General category: Unsorted manuscripts
A manuscript now lost but listed in the 12th-century library catalogue of Lincoln Cathedral, where the title has been crossed out. To judge by the title, it would appear to have contained a version of the Proverbia Grecorum.
A purely hypothetical ‘very ancient book in the British language’ (quendam Brittanici sermonis librum uetustissimum) containing a history of the deeds of the kings of Britain, from Brutus to Cadwalladr, which Geoffrey of Monmouth alleges to have rendered into Latin when writing his Historia regum Britanniae, a work known for its audacious originality. Geoffrey mentions it in the preface to this work, where he claims to have received the book from Walter, archdeacon of Oxford. Whatever his source material may have been, or Walter’s role in supplying it, the claim that so much of this was written in the vernacular and contained in a single volume (implicitly, to which few would have access) is commonly regarded as a spurious appeal to authority.
- s. viiiin
Composite manuscript which belonged to Sir Robert Cotton and consists of a number of chronicles, including the so-called ‘Kilkenny chronicle’.
- s. xii–xvii
- s. xiii
A collection of medieval fragments removed from the bindings of other manuscripts.
- s. x–xiv
- s. viii
