T HE discrepancy which exists between the Insular and the Continental distribution of manuscripts of Aldhelm is paralleled in the case of his compatriot Bede. It appears even more extreme by reason of the voluminous works of the latter and the larger number of manuscripts subsequent to the tenth century.64 Out of more than 1,500 extant manuscripts, dating from the eighth to the sixteenth century, only 21 are written in Insular scripts of the eighth and ninth centuries, and 3 in mixed hands (Insular and Continental minuscule) of the ninth. For the Historia ecciesiastica the total score of English manuscripts (70) is equal to the Continental. For the early period and thereafter through the twelfth century, from which the largest proportion dates (almost one-third), the Continental outnumber the English; but in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the balance is restored by virtue of the fact that about 70% of the manuscripts copied in these two centuries appear to come from English scriptoria.65 oldest manuscript is the Moore Cambridge Kk V 16 (ca. 737), in expert minuscule of an early type with various cursive elements .... written presumably in the North of England or possibly 64 Cf. C. H. Beeson, The Manuscripts of Bede, CP, XLII (1947), 73-87. flgures cited by Professor Beeson are derived from M. L. W. Laistner, with the collaboration of H. H. King, A Hand-List of Bede Manuscripts (Cornell University Press, 1943); Laistner, Bedae Venerabilis Expositio actuum apostolorum et retractatio (Mediaeval Academy of America, 1939); and Charles W. Jones, Bedae Opera de temporibus (Mediaeval Academy of America, 1943). 65 Laistner, Hand-List, p. 8. in a Continental centre with Northumbrian connexions.66 next oldest is Leningrad Q I 18, probably written in 746 by at least two practiced scribes using Anglo-Saxon pointed minuscule, with some variation of size and regularity. It may derive from the Continental scriptorium at Echternach, which was fou-nded by the English missionary, St. Willibrord. A third Anglo-Saxon codex, London Cotton Tib. C II, saec. VIII ex., originated in England. text was copied by more than one scribe using pointed minuscule, with opening passages in roulnd hand and titles and colophons in red. Its ornamentation and script suggest the soluth rather than the region of Durham, which Lindsay proposed.67 A single folio of another eighth-century manuscript is preserved in the London library of Chester Beatty, No. 1 (olim Cheltenham Phill. 36275 [recently offered for sale by the New York dealer, H. P. Kraus, item 3 in List No. 109, which appeared after this article had gone to press]). It contains only a section of chapter 29 and the whole of chapter 30, Book iii, in a bold, well-formed Anglo-Saxon minuscule somewhat resembling that of the British Museum codex just mentioned. Of English origin also is London Cotton Tib. A XIV, saec. IX in. Its script is Anglo-Saxon minuscule, apparently the work of a single copyist, showing some variation in size but not in character. A fragment, part of one folio taken from a binding, now in the library of C. L. 66 E. A. Lowe, CLA, II (1935), No. 139. 67 W. M. Lindsay, Notae Latinae (Cambridge, 1915), p. 461.