Welsh Journals

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in the course of which a pilgrim to St. Wulfstan from Abergavenny was thrown into prison at Grosmont and saved by the intervention of the saint (i, cap. 31). It is interesting to note also the entry in the Annals of Worcester under the year 1212 which records an alliance between that monastery and Strata Florida (" Facta est socialis concordia inter ecclesiam Wygorniae et ecclesiam de Stratflur," Luard, Annates Monastici, Rolls Series, iv, p. 400). A Life of St. Wulfstan is thus not out of place in the National Library of Wales and a manuscript from Worcester may well feel at home in the neighbourhood of Strata Florida. Peniarth MS. 386 (Hengwrt 362) is thus described in Robert Vaughan's catalogue of the Hengwrt Library (N.L.W. MS. 9095, f-92b): "Z.2.3/3. Vita Wolstani Episcopi Wigornensis in verse. Bibliotheca a magistro Petro de Riga metrice edita. i. the Bible in verse, an old MS. in Latine." This description derives from one inscribed on a vellum label on the front cover in a fifteenth century hand: Vita sanctissimi patris nostri Wolstani cum miraculis in metris. Biblia tota a magistro Petro Riga metrice edita." Labels of this kind are frequent on Worcester books (cf. J. K. Floyer, Cat. of MSS. in Worcester Cathedral Library, 1906, p. xvi, where a binding with a similar label is figured and C. H. Turner, Early Worcester MSS., 1906, p. lxiv). And the Worcester provenance of the MS. is made certain by two inscriptions of circ. 1400 Liber sancte Marie Wigornie (p. ii the same or a closely similar inscription in a 14th(?) century hand immediately above has been erased) Sit benedictum (sic) qui non delet stilum. Worcetur (p. iii). On p. i is a donor's note: "Donum magistri Moreye Junii 24. 1602." The Worcester manuscripts were not scattered at the Dissolution, but a considerable number left the library in various ways in the second half of the sixteenth century (cf. Turner's list of Worcester manuscripts in other libraries, op. cit., p. lxiii, where this MS. is not recorded). It does not appear to whom the manuscript was given by Moreye nor has he been identified. The manuscript proper consists of 262 leaves of vellum, measuring gi ins. by 61 ins., made up in mixed gatherings of twelves and eights. The text is written in several small, neat hands of about the middle of the thirteenth century and is decorated with firmly executed initials in blue and red delicately flourished in penwork (the flourishes to the blue initials in red, to the red in buff colour). Of the monastic binding of oak boards the top cover only remains, with two grooves for clasps which have gone and the label described above.