The Saxilby fragment

Abstract

The two folios which are the subject of this study are the property of the vicar and churchwardens of the parish of St Botolph, Saxilby-with-Ingleby, some six miles west of the city of Lincoln. The leaves are of parchment, are adjacent and may once have been conjoint, but are now disjunct. The overall dimensions of each leaf are approximately 430 × 325 mm; each has four good margins, leaving a music area of 358 × 247 mm. Each side is ruled with twelve five-line staves in red ink, apparently without the use of a rastrum; the staves are a little less than 20 mm high. On all four sides each of the two voices was supplied with an initial letter executed in blue paint with red tracery. Each initial is a single staff in height, and is similar in style to the subsidiary capitals of Old Hall and many other English manuscripts of the fifteenth century. In its surviving state the manuscript has undergone a sad mutilation: a rectangle four staves deep has been cut away from the top left-hand corner of folio 1v, removing the initial ‘E’ of the top voice complete with the red tracery trailing from it down the edges of the staves below. In so doing, the vandal also removed a good deal of music from both sides of the leaf.