HICKES provides the principal evidence for the Finnsburh Fragment (Finn): ‘Eodem metro conditum forte reperi fragmenti poëtici singulare folium, in codice ms. homiliarum Semi-Saxonicarum qui extat in Bibliotheca Lambethana.’1 In his Catalogus, Wanley's description is guarded: ‘Fragmentum Poeticum, prælium quoddam describens in oppido Finnisburgh nuncupato innitum, quod exhibuit D. Hickesius. Gramm. Anglo-Sax. p. 192’.2 Had the leaf containing this fragment already disappeared? Apart from these two references, there is no other indication of anyone's having seen the leaf, and ‘repeated searches of the Lambeth Palace Library’ have not led to its discovery.3 As Ker points out, it may be significant that Wanley notes the fragment on its own, giving neither size nor date; it had probably been ‘mislaid already by the time that he visited the library’.4 Lambeth Palace Library houses two manuscripts that contain Old English homilies, MSS 487 and 489, which are therefore regarded as contenders for the book in which Hickes's fragment was found. MS 489, the earlier of the two, is dated to the third quarter of the eleventh century by Ker.5 Wanley indicates that MS 489 is straightforward Old English, placing the collection in the time of Edward the Confessor and describing it as beautifully written (‘pulchre scriptus’).6 By contrast, for Wanley the language of MS 487 is ‘lingua Normanno-Saxonice’, and he assigns it to the time of Richard I. Ker, noting Hickes's description of the fragment, admits MS 487 among the numbered entries of his Catalogue, but only as the putative home of the Finnsburh Fragment. Elsewhere he points out that MS 487 falls into a group of manuscripts not easily categorized either as Old English or Early Middle English and perhaps written before 1200.7 More recently, Wilcox suggests that the leaf was most likely displaced from this collection during the campaign of reordering and rebinding of Lambeth manuscripts during the primacy Archbishop Sancroft (1678–1691 [ejected 1690]) ‘and possibly before 1688’.8 Yet, as Fry observes, Hickes's wording indicates where the leaf was found, but does not state whether or not it was bound into the codex in which it was found; ‘it may have formed part of an earlier binding or merely a loose leaf’.9