A leaf identified — being pastedown waste in a copy of Tonstall, De arte supputandi (London, 1551)
From the notes of the Rev. Edmund Cattermole, M.A., curate of Pwll, and corresponding secretary to the Marches Antiquarian Society. Read at the Society's meeting at Ludlow, the xiv of November, 1843. Pp. 47–49 of the manuscript Minute Book.
Mr Pugh of Ludlow having sent to me, in October last, a small quarto of TONSTALL his De arte supputandi, of the impression of 1551 — much used, and lately rebound for the parish vestry at Astley by one Davies of Hereford — there fell out of the new boards, before the paste was set, a piece of vellum of which I send the particulars below. It had served as the rear pasteboard's lining, fast-glued upon its verso, and was lifted only with great patience and the help of the binder's daughter, whose hand is steadier than my own.
The leaf is plainly fragmentary: cut close to the gutter, the inner margin gone, and the verso (whereon, by what I could discern by candlelight held against the recto, a second hand had set down what seemed to me figures of weight and the form of a proper name) lost to the paste. It would be a very particular sort of error to suppose the leaf to have been cut for its size; the dimensions are wrong for the binding it was set into, and the cutter took less than he might have. He cut, I judge, what he meant to cut, and used the residue as came to his hand.
The recto, which I transcribe below, is an entry of a sacristan's register, late xv to mid xvi century, of a religious house I take to be S. Helene's of the priory suppressed in xxx Henry VIII, with whose other goods the present book also came at length to the FitzHardy library at Astley.¹ The hand is small, even, and uncommonly patient, the abbreviations such as a clerk's daughter would use; the same hand appears, by my reading, in the visitor's docket-pouch at Hereford Cathedral, signed A. H., sacristane, receaved.
— transcription, recto only —
Dominica in albis. The chalice on the high altar, the paten with it; the ij candlesticks of the lesser sort; the corporal of fine work returned to the press at compline by the hand of Dame I., pry'sse.
Dominica secunda post Pascha. The chalice as before; the paten; the ij candlesticks; the pyx of latten (the silver pyx being at Ludlow with Wm Smyth for the mending of the lid); the corporal newly washed by Sr Margery. Returned to the press at compline. The keys two, as alwayes.
Dominica tertia post Pascha. The chalice of Dame M. fitzHardy upon the high altar at the Masse; sett againe in the press at compline. The keys two, the one upon my girdell, the other —
[here the leaf is cut close to the gutter; the remainder of the entry, and the entirety of the verso, are wanting]
— end of transcription —
It is to be lamented that the verso was not lifted whole. I held the leaf to the window for the space of a quarter of an hour, and could make out only that the second hand was darker, and the figures (if they be figures) were not in the abbreviations of a sacristane but in the longer practice of a clerk of weights — pennyweight strokes, after the fashion of the Iewel-house at Westminster. There was a capital P, and the figures xviij, and beyond that I could read nothing without parting the vellum from the board, which Mr Davies forbad upon his honour as a binder. The hand was not, I think, the sacristane's.
If this leaf be from the Liber Sacristae of S. Helene's, as I think it must, it is the only leaf of that book known to be extant, the volume itself having been (so I am told) given over by Mr Carleton's clerks at the dissolution and broken up at Astley for waste in the years following. The recusant household kept many such books at Astley well into the reign of King James, when they were dispersed for the new building.
I append two further observations, with which I shall not trouble the Society longer.
Footnotes, in Mr Cattermole's hand —
1. The indenture of the goods and books of the late priory of S. Helene to Sir Iohn FitzHardy, of Astley, dated the xviij of Iune 30 Henry VIII, is preserved in the Astley muniment-room, and was shewn to me by the present Sir Reginald with much courtesy. The Sir Iohn of the indenture is the great-great-grandfather of Sir Reginald, and was, I am told within the household, a man given more to the kitchen than to the chapel.
2. Dominica tertia post Pascha, that year, fell upon the xij of May. The visitor's inventorie which I have lately seen at the County Record Office is dated the xiij of May following — the Monday next after — the cuppe of Dame Margery FitzHardy being therein noted wanting, the press found locked, the keys two. I see no reason to think the sacristane was party to the want. She wrote, as she always wrote, the one upon my girdell, the other — and was interrupted, or interrupted herself, before she set the second hand's name down. Whether the cut was made by her own knife or by another's I cannot say; the cut is clean, but a frighted woman with a sharp knife will cut as cleanly as a calm one.
— E. C.