastic collection. The writer of the Gesta Abbatum mentions in particular the Historia Scholastica cum allegoriis, which he calls liber elegantissimus. It was the work of Prior Reymund, and may now be seen in the British Museum collection (Royal MS. 4, D vii). It fully deserves the praise bestowed upon it, for its workmanship is wonderful, the lines and distances most exact, the size of the letters even, and the “flourishing” of the capitals always elegant. In the Gesta it is not made quite clear when and under what abbot this book was added to the monastic collection, for at a later period obviously this same book is described as librum decentissimum—a very fine book—and it is put down to the benefaction of Abbot William, the successor of the abbot first named as the donor. No doubt the second adscription is correct, as the MS. in the Museum, after the St. Albans pressmark (B gradus) says it is a book of “W. abbatis.” Another abbot, Roger, who ruled from 1260 to 1290, specially collected works on canon law, the “Summas of Reymund and Galfrid” and “Bernard on the Decretals.” He also wrote out with his own hand a work of Seneca's, and gave these and many other books and tracts to the library of his house.

In the first half of the fourteenth century, Abbot Richard Wallingford, the second of the name, who became abbot in 1326, with the consent of the seniors gave four books from the monastic library to Richard, of Bury, of Philobiblon fame. They were a Terence, a Virgil, a Quintilian, and St. Jerome against Rufinus. He also agreed to sell to the same bibliophile for £50 thirty-two more books belonging to the house. What the monks in general thought of this transaction was probably the same as what is expressed by Walsingham. It was, he writes, an abominable prorsus donum—altogether a detestable gift—for books ought to be “the highest and indeed the sole delight of those who dwell in the cloister.” We may note, however, that when made Bishop of Durham, Richard of Bury restored some of these volumes to St. Alban's, and after his death his executors sold others to the next abbot, Michael de Mentmore. It would be wrong, however, whilst speaking of Abbot Richard Wallingford's alienations, not to record also the fact that in some ways he enriched the library. He is said to have “compiled many books of sciences and arts and constructed many astronomical and geometrical instruments,” at the same time composing books to teach their use. He collected Decretals and Constitutions of the Provincial Chapters of the Order, wrote a commentary on the Prologue of the Rule of St. Benedict, and compiled a register of the various privileges granted to his house.

Michael de Mentmore, his successor, to whom I have referred, procured two good Bibles for the community, as well as many other volumes. Two of these latter are specially named—“an Ordinale or Portiforium, an object of beauty and sumptuous in its workmanship,” and a most wonderful (perpulchrum) Psalter for use in the choir and cloister, which volume, adds the annalist rightly, “was a delight to all who saw it.” The next two abbots, whose rule synchronized with the second half of the fourteenth century, built the library and what is called the “Study,” and caused to be made in the Scriptorium, or purchased, a very large number of books to be added to the monastic collection.

Abbot Whethamstede, who in the fifteenth century twice ruled St. Albans, gave three books to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, which were then valued at £10, and a Book on Astronomy to the Duke of Bedford, worth £3 6s. 8d. He also paid a monk of Bury St. Edmunds, the poet Lydgate, £3 6s. 8d. for a translation of the Life of St. Alban into English. This last, although finished, was still only in quires, unbound, upon Whethamstede's resignation in 1440. He was re-elected in 1451 and, finding that Lydgate's work was still in the same state, unbound, he spent more than £3 on the covers and binding, and placed it at the shrine of the Saint in the church. Abbot Whethamstede was himself the author of a large and almost encyclopaedic work called the Granarium in four volumes. A copy of this was amongst the books mentioned as given by Duke Humphrey to Oxford, and another is named as having been copied for St. Albans at the cost of 20 marks, whilst three volumes out of the four are to be found among the British Museum MS. collections. In this regard the account of payments made during Abbot Whethamstede's rule, for the making and compilation of books, and given by Amundesham (vol. ii, p. 260), is of considerable interest. From this account may be well understood the great cost of producing manuscripts at that day—the middle of the fifteenth century—even in a monastic Scriptorium. For the four great Gradual books in the choir the abbot paid £20 (probably more than £300 or £400 of our money); a glossed copy of Boethius de Consolatione cost £5 (hardly less perhaps than £80). The twenty-three works set out in the first part of the account cost £82 3s. 4d. in or about 1440: that is, according to the present value of money, probably between £1,300 and £1,500.

I have taken these items from the Chronicles of St. Albans to illustrate the growth of the library under the care of the successive abbots, because the series of these annals is so complete and inviting. The history of any other house, however, would serve the purpose almost equally well. The register of Henry de Estria, Prior of Canterbury, and the Canterbury Book of Obits, for example, contain many interesting records of gifts of volumes to the Christ Church library. Estria himself, for instance, is said to have gathered together at great cost during the forty-seven years of his priorship, “many more books on all kinds of subjects than any of his predecessors.” Thomas Chillenden, who was Prior from 1390 to 1411, also was a great and noteworthy book collector, and secured for his house “very many precious volumes of different sorts,” and so on. Naturally the library in this cathedral monastery was enriched by gifts from the archbishops. Thus, according to the Obit Book, Archbishop Arundell left the monks “a fine volume containing all the works of St. Gregory,” forbidding under pain of excommunication that it should ever be taken away from Christ Church. The monks, however, had some difficulty in getting possession of the volume after the Archbishop's death, and it was not indeed until some years after that they succeeded, and then only when Prior John petitioned the Duke of Gloucester on the matter. It seems that Sir Gilbert Umfraville, Arundell's executor, had given the book to King Henry IV to look at, and he was not able during his life to get it back from the monarch. On Henry's death it was found that by his will he had desired that the book should be given to the Carthusians of Shene, and this had been done. The Prior's petition, which was granted, was that the Prior of Shene should be ordered to hand the book to William Molash, monk and almoner of Christ Church, and as the volume clearly belonged to Canterbury, this was ultimately done.

Kings sometimes, as borrowers of books, were difficult to deal with. Besides the instance just named there is a note in 1424 that the Countess of Westmorland petitioned the Duke of Gloucester, the Protector, that she might have given up to her a book containing the “Chronicle of Jerusalem and the voyage de Godfrey Boylion,” which the late King Henry V had borrowed, and which, at the time, Robert Rolleston, clerk, keeper of the wardrobe to the King, held in his keeping as part of his late master's possessions.

I may here recall a gift of Archbishop Courtenay to Christ Church, Canterbury. He left six books, said to be very valuable: a work of St. Augustine, a dictionary in three volumes, and the Commentary of De Lira in two. His brother, Richard Courtenay, had the use of them, but gave a bond for £300 that his executors should hand the gift over to the monks on his death.

A somewhat curious letter about some books appears in a collection of documents concerning the Premonstratensian Canons, which I have lately been engaged upon for the Royal Historical Society. I say “curious,” because we do not often find a purchaser writing to say that he has paid too little for a bargain, and desiring to make restitution. It appears that a certain Thomas Hill, the Rector of Chesterford, some time before 8th September 1458, obtained possession of a portable Bible and a dictionary by purchase. They had been left by a certain clerk named Daniel to the Abbey of Welbeck, and had got into the hands of a priest called Richard Scot, who had been chaplain to Roger Walden, Archbishop of Canterbury, during his brief term of office (1398-9). In 1420, the priest, Thomas Hill, arranged the sale of the two volumes with the Welbeck authorities, but, as he says, “I was young then and looked too much to worldly wealth, and so obtained the books at less than a just price.” He consequently charged his executors to give back the books to the abbey on payment of the sum he had paid, namely, 30s.; or, if the Canons of Welbeck did not want to wait till his death, he offered to pay down another 20s. at once, for the satisfaction of his scruples of conscience. As a third alternative the Rector of Chesterford suggested that should the Canons of Welbeck not wish to purchase the books for the 30s. he had given for them, on his death his executors would sell them in open market, and any sum they might fetch over and above the original price, they should pay over to the abbey as conscience money.

Abbot Benedict, of Peterborough, who was chosen in 1177, had been Prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, and was a man of great literary attainments. He is said to have been a musician and composed anthems, both words and music. He wrote a “Volumen egregium” on the death and miracles of St. Thomas, and a list is extant of fifty-three volumes which he added to the collection at his abbey of Peterborough. Amongst these were twenty-one volumes of the Bible, glossed and not glossed; two volumes of Peter Lombard; two of the decreta of Gratian, and many other works on canon law; an Arithmetic, a Seneca, a Martial, and a Terence.

Frequently, of course, from the kind of books given to or procured for any religious house we can guess at the special tastes of the donor. Thus Abbot Marleberge, of Evesham, before becoming a monk, had taught canon law and civil law at Oxford. He brought his law books to Evesham with him, and he also presented the library with a Cicero, a Lucan, and a Juvenal. During his term of office also he caused many books to be written, and found the necessary materials for others which the monks wrote. So, too, Prior William de Rokeland of Bury brought many law books to his abbey; and one monk, Stephen, who was a doctor of medicine, gave “three large and very beautiful books on medical science” to guide “in the treatment of the sick.”

Much information regarding the cost of books and of the materials for making them can be obtained from accounts and such like documents. Mr. Ansty, in the Munimenta Academica (I, xiii), gives the bill for writing the book of the Southern Proctor at Oxford in 1477. The actual writing cost £3 17s. 4d., the illumination £1 5s. 8d., the binding 7s. 2d., and the two clasps 12s.; a fee of 3s. 4d. was also paid for the loan of the copy, and £1 3s. 4d. to the Proctor for overseeing the work, that is, I suppose, collating it. The whole bill of £7 8s. 10d., when translated into the money value of our day, appears very large, but for rare books almost any price was paid. The Countess of Anjou, for a copy of the Homilies of Haimon, Bishop of Halberstadt, gave two hundred sheep, five quarters of wheat, and the same quantity of rye. Even as late as 1433, £66 13s. 4d. was paid for transcribing the Works of Nicholas de Lira, in two volumes, destined to be chained in the library of the Grey Friars at Oxford. An idea of the value of this cost may be gathered from the fact that the usual price of wheat at the time was 5s. 4d. per quarter, and that a ploughman received one penny a day for his wages.

In the inventory of the royal library of Charles VI of France, made by order of the Duke of Bedford in 1423, the books are all priced. It is remarkable that, compared with the prices set on the books of the Duc de Berri in 1416, all are priced very low. Whilst the dearest book in the royal library was 16 livres and the cheapest 5 sous, the dearest in the Berri collection was put at 500 livres. It is not unlikely that the Duke of Bedford, desiring to purchase the entire collection—which he afterwards did for 1,200 livres—had them valued as low as possible; even then they were put at 2,323 livres, above 1,000 livres more than the Duke gave. It would be of great interest to discover what became of the books of this wonderful library. It is surmised that they generally came over to England, although, as M. Delisle has pointed out, some came back. In the library of St. Geneviève there is a Livy with an inscription on a fly-leaf saying that it was sent to England as a present to the Duke of Gloucester by his brother-in-law, the Duke of Bedford. A note also at the beginning of a copy of Durandus' Rationale which belonged to this famous collection, says that it was purchased in London in 1441.

An indenture, dated 26th August 1346, and printed in the Fabric Rolls of York by the Surtees Society (vol. xxxv, p. 165), is useful as giving an excellent account of the prices paid for work on MSS. in the fourteenth century. In this instance Robert Brekeling, the scribe, undertook to write a Psalter with a Calendar for 5s. 6d., and, in the same style of writing, the Office for the Dead with a collection of hymns and collects, for an additional 4s. 3d. He also promised in this contract to illuminate the first letters of the psalms in gold and colours, and the rest of the first letters in gold and red, except the titles of double feasts, which were to be in workmanship like the initial letters of the Psalter. Also all the first letters of the verses (of the Psalms) were to be in good blue and red, and all letters at the beginnings of the Nocturnes, or divisions of the office of Matins, were to be five lines of the MS. in size, and to be well painted; the initials of the Beatus Vir and the Dixit Dominus especially were to be larger still, six or seven lines in size. For all this illumination Robert Brekeling was to receive only 5s. 6d. over and above 18d., which was allowed him for the gold, and 2s. for the colours.

Other examples to illustrate the prices of MS. work are to be found in the same Fabric Rolls. In 1498 the great “Antiphoner” for the lectern in the choir at York Cathedral was written, illuminated, and bound for the sum of £4 9s. 6[frac12]d. A century before, in 1393, the writing of two Graduals for the choir cost £4 6s. 8d. Richard de Styrton charged 40s. for illuminating them; 22s. 7[frac12]d. was paid for the parchment, and 4d. for some linen covers or bags to keep the unbound quires in and prevent their getting soiled. The next year, 1394, £4 13s. 3d. was paid to the same scribe, friar William Ellerker, for the parchment and writing of four books for choir use. In 1395 Robert, the bookbinder, was paid 10s. for binding one of the great Graduals for the choir of York: four skins of parchment as guards in the insides of the binding cost 20d., and the skin of a deer for the outside 3s. 2d. Again in 1399 “Robert Bukebynder” had to bind another book called the “Great Gradual.” The guard leaves in this case were the skins of four young calves, and the skin of a specially large deer had to be procured for the binding at the cost of 4s. Friar W. Ellerker, according to previous agreement, was paid 13s. 4d. for writing the Gradual, and Mr. R. de Styrton 20s. for illuminating it.

In 1526 there is an interesting entry in these same Rolls about music books: Leonard Mason, the Cantor, was paid 10s. by the Dean's order for two books of four-part music with “Kyrreallay” and masses. Another musician, John Gibbons, was given 3s. 4d. for “les prikking”—i.e., writing in the music of the hymns and Te Deum in several choir books.

The illuminator and the corrector followed the scribe in the preparation of all books which demanded care or which were to receive the embellishment of painted initial letters, or of those larger miniature paintings, which are best evidence of the love of books in those who paid for them, and of the art of those who executed the work. Curiously enough, whilst it is not uncommon to find the name of the ordinary scribe at the end of a MS., it is very and strangely rare to find any record of the artist who embellished it. M. Delisle explains this by the suggestion that the illuminators, generally laymen, were forbidden to add anything whatsoever to a MS., whilst the ordinary scribe, frequently a cleric, had greater freedom given to him. Sometimes, however, the artist managed to get his name recorded, and Delisle speaks of a Bible at the end of which is “Explicit textus Biblie Robertus de Billyng me fecit. Amen.” Between the strokes of Billyng's signature are some vermilion lines which, on being closely examined, proved to be the following: “Jehan Pucelle, Ancian de Cans, Jacquet Maci, ils hont enluminé ce livre ci: ceste ligne de Vermeillon que vous vées fu escrite en l'an de grace mille ccc xxvii. en un jeudi, darrenier jour d'avril.”

At the end of a MS. in the Burgundian Library at Brussels is a useful bill of the cost of the volume. The transcription cost 44 espèces; the loan of the MS. to copy 7; the illuminator for making a miniature in grisaille 4; and the paper 6 espèces—in all 61 espèces, or about 2,260 francs of our money. This is an interesting example, as it is not very common to find the cost of the book set down within its own covers.

In regard to the actual work of making books, and notes left by the scribes in the margin, an example given by M. Delisle from a Pontifical made for Pope Benedict XIII, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, may be recalled to the memory. Many notes in this volume indicate to the painter the subject he is to paint and how he is to treat it. For example, “The Pope on his throne:” “here the Pope kneeling:” here “a stole is to be painted,” etc. In this case the name of the artist is known. It is Brother Sencius Gonterii, and he received for all his work 17 florins and 7d. The marginal notes of scribes, which are intended for others that come after them to finish the work, might often escape attention, but they furnish most instructive information about mediaeval bookmaking. For example, let us take MS. Reg. 3, E VI—the Four Gospels glossed. This is a very good instance of the extreme care taken in correcting on collation. The scribal errors are here very numerous and considerable: they have been indicated by the corrector in the margin with a leaden style, in a regular and neat hand. After this had been done, the corrections so indicated have been entered on erasures in the text: and this method may be seen exemplified throughout the volume. Also in portions of the book scriptural and patristic references have been indicated with the plummet, but have never been executed or written in. Or take in the same Royal Collection 4, A 11—a copy of a glossed Genesis. This is about as good a book as we could desire for showing how it was managed that the indications to the rubricator did not appear when the volume was completed. A line of piercing points was drawn on the parchment in the first instance to indicate where the binder should cut the leaves: then the letters or headings, which it was intended should be put in by the rubricator, were placed just outside this line, and when he had done his work and these letters or headings had found their place in the MS., the notes were sliced off by the knife of the binder following along the line of pierced points.

Royal MS. 3, C II, affords an example of another kind. The book is also a glossed Genesis; and it is chiefly interesting perhaps for the marginal notes. Someone has been all through the volume, noting in the margin all the passages of Holy Scripture referred to in the various extracts from the Fathers, which make up the gloss. The way this was done was apparently as follows:—First someone went through the volume entering in these references in the usual “scrabble” hand with a leaden style, and when this was done a trained scribe went through the sheets and copied them all in the formal writing in the usual way. The original style scrabbles are still visible throughout the book, and this fact makes the volume a very useful text-book for learning to read these crabbed, hurried notes, which occur in so many MSS., and which are often too tantalizing for those who would decipher them. Here the formal hand of the rubricator has translated them for us.

To go back to the expenses of mediaeval bookmaking: in the book of “Expenses of Sir John Howard, Kt., of Stoke Neyland, and afterwards Duke of Norfolk, 1462-1469,” we have an interesting account of payments made in 1467 for the making of a Psalter. The document runs:

Item the 28th day of July my mastyr rekened with Thomas Lympnour of Bury, and my master paid him for 8 hole vynetes [vignettes], prise the vynett xiid—8s.

Item for 21.di. vynetts, prise the di. vynett 4d—6s.

Item for psalmes lettris 1500 & di the prise of a c. 4d—5/2

Item for parvis [or small] lettris 6300 prise of a c. 1d—5/3.

Item for wrytenge of a quare & di pryse the quayre 20d—2/6

Item for wrytenge of a Calender—12d

Item for 3 quayres of Velym prise the quayre 20d—5/-

Item for notynge of v quayres & 2 leves prise of the quayre 8d—3/7d

Item for capital drawinge iii c & di—the price 3d

Item for floryshynge of Capytallis v.c.—5d

Item for byndynge of the boke—12s.

To this bill we have a note appended: “The wyche parcellis my mastyr paid him this day and he is content.” In the above account we possess a very detailed account of all the expenses of making, illuminating, and binding a book in the fifteenth century. Beginning with the purchase of the vellum required, we notice that, apparently, two quires and two leaves were furnished to the scribe, since, whilst only three quires were purchased, the book consisted of five quires and two leaves. The preparation, or “notynge” as it is called, of the vellum is charged for as an extra. This no doubt refers to ruling the margins and lines, making the pricking points, and generally preparing each leaf for the writing and painting that was to be placed on to it. Then comes the large and small formal lettering, for which different prices were charged: by “psalm letters,” which in this case numbered 1,550, I understand the bigger letters it was usual to have at the beginning of each verse of a psalm, for each of which the charge was four times the amount paid for the ordinary letter. Besides this there is a charge made for writing a quire and a half in the ordinary character of the handwriting of the period, and for the Calendar at the beginning, for which 12d. was charged. For the 350 ordinary capital letters which had to be “drawn”—that is, I suppose, were too elaborate to be merely written with the ordinary pen—an extra of 3d. was paid; whilst the “floryshynge” of 500 other capital letters cost 5d. a hundred. The illumination was a special item of charge; in this psalter there were, apparently, eight whole page pictures—“vynetts” as they are called—and twenty-one half-page; for the former the price was one shilling, and for the latter sixpence each. Finally, for the binding of the book there was charged twelve shillings, which suggests rather a sumptuous binding.

In the same book of accounts, I may perhaps be permitted to add, are two not uninteresting items. The same day, notes the keeper of the accounts, “my mastyr paid for painting of two chesse bordes 20d.,” and on 3rd May 1464, it is recorded that “my mastyr payd to John Gyldre for two bokys, a Frenshe boke and an Yenglyshe boke calyd Dives et Pauper, bought at Maningtree, 13s. 4d.”

Note

1. A paper read before the Bibliographical Society, 19 Nov. 1906.