Composite Brut Chronicle
England, c. 1450–1475

Warkworth’s Chronicle
England, c. 1480

Peterhouse MS 190, f. 1r
England, c. 1480
Vellum, c. 270 x 190 mm (190 x 125 mm and 195 x 13 mm), I + 225 ff.

Peterhouse is the oldest surviving Cambridge college, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham († Dodington, 1286), bishop of Ely. He bequeathed to his scholars several books on theology and other subjects. According to the Statutes of 1344, books were listed in an indenture and kept locked in a common chest, while a room with the incipient functions of a library seems already to have been in place in 1403–1404, when the accounts of Peterhouse record expenditures for the repair of its roof. The construction of the new library would last from 1431–1450.

John Warkworth (c. 1425–1500), Master of Peterhouse from 1473, was a book enthusiast; and in 1480, under his mastership, the College enacted or adopted a special statute headed De libris Collegii. In 1481, he left to the College 12 service books for chapel use, as well as over 50 volumes and an astrolabe for the library. His volumes record the gift in the front flyleaf with the formula: Liber Collegii Sancti Petri in Cantebrigio ex dono magistri Iohannis Warkworth magistri dicti Collegii sub interminacione anathematis nullatenus a libraria ibidem alienandus. This statement is a curse (interminatio anathematis) that will apply to any individual having the audacity to ‘alienate’ (or remove) any of these books from the college collection.

As for this particular manuscript, Professor Lister Matheson has observed that the two chronicles contained in it, copied by two different hands, are textually related to the MSS British Library, Harley 3730 and Glasgow, Hunterian 83. It is not unlikely that the three were copied in the early 1480s for or by Fellows of Peterhouse, possibly in the college library, though James Halliwell’s attribution of the second Chronicle to Warkworth himself is unlikely according to Matheson.

By kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Peterhouse, Cambridge.