Godefrey of Boloyne, or The siege and conquest of Jerusalem, or Eracles.
Translated by William Caxton.
Westminster: William Caxton, 20 Nov. 1481.
Fol. a6 b4 1-168 176. [144] leaves (a1, 1/1 blank).
ISTC ig00316000; GW 12572; Goff G316; BMC XI 124 (IB. 55049); Bod-inc G-164; DeR(C) 46.7.
A translation of excerpts from a French version of the Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis of Gulielmus de Tyro.
| GIP number: | G40 |
| Shelf-mark: | Sp Coll Hunterian Bv.2.29 (see main library entry for this item) |
| Note: | Leaves 2/4 and 2/8 have lacerations made by a knife. |
| Note: | The third front flyleaf has a watermark of a pot surmounted by a crown and upturned crescent; its top right-hand corner has been excised, and on its verso is pasted an engraving of William Caxton. |
| Provenance: | Thomas (16th century): partially defaced inscription on 16/4v “Thomas [...] est verus possessor huius libri”. Robert (16th century): name “Robert” on 9/2r. John Rolfe (16th century): name on 1/1r “John Rolfe”. John Dawson (16th century): name on 10/8v “John Dawson”. Mathew Goodwin (fl. 1650): inscription on verso of third front flyleaf “Belonges to Mathew Goodwin 14 June 1650” above which (and probably in the same hand) is an inscription “vallewed – in – 2/s 6d”. Ebenezer Mussell (d. 1764), collector: on the recto of the third front flyleaf is the number “149” in ink i.e. lot 149 in A catalogue of the curious and valuable library of Ebenezer Mussel, Esq; of Bethnal Green, [London:] A. Langford, [1766]. John Ratcliffe (1707-1776), book collector: purchased at the Mussell sale for £3.17.0 according to the digitized copy of the Mussell sale catalogue (annotated with prices and buyers’ names) at the Houghton Library, Harvard University; lot 1667 in Bibliotheca Ratcliffiana (1776). William Hunter (1718-1783), physician and anatomist: purchased by Hunter for £4.18.0 at the Ratcliffe sale according to the annotated British Library copy of the Ratcliffe sale catalogue (shelfmark 822.d.6); De Ricci mistakenly identified Hunter’s copy as lot 1224 (which is the copy now in the British Library - see BMC XI 124). University of Glasgow: Hunterian bequest 1807; Hunterian Museum bookplate and book label on front pastedown, with former shelfmark “Z.8.5”. |
| Binding: | England, 18th-century gold-tooled red goatskin; covers decorated with a dog-tooth roll border; red title label and green imprint labels on spine; four other spine compartments decorated with cross-hatching in the form of dotted lines, and with decorative roll tooling added at head and tail of spine; dark blue pastedowns; gilt-edged leaves. Size: 249 x 184 mm. |
| Leaf size: | 243 x 174 mm. |
| Annotations: | Pen-trials in a 16th-century hand on a2r, together with faded and cropped marginal annotations in a different hand; on 1/1r are four inscriptions in a 16th-century hand “at my begynnyng god be my sped || In Grace [and] vertue to pro[ce]de”, “Sigillo Sigillat[um] dat[um] octauo die mensis”, “God spake these wourdes [and] sayd I am thy”, and “[...] somnu[m] mortis imaginem”. Inscription in a 16th-century hand on 10/3v “Joh[ann]es Warde est nebulo lanista ac rabula”. Underlining and manicules on 1/2v and 1/3r. Marginal annotations in 16th-century hands on 6/3r, 9/5r, 13/7v (defaced), 13/8r, 14/3r, 17/5v ('Thus fare yow well from London the xx [probably a date and month obscured]'). Pen-trials and jottings in 16th/17th-century hands on 17/6r and 17/6v. On the recto of the third front flyleaf is the number “149” in a 17th/18th-century hand and the start of a name(?) “Goo” (perhaps the beginning of Goodwin - see Provenance), and on the same page are two titles in ink in 18th-century hands. |
| Decoration: | Initials supplied in red throughout; line-fillers in red in the table of contents (a4r-b4r); chapter headings have paragraph marks and line-fillers in red. |
| Imperfections: | Wanting the blank leaf a1, and leaf 11/1 (the missing text supplied in manuscript facsimile on an inserted leaf). |
