Phillipps MS 8411.
The last flyleaf is now a stub.
The first text is faintly ruled in brown ink; the second in hardpoint.
I-II¹⁰, III⁸, IV-VI¹⁰, VII⁶ (one of these is a stub; another is the back pastedown). Catchwords throughout. There are quire signatures in both sections of the manuscript. In the portion containing the first text the first quire is marked in red in the center-right of the bottom of the page with the quire letter a and numbers up to four. The central bifolium is not marked. The marking "a1" seems to have been removed with the damage to the border on f.1 (see below), although a small amount of red ink is still visible in the correct location. On ff. 2 and 3 the numbering has been corrected in the same hand as the original numbering. ff. 1-4 also have dark red numbers in the lower right corners. In the portion containing the second text the folios are numbered in black ink in the lower right hand corner, starting with number 1. They also record the order of the folios in an earlier mis-binding which attached the third quire of this text incorrectly. There are also occasional red quire signatures giving both letter and number. Although these have largely been trimmed, the ones that remain seem to agree with the foliation in black ink. This suggests that the red quire signatures represent the original, incorrect, binding of the manuscript, while the letters used confirm that the two texts were originally bound together in this order. In the incorrectly bound quire, numbers have been added at the end of each block to text to indicate which folio should be read next, perhaps in the same hand as the black folio numbers. The current binding maintains the correct order of the text.
The manuscript is written in a humanist book-hand by a single scribe. Chapter headings are rubricated in a dark red throughout. Initials are alternately in red with purple pen-flourishes and harping and in blue with pink flourishing and harping.
The beginning of the body of each text is marked with illuminated initial and border. On f. 1v is a ten-line decorated initial C containing a pink vase with three red and gold flowers. A partial border of stylized flowers and foliage in pink, red, green, blue, and gold, surrounded by pen-work scrolls and decorated with illuminated dots, runs around three sides of the page. The decoration is Gothic in inspiration and coloring. The inner margin is decorated with illuminated dots and pen-work. The style of the border suggests an origin in Ferrara. In the center of the lower margin a section of the border has been cut out, perhaps to remove the crest of the original owner. Small patches of red ink are visible at the edges of the missing section. The border has been repaired with a piece from a different manuscript containing an illuminated bar border in similar shades of pink, green, and blue with dense pen-work. On f. 29r is a nine-line initial L decorated with red and green foliage and a red flower. The inner margin is decorated with foliage in green, red, blue, and gold, finished with pen-work scrolls, flowers in pink and gold, and illuminated dots. The remaining three sides have a bar border. The inner bar is in blue with white highlighting; the main bar is green and decorated in gold ink with laurel leaves; outside this is an illuminated bar, and finally the whole is surrounded with geometric pen-work. In the center of the lower border is a medallion in pink and blue containing the gold nomina sacra "yhs", with the ascender of the h crossed.
The binding of the manuscript is early, although not original (see above). The wooden boards are covered in leather, blind-tooled with knotwork patterns, and decorated with small gilt roundels. The decoration is arranged as a border around a circular central knotwork pattern. There are holes for attaching a clasp in the center of the upper and lower boards, but no clasp survives. The style of the binding is Florentine, dating from the second half of the 15th century.
In Latin.
Record created by YCBA staff from research and description by Katherine Hindley, Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Research Associate, Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts, Yale Center for British Art, 2015.
Selected exhibitions: "'The Compleat Horseman': Sporting Books from the Bequest of Paul Mellon" (Yale Center for British Art, 17 February-29 April, 2001).