the Archbishop, it had sustained losses. To restore it to completeness twelve new parchment leaves, upon which, at the direction of the Archbishop,[1] the missing portions were copied (from the Corpus MS.) in imitation of the old writing, were inserted as follows: six continuous leaves (fols. 57-62) containing Mark i, i to iv, 37 (ending with þæt scyp þæt); one leaf (fol. 90) containing Mark xvi, 14 to the end of the Gospel; one leaf (fol. 131) containing Luke xvi, 14 (beginning with ðing) to xvii, 1 (ending with leorningcnihtum); one leaf (fol. 150) containing Luke xxiv, 51 (beginning with geworden) to the end of the Gospel; three continuous leaves (fols. 192-194) containing John xx, 9 (beginning with hāli ge-, repeated from the end of the preceding page) to the end of the Gospel. The restorer also inserted a number of the rubrics from MS. A.
A study of the lacunae in the MSS. led Professor Skeat[2] to discover that the Royal MS. copy of the Version 18 directly derived from B, and the Hatton from the Royal. It is clearly seen that at the time the Royal MS. was written, B had sustained only a part of its losses. This condition of B may be denoted by B1, which lacked the ends
- ↑ The following passages are cited from John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1821; the first ed. is in fol., London, 1711): "In the Bodleian library at Oxford, there is an ancient book of the four Gospels in Saxon, before the Conquest. This book the aforesaid exact writer [Wanley] concludes once to have belonged to our Archbishop. And whereas it was defective in several places, and many leaves gone, those defects are restored and supplied in a modern hand by the commandment of our Archbishop, as is very probable, it being his great endeavour, by help of perfect copies, to make up the wants in others" (11, 511). "And he kept such in his family as could imitate any of the old characters admirably well. One of these was Lyly, an excellent writer, and that could counterfeit any antique writing. Him the Archbishop customarily used to make old books complete, that wanted some pages; that the character might seem to be the same throughout" (11, 500).
- ↑ Preface to Mark p. x, Preface to Luke p. viii, Preface to John p. viii, and James W. Bright, The Gospel of Saint Luke in Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1893), pp. xv, xvi.
