David Laing, eminent historian, antiquary and bibliographer, was the second son of the Edinburgh bookseller William Laing (1764-1832) and his wife Helen Kirk, and was born on 20 April 1793. He was educated at the Canongate Grammar School and later on attended Greek classes at the University of Edinburgh. At the age of fourteen, he became apprenticed to his father who, at the time, was the only bookseller in Edinburgh dealing in foreign literature. Laing was able, occasionally, to travel abroad in search of rare or curious books. In 1821, he became a partner in his father's business and throughout his life he was an avid collector of manuscripts and rescued many from destruction. The first published work of his own was Auctarium Bibliothecae Edinburgenae sive Catalogus Librorum quos Gulielmus Drummondus ab Hawthornden D.D.Q. Anno 1627 (1815). Among other works, Laing also reprinted Thomas Craig's Epithalamium on the marriage of Darnley and Mary Stuart (1821). When Sir Walter Scott founded the Bannatyne Club in 1823 for the printing of material and tracts relating to Scottish history and literature, Laing - a friend of Scott's - became Secretary of the Club and chief organiser until its dissolution in the 1860s. Laing was also associated with the Abbotsford Club, the Spalding Club, and the Wodrow Society, each of which had been set up for the publication of manuscripts and for the revival of old texts. When the keepership of the Advocates' Library fell vacant in 1818, Laing was a candidate but was not elected. He became Keeper of the Library to the Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet, a post which he occupied from 1837 until his death. On his appointment to the post, he gave up his business as a bookseller and disposed of the stock in a public sale. Laing died at Portobello, in Edinburgh, on 18 October 1878.
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MS 145 contains one of only thirteen known extant copies of a 14th-century text by William of Pagula [Paull], a theologian, writer, and English parish priest. This massive text containing five books is a manual on canon law and theology, composed sometime in or around 1318-22. The text in nearly complete in MS 145, although the final book, Liber v wants three chapters.f. 1r: Prologue, beginning with the words Incipit Prologus. Ad...
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MS 148 is a copy of a reforming text by Pope Benedict XII, known as 'Constituta totius Ordinis canonicorum regularium Ordinis S. Augustini'. Benedict XII became pope in 1334, and occupied the role until his death in 1342. Pope during the'Avignon papacy' period, Benedict was the third pope to rule from Avignon (in France), rather than Rome. Pope Benedict was a former Cistercian abbot, and was known for his religious strictness and austerity. When he became pope, he turned his attention to...
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Contains nine texts bound together, in different hands.Of note, the endpaper at the beginning of the manuscript is an interesting fragment from an Antiphoner of the 9th or 10th century. The other endpaper is a textual fragment too, although from later that the 9th/10th centuries.ff. 1r-8v: Bull of Pope Honorius III to Saint Francis and the brothers of the Orderff. 9r-13r: Bull of Pope Gregory IXff. 14r-50r: Bull of Pope Nicholas III from 1279,...
Scope and Contents
A composite manuscript connected with the Benedictine Monastery of San Lorenzo, in the Castello neighbourhood of Venice. The first text was commissioned by the Abbess Cipriana Michiel. The texts are preceded by a table of contents which appears to be an addition and which includes detailed heading for the first four texts (all written by the same hand). The table of contents starts on f. iiir. It is introduced by the rubric Al nome del nostro Signore Jesu Chisto....
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This manuscript contains a list of medieval statutes and other laws issued by the Kingdom of England before the development of the English Parliament, and a Registrum Brevium, which is collection of writs used by legal practitioners, especially in the late Middle Ages.ContentsStatutes: start on f. 1r and ends on f. 29v, and contains the following statutes: Magna Carta,...
This manuscript was lost during the Second World War. It was a 14th-century English manuscript in vellum, written in Latin and in French, which contained a list of medieval statutes and other laws issued by the Kingdom of England before the development of the English Parliament. A more detailed description can be found in Catherine Borland's catalogue (1916): MS 157 (external link).
Scope and Contents
In medieval England, common law descended from writs issued by the royal chancery. These writs were compiled in a volume referred to as the Registrum Brevium (Register of Writs), the earliest surviving manuscript of which exists from 1227. These texts of writs was continually modified and updated, and the Registrum Brevium came to be one of the most common kind of legal manuscript in Medieval England. MS 158 is a pocket-sized...
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This manuscript contains the ordinances of the Order of the Golden Fleece, a Roman Catholic order of chivalry founded in Bruges by Philip the Good in 1430. The Order still exists in Spain and Austria. This is a late medieval copy in French of the document that determined the practices and rules of this royal Order.ContentsTable of contents I: the title on f. 1r reads: Sensuit la table de ce present...
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La Cedola del Terzo Monte dei Poveri della magnifica Città di Perugia ('The ordinances of the third Mount of Piety of the magnificent city of Perugia') is a document relating to the establishment of a Mount of Piety founded in Perugia in 1467. A Mount of Piety was a pawnbroking establishment run by the Church as a charity and intended to benefit the poors by lending small sums of money in exchange for an object which belonged to the client. One of the first...
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Contains three texts, and tables subsequently inserted into the volume. The fly leaves (ff. i-ii) containing the tables are by later hands, while the rest of the manuscript is by a single 12th-century hand with only the exception of f. 72, which is written by a different but contemporary 12th-century hand.The tables on f. ir and f. iiv list three additional texts, now missing, or perhaps never copied: 'Liber urinarum a voce theophili' (Theophilus Protospatharius's, also known as...
