A Reference to a Manuscript of Chaucer’s Boece

Abstract

In 1770, the London bookseller Thomas Payne issued his Catalogue of the Library of the late John Grey, Esq., F.R.S. and Rector of the Marischal College of Aberdeen, and of several other Libraries, containing a very large and curious collection of books … and some manuscripts upon vellum &c. In the Appendix, under the heading ‘manuscripts, quarto’, appears this entry: ‘7574 Boetius’s Consolat. of Philosophy, translated by Chaucer, imperfect, 2 s 6d’. References to the sale of manuscripts of Chaucer’s Boece seem rare. This is understandable because most of the nine that survive entered institutional libraries at early dates. Of the two in Cambridge University Library, one, MS Ii.3.21, had been given to the Library before 1424; the other, Ii. 1. 38, had come with Richard Holdsworth’s books in 1664. Salisbury Cathedral Library MS 113 has been in situ since the fifteenth century. Bodleian Library...