The Custodial History of the Sadler Partbooks (Oxford, Bodleian Library MSS Mus. e. 1–5)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Sadler partbooks (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Mus. e. 1–5), one of the most important English polyphonic sources to survive from the sixteenth century, reflect the interventions of several generations of later owners. Today the volumes bear a number of marks that were clearly not coeval with their copying in the sixteenth century; they have also been subjected to at least one rebinding, and some leaves are in a disrupted position, hitherto unobserved (and still misplaced). This article seeks to account for the custodial history of the Sadler partbooks, and to chart the bearing that their later owners have had on the partbooks’ present state. Apart from showing that the books travelled widely—they can be traced in Norwich, London, Bath, Bristol, Manchester, and eventually Oxford—it also shows that the partbooks came to the brink of destruction in the hands of one former owner, surviving fire, flood, and theft.