| Summary: | Description: ROMANCE of the Saint Graal, in French prose, put together from different sources, viz.:1. Saint Graal, the French romance purporting to be from a Latin original translated by Robert (here, at f. 84 b, called Pierres) de Borron. Imperfect by about a column at the end. For full description see Ward, Cat. of Romances, i, pages 341. The text of this MS. is printed by F. J. Furnivall with the English metrical Seynt Graal, Roxburghe Club, 1861-1863, compare H. O. Sommer's Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, Washington, 1909, volume i, where the text is printed from Add. MS.10292, with references to the other MSS. Beg. 'Chil ki la hauteche' and breaks off 'en a touchier a ses . . .' f. 3. 2. Quête du Saint Graal and Morte Arthur, the second and third parts (the latter incomplete) of the prose romance of Lancelot du Lac, attributed to Walter Map. For full description see Cat. of Rom., i, pages 354. Partly printed by Furnivall as above; for the rest see Lancelot, Paris, 1513, iii, folio 143 b-174, Col. 1. The Quest beg. 'A la ueille de la pentecouste'; the Morte Arthur (f. 140), 'Apres che que maistres Gautiers Map', breaking off 'non mie quil ait paour'. f. 89. Vellum; following 162. 19 in. x 131/4 in. Early XIV century In three columns. Sec. folio '-enc que ie tant'. Illuminations perhaps of English, rather than French, origin. The first initial of each part is prolonged into an elaborate border with grotesques, knights, musicians, andc., and there are over a hundred well executed small miniatures (about 23/4 in. x 21/2 inches) as chapter-headings. In these the knights are generally distinguished by coats of arms (e.g.Bohors bears gu. a lion rampant argraffiad), but the bearings are not quite consistent. Thus Lancelot is represented sometimes with argraffiad a lion rampant gu., but elsewhere (f. 156 b) argraffiad three bends gules. The last is apparently the only instance in which the arms agree with the fabulous heraldry of later times (e.g. Add. MS.35346). Several coats which appear repeatedly among the grotesques of following 3, 89, 140 are perhaps merely decorative. They include (a) paly of six, gu. and chequy argraffiad and sa., (b)arg. a cross moline az. semé de lys argraffiad, over all a bendlet gu., (c) gu. a chevron vert (sic) between three mullets or, (d) sa. bendways three allerions or between two bendlets argraffiad Many of the miniatures appear to have been copied from the same model as those in Add. MSS.10292, 10294. A woodcut reproduction of a knight from f. 94 b is in Hewitt's Ancient Armour, 1855, i, pages 250; and f. 66 b is given here (pl. 85), on a reduced scale. On the fly-leaves are partially effaced ownership notes, viz. 'Cest liure est a moy Richard Roos chiualer' [? living in 30 Hen. VI, see Cal. Inquisitions post mortem, Hen. VII, volume i, no 37], f. 2b; 'Thys boke is myne dame Alyanor Haute', f. 162. She was probably the daughter of Sir Robert Roos, of Gedney, co. Linc., who married Richard Hautc, esquire, the younger (Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1474). The Hautes were connected with the Wydvilles by the marriage of one William Haute (who had a son Richard) to a sister of the first Earl Rivers, and the autograph of the 1st Earl's daughter, 'E[lizabeth] Wydevyll', Queen of Edward IV, is on f. 162. In her hand are also probably the names (f. 1) of her children, 'Elysabeth, the kyngys dowther', afterwards Queen of Henry VII, and 'Cecyl the kyngys dowt her', wife first of John Welles, Viscount Welles, and afterwards of Thomas Kymbe, and of 'Jane Grey', one of the family of Elizabeth Wydville's first husband. No. 103, 'Le St. Gral, donné a la Royne', of the cat. of MSS. At Richmond Palace in 1535 (cf. 14 D. 1); cat. of 1666, f. 13 (cf. title on f. 1, 'Lassaulte de paradis et le chiualer spirituell'); not in CMA.
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