c. 290 x 230 mm. i + i + 182 + i leaves, complete, collation: 1–1412, 15–168, ff. 123v–124 are blank, modern foliation in pencil 1-182 followed here, the last three gatherings now separated and tipped-in as single leaves, but their previous structure is evident from 19th century pencil quire numbers on the first recto of each gathering; catchwords survive in the first 10 gatherings, leaf signatures occasionally survive, 53 lines in Anglicana script, ruled space: c. 215 x 150 mm, explicits and incipits of books in larger script, rubrics in red, capitals touched with red, paraphs in red, underlining in red, the diagram (f. 2) written in formal textura, marginalia by several English and/or presumably Welsh hands of various dates, ff.18v–20 mostly in three columns, the index in multiple columns, decorated throughout, the beginning of some books with a large puzzle initial in red and blue with red and purple penwork forming reserved leafy designs ff.1, 28v, 48, 76v, 98v, 124v, 143v, chapters with 2- to 4-line initials in blue with similar but simpler red penwork, 1-line initials in plain blue (the final gatherings water-damaged, re-sewn, and repaired, with some margins defective and patched with paper, f.177 lacking the outer upper corner with the loss of some text). Binding sewn on five bands laced into pasteboards covered with 18th century mid-brown morocco (probably for William Trone), covers framed by blind fillets, the edges of the leaves sprinkled red, the spine rebacked with 19th century olive morocco, probably for Jacob Bryant (see Provenance) lettered in gilt capitals ‘Polychronicon M.S. M. CCC. LII’, the covers each with an added central blind-stamp of the crest of the Marquess of Blandford (British Armorial Bindings online, Stamp 3) (somewhat scuffed).

Ranulf Higden (d. c. 1363⁄4) was a monk at the Benedictine abbey of St Werburgh, Chester; he identifies himself as the compiler in an acrostic of the opening letters of chapters in the first book, and tells us that he named his work ‘Polychronicon’ because of 'the plurality of eras that it encompasses'.

This is the only copy of the text recorded in private hands. According to the list of manuscripts in Freeman, 2013, Appendix 1, only two other copies of the text were then in private hands: Sotheby’s, 8 July 1974, lot 61: this is now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lawn medieval 21; and Christie’s, 3 June 2009, lot 12: this is now New Haven, Beinecke Library, Osborn fa51. Some manuscripts are illustrated with a mappa mundi; the present copy is apparently unique in having instead a diagram of the heavens.

The text is arranged in seven books, echoing the Seven Days of Creation, the first book discusses the topography of the world, and the other six narrate its history from Creation to his own era. Ranulf revised the work during his life, and various continuations were appended after his death: the present manuscript ends at the year 1352. Contents: the manuscript starts on f.i where we find an added 19th century title-page, prologue starts: ‘Prologus primus super historiam Policronicam. Capitulum primum.Post preclaros artium scriptores [...] clavorum lignorum canabi livi [sic] et specierum’, ff.1–175v, the enlarged coloured initials of the chapters in Book I spell ‘presentes cron[i]cam conp[i]laui frater ranulphus cestrensis monachus; alphabetical subject index, referring to book and chapter, Abraham–Zorobabel, ff.176–182; the Six Ages of the World: ‘Prima etas ab Adam usque ad diluvium [...] Sexta etas ab incarnatione Christi usque ad finem mundi’, f.182; late-15th /16th-century additions: ‘The Ports’ Domesday’ (cf. K. M. E. Murray, The Constitutional History of the Cinque Ports (Manchester, 1935), Appendix II): ‘Extracta de Domesday regis. Isti sunt quinque portus regis Anglie habentes libertates quas alii portus non habent [...]’, and a list of English kings to 1066: ‘Reges Anglie ab adventu Dacorum usque ad conquestum per Normannos. Aluredus quartus filius Egberti [...] Haraldus filius Godwyni ducis Westsaxonum usurpando regum quasi ix mensibus’, f.182v.

Illustration and diagrams:

Full-page: the known universe in concentric circles, with the Earth at the centre (‘Locus hominum et animancium. Terra’), surrounded by the places of fish, birds, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, stars, and the ‘Aque superiores’; the distances from the Earth to the Moon, from the Moon to the Sun, and from the Sun to the stars, are expressed in stadia and miliaria, f.3.

The descent from Adam to Noah’s sons, added, 16th century, in the lower margins below the account of Adam and his descendants, ff.30v–31.

A cross-section showing the levels in Noah’s Ark, in two versions: one according to St Augustine, the other according to other writers, f.31v.

A square and saltire, illustrating the proportions and resonances of the Pythagorean hammers, and a monochord that represents these by a length of string, f.52v.

For an overview of Polychronicon diagrams, see Kathleen L. Scott, ‘The Illustrations of the Takamiya Polychronicon’, in Takami Matsuda, Richard A. Linenthal & John Scahill (eds), The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya (Cambridge, 2004), pp.161–78 at 161–62.

This manuscript reaches us with exceptional early and modern provenance, including Jacob Bryant (1716–1804), English scholar and mythographer, tutor and private secretary of George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyn, George Spencer-Churchill (1766–1840), Marquess of Blandford and later 5th Duke of Marlborough, Howard and Phyllis Goodhart, amongst others. Provenance:

(1) Written in Britain at the end of the 14th century; possibly at Chester (on the border with Wales), where Ranulf Higden was a monk, and from where the various revisions of his text were disseminated; or perhaps in Wales itself, to judge by the later provenance;

(2) Perhaps owned by a monastery in Wales by the 15th century: one of relatively few early additions to the subject index is a reference to the number of monks at at Bangor (‘de numero monachorum bangore’, f.179v), correctly directing the reader to Book V, chapter 10, where there is another similar marginal note (f.106); another clue that the volume was monastically owned is an added note that St Osmund not only rebuilt Salisbury cathedral, but also composed a new Ordinal – the sort of detail probably only of interest to someone who performed the liturgy (f.179v);

(3) Doubtless in Welsh ownership, probably in Wales, by the 16th century, when the vernacular Welsh equivalents of dozens of Latin or Latinised names were added in the margins (ff.60, 65v, 73, 76, 86v, 87v, 89, 89v, 92, 95v, 96, 101, and 102), as James Freeman kindly brought to our attention; Carausius is glossed Carawn, Traherne = Trahaiarn, Conanus = Cynan Meriadoc, Constantinus = Cwstennyn, Moriudus = Morudd, Vigenus = Owen, etc.;

(4) There are many marginal annotations in other 16th-century hands, still to be studied, and the title of ‘pope’ was erased at the Reformation in compliance with Henry VIII’s decree;

(5) W. Trone, 18th century (doubtless the William Trone, of Farnham Royal or Maidenhead, who owned Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS Eng. 58 and MS Lat. 142, among other manuscripts): with a description signed by him (verso of first flyleaf), citing Ames’s Typographical Antiquities (1749);

(6) Jacob Bryant (1716–1804), English scholar and mythographer, tutor and private secretary of George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough: a description reported to have formerly been with the manuscript was annotated ‘This manuscript note is the Autograph of Jacob Bryant – Blandford – July 20th 1805’; probably bequeathed (as were other choice books, including a Caxton edition of Christine de Pisan, now New York, Morgan Library, M781) to:

(7) George Spencer-Churchill (1766–1840), Marquess of Blandford and later 5th Duke of Marlborough, of White Knights, near Reading, and Blenheim Palace, near Oxford; owner of the Bedford Hours and an important collection of Caxtons and other incunabula, Blandford is primarily famous in bibliophile circles for having paid an astonishing £2,260 for the unique copy of the Valdarfer first edition of Boccaccio’s Decameron at the Roxburgh sale in 1812 (the event that led to the creation of the Roxburgh Club); but due to his extravagance and crippling debt (he has been described as a ‘financial numbskull’), Blandford had to sell his library in 1819: R. H. Evans, White Knights Library, Catalogue of that Distinguished and Celebrated Library [...] Part II, 22 June – 3 July 1819, lot 3606 (on the 18th day of the sale), bought by the London bookseller Triphook (who was previously Blandford’s agent) for £6 6s;

(8) Unidentified 19th-century owner: their description of the text stuck to a back flyleaf, from which most of the name has been excised;

(9) Henry Pelham Archibald Douglas Pelham-Clinton (1864–1928), 7th Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne: his posthumous sale at Sotheby’s, The Clumber Library: catalogue of the magnificent library, the property of the late seventh Duke of Newcastle, removed from Clumber, Worksop [...] the fourth and final portion [...], 14–16 February 1938, lot 1209 (with a clipping of this description stuck to the front pastedown), bought by:

(10) Maggs Bros; sold the same year to:

(11) Howard Lehman Goodhart (1884-1951), stockbroker and bibliophile: his leather book label inside upper cover. By descent to his daughter:

(12) Phyllis Goodhart Gordan (1913-1994): her leather book label inside upper cover, MS 64. On deposit at Bryn Mawr, BMC 64. Published in Faye & Bond, Supplement, p.400, no 64.

Literature:

Catalogus librorum qui in bibliotheca Blandfordiensi reperiuntur [privately printed, 1812–14], fascicle 8 p. 22.

Faye and Bond, Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, 1962, p.400.

A. S. G. Edwards, ‘Notes on the Polychronicon’, Notes and Queries, 223 (1978), pp. 2–3, at p. 2, no. 1(f).

James Freeman, ‘The Manuscript Dissemination and Readership of the “Polychronicon” of Ranulph Higden, c. 1330 – c. 1500’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013), pp. 68 n. 45, 180 n. 139, 193 n. 182, 213 no. 127, 334 no. 127.

Trevor Russell Smith, ‘Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon and Continuations: Texts and Manuscripts’, Traditio, 79 (2024), pp. 257–348, at p. 319 no 130.