D91.21 (SJLM/1/1/3/2) Account of Miles Worsley cofferer/treasurer of the chamber: Croydon and Hatfield, 14 January 1505 – 14 January 1507

Extract Discussion See Introduction 4 and Plates 13–14. Description Paper (occasional wormholes, esp. pp. 85–110, the bottom outer corners frayed and remounted); page size approx. 285 x 210 mm. 86 ff. in eight quires of irregular numbers of leaves: 110, 210, 310, 414, 510, 612, 712(wants 11, 12), 810.1 Paginated top right (recto only) 1–171; pp. [i-ii], 68–69, 81–82, 88, 166–72 blank. A strip has been cut off square from 15 mm. from the inner edge of the top of pp. 81/82 to a depth of 35 mm. A piece of paper approx. 280 x 210 mm., torn across at the lower edge, has been written on, turned sideways, folded and stitched between pp. 62/63. Left margins approx. 50 mm. (with some subheadings); right margins variable; upper margins 10–15mm.; lower margins variable. The quires are stitched into the original membrane wrapper with two modern leather and string strengtheners on the spine; the irregularly-cut unscraped parchment is approx. 530 mm. x 590 mm. at its largest points when opened out (the back edge of the wrapper folds over to contain the whole document, and the upper and lower edges front and back fold in and down). A contemporary hand has recorded in ink on the front cover: ‘Pressus 11’, and contemporary notes read ‘xiii li. xvii s. ix d.’ (on the back fold-over, facing up when the book is closed) and ‘xxv day of June’ ‘[…..]ay ffoller of […..] to hur delyvered […] iii […] et deb ii […]’ (on the back of the casing). The front vertical edge of the wrapper is cut down zig-zag top right to bottom centre (including the first two sheets) to indicate cancellation after completion and approval of the audit; the cut defaces the first folio of writing (pp. 1–2), and the second folio recto (p. 3) is variably legible. The whole is contained in a modern box of brown/grey waterproof buckram (‘D91.21’ in pencil on a white pasted slip, top left front cover of slipcase, now erased to ‘SJLM/1/1/3/2’). The summaries, i.e. initial and final material for each year of the accounts (pp. 1–5, 70–80, 83–91, 161–5), use a formal script (Bastard Anglicana, with a large decorated initial ‘S’ pp. 5, 68, 89, 152) for the rubrics, infilled with either a smaller formal or a cursive script.2 The main body of the accounts and the marginal headings are mostly in a current hand (Anglicana with some Secretary influence), the same as that in D91.20 and D91.19, seemingly identifiable as the hand of Miles Worsley himself (‘the MW hand’, ‘the main hand’).3 Another hand (the ‘curly’ hand) occurs pp. 25–6, 91; the ‘sprawling hand’ is responsible for entries on pp. 67, 85, 90, 150 (‘Somme’), 152, 161 (and perhaps even all the end-of-year summary for 1505–6, pp. 70–80 and 1506–7, pp. 150–65).4 Lady Margaret signs ‘Margaret R’ at the bottom of each page of entries (m in the edited text, placed to the left of the page total).5 Page and (rarer) mid-page totals are normally written, and often corrected (if not by the auditor), in the MW hand;6 they are marked ‘probatur’ (p in the edited text), normally with a trefoil symbol, as in D91.20,7 or (pp. 91–132) an elongated delta with two horizontal lines across it, as well as the trefoil.8 Latin annotations and other interventions (some with +, e.g. Nota p. 116, fourth entry p. 150) occur occasionally in a hand (probably the ‘sprawling’ hand) which notes (often with a thick nib and very black ink) the reasons for cancellations of entries, etc.9