Manuscripts
Manuscript:
London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus F iii
No catalogue entry available
Davies, Ceri, John Prise. Historiae Britannicae defensio: A defence of the British history, Studies and Texts, 195, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2015. liv + 336 pp.  
Edition, with facing English translation, introduction and notes.
abstract:
Sir John Prise (1501/2–1555), of Brecon, was an influential lawyer and administrator during the reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI and Queen Mary I. In the 1530s he was brought under the aegis of Thomas Cromwell, to whose family he became connected by marriage, and was appointed visitor and commissioner for the dissolution of monasteries in England and Wales. The experience made him acutely aware of the wealth of manuscripts contained in these religious houses, and alone among the commissioners he set about saving material from their libraries.

In 1540 he was appointed secretary of the Council in the Marches of Wales and made his home in Hereford, in the dissolved Benedictine Priory of St Guthlac. This remained his base for the last fifteen years of his life, a time in which he combined public duty with a deep commitment to literary and scholarly pursuits. In 1546 he was responsible for the printing of Yny lhyvyr hwnn, the earliest printed book in the Welsh language. His greatest work, however, is his Latin book, Historiae Britannicae Defensio, an early draft of which was written by 1545. In it Prise addresses the criticisms directed against Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae and the tradition of the British History based on it, especially by the Italian historian Polydore Vergil in Anglica Historia (first edition 1534). Until nearly the end of his life Prise continued modifying and expanding his text. It is notable not only for its author’s knowledge of British antiquity, founded on years of study of manuscript and other sources including – most importantly for Prise – material in Welsh, but also for the range of its learning, its lucid Latinity and the forensic quality of its argumentation.

The present work puts John Prise's Historiae Britannicae Defensio into print for the first time since the edition whose publication in 1573 was seen to by the author's son, Richard Prise. The 1573 printing forms the copy-text, critically edited in the light of the one surviving manuscript (Oxford, Balliol College, MS 260) of a version which is very close to it. The facing English translation is the first published translation of the Defensio. The work is furnished with an extensive introduction and elucidatory notes.

Results for London (670)
Not yet published.

A part of the ‘Cotton-Corpus legendary’ which covers feast-days for the months of October, November and December. The other parts of the legendary are to be found in London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero E i.

  • s. xi2

Various transcripts, including one of Vita Ælfredi regis from what was London, British Library, MS Cotton Otho A xii (before the 1731 fire), created for Matthew Parker at a time when Parker had not yet added his interpolations to the exemplar.

  • c. 1550 x 1574
Cotton library, MS Otho A xii
Not yet published.

A lost manuscript of Asser’s Life of King Alfred. Originally an independent manuscript and later part of what once constituted London, British Library, MS Cotton Otho A xii, it was destroyed by the Ashburnham House fire of 1731. Although the original is irretrievably lost, significant information about its character and contents can be gleaned from transcripts and descriptions written before the fire.

  • c.1000

Extracts from London, British Library, MS Egerton 1782.

  • 1749
  • Aodh Ó Dálaigh

Transcript of the Latin text in the Welsh lawbook of London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian E xi.

  • s. xv2

Latin text of Welsh law, which was known to lawyers active in Gwynedd during the 13th century. This text or a related one may have provided the basis for the Latin text in London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian E xi, which refers to matters relating to both Gwynedd and south-west Wales. It has been suggested that the Llyfr y Tŷ Gwyn text became known in Gwynedd through the agency of Cadwgan, bishop of Bangor (1215-1236) and abbot of Whitland before that.

  • London, British Library, MS 6250
  • London, British Library, MS 19861
  • London, British Library, MS 38132