APPENDIX A

SCRIBES.

THE only difficulties lie with scribes A, B, B types, C, Z, who are not always contemporary with their entries. After the year 1465, when D appears, difficulties lessen considerably; and the scribes may be roughly taken as contemporary with the events they record; with the exception of B's and C's back leet entries, and even these need not be more than twenty to forty years out. As Z's early entries are in Latin, no English linguistic difficulty arises; but historians of the English language should be warned that portions of the text which, either in the footnotes or in this Appendix are given as copied from entries in the writing of A, B, or C, reproduce the word-forms usual in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries. As in the case of B and C, these are entries of leet proceedings, there is little difficulty in detaching them from the rest of the material. The lack of chronological correspondence in A's case is the more disappointing because it casts doubt on the age of the code of urban ordinances I have called the "Proclamation of John Leeder," which though given in the MS. among the ordinances of 1421 is in general form allied to the similar codes of Leicester and Worcester, which are dated 1467.

1 See above, pp. xv-xvi; and for watermarks, ib. xi-xii. It should be noted that some scribes of B type are early, probably contemporary.

Chronicle, mayoral elections.

Leet entries.

2 Omit p. 101.

The following is a description of the various scribes

A, later copyist of leet ordinances and chronicle from 1414-44; writes-with one exception-on crescent-marked paper; date c. 1520.

B, later copyist of leet ordinances from 1426-74, and thenceforward contemporary recorder of both leet and chronicle entries to 1506;5 to be identified with John Boteler; date c. 1480-1506.

B types. Chronicle entries 1426-65. Probably in some instances contemporary, but may be as late as c. 1480-1520.

C, later copyist of leet ordinances from 1430-1507; date probably contemporary with scribe B.

D, contemporary copyist of chronicle entries, 1463-71.
E, contemporary copyist of chronicle entries, 1472-74.

F inserts a few entries in Boteler's town-clerkship, see p. 581 (mayor's election). Probably a contemporary scribe.

G, H, I, J, K, L, sixteenth century scribes. Entries are contemporary.

Z, Elizabethan scribe. Tho. Banester, town clerk. His thirteenth and fifteenth century entries (pp. 1-2, 7-19) not contemporary. O, P, Q, Elizabethan and Stuart scribes entries are contemporary.

1 Mayoral and chronicle entries. 3 See p. 321.

2 Leet entries. Paper changes leaf 349, p. 694. Another scribe seems to have worked under Boteler, in a hand so nearly resembling his that I can hardly detect a difference.

• Some of these also occur in the Chartulary, Corp. MSS. A. 2.

GLOSSARY

The words to which only the number of the page is affixed have been explained in footnotes.